AnonymousEAForumAccount

Karma: 3,693

AnonymousEAForumAccount Jul 26, 2024, 3:35 PM
17 points
3 ∶ 0
in reply to: Nicholas Decker’s comment on: We need an independent investigation into how EA leadership has handled SBF and FTX
Just to clarify, I agree that EA should not have been expected to detect or predict FTX’s fraud, and explicitly stated that^[1]. The point of my post is that other mistakes were likely made, we should be trying to learn from those mistakes, and there are worrisome indications that EA leadership is not interested in that learning process and may actually be inhibiting it.
1. ^
  “I believe it is incredibly unlikely that anyone in EA leadership was aware of, or should have anticipated, FTX’s massive fraud.”

AnonymousEAForumAccount Jul 26, 2024, 5:50 AM
31 points
8 ∶ 0
in reply to: Karthik Tadepalli’s comment on: We need an independent investigation into how EA leadership has handled SBF and FTX
In 2023, 80% of CEA’s budget came from OP’s GCRCB team. This creates an obvious incentive for CEA to prioritize the stuff the GCRCB team prioritizes.
As its name suggests, the GCRCB team has an overt focus on Global Catastrophic Risks. Here’s how OP’s website describes this team:
We want to increase the number of people who aim to prevent catastrophic events, and help them to achieve their goals.
We believe that scope-sensitive giving often means focusing on the reduction of global catastrophic risks — those which could endanger billions of people. We support organizations and projects that connect and support people who want to work on these issues, with a special focus on biosecurity and risks from advanced AI. In doing so, we hope to grow and empower the community of people focused on addressing threats to humanity and protecting the future of human civilization.
The work we fund in this area is primarily focused on identifying and supporting people who are or could eventually become helpful partners, critics, and grantees.
This team was formerly known as “Effective Altruism Community Growth (Longtermism).”
CEA has also received a much smaller amount of funding from OP’s “Effective Altruism (Global Health and Wellbeing)” team. From what I can tell, the GHW team basically focuses on meta charities doing global poverty type and animal welfare work (often via fundraising for effective charities in those fields). The OP website notes:
“This focus area uses the lens of our global health and wellbeing portfolio, just as our global catastrophic risks capacity building area uses the lens of our GCR portfolio… Our funding so far has focused on [grantees that] Raise funds for highly effective charities, Enable people to have a greater impact with their careers, and found and incubate new charities working on important and neglected interventions.”
There is an enormous difference between these teams in terms of their historical and ongoing impact on EA funding and incentives. The GCRCB team has granted over $400 million since 2016, including over $70 million to CEA and over $25 million to 80k. Compare that to the GHW which launched “in July 2022. In its first 12 months, the program had a budget of $10 million.”
So basically there’s been a ton of funding for a long time for EA community building that prioritizes AI/Bio/other GCR work, and a vastly smaller amount of funding that only became available recently for EA community building that uses a global poverty/animal welfare lens. And, as your question suggests, this dynamic is not at all well understood.

AnonymousEAForumAccount Jul 26, 2024, 4:30 AM
9 points
1 ∶ 2
in reply to: Ozzie Gooen’s comment on: We need an independent investigation into how EA leadership has handled SBF and FTX
1. I don’t think any EA group outside of FTX would take responsibility for having done a lot ($60k+ worth) of due-diligence and investigation of FTX. My impression is that OP considered this as not their job, and CEA was not at all in a position to do this (to biased, was getting funded by FTX). In general, I think that our community doesn’t have strong measures in place to investigate funders. For example, I doubt that EA orgs have allocated $60k+ to investigate Dustin Moskovitz (and I imagine he might complain if others did!).
My overall impression was that this was just a large gap that the EA bureaucracy failed at. I similarly think that the “EA bureaucracy” is much weaker / less powerful than I think many imagine it being, and expect that there are several gaps like this. Note that OP/CEA/80k/etc are fairly limited organizations with specific agendas and areas of ownership.
I’m very sympathetic to the idea that OP is not responsible for anything in this case. But CEA/EV should have done at least the due diligence that fit their official policies developed in the aftermath of Ben Delo affair. I think it’s reasonable for the community to ask whether or not that actually happened. Also, multiple media outlets have reported that CEA did do an investigation after the Alameda dispute. So it would be nice to know if that actually happened and what it found.
I don’t think the comparison about investigating Dustin is particularly apt, as he didn’t have all the complaints/red flags that SBF did. CEA received credible warnings from multiple sources about a CEA board member, and I’d like to think that warrants some sort of action. Which raises another question: if CEA received credible serious concerns about a current board member, what sort of response would CEA’s current policies dictate?
Re: gaps, yes, there are lots of gaps, and the FTX affair exposed some of them. Designing organizational and governance structures that will fix those gaps should be a priority, but I haven’t seen credible evidence that this is happening. So my default assumption is that these gaps will continue to cause problems.

