Aaron Gertler 🔸

• Aaron Gertler 🔸 13 Sep 2026 18:43 UTC

  3 points

  3 ∶ 3

  in reply to: Camille’s comment on: Caroline Elli­son has joined Manifund

  I’m sorry to hear about the issues your university group had — I worked in EA comms during that period, and can imagine how hard it would have been when FTX was headline news. I’m glad that EA was largely unknown when I was starting my school’s group.

  I still expect this story to be much smaller than the original FTX collapse. SBF has moved from one of the most famous people in the country to an occasional curiosity (e.g. stories about his prison life). Crimes are much more interesting than what the criminals do years later. Outside of tiny crypto sites, I’ve only seen this story get a couple of blurbs in the business press. I predict that the median university group will hear about it zero times over the course of its recruiting season this year.

• Aaron Gertler 🔸 13 Sep 2026 17:23 UTC

  13 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: jai_’s comment on: Caroline Elli­son has joined Manifund

  When I plugged this statement into Opus, it mostly disagreed outside of direct quid pro quo cases or scenarios where the donor gets more than they gave. I could see this scenario being a legal gray area, but I generally don’t think it’s unethical to make private hiring decisions based on whatever criteria you want. (Though it gets more complicated when you bring in issues like racial preferences or hiring people incompetent enough to cause harm to third parties, and I understand why a lot of people put Manifund’s choice in the latter category.)

  I do think charities have some obligation not to “betray” their donors by using their money for things the donors would be appalled by. If some of Manifund’s donors don’t like the thought of their money paying for Caroline’s salary, I hope they’ll have some recourse (though of course it’s complicated to figure out whose money pays for what within a charity).

• Aaron Gertler 🔸 13 Sep 2026 3:26 UTC

  39 points

  3 ∶ 1

  on: Caroline Elli­son has joined Manifund

  Personal notes: I’ve had friendly interactions with Austin and spent some time in the Mox coworking space. I’ve never met Caroline, though I liked her Tumblr and hope she finds ways to do good moving forward. The FTX collapse cost me thousands of dollars, destroyed a video game I loved, made my job much harder for the next year, and damaged a community I love.

  Thoughts on the situation, as someone who cares a lot about EA’s reputation and also thinks it’s sometimes good to make unusual decisions based on controversial ethical principles:

  Perspective-taking: Ariel’s comment is really good. Read that first if you haven’t.

  Competence: Having read Going Infinite and a bunch of news stories, I don’t feel qualified to distinguish between “Caroline is bad at operations/​finance/​judging ideas” and “Caroline is good at those things — after all, FTX/​Alameda had lots of early success — but she got overwhelmed by the complexities of an org with billions of dollars in assets while struggling with interpersonal entanglements”. If Austin thinks her abilities are a good fit, I’m not all that inclined to doubt him.

  Personal ethics: My ethical qualms are with Austin, not Caroline. I don’t think her ethics matter much for this role: she is unlikely to end up in a situation where the pressures on her, and decisions available to her, even vaguely resemble her situation at FTX. I’d still feel safe using Manifund’s platform while she’s involved.

  Is this a good decision (impact)? Seems terrible from the standpoint of furthering Manifund’s goals. It’s also a small ding on EA’s reputation as a whole, with whatever damage that implies. But I think Austin understood those things, and impact wasn’t his primary focus.

  I wouldn’t have made this decision in Austin’s shoes, given the chance that it could undo years of work to build Manifund, but I respect that EA contains lots of people with unusual perspectives and that they’ll sometimes do things I wouldn’t. That said, I’ll reserve my donations for people whose perspectives are closer to mine.

  Is this a good decision (ethics)? I don’t think it’s unethical to hire people with criminal backgrounds, and the weak “finance” connection here doesn’t change my view (see “personal ethics”). But I agree with others’ concerns about paying someone with money they helped steal. If Manifund doesn’t pay back the FTX money, that would breach my ethical standards; I’d hope that any org self-labeling as “EA” would do better.

  Using loyalty and indebtedness as hiring criteria strikes me as unwise, but not unethical, as long as Austin is honest with his donors about his motives.

  What does this say about Manifund? If I wanted to predict Manifund’s actions, I’d care more about the years of activity they’ve documented than this particular hire. If you thought they were a good grantmaker before, it’s reasonable not to update much. However:

  • The situation presents other reasons for concern, unrelated to their grantmaking ability.

  • Manifund supports lots of small projects with unclear impact. If you find their results hard to judge, you might care more about the judgment of their staff. If I were a Manifund donor in that position, I’d be updating in the direction of “Austin sees the world and makes decisions very differently from me”, and that would affect my trust in Manifund’s work.

  EA’s reputation: Overall, this is small potatoes. FTX is famous, but the fame is fading. Caroline is much less famous than SBF. Manifund is an obscure org. From my recent experience, EA’s reputation seems to hinge more on AI safety (and the age-old GiveWell/​ETG stuff) than FTX. If Caroline were broadly welcomed back, that would be unusual, but the most common reactions being either severe skepticism or outright condemnation is… pretty much what you’d see elsewhere, for better or for worse.

