Even among EAs I’m atypically pro-transparency, but while I would worry if there was little public information or community engagement from most of the board members that’s far from the case. If you overly constrain the board members you’re willing to have you can miss out on people with skills or experience that would be really valuable for the organization.
I’m not suggesting she do a five-page interview in Time Magazine—just some kind of engagement with the community she’s somehow, virtually without its knowledge, become custodian of. Like, an occasional forum post, monthly office hours, or similar.
Part of the problem with the current structure is precisely that no-one gets to ask the question ‘how qualified are the Watchmen?’ - we just have to take it on the trust of the other four, which compounds the problem. By comparison, how would you feel if two, three, or four of the remaining five were replaced by someone equally as mysterious? I think each unknown makes the concerns about concentration of influence and lack of accountability look proportionately worse.
BTW I agree with the sentiment that the EA movement would benefit from knowing a little more about McCauley. Even just some very basic questions like:
What cause areas are most important to you?
What do you see as the role of EVF?
How did you get into EA? How have your views evolved over time?
I think it’s a relatively small issue, but not knowing much about the EVF board seems like it somewhat reduces the abilities of EAs to properly calibrate their views on how much to trust/rely on EVF and its subsidiaries.
I will also say that it doesn’t feel super representative of the EA community that all 5 of EVF’s board members appear to primarily be longtermists. This isn’t necessarily an issue if all the board members are doing a good job of listening to and representing the views of the EA community, rather than just their own. But it’s sort of odd.
Even among EAs I’m atypically pro-transparency, but while I would worry if there was little public information or community engagement from most of the board members that’s far from the case. If you overly constrain the board members you’re willing to have you can miss out on people with skills or experience that would be really valuable for the organization.
I’m not suggesting she do a five-page interview in Time Magazine—just some kind of engagement with the community she’s somehow, virtually without its knowledge, become custodian of. Like, an occasional forum post, monthly office hours, or similar.
Part of the problem with the current structure is precisely that no-one gets to ask the question ‘how qualified are the Watchmen?’ - we just have to take it on the trust of the other four, which compounds the problem. By comparison, how would you feel if two, three, or four of the remaining five were replaced by someone equally as mysterious? I think each unknown makes the concerns about concentration of influence and lack of accountability look proportionately worse.
BTW I agree with the sentiment that the EA movement would benefit from knowing a little more about McCauley. Even just some very basic questions like:
What cause areas are most important to you?
What do you see as the role of EVF?
How did you get into EA? How have your views evolved over time?
I think it’s a relatively small issue, but not knowing much about the EVF board seems like it somewhat reduces the abilities of EAs to properly calibrate their views on how much to trust/rely on EVF and its subsidiaries.
I will also say that it doesn’t feel super representative of the EA community that all 5 of EVF’s board members appear to primarily be longtermists. This isn’t necessarily an issue if all the board members are doing a good job of listening to and representing the views of the EA community, rather than just their own. But it’s sort of odd.