2. I think there were some orange/red flags around, but that it would have taken some real investigation to figure out how dangerous FTX was. I have uncertainty in how difficult it would have been to notice that fraud or similar were happening (I previously assumed this would be near impossible, but am less sure now, after discussions with one EA in finance). I think that the evidence / flags around then were probably not enough to easily justify dramatically different actions at the time, without investigation—other than the potential action of doing a lengthy investigation—but again, that doing one would have been really tough, given the actors involved.
Note that actually pulling off a significant investigation, and then taking corresponding actions, against an actor as powerful as SBF, would be very tough and require a great deal of financial independence.
I very much agree that we shouldn’t be holding EA leaders/orgs/community to a standard of “we should have known FTX was a huge fraud”. I mentioned this in my post, but want to reiterate it here. I feel like this is point where discussions about EA/FTX often get derailed. I don’t believe the people calling for an independent investigation are doing so because they think EA knew/should have known that FTX was a fraud; most of us have said that explicitly.
That said, given what was known at the time, I think it’s pretty reasonable to think that it would have been smart to do some things differently on the margin, e.g. 80k putting SBF on less on a pedestal. A post-mortem could help identify those things and provide insights on how to do better going forward.
3. My impression is that being a board member at CEA was incredibly stressful/intense, in the following months after the FTX collapse. My quick guess is that most of the fallout from the board would have been things like, “I just don’t want to have to deal with this anymore” rather than particular disagreements with the organizations. I didn’t get the impression that Rebecca’s viewpoints/criticisms were very common for other board members/execs, though I’d be curious to get their takes.
This seems like a very important issue. I think one big problem is that other board members/execs are disincentivized to voice concerns they might have, and this is one of the things an independent investigation could help with. Learning that several, or none of, the other board members had concerns similar to Rebecca’s would be very informative, and an investigation could share that sort of finding publicly without compromising any individual’s privacy.

4. I think that OP / CEA board members haven’t particularly focused on / cared about being open and transparent with the EA community. Some of the immediate reason here was that I assume lawyers recommended against speaking up then—but even without that, it’s kind of telling how little discussion there has been in the last year or so.

I suggest reading Dustin Moskovitz’s comments for some specific examples. Basically, I think that many people in authority (though to be honest, basically anyone who’s not a major EA poster/commenter) find “posting to the EA forum and responding to comments” to be pretty taxing/intense, and don’t do it much.
Remember that OP staff members are mainly accountable to their managers, not the EA community or others. CEA is mostly funded by OP, so is basically similarly accountable to high-level OP people. (accountable means, “being employed/paid by” here)

Pretty much agree with everything you wrote here. Though I want to emphasize that I think this is a pretty awful outcome, and could be improved with better governance choices such as more community representation, and less OP representation, on CEA’s board.
If OP doesn’t want to be accountable to the EA community, I think that’s suboptimal though their prerogative. But if CEA is going to take responsibility for community functions (e.g. community health, running effectivealtruism.org, etc.) there should be accountability mechanisms in place.
I also want to flag that an independent investigation would be a way for people in authority to get their ideas (at least on this topic) out in a less taxing and/or less publicly identifiable way than forum posting/commenting.
5. In terms of power, I think there’s a pretty huge power gap between the funders and the rest of the EA community. I don’t think that OP really regards themselves as responsible for or accountable to the EA community. My impression is that they fund EA efforts opportunistically, in situations where it seems to help both parties, but don’t want to be seen as having any long-term obligations or such. We don’t really have strong non-OP funding sources to fund things like “serious investigations into what happened.” Personally, I find this situation highly frustrating, and think it gets under-appreciated.
Very well put!
6. My rough impression is that from the standpoint of OP / CEA leaders, there’s not a great mystery around the FTX situation, and they also don’t see it happening again. So I think there’s not that much interest here into a deep investigation.

