I agree that the donors should feel free to disassociate themselves from whatever they want, though in this case how the castle is being handled is a decision by EV, the most central EA organization.
Another place where I have changed my mind over time is the grant we gave for the purchase of Wytham Abbey, an event space in Oxford.
[ . . . .]
Because this was a large asset, we agreed with Effective Ventures ahead of time that we would ask them to sell the Abbey if the event space, all things considered, turned out not to be sufficiently cost-effective. We recently made that request; funds from the sale will be distributed to other valuable projects they run.
Claire had previously noted that “(Proceeds from a sale would be used as general funding within EVF, and that funding would replace some of our and other funders’ future grants to EVF.)” So the plan of reallocating the funds locked up in Wytham to replace some of its general support to EVF if OP wanted out seems to have been the understanding from the get-go.
Based on that, it sounds like the sale was EVF’s decision insofar as it could have refused, damaged its relationship with its predominant funder, and found some other way to plug the resulting massive hole in its budget. In other words: not really. And EVF would still have needed to come up with a non-OP funding source for operating Wytham; surely it was not going to get OP’s funds to directly or indirectly do so after not honoring the request to divest it had agreed in advance OP could make.
Sure, I am not saying that EV should have gone back on some kind of promise.
But generally expect that when I trade with leadership in this ecosystem that they will be held to a standard of cost-effectiveness and not a standard of looking good on optics-grounds. And I think it continues to be good to judge EV and OP for making decisions on grounds that seem inconsistent with EA principles to me.
It shouldn’t cost them like an infinite amount of social capital, but I do think it makes the people a bit less suited to being in long-term EA leadership positions (i.e. if we had an election for EA leadership, the degree to which people optimize for optics instead of cost-effectiveness would hopefully be one of the central virtues on which to evaluate our leadership).
Alexander Berger wrote yesterday:
Claire had previously noted that “(Proceeds from a sale would be used as general funding within EVF, and that funding would replace some of our and other funders’ future grants to EVF.)” So the plan of reallocating the funds locked up in Wytham to replace some of its general support to EVF if OP wanted out seems to have been the understanding from the get-go.
Based on that, it sounds like the sale was EVF’s decision insofar as it could have refused, damaged its relationship with its predominant funder, and found some other way to plug the resulting massive hole in its budget. In other words: not really. And EVF would still have needed to come up with a non-OP funding source for operating Wytham; surely it was not going to get OP’s funds to directly or indirectly do so after not honoring the request to divest it had agreed in advance OP could make.
Sure, I am not saying that EV should have gone back on some kind of promise.
But generally expect that when I trade with leadership in this ecosystem that they will be held to a standard of cost-effectiveness and not a standard of looking good on optics-grounds. And I think it continues to be good to judge EV and OP for making decisions on grounds that seem inconsistent with EA principles to me.
It shouldn’t cost them like an infinite amount of social capital, but I do think it makes the people a bit less suited to being in long-term EA leadership positions (i.e. if we had an election for EA leadership, the degree to which people optimize for optics instead of cost-effectiveness would hopefully be one of the central virtues on which to evaluate our leadership).