I agree with this. Actually, I think we could go further and initiate some form of productive public dialog with the wider world on this question. “Do you think that we ought to take money in the EA ecosystem and pay it back to people [potentially] defrauded by FTX, or should we put this money into the charities for which it was intended?”
That seems like responsible stewardship, and I’d expect people’s opinions would vary widely.
The question would be how we’d make such decisions, how we’d hold this dialog, and how much time and energy we’d want to put into that endeavor. One way might be to solicit input from groups that we think ought to have a say: charities we donate to, ethical thinkers, community leaders, and people who lost money in the FTX meltdown, to name a few. We could potentially make the decision by running some sort of vote, which could be as sophisticated as we like. We could vote on whether to return the money, but also how much of it should be returned.
Just brainstorming here, I don’t expect that these are the ideal way to deal with this. Just a starting point.
Do you think that we ought to take money in the EA ecosystem and pay it back to people [potentially] defrauded by FTX, or should we put this money into the charities for which it was intended?
I say give the money back (at the EA-community level, not the individual org/project level), and let the theft victim decide if they want to redonate their money to charity. It’s their money, after all!
(If the thing that happened is basically theft, and if they don’t get their money back by some other channel. I’d be interested to hear counter-arguments on either of those fronts, or on the general policy I’m suggesting.)
Public discussions sound great too, but we can invite a public conversation without using that as a reason to put off making decisions about this.
(I do think we should think hard about the relevant factors here, before acting. There are a ton of things I expect to be confusing here; maybe the whole idea just doesn’t make sense because of some subtlety about comparing the counterfactuals. But I’m guessing a large public conversation wouldn’t give us much additional insight here, and would be useful for reasons other than improving the quality of our decision.)
I agree with this. Actually, I think we could go further and initiate some form of productive public dialog with the wider world on this question. “Do you think that we ought to take money in the EA ecosystem and pay it back to people [potentially] defrauded by FTX, or should we put this money into the charities for which it was intended?”
That seems like responsible stewardship, and I’d expect people’s opinions would vary widely.
The question would be how we’d make such decisions, how we’d hold this dialog, and how much time and energy we’d want to put into that endeavor. One way might be to solicit input from groups that we think ought to have a say: charities we donate to, ethical thinkers, community leaders, and people who lost money in the FTX meltdown, to name a few. We could potentially make the decision by running some sort of vote, which could be as sophisticated as we like. We could vote on whether to return the money, but also how much of it should be returned.
Just brainstorming here, I don’t expect that these are the ideal way to deal with this. Just a starting point.
I say give the money back (at the EA-community level, not the individual org/project level), and let the theft victim decide if they want to redonate their money to charity. It’s their money, after all!
(If the thing that happened is basically theft, and if they don’t get their money back by some other channel. I’d be interested to hear counter-arguments on either of those fronts, or on the general policy I’m suggesting.)
Public discussions sound great too, but we can invite a public conversation without using that as a reason to put off making decisions about this.
(I do think we should think hard about the relevant factors here, before acting. There are a ton of things I expect to be confusing here; maybe the whole idea just doesn’t make sense because of some subtlety about comparing the counterfactuals. But I’m guessing a large public conversation wouldn’t give us much additional insight here, and would be useful for reasons other than improving the quality of our decision.)