I think Zvi put it well: “a lot of top EA leaders ‘think we know what happened.’ Well, if they know, then they should tell us, because I do not know. I mean, I can guess, but they are not going to like my guess. There is the claim that none of this is about protecting EA’s reputation, you can decide whether that claim is credible.”

AnonymousEAForumAccount Jul 26, 2024, 1:13 AM
23 points
2 ∶ 1
in reply to: Ozzie Gooen’s comment on: We need an independent investigation into how EA leadership has handled SBF and FTX
My model is that the “community” doesn’t really have much power directly, at this point. OP has power, and to the extent that they fund certain groups (at this point, when funding is so centralized), CEA and a few other groups have power.
I more or less agree with this. Though I think some of CEA’s power derives not only from having OP funding, but also the type of work CEA does (e.g. deciding who attends and talks at EAG). And other orgs and individuals have power related to reputation, quality of work, and ability to connect people with resources (money, jobs, etc).
Regarding how different parts of the community might be able to implement changes, it might be helpful to think about “top-down” vs. “bottom-up” reforms.
Top-down reforms would be initiated by the orgs/people that already have power. The problem, as you note, is that “OP and these other top EA groups feel like they just have a lot going on, and aren’t well positioned to do other significant reforms/changes.” (There may also be an issue whereby people with power don’t like to give it up.) But some changes are already in the works, most notably the EV breakup. This creates lots of opportunities to fix past problems, e.g. around board composition since there will be a lot more boards in the post-breakup world. Examples I’d like to see include:
- EA ombudsperson/people on CEA’s board and/or advisory panel of with representatives from different parts of the community. (There used to be an advisory panel of this sort, but from what I understand they were consulted for practically, or perhaps literally, nothing).
- Reduced reliance on OP’s GCRCB program as the overwhelmingly dominant funder of EA orgs. I’d like it even more if we could find a way to reduce reliance on OP overall as a funder, but that would require finding new money (hard) or making do with less money (bad). But even if OP shifted to funding CEA and other key EA orgs from a roughly even mix of its Global Catastrophic Risks and its Global Health and Wellbeing teams, that would be an enormous improvement IMO.
  - The fact that key EA orgs (including ones responsible for functions on behalf of the community) are overwhelmingly funded by a program which has priorities that only align with a subset of the community is IMO the most problematic incentive structure in EA. Compounding this problem, I think awareness of this dynamic is generally quite limited (people think of CEA as being funded by OP, not by OP’s GCRCB program), and appreciation of its implications even more so.
- Vastly expanding the universe of people who serve on the boards of organizations that have power, and hopefully including more community representation on those boards.
- Creating, implementing, and sharing good organizational policies around COI, donor due diligence, whistleblower protections, etc. (Note that this is supposedly in process.^[1])
Bottom up reforms would be initiated by lay-EAs, the folks who make up the vast majority of the community. The obstacles to bottom up reforms are finding ways to fund them and coordinate them; almost by definition these people aren’t organized.
Examples I’d like to see include:
- People starting dedicated projects focused on improving EA governance (broadly defined)
  - This could also involve a contest to identify (and incentivize the identification of) the best ideas
- Establishment of some sort of coalition to facilitate coordination between local groups. I think “groups as a whole” could serve as a decentralized locus of power that could serve as a counterbalance to the existing centralized power bases. But right now, I don’t get the impression that there are good ways for groups to coordinate.
- EAIF focusing on and/or earmarking some percentage of grantmaking towards improving EA governance (broadly defined). As mentioned earlier, lack of funding is a bit obstacle for bottom up reforms, so the EAIF (~$20m in grants since start of 2020) could be a huge help.
- Individual EAs acting empowered to improve governance (broadly defined), e.g. publicly voicing support for various reforms, calling out problems they see, incorporating governance issues into their giving decisions, serving on boards, etc)
1. ^
  In December, Zach Robinson wrote: “EV also started working on structural improvements shortly after FTX’s collapse and continued to do so alongside the investigation. Over the past year, we have implemented structural governance and oversight improvements, including restructuring the way the two EV charities work together, updating and improving key corporate policies and procedures at both charities, increasing the rigor of donor due diligence, and staffing up the in-house legal departments. Nevertheless, good governance and oversight is not a goal that can ever be definitively ‘completed’, and we’ll continue to iterate and improve. We plan to open source those improvements where feasible so the whole EA ecosystem can learn from EV’s challenges and benefit from the work we’ve done.”
  Open sourcing these improvements would be terrific, though to the best of my knowledge this hasn’t actually happened yet, which is disappointing. Though this stuff has been shared and I’ve just missed it.

