Governance has value regardless of degree of trust
I find EA leadership’s attitude low trust in some instances
There’s a false dichotomy implied in this post; that high trust and less governance go together, and having strong governance means you have low trust. I don’t think this is the case; in fact you often create high trust by having appropriate strong governance, or lack of governance destroying trust.
I also find the characterisation of governance being there to protect against bad actors narrow, even naive; both in this post and in comments. Governance primarily should be in place to protect the average good person from doing something ill-considered; such as accounting for funding streams that is irregular and inexact which could cause problems later on, or having slap-dash recruitment practices which are not designed to ensure you are being fair to all applicants. I think EA could benefit from a lot more of that; just because we’re well intended and generally more conscientious doesn’t mean we’re immune from mistakes
There’s many ways in which the relationship between EA (nominal) leadership and EA base seems low trust to me. For instance:
I’ve worked in organisations of 6000 people where any communications had to go to the CEOs office, to ensure everything was “on message”; most people I knew found that process controlling and low trust, but also understandable. For example, a media announcement that team X was committing £Y to a certain area would have financial implications for the whole organisation, which could cause budgetary challenges. This approach reminds me a lot of how EA leadership actively discourages people from speaking to the media, to the point of directly ringing people to discourage them.
when I spoke to some EA leaders about excessive deference within EA, they cited the unilateralists curse as a reason for not speaking up about uncertainties leaders have in key ideas
Edit for context:
Basically I feel it’s wrong to say we are high trust across the board, and if we’re going to discuss trust I feel a more rounded view is needed. So I’m bringing these two anecdata points in to spark another nuance in the conversation, but not making a “cased close” argument about just how representative these instances are or just how justifiable they are.
Probably a consequence of me trying to say how I feel about the vague zeitgeist at the moment, but I think I was complaining mostly about proposals for governance that do seem aimed at eliminating bad actors or bad behaviour.
Governance primarily should be in place to protect the average good person from doing something ill-considered; such as accounting for funding streams that is irregular and inexact which could cause problems later on, or having slap-dash recruitment practices which are not designed to ensure you are being fair to all applicants.
I think this sounds reasonable and I don’t object to it, except insofar as I’d want to be sure it was actually pulling its weight and not guarding against hypothetical problems that don’t occur or don’t matter much. “We weren’t paying attention and we lost some money” is common and damaging: yes you should have good accounting. Other stuff I don’t know.
I like your point that it doesn’t feel like “leadership” (scare quotes because I still don’t really believe it exists) don’t have as much trust in the community as vice versa. I personally think this is a matter of perception versus reality—most of the time when this has come up “leadership” has argued that they don’t actually want people to defer to them and they’re not sure why people are getting that impression, etc.
A few disjointed challenges, basically:
Governance has value regardless of degree of trust
I find EA leadership’s attitude low trust in some instances
There’s a false dichotomy implied in this post; that high trust and less governance go together, and having strong governance means you have low trust. I don’t think this is the case; in fact you often create high trust by having appropriate strong governance, or lack of governance destroying trust.
I also find the characterisation of governance being there to protect against bad actors narrow, even naive; both in this post and in comments. Governance primarily should be in place to protect the average good person from doing something ill-considered; such as accounting for funding streams that is irregular and inexact which could cause problems later on, or having slap-dash recruitment practices which are not designed to ensure you are being fair to all applicants. I think EA could benefit from a lot more of that; just because we’re well intended and generally more conscientious doesn’t mean we’re immune from mistakes
There’s many ways in which the relationship between EA (nominal) leadership and EA base seems low trust to me. For instance:
I’ve worked in organisations of 6000 people where any communications had to go to the CEOs office, to ensure everything was “on message”; most people I knew found that process controlling and low trust, but also understandable. For example, a media announcement that team X was committing £Y to a certain area would have financial implications for the whole organisation, which could cause budgetary challenges. This approach reminds me a lot of how EA leadership actively discourages people from speaking to the media, to the point of directly ringing people to discourage them.
when I spoke to some EA leaders about excessive deference within EA, they cited the unilateralists curse as a reason for not speaking up about uncertainties leaders have in key ideas
Edit for context: Basically I feel it’s wrong to say we are high trust across the board, and if we’re going to discuss trust I feel a more rounded view is needed. So I’m bringing these two anecdata points in to spark another nuance in the conversation, but not making a “cased close” argument about just how representative these instances are or just how justifiable they are.
Probably a consequence of me trying to say how I feel about the vague zeitgeist at the moment, but I think I was complaining mostly about proposals for governance that do seem aimed at eliminating bad actors or bad behaviour.
I think this sounds reasonable and I don’t object to it, except insofar as I’d want to be sure it was actually pulling its weight and not guarding against hypothetical problems that don’t occur or don’t matter much. “We weren’t paying attention and we lost some money” is common and damaging: yes you should have good accounting. Other stuff I don’t know.
I like your point that it doesn’t feel like “leadership” (scare quotes because I still don’t really believe it exists) don’t have as much trust in the community as vice versa. I personally think this is a matter of perception versus reality—most of the time when this has come up “leadership” has argued that they don’t actually want people to defer to them and they’re not sure why people are getting that impression, etc.