Not saying your claim isn’t true, just that none of their currently listed buildings are castles and I couldn’t find any evidence of a purchase.
SIDENOTE: With this research and all the recent scandals it’s starting to dawn on me how much money people are getting, I always just assumed most EA’s were unpaid volunteers like me.
The server got some interesting information this week iRozhlas.cz. According to his findings, the FTX Foundation sent 107 million crowns to the Czech Republic for the purchase and operation of a chateau in Hostačov, a small village in the Havlíčkobrod region. This happened just four months before the FTX crash.
The castle was bought by Irena Kotíková, respectively the association European Summer Program on Rationality. Mrs. Kotíková claims that she applied to FTX for a grant for an international education center and simply received it. On the first attempt. So far, she says she is not afraid that the collapse of FTX could also affect her project at the castle, but she is ready to return the money if she is called upon to do so.
Personal opinion: This seems bad. This should’ve been disclosed and we shouldn’t keep the chateau.
EDIT: For the people who read Jan’s comment and got the impression I digged through obscure messages to reveal people’s addresses, I didn’t. They are the addresses that are publicly listed on the respective websites contact pages. You can find my full reply to Jan’s comment here.
Some reasons why your comment may have been downvoted:
Jan Kulveit pointed out that “[m]ultiple claims in this post are misleading, incomplete or false”. Although Jan didn’t elaborate, his familiarity with the EA Czech scene may justify the belief that the post did in fact contain claims that are misleading, incomplete or false, and warrant a vote associated with that belief. (You don’t need to wait for the relevant evidence to be released if you expect to be persuaded by this evidence once it is released.)
You posted both a comment and a top-level post with virtually the same information. Some people may consider this to be excessive.
The top-level post makes an assertion (“ESPR should return the FTX-funded chateau”) but provides hardly any reason in support of it. You do not engage with the extensive discussion in recent weeks on what recipients of FTX funds should do with the money they received (e.g.), which uncovered reasonable considerations both for and against returning these funds. Nor do you consider Owen Cotton-Barratt’s justification for the Wytham Abbey purchase, which may also justify the decision to purchase this other property. (I don’t personally have a strong opinion either way, FWIW.)
Jan Kulveit has yet to point out anything, he has merely claimed that. Perhaps he posts evidence that I made false claims in the future, but for now there is no reason to downvote. Also the heavy downvotes started long before Jan made his comment.
The comment was hidden since it was replying to a thread with negative karma, many comments turn into posts and I found this information alarming enough to warrant it’s own post.
I did provide reasons to defend it and when those discussion took place we didn’t yet have a confession by SBF so it was still possible that this was all a misunderstanding, furthermore Wytham Abbey wasn’t purchased by FTX funds, this chateau is.
EDIT: Also Jan’s comment gets 10 karma while he has yet to cite anything, while my citation filled comment doesn’t just get disagreement karma, it get’s actual negative karma. This is not an impartial evaluation of the evidence, this is preemptively voting on what people wish to be true.
I don’t know any details, all I know is that I’ve heard multiple people talk about EA Prague buying/having a castle over the past few months—I remember it very vividly because the idea of EAs buying a castle had made me laugh the first time I heard it.
Re: your side note: I know vastly more people involved in EA (especially on the community building side) who are getting paid than who are unpaid volunteers, so that might be something you want to look into if you’re putting in a significant amount of time and effort.
Re: your edit: I share your dissapointment. I particularly have difficulty understanding the reasoning behind disagree votes on my previous comment as well—I totally understand that it may not be seen as a valuable contribution to the discussion, I didn’t consider it to be so unless Linch’s question, but I don’t see what there is to disagree with in reporting what I have heard. Maybe I just don’t get the Forum voting system
I’ve heard about this from multiple people in person, although I was under the impression that it was EA Prague that bought the castle.