AnonymousEAForumAccount Jul 25, 2024, 10:23 PM
8 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: Owen Cotton-Barratt’s comment on: We need an independent investigation into how EA leadership has handled SBF and FTX
I basically agree with this take. I think an investigation conducted from within the EA community (by someone(s) with a bit of distance from FTX) makes a lot more sense than Mintz v2. Ideally, the questions this investigation would seek to answer would be laid out and published ahead of time. Would also be good to pre-publish the principles that would determine what information would be redacted or kept confidential from public communication around findings.
This is then kind of a headhunting task; but who would take responsibility for that?
If we had one or more ombudspeople or explicit community representation on the CEA board (which I really wish we did), this would be a great role for them. As things stand, my low-conviction take is that this would be a reasonable thing for the new non-OP connected EV board members to take on, or perhaps the community health team. I have some reservations about having CEA involved in this, but also give a lot of weight to Rebecca saying “CEA is a logical place to house” an investigation.
Personally, I’d consider Rethink Priorities to be kind of the default choice to do an investigation; I’ve seen others toss their name around too. It’d be nice to have some process for generating other candidates (e.g. community health coming up with a few) and then some method of finding which of the options had the most community buy-in (e.g. ranked choice voting among everyone who has filled out the EA survey sometime in the last three years; I don’t think this would be an ideal methodology but it’s at least loosely in the ballpark of ways of finding an investigator that the community would find credible).

AnonymousEAForumAccount Jul 25, 2024, 2:11 AM
35 points
8 ∶ 4
in reply to: Ozzie Gooen’s comment on: We need an independent investigation into how EA leadership has handled SBF and FTX
I’ll respond to your other points in a separate comment later, but for the sake of clarity I want to give a dedicated response to your summary:
My take is less, “there was some conspiracy where a few organizations did malicious things,” and more, “the EA bureaucracy has some significant weaknesses that were highlighted here.”
I very much agree that “the EA bureaucracy has some significant weaknesses that were highlighted here” is the right framing and takeaway.
My concern (which I believe is shared by other proponents of an independent investigation) is that these weaknesses have not, and are not on track to be, properly diagnosed and fixed.
I think plenty of EA leaders made mistakes with respect to FTX, but I don’t think there was any malicious conspiracy (except of course for the FTX/Alameda people who were directly involved in the fraud). For the most part, I think people behaved in line with their incentives (which is generally how we should expect people to act).
The problem is that we don’t have an understanding of how and why those incentives led to mistakes, and we haven’t changed the community’s incentive structures in a way that will prevent those same sorts of mistakes going forward. And I’m concerned that meaningful parts of EA leadership might be inhibiting that learning process in various ways. I’d feel better about the whole situation if there had been some public communications around specific things that have been to improve the efficacy of the EA bureaucracy, including a clear delineation of what things different parts of that bureaucracy are and are not responsible for.

AnonymousEAForumAccount Jul 25, 2024, 1:11 AM
3 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: Owen Cotton-Barratt’s comment on: We need an independent investigation into how EA leadership has handled SBF and FTX
One way you could engage would be to share your thoughts on when, generally speaking, you think an independent investigation would be warranted. You wouldn’t have to go into any specific details about this particular incident, you could discuss this in terms of high level principles and considerations that you think should guide the decision.