  • However, I’d still describe it as a “small ding” — if someone hears about this, and cares at all, they’re more likely to update negatively than positively against EA.

  • If you see someone cite Manifund’s decision as a reason to distrust EA, you could point them to this thread, or the comments on Austin’s Substack post. They might realize that Manifund’s decision doesn’t say much about the EA community or EA’s principles.

  • If you judge a situation by its salience on the day it happens, you’ll routinely overestimate its lasting impact. The Nick Bostrom letter felt like a disaster the day it came out — a perfect intersection of hot-button social issue, prominent figure, and scissor situation for the community — but in the end, I don’t think it left much of an impression on the wider world.

  Should Manifund be “organizatio non grata” in EA? This is up to the loose collection of orgs and people that comprise “EA”, not any single entity. I respect anyone’s decision to update on Manifund as they see fit. If I ran EA Global or made grants, and I had to decide whether to invite/​fund the org, I’d consider it (assuming they paid back the FTX money). But I would expect to end on “nope, this crosses too many lines even if I like Manifund’s work and see Austin’s perspective”.

• Aaron Gertler 🔸 13 Sep 2026 1:46 UTC

  12 points

  2 ∶ 4

  in reply to: Camille’s comment on: Caroline Elli­son has joined Manifund

  (2) For what it’s worth, I don’t think this particular news is likely to reach the people your friends are talking to at their university table.

  You could spend years engaging with EA and never hear about Manifund, and if you did, you’d probably hear about the conference they run rather than the decision to hire the second-most-famous person involved in a financial scandal that happened when the class of 2030 were 14-year-olds.

  If someone does hear about the decision, and worries that Manifest represents something bad at the heart of EA, you might show them the comment thread on this post — I think it’s a good representation of the community as a whole (some people biting bullets, many people pointing out various ethical concerns).

  And on (3), I don’t see this feeding into any war much: it seems like ~90% of EA people and ~90% of LW people (maybe 95?) think this is a bad decision.

• Aaron Gertler 🔸 13 Sep 2026 1:30 UTC

  23 points

  5 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Flo 🔸’s comment on: Caroline Elli­son has joined Manifund

  If every decision made by any organization under the EA umbrella can make you reconsider associating with the brand, are there any other brands you associate with that manage to maintain the standards you look for?

  Every discussion I’ve seen makes me think that people within EA overwhelmingly think this is a bad idea, and many of them plan to interact differently with Manifund going forward; for a community without formal standards for who “belongs”, that seems like as much as you could reasonably ask for (aside from even more overwhelming condemnation, I suppose).

  Caveat: Our differing instincts might be informed by a different understanding of where Manifund sits within EA (I think of them as a fairly minor organization, but EA is a loose and chaotic group of orgs, and I only see certain parts of the elephant).

A chance to speak up for mosquito erad­i­ca­tion in the USA (by June 5)

• Aaron Gertler 🔸 1 May 2026 9:47 UTC

  6 points

  1 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Geoffrey Miller’s comment on: Starfish

  All good points!

  Weirdly, I arrived at this comment just after rereading an internet horror comic that begins with a starfish eating someone alive. I hope shellfish aren’t sentient.

Starfish

• Aaron Gertler 🔸 27 Apr 2026 18:32 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: EdoArad🔸’s comment on: “Art with EA Vibes” database — what should I in­clude?

  Thanks, this should be fixed now.

• Aaron Gertler 🔸 22 Apr 2026 19:34 UTC

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Vasco Grilo🔸’s comment on: Seven­teen rea­sons I’m here

  Hi Vasco. Thanks!

Seven­teen rea­sons I’m here

• Aaron Gertler 🔸 22 Apr 2026 0:12 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Jen baik’s comment on: “Art with EA Vibes” database — what should I in­clude?

  I’d prefer for the submitter to write or generate a summary, so that it covers what they think is important — an AI summary of e.g. “War With The Newts” probably won’t hint at the EA parallels.

  I also like having less AI text around if I can help it; I don’t personally mind it in this context, but think it tends to degrade reading experience for many people.
  
  That said, I’d like to make life easier for submitters, so I’ve removed the mandate from “summary” and “media type”. I left “EA vibes” because that still requires a human touch — my experiments in getting AI to explain a book’s EA vibes have been mixed at best, and a work’s connection to EA is often quite personal for the submitter (we all see EA a bit differently).

• Aaron Gertler 🔸 21 Apr 2026 19:04 UTC

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Eevee🔹’s comment on: “Art with EA Vibes” database — what should I in­clude?

  Thanks for the reminder—didn’t mean to leave out the type.

  I skipped “Creator” at first because I wasn’t sure it was worth the space (mostly one-time creators here), but when I thought more, it seems useful for people to be able to e.g. filter through all the Scott Alexander content once the database is bigger. And it saves people from having to specify creators in the title. And people can always filter it out for themselves. So it’s in for now!

