Regardless of whether there is an economic argument to be made for this decision, as Nathan Young and others are implying, large expenses being clearly communicated and justified seems like a worthwhile endeavor for the sake of transparency alone. If people are finding out about “EA buying a castle” from Émile Torres or the New Yorker (EDIT: and we can’t point to any kind of public statement or justification), then we’re probably doing something wrong.
(Written in a personal capacity, unrelated to my job)
I agree with some of this, but not the last sentence.
Emile’s audience is very different from CEA’s audience (or the audience of anyone in EA). Many people will “find out” things from them, regardless of how EA orgs share information.
I also think they would have written exactly the same Twitter thread regardless of what was shared, for exactly the same audience (people who follow them specifically to see exaggerated takedowns of EA-related things). A public post about the Abbey probably kicks off that thread earlier, but I don’t think it changes the content.
In general, thinking about what Torres will say is of limited use, because they tend to show everything in the worst possible light (often lying in order to do so).
Good point, I didn’t make clear what I meant with the last sentence. Would this rephrasing make sense to you?
If people are finding out about “EA buying a castle” from Émile Torres or the New Yorker and we can’t point to any kind of public statement or justification, then we’re probably doing something wrong
I also agree the content of some of these criticisms wouldn’t change even if there were a public post, but I don’t think the same applies to people’s responses to it. If a reasonable person stumbles across Torres or the New Yorker criticizing EA for buying a castle, they would probably be a lot more forgiving towards EA if they can be pointed to a page on CEA’s website that provides an explanation behind the decision, written before any of these criticisms, as opposed to finding a complete lack of records or acknowledgements on (C)EA’s side.
In general, taking reasoning transparency more seriously seems like low hanging fruit for making the communication from EA orgs to both the movement and the public at large more robust, though I might be missing something, in which case I’d love if someone could point it out to me.
I think that the existence of a page would mollify maybe 10% of the people who liked Torres’ post, and it also runs the risk of sparking additional attention (maybe drawing in people to attack EV for running so many events or providing material for people to quote-tweet derisively).
I believe in reasoning transparency and try to write up my own decisions in a lot of detail. I think this is a good thing to do for the sake of the people who like and care about your work. But I don’t expect it to help much with motivated critics or the general public.
(One counterpoint: If anyone from the general public cares about long explanatory writeups on the economics of buying an abbey, I’d expect those people to be the types most likely to become interested in EA. But those are also the people I’d expect to not be engaging with Torres, so I don’t know how big the effect is.)
One counterpoint: If anyone from the general public cares about long explanatory writeups on the economics of buying an abbey, I’d expect those people to be the types most likely to become interested in EA. But those are also the people I’d expect to not be engaging with Torres, so I don’t know how big the effect is.
I’m unconvinced by this part—I think that Torres is clearly a bad faith actor, but am sure this isn’t legible to many in their audience. I expect they appeal to different subcultures, but that at least some of their audience would be EA receptive.
Currently I get the impression EA has more critics than supporters, with critical tweets getting thousands of likes and the most popular supportive tweets just hundreds. My impression might be wrong, but yeah I feel like we’re definitely doing things wrong PR wise.
I disagree with this inference. If I’d heard that (say) supportive feminist tweets were routinely getting fewer retweets than tweets critical of feminism, I don’t think I’d believe that feminists were “definitely doing things wrong PR-wise”. Tweet numbers could be relevant evidence, given some wider context, like “there’s a social trend where the most controversial and peripheral feminist ideas get disproportionately promulgated, at the expense of more central and popular ideas”, but I’m not convinced EA is in a similar situation.
I don’t have a view on whether buying Wytham was a good idea, but I do agree with Owen that we should “let decisions be guided less by what we think looks good, and more by what we think is good”. I want people to act on important ideas, and I think it’s bad when people are turned away from important ideas — but one important idea I want to spread is Owen’s, where we emphasize the virtue of performing actions you can ultimately stand behind, even if the action has bad optics.
This point is boring, but I don’t think Twitter gives an accurate picture of what the world thinks about EA. I still think there is a point in sometimes reacting to bad-faith arguments and continuing to i) put out good explanations of EA-ish ideas and ii) writing up thoughts on what went wrong. But communicating too fast, before, e.g., we have an improved understanding of the FTX situation, seems bad.