AnonymousEAForumAccount Jul 24, 2024, 6:48 PM
2 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Why hasn’t EA done an SBF investigation and postmortem?
I’ve written a post adding my own call for an independent investigation, which also outlines new information in support of that position. Specifically, my post documents important issues where EA leaders have not been forthcoming in their communications, troublesome discrepancies between leaders’ communications and credible media reports, and claims that leaders have made about post-FTX reforms that appear misleading.

AnonymousEAForumAccount Jul 24, 2024, 3:35 PM
26 points
5 ∶ 3
in reply to: huw’s comment on: We need an independent investigation into how EA leadership has handled SBF and FTX
Indeed. And if EA leaders do believe that the issue is closed or that an investigation would be superfluous (which seems to be a common, if not the default, leadership position), they should make the case for that position explicitly and publicly. As things stand, the clearest articulation I’ve seen as to why there hasn’t been an independent investigation comes from Rob Bensinger’s account of what an unidentified “EA who was involved in EA’s response to the FTX implosion” told him based on information that dated from ~April 2023 and “might be out of date”.
What links here?
- AnonymousEAForumAccount's comment on We need an independent investigation into how EA leadership has handled SBF and FTX by AnonymousEAForumAccount (Jul 26, 2024, 5:59 PM; 4 points)

AnonymousEAForumAccount Jul 24, 2024, 4:37 AM
12 points
1 ∶ 0
on: Quick Update on Leaving the Board of EV
I’m very grateful that Rebecca had the integrity to resign her board seat and to share the reason why. I’ve published a new post that shares evidence supporting her allegations that EA leaders made mistakes around FTX and don’t seem interested in helping the community learn the appropriate lessons, and echoes her call for an independent investigation. My post documents important issues where EA leaders have not been forthcoming in their communications, troublesome discrepancies between leaders’ communications and credible media reports, and claims that leaders have made about post-FTX reforms that appear misleading.

AnonymousEAForumAccount Jul 15, 2024, 9:53 PM
20 points
2 ∶ 1
on: Are older people overlooked within EA? If so, how should we change that?
Yes, this is a problem, and a long-standing one at that.
One of the more obvious areas for improvement would be for CEA to stop explicitly deprioritizing mid/late career professionals:
“As mentioned in our 2021 plans, we intend to focus our efforts to bring new people into the community on students (especially at top universities) and young professionals. We intend to work to retain mid- and late-career professionals who are already highly engaged in EA, but we do not plan to work to recruit more mid- or late-career people.”

AnonymousEAForumAccount Jun 13, 2024, 3:02 PM
10 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: Ebenezer Dukakis’s comment on: Review of Past Grants: The $100,000 Grant for a Video Game?
Wow, I didn’t realize that evaluation existed! Thanks for sharing! (Though given that this evaluation only covers ~2 dozen grants for one fund, I think my overall assessment that there’s little in the way of post-grant evaluation still holds).
Self-assessment via a simple google form is an interesting idea. My initial reaction is that it would be hard to structure the incentives well enough for me to trust self-assessments. But it still could be better than nothing. I’d be more excited about third party evaluations (like the one you shared) even if they were extremely cursory (e.g. flagging which ones have evidence that the project was even executed vs. those that don’t) and selective (e.g. ignoring small grants to save time/effort).

AnonymousEAForumAccount Jun 5, 2024, 7:38 PM
28 points
10 ∶ 1
in reply to: Richard Y Chappell🔸’s comment on: Review of Past Grants: The $100,000 Grant for a Video Game?
I’d be a bit surprised if there wasn’t already a process in place for retrospective analysis of this sort. Is there any public info available about if/how EA Funds do this?
When I looked at this as part of the 2022 red teaming contest, I found that “EA Funds has received roughly $50 million in donations and has made hundreds of grants, but has never published any post-grant assessments.” I’m almost positive there haven’t been any retrospective analyses of EA Funds grants since then.
This problem isn’t unique to EA Funds. I also found that EA Grants and the Community Building Grants program both lacked any kind of public post grant assessment.
The unfortunate result of this situation is that while lots of time and money have been invested in various grantmaking programs, we don’t really know much about what types of grantmaking are most effective (e.g. granting to individuals vs. established organizations). It’s true that post-grant assessment is costly to conduct, but it’s disappointing that we haven’t made this investment which could significantly improve the efficacy of future grantmaking.

