I think that’s a good analysis, and I think we should strive to be a high-trust community.
But: you can’t just tell people to shut up and simply trust. Trust needs to be earned. One effect of democratic processes is that candidates demonstrate their trustworthiness, so after the democratic process, people can trust them.
Right now, you would ask any new EA community member (and most EAs are new) to “just trust other EAs”, on no other basis than “past EAs have been trustworthy”.
I can imagine a few things that important figures can do in order to increase their trustworthiness:
Listen to and engage with the EA community.
Be transparent about their decisions and strategy.
Not being afraid to limit their own power by introducing oversight.
I can also imagine a few things that community members can do to improve their trustworthiness:
be vouched for by other trustworthy people
repeatedly demonstrate good intentions
As it stands now, I don’t trust the EA community to indentify non-trustworthy EAs to me. In a high-trust culture, any abuse of trust should be costly. I have not yet seen an example of this.
I agree with much of this, however, I also don’t think we should go around asserting “past EAs have been untrustworthy” based on little evidence nor fact-checking. This does a lot of damage not just to the reputation of the individuals and organisations (which is important for their impact) but to the high-trust environment that we have right now (which is also important for our community’s impact). We largely have this high-trust environment because it’s earned (the reason I trust so many people and organisations is that they’ve proven to be trustworthy time and time again). Yes, some trust has absolutely been let down recently (eg SBF), and we need to learn from that, but we need to learn the right lessons not the wrong ones.
A lot of the valid points you had within the The Bad Omens in EA Governance post you wrote were undermined by (or at least buried by) its accusatory superlative language, lack of fact-checking and misleading statements (e.g. “EVF paid itself” when talking about an EA Funds grant to GovAI which is instead better understood as EA Funds grant managers awarded a grant to Allan Dafoe and Ben Garfinkel to set up GovAI and EVF were approached to fiscally sponsor it) . Many innacurate and misleading statements (and lots of superlative accusatory language) are still present in the post despite the feedback and this contributes to an unjustified low-trust environment.
I strongly encourage you to continue to push directionally for good governance and legible trustworthiness as I think it’s something worth pursuing. I do however worry about the approach you’ve taken.
Your previous post demonstrated much stronger reasons to not trust you than those you accused of being untrustworthy. However, I’m trying (and failing to some extent as I’m human) to take on board the points you make and to be charitable while also pushing back appropriately. This is the approach I appreciate from others in the community who I trust and respect. I hope that you are able to take this feedback on board and try to hold yourself to the standards you seem to hold of others, that in turn would help me trust future critiques you make.
I just want to say that I have been very impressed by your response to my post!
I agree, I should have done more fact checking before posting and I should have used more charitable language. This has shaped the debate in a combattive way I didn’t intend. I already learned from this and will hold myself to a higher standard in future interactions with the community!
Thanks for holding me to a high standard in return, you have been nothing but nice. This has increased my trust in you personally!
What specific examples of abuse of trust haven’t been made to be costly do you think should be made to be costly? Why those ones? And how specifically should they be identified or made to be costly? Do you have examples from other communities who’ve done this well in a way that has improved trust and ability to have impact?
I think that’s a good analysis, and I think we should strive to be a high-trust community.
But: you can’t just tell people to shut up and simply trust. Trust needs to be earned. One effect of democratic processes is that candidates demonstrate their trustworthiness, so after the democratic process, people can trust them.
Right now, you would ask any new EA community member (and most EAs are new) to “just trust other EAs”, on no other basis than “past EAs have been trustworthy”.
I can imagine a few things that important figures can do in order to increase their trustworthiness:
Listen to and engage with the EA community.
Be transparent about their decisions and strategy.
Not being afraid to limit their own power by introducing oversight.
I can also imagine a few things that community members can do to improve their trustworthiness:
be vouched for by other trustworthy people
repeatedly demonstrate good intentions
As it stands now, I don’t trust the EA community to indentify non-trustworthy EAs to me. In a high-trust culture, any abuse of trust should be costly. I have not yet seen an example of this.
I agree with much of this, however, I also don’t think we should go around asserting “past EAs have been untrustworthy” based on little evidence nor fact-checking. This does a lot of damage not just to the reputation of the individuals and organisations (which is important for their impact) but to the high-trust environment that we have right now (which is also important for our community’s impact). We largely have this high-trust environment because it’s earned (the reason I trust so many people and organisations is that they’ve proven to be trustworthy time and time again). Yes, some trust has absolutely been let down recently (eg SBF), and we need to learn from that, but we need to learn the right lessons not the wrong ones.
A lot of the valid points you had within the The Bad Omens in EA Governance post you wrote were undermined by (or at least buried by) its accusatory superlative language, lack of fact-checking and misleading statements (e.g. “EVF paid itself” when talking about an EA Funds grant to GovAI which is instead better understood as EA Funds grant managers awarded a grant to Allan Dafoe and Ben Garfinkel to set up GovAI and EVF were approached to fiscally sponsor it) . Many innacurate and misleading statements (and lots of superlative accusatory language) are still present in the post despite the feedback and this contributes to an unjustified low-trust environment.
I strongly encourage you to continue to push directionally for good governance and legible trustworthiness as I think it’s something worth pursuing. I do however worry about the approach you’ve taken.
Your previous post demonstrated much stronger reasons to not trust you than those you accused of being untrustworthy. However, I’m trying (and failing to some extent as I’m human) to take on board the points you make and to be charitable while also pushing back appropriately. This is the approach I appreciate from others in the community who I trust and respect. I hope that you are able to take this feedback on board and try to hold yourself to the standards you seem to hold of others, that in turn would help me trust future critiques you make.
I just want to say that I have been very impressed by your response to my post! I agree, I should have done more fact checking before posting and I should have used more charitable language. This has shaped the debate in a combattive way I didn’t intend. I already learned from this and will hold myself to a higher standard in future interactions with the community!
Thanks for holding me to a high standard in return, you have been nothing but nice. This has increased my trust in you personally!
Thanks very much for writing this—it really made my day to read it 😀
Hope you have a wonderful rest of 2022!
… strikes me as “not nice” fwiw, though overall it’s been cool to see how you’ve both engaged with this conversation.
Do you feel comfortable sharing specific examples of what EA orgs and people have done to earn your high trust?
What specific examples of abuse of trust haven’t been made to be costly do you think should be made to be costly? Why those ones? And how specifically should they be identified or made to be costly? Do you have examples from other communities who’ve done this well in a way that has improved trust and ability to have impact?
I have not come across serious abuses of trust, which is surprising even in a high-trustworthiness environment.
For example, actual Fraud can’t be at 0% when there’s so much money around.
The only example I can think of, SBF, seems thoroughly extradited from EA.