Also, as a semi-good analogy for the Wytham question, the World Economic Forum draws massive protests every year but is still widely respected among important circles.
Regardless of whether there is an economic argument to be made for this decision, as Nathan Young and others are implying, large expenses being clearly communicated and justified seems like a worthwhile endeavor for the sake of transparency alone. If people are finding out about “EA buying a castle” from Émile Torres or the New Yorker (EDIT: and we can’t point to any kind of public statement or justification), then we’re probably doing something wrong.
(Written in a personal capacity, unrelated to my job)
I agree with some of this, but not the last sentence.
Emile’s audience is very different from CEA’s audience (or the audience of anyone in EA). Many people will “find out” things from them, regardless of how EA orgs share information.
I also think they would have written exactly the same Twitter thread regardless of what was shared, for exactly the same audience (people who follow them specifically to see exaggerated takedowns of EA-related things). A public post about the Abbey probably kicks off that thread earlier, but I don’t think it changes the content.
In general, thinking about what Torres will say is of limited use, because they tend to show everything in the worst possible light (often lying in order to do so).
Good point, I didn’t make clear what I meant with the last sentence. Would this rephrasing make sense to you?
I also agree the content of some of these criticisms wouldn’t change even if there were a public post, but I don’t think the same applies to people’s responses to it. If a reasonable person stumbles across Torres or the New Yorker criticizing EA for buying a castle, they would probably be a lot more forgiving towards EA if they can be pointed to a page on CEA’s website that provides an explanation behind the decision, written before any of these criticisms, as opposed to finding a complete lack of records or acknowledgements on (C)EA’s side.
In general, taking reasoning transparency more seriously seems like low hanging fruit for making the communication from EA orgs to both the movement and the public at large more robust, though I might be missing something, in which case I’d love if someone could point it out to me.
I think that the existence of a page would mollify maybe 10% of the people who liked Torres’ post, and it also runs the risk of sparking additional attention (maybe drawing in people to attack EV for running so many events or providing material for people to quote-tweet derisively).
I believe in reasoning transparency and try to write up my own decisions in a lot of detail. I think this is a good thing to do for the sake of the people who like and care about your work. But I don’t expect it to help much with motivated critics or the general public.
(One counterpoint: If anyone from the general public cares about long explanatory writeups on the economics of buying an abbey, I’d expect those people to be the types most likely to become interested in EA. But those are also the people I’d expect to not be engaging with Torres, so I don’t know how big the effect is.)
I think that sort of long writeup can help signal thoughtfulness even if people aren’t actually going to read through it
I’m unconvinced by this part—I think that Torres is clearly a bad faith actor, but am sure this isn’t legible to many in their audience. I expect they appeal to different subcultures, but that at least some of their audience would be EA receptive.
FYI: I added a brief explanation of why we hadn’t posted publicly about it before now to the end of my answer.
Currently I get the impression EA has more critics than supporters, with critical tweets getting thousands of likes and the most popular supportive tweets just hundreds. My impression might be wrong, but yeah I feel like we’re definitely doing things wrong PR wise.
I disagree with this inference. If I’d heard that (say) supportive feminist tweets were routinely getting fewer retweets than tweets critical of feminism, I don’t think I’d believe that feminists were “definitely doing things wrong PR-wise”. Tweet numbers could be relevant evidence, given some wider context, like “there’s a social trend where the most controversial and peripheral feminist ideas get disproportionately promulgated, at the expense of more central and popular ideas”, but I’m not convinced EA is in a similar situation.
I don’t have a view on whether buying Wytham was a good idea, but I do agree with Owen that we should “let decisions be guided less by what we think looks good, and more by what we think is good”. I want people to act on important ideas, and I think it’s bad when people are turned away from important ideas — but one important idea I want to spread is Owen’s, where we emphasize the virtue of performing actions you can ultimately stand behind, even if the action has bad optics.
This point is boring, but I don’t think Twitter gives an accurate picture of what the world thinks about EA. I still think there is a point in sometimes reacting to bad-faith arguments and continuing to i) put out good explanations of EA-ish ideas and ii) writing up thoughts on what went wrong. But communicating too fast, before, e.g., we have an improved understanding of the FTX situation, seems bad.
Also, as a semi-good analogy for the Wytham question, the World Economic Forum draws massive protests every year but is still widely respected among important circles.