I understand that, but this kind of thing fuels the fire of snark against the EA movement. Tweets like these are a great example of taking this out of context and using it to undermine the entire point of EA. I don’t think it makes sense to spend all our time optimising away opportunities for snark, but in this case it would have been so easily avoided: don’t buy a mansion, or if you do, get the granter buy it and lease it to you for 100 years or something.
I think the optics are particularly bad because english old stone mansions code as particularly luxurious in an american context — the price tag becomes much less important than the pictures of what looks like old school opulence.
Of course this can have a net positive EV, but if you’re holding me to the standard of finding specific future donors we have lost because of this, then I would like to hold you to the standard of pointing out specific future ideas and projects that this enables that will generate positive EV.
As I said in my reply to Neel, I am outlining a hypothetical, not making a claim about what the consequences on donations or ideas will be. I just don’t see very much value coming out of casual comments, although I think it’s natural that people are reacting to all the twitter vitriol (but I encourage everyone to delete twitter). I am keeping an open mind about the abbey, and my comment attempts to explain why.
I understand that, but this kind of thing fuels the fire of snark against the EA movement. Tweets like these are a great example of taking this out of context and using it to undermine the entire point of EA. I don’t think it makes sense to spend all our time optimising away opportunities for snark, but in this case it would have been so easily avoided: don’t buy a mansion, or if you do, get the granter buy it and lease it to you for 100 years or something.
I think the optics are particularly bad because english old stone mansions code as particularly luxurious in an american context — the price tag becomes much less important than the pictures of what looks like old school opulence.
Of course this can have a net positive EV, but if you’re holding me to the standard of finding specific future donors we have lost because of this, then I would like to hold you to the standard of pointing out specific future ideas and projects that this enables that will generate positive EV.
As I said in my reply to Neel, I am outlining a hypothetical, not making a claim about what the consequences on donations or ideas will be. I just don’t see very much value coming out of casual comments, although I think it’s natural that people are reacting to all the twitter vitriol (but I encourage everyone to delete twitter). I am keeping an open mind about the abbey, and my comment attempts to explain why.