I did some digging and found that:
ESPR’s adres is listed as [EDIT: Removed at request of Irena, it wasn’t a castle]
The Czech Association for Effective Altruisms adresses are listed as [EDIT: Removed at request of Irena, they weren’t castles]
EA Prague lists their locations as [EDIT: Removed at request of Irena, it wasn’t a castle]
For money I found that Open Philanthropy gave $510,000 to ESPR and $10,350 to CARE conference travel grants in Prague (neither of which seemed to mask the purchase of a castle)
Not saying your claim isn’t true, just that none of their currently listed buildings are castles and I couldn’t find any evidence of a purchase.
SIDENOTE: With this research and all the recent scandals it’s starting to dawn on me how much money people are getting, I always just assumed most EA’s were unpaid volunteers like me.
[Early edit before any upvotes] I found a source:
Personal opinion: This seems bad. This should’ve been disclosed and we shouldn’t keep the chateau.
EDIT: The fact that this comment got negative karma and the fact that the post I made about it also got negative karma and got hidden from the frontpage, without anyone making an argument why it’s a bad piece of writing, really makes me lose faith in the EA-community. EDIT: It’s back on the frontpage.
EDIT: Removed addresses at the request of Irena
EDIT: For the people who read Jan’s comment and got the impression I digged through obscure messages to reveal people’s addresses, I didn’t. They are the addresses that are publicly listed on the respective websites contact pages. You can find my full reply to Jan’s comment here.
Some reasons why your comment may have been downvoted:
Jan Kulveit pointed out that “[m]ultiple claims in this post are misleading, incomplete or false”. Although Jan didn’t elaborate, his familiarity with the EA Czech scene may justify the belief that the post did in fact contain claims that are misleading, incomplete or false, and warrant a vote associated with that belief. (You don’t need to wait for the relevant evidence to be released if you expect to be persuaded by this evidence once it is released.)
You posted both a comment and a top-level post with virtually the same information. Some people may consider this to be excessive.
The top-level post makes an assertion (“ESPR should return the FTX-funded chateau”) but provides hardly any reason in support of it. You do not engage with the extensive discussion in recent weeks on what recipients of FTX funds should do with the money they received (e.g.), which uncovered reasonable considerations both for and against returning these funds. Nor do you consider Owen Cotton-Barratt’s justification for the Wytham Abbey purchase, which may also justify the decision to purchase this other property. (I don’t personally have a strong opinion either way, FWIW.)
Jan Kulveit has yet to point out anything, he has merely claimed that. Perhaps he posts evidence that I made false claims in the future, but for now there is no reason to downvote. Also the heavy downvotes started long before Jan made his comment.
The comment was hidden since it was replying to a thread with negative karma, many comments turn into posts and I found this information alarming enough to warrant it’s own post.
I did provide reasons to defend it and when those discussion took place we didn’t yet have a confession by SBF so it was still possible that this was all a misunderstanding, furthermore Wytham Abbey wasn’t purchased by FTX funds, this chateau is.
EDIT: Also Jan’s comment gets 10 karma while he has yet to cite anything, while my citation filled comment doesn’t just get disagreement karma, it get’s actual negative karma. This is not an impartial evaluation of the evidence, this is preemptively voting on what people wish to be true.
I don’t know any details, all I know is that I’ve heard multiple people talk about EA Prague buying/having a castle over the past few months—I remember it very vividly because the idea of EAs buying a castle had made me laugh the first time I heard it.
Re: your side note: I know vastly more people involved in EA (especially on the community building side) who are getting paid than who are unpaid volunteers, so that might be something you want to look into if you’re putting in a significant amount of time and effort.
Re: your edit: I share your dissapointment. I particularly have difficulty understanding the reasoning behind disagree votes on my previous comment as well—I totally understand that it may not be seen as a valuable contribution to the discussion, I didn’t consider it to be so unless Linch’s question, but I don’t see what there is to disagree with in reporting what I have heard. Maybe I just don’t get the Forum voting system
The castles are just multiplying!
Is this the beginning of Effective Feudalism?
Maybe the monk life will suit me and I should retire to an abbey after all!