• Aaron Gertler 🔸 21 Apr 2026 18:07 UTC

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Eevee🔹’s comment on: “Art with EA Vibes” database — what should I in­clude?

  Fixed! Thanks for the alert.

• Aaron Gertler 🔸 21 Apr 2026 8:31 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: MvK🔸’s comment on: You should write about your giving

  GWWC has a blog, so you could ask them about publishing there!

  There’s always the option of pitching your story to news outlets; occasionally we do see a GWWC member pop up in mainstream media, like Allan Saldanha in the Guardian (who also gives well over 10%). But I don’t know how those stories tend to come together — whether it’s through GWWC helping out or the subject making their own connections. Probably worth asking GWWC about that, though.

“Art with EA Vibes” database — what should I in­clude?

Build­ing the Field of AI Safety

• Aaron Gertler 🔸 17 Apr 2026 19:10 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Dalton Sweet’s comment on: You Should Write a Fo­rum Bio

  Congratulations! Welcome to the Forum.

• Aaron Gertler 🔸 8 Apr 2026 19:41 UTC

  6 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Vasco Grilo🔸’s comment on: You should write about your giving

  Thanks for the nitpick, fixed!

  I mean something like “the average person in the EA community” or “the average person who is interested enough in EA’s ideas and methods to take action” — that seems like the relevant audience for the question of what the community should focus on.

  (This is complicated by giving being an easier pitch/​reaching more people than career choice — but that’s beyond the scope of this comment.)

  Some thoughts:

  1. I’m not sure what it means for a candidate to be “more cost-effective”, but I assume it equates to “better at their job” (assuming a fixed salary).

  2. My impression, from spending a lot of time in EA orgs and working on several hiring rounds, is that the difference between “best candidate” and “second-best candidate” is often well over 10% (though, to be fair, orgs may be wrong about which candidate is best).

  3. And even a candidate who is only 10% “better” might have additional impact worth far more than 10% of their salary. Let’s say an average org employee generates $2 million in value for the organization (seems realistic based on this). Getting the “best” candidate for a job would then be worth $200,000 to the org. If that employee earned a $100,000 salary (and donated $10,000/​year), they’d generate more value by working than giving even if their donation target was 10x as cost-effective as their employer.

     1. The linked figures are old and could be flawed in many ways, but I’m not aware of anything better.

     2. The implicit assumption I’m reading from your model is that someone’s impact within a job is worth exactly what they are paid. But I may be misunderstanding something — you have much more experience with this kind of modeling than I do!

  4. Your model seems to assume that a donor will support the most cost-effective intervention in an area. But if less cost-effective interventions have a lot more jobs, doesn’t that imply they also have more funding, and thus that the average donor is more likely to support them?

     1. This is hard to support empirically without some shared views on which interventions are best. But I will say that donors, relative to job-seekers, have historically been much more interested in global health than animal welfare or X-risk — if you think the most effective interventions are in the latter categories, that’s some evidence in favor of prioritizing career choice over giving.

     2. If new donors did reliably support the most cost-effective interventions, that seems like it would open up many more jobs in those interventions and boost the impact of an expected career change (though perhaps not above the impact of donating).

  5. People who decide to change their careers don’t just add to existing interventions — they sometimes make it possible to support new interventions (e.g. by founding an org, or bringing a new kind of expertise into an existing org).

     1. Donors can also do this, but it’s hard — I’d guess the average EA-interested person is more likely to be capable of starting a new org than providing sufficient seed funding to get one running.

  6. In my experience, EA orgs tend to describe themselves as much more limited by talent than funding. This doesn’t disprove your model — it could be that orgs are broadly wrong about this, or that the most effective orgs are more likely to be primarily funding-bottlenecked, or that the average person can do more to resolve a funding bottleneck than a talent bottleneck, etc. — but it seems like evidence that the model is incomplete.

  7. In theory, the best outcome is for someone to change their career and start donating. And I think someone who changes their career is more likely to start donating than vice-versa. A career change is a big change to someone’s environment/​what they think about all day, and likely connects them to lots of other people who donate, while donating is a smaller change with little day-to-day impact on how the donor thinks about their career.

     1. If you think most people make far more impact by donating than working, and that it’s much easier to convince people to donate than change careers, this factor won’t change much; you’d still prefer lots of new donors to a small number of new workers who also donate. But I still thought it was worth noting.

  I probably won’t have time to respond to more comments at length (if at all), but I appreciate the impetus to think about the question!

• Aaron Gertler 🔸 8 Apr 2026 17:34 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Austin’s comment on: You should write about your giving

  Thanks! I didn’t add Richard initially because he’s said he doesn’t think of himself as part of EA (didn’t want to saddle him with associations he might not want). But his donation writeups are great, so I adjusted the language of my list to be more inclusive of anyone who shares an interest in EA-linked causes.