Strongly upvoted. Catherine is likely constrained in what she can say due to her role, in part, as a mediator between EAs.
Here’s a few blunter points I’d add / make explicit:
EAs / EA orgs that do shockingly poor work sometimes wind up with informal, sometimes unspoken, mutual non-dispargement agreements with their victims. It’s rarely ever worth the effort of giving someone a terrible reference because they might retaliate. You need to drag it out of them and listen hard for hints. Promise confidentiality. Don’t settle for a short written reference from some HR person. Try get on a call with someone who worked closely with them.
Do not assume that because a mental health professional advertising EA-alignment means that they’ll be making scientifically sound suggestions. Seek independent reviews. Look at the scientific literature for their approach (if there isn’t much, that’s a bad sign).
The amount of negative information that reaches you about an organisation / person is not just about their competence / character. It’s equally as determined by the cause area and the culture there...
Different cause areas attract different personality profiles. This leads to very different dynamics in reputation and social information flow. Animal advocacy disproportionately attracts people the empathetic, brave, justice-seeking. The adversial nature of it selectively repels people who’re conflict averse. They’re thus much more likely to call people out and go to war with each other. Mental health attracts warmer more understanding people whose prime motivation is making people happy. So, you might be more likely to hear negative things about animal advocacy orgs than mental health ones, but you shouldn’t assume that we’re better to work with necessarily. It could equally be that our peers are less keen to call us out on our bullshit.
Influential people are much less likely to be called out because they’re perceived to be in a better position to retaliate. People who do more stuff are more likely to be called out because they’re involved with more people and will fail more often.
I’ve got a ton of deadlines coming up, so sadly can’t reply to comments
Agreed with all of the above. I’ll also add that a bunch of orgs do work that is basically useless, and it should not be assumed that just because an org seems “part of the community” that working there will be an effective way to do good—public callouts are costly, and community dynamics and knowledge can be hard to judge from the outside.
I wonder whether CEA or someone could fruitfully run (and share the results of) an anonymous survey of some suitably knowledgeable and diverse group of EA insiders, regarding their confidence in various “EA adjacent” orgs?
Strongly upvoted. Catherine is likely constrained in what she can say due to her role, in part, as a mediator between EAs.
Here’s a few blunter points I’d add / make explicit:
EAs / EA orgs that do shockingly poor work sometimes wind up with informal, sometimes unspoken, mutual non-dispargement agreements with their victims. It’s rarely ever worth the effort of giving someone a terrible reference because they might retaliate. You need to drag it out of them and listen hard for hints. Promise confidentiality. Don’t settle for a short written reference from some HR person. Try get on a call with someone who worked closely with them.
Do not assume that because a mental health professional advertising EA-alignment means that they’ll be making scientifically sound suggestions. Seek independent reviews. Look at the scientific literature for their approach (if there isn’t much, that’s a bad sign).
The amount of negative information that reaches you about an organisation / person is not just about their competence / character. It’s equally as determined by the cause area and the culture there...
Different cause areas attract different personality profiles. This leads to very different dynamics in reputation and social information flow. Animal advocacy disproportionately attracts people the empathetic, brave, justice-seeking. The adversial nature of it selectively repels people who’re conflict averse. They’re thus much more likely to call people out and go to war with each other. Mental health attracts warmer more understanding people whose prime motivation is making people happy. So, you might be more likely to hear negative things about animal advocacy orgs than mental health ones, but you shouldn’t assume that we’re better to work with necessarily. It could equally be that our peers are less keen to call us out on our bullshit.
Influential people are much less likely to be called out because they’re perceived to be in a better position to retaliate. People who do more stuff are more likely to be called out because they’re involved with more people and will fail more often.
I’ve got a ton of deadlines coming up, so sadly can’t reply to comments
Agreed with all of the above. I’ll also add that a bunch of orgs do work that is basically useless, and it should not be assumed that just because an org seems “part of the community” that working there will be an effective way to do good—public callouts are costly, and community dynamics and knowledge can be hard to judge from the outside.
I wonder whether CEA or someone could fruitfully run (and share the results of) an anonymous survey of some suitably knowledgeable and diverse group of EA insiders, regarding their confidence in various “EA adjacent” orgs?