Jeroen Willems🔸 comments on FTX, ‘EA Principles’, and ‘The (Longtermist) EA Community’

[Jeroen Willems🔸]

In response to part 2: I personally didn’t think the principles of EA are vague.

From the introduction to EA on effectivealtruism.org, the fourth value of the movement is described as:

“Collaborative spirit: It’s possible to achieve more by working together, and doing this effectively requires high standards of honesty, friendliness, and a community perspective. Effective altruism is not about ‘ends justify the means’ reasoning, but rather is about being a good citizen, while ambitiously working toward a better world.”

https://​​www.effectivealtruism.org/​​articles/​​introduction-to-effective-altruism#:~:text=Collaborative spirit%3A,a better world.

It seems very clear to me that SBF’s actions violate this value.

[Violet Hour]

Thanks for the comment, this is a useful source. I agree that SBF’s actions violated “high standards of honesty” (as well as, um, more lenient ones), and don’t seem like the actions of a good citizen.

Still, I’ll note that I still feel hesitant about claims like “Sam violated the principles of the EA community”, because your cited quote is not the only way that EA is defined. I agree that we can find accounts of EA under which Sam violated those principles. Relative to those criteria, it would be correct to say “Sam violated EA principles”. Thus, I think you and I both agree that saying things like “Sam acted in accordance with EA principles” would be wrong.

However, I have highlighted other accounts of “what EA is about”, under which I think it’s much harder to say that Sam straightforwardly violated those principles — accounts which place more emphasis on the core idea of maximization. And my intuitions about when it was appropriate to make claims of the form ‘Person X violated the principles of this community’ requires something close to unanimity, prior to X’s action, of what the core principles actually are, and what they commit to you. Due to varying accounts of what EA ‘is’, or ‘about’, I reject the claim that Sam violated EA principles for much the same reason that I reject claims like Sam acted in accordance with them. So, I still think I stand behind my indeterminacy claim.

I’m unsure where we disagree. Do you think you have more lenient standards than me for when we should talk about ‘violating norms’, or do you think that (some of?) the virtues listed in your quote are core EA principles, and close-to-unanimously agreed upon?

[pseudonym]

Sam was a known, committed consequentialist, who may have been attempting to make decisions in an explicitly consequentialist way. Thus, claims to the effect of ‘Sam’s actions violated EA principles’ feel too strong. Sam’s actions were obviously not required by EA principles, but nor am I confident that, at least before this post, we’d have had firm ground to say that fraud was condemned by EA principles.

I’ll just note that all of the links in this thread predate the “fraud in the service of effective altruism is unacceptable” post, who were by people most would probably consider “EA leaders”.

I think I agree that “maximization” seems to be a core idea of EA. But I think I disagree that people think “what EA is about” will include maximization to the extent that Sam took it (let’s assume he actively + intentionally defrauded FTX customers for the purpose of donating it). And just because “maximization” seems to be directionally correct for most people (and thus seen to be “what EA is about”), doesn’t mean that all actions done in the name of “maximization” (assuming this is what happened) are consistent with EA principles.

I think I probably agree with your statement of EA community values being “indeterminate”. But I also think your bar for saying something is not indeterminant (requiring something close to unanimity) is too high-in that case you’re going to be hard pressed to find many things that fit this in the EA community (we should do good better), and even within the longtermist community (future people matter).