AnonymousEAForumAccount Apr 23, 2024, 10:34 PM
3 points
2 ∶ 1
in reply to: Jason’s comment on: Personal reflections on FTX
Yeah, fully agree with this. I hope now that EV and/or EV-affiliated people are talking more about this matter that they’ll be willing to share what specific due diligence was done before accepting SBF’s gifts and what their due diligence policies look like more generally.

AnonymousEAForumAccount Apr 23, 2024, 2:29 PM
22 points
4 ∶ 1
on: Personal reflections on FTX
There have been various calls for an independent investigation into the relationships between EA and SBF. Do you think such an investigation is warranted? Why or why not?

AnonymousEAForumAccount Apr 23, 2024, 2:20 PM
15 points
4 ∶ 3
in reply to: Aleks_K’s comment on: Personal reflections on FTX
EV should have due diligence processes in place, instigated by EA’s first encounter with a disgraced crypto billionaire/major EA donor (Ben Delo).
In February 2021, CEA (the EV rebrand hadn’t happened yet) wrote:
Here’s an update from CEA’s operations team, which has been working on updating our practices for handling donations. This also applies to other organizations that are legally within CEA (80,000 Hours, Giving What We Can, Forethought Foundation, and EA Funds).
- “We are working with our lawyers to devise and implement an overarching policy for due diligence on all of our donors and donations going forward.
- We’ve engaged a third party who now conducts KYC (know your client) due diligence research on all major donors (>$20K a year).
- We have established a working relationship with TRM who conduct compliance and back-tracing for all crypto donations.

AnonymousEAForumAccount Apr 23, 2024, 2:15 PM
40 points
6 ∶ 1
in reply to: William_MacAskill’s comment on: Personal reflections on FTX
Thanks for writing up these thoughts Will, it is great to see you weighing in on these topics.
I’m unclear on one point (related to Elizabeth’s comments) around what you heard from former Alameda employees when you were initially learning about the dispute. Did you hear any concerns specifically about Sam’s unethical behavior, and if so, did these concerns constitute a nontrivial share of the total concerns you heard?
I ask because in this comment and on Spencer’s podcast (at ~00:13:32), you characterize the concerns you heard about almost identically. In both cases, you mention a bunch of specific concerns you had heard (company was losing money, Sam’s too risky, he’s a bad manager, he wanted to double down rather than accept a lower return), but they all relate to Sam’s business acumen/competence and there’s no mention of ethical issues. So I’m hoping you can clarify why there’s a discrepancy with Time’s reporting, which specifically mentions that ethical concerns were a significant point of emphasis and that these were communicated directly to you:
[Alameda co-founders wrote a document that] “accuses Bankman-Fried of dismissing calls for stronger accounting and inflating the expected value of adding new exchanges, and said a majority of employees thought he was “negligent” and “unethical.” It also alleges he was “misreporting numbers” and “failing to update investors on poor performance.” The team “didn’t trust Sam to be in investor meetings alone,” colleagues wrote. “Sam will lie, and distort the truth for his own gain,” the document says.
…Mac Aulay and others warned MacAskill, Beckstead and Karnofsky about her co-founder’s alleged duplicity and unscrupulous business ethics, according to four people with knowledge of those discussions. Mac Aulay specifically flagged her concerns about Bankman-Fried’s honesty and trustworthiness, his maneuvering to control 100% of the company despite promising otherwise, his pattern of unethical behavior, and his inappropriate relationships with subordinates, sources say.
What links here?
- We need an independent investigation into how EA leadership has handled SBF and FTX by AnonymousEAForumAccount (Jul 24, 2024, 3:24 AM; 141 points)

AnonymousEAForumAccount Mar 30, 2024, 1:36 AM
4 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: David_Moss’s comment on: Updates on Community Health Survey Results
Excellent points, everything you write here makes a lot of sense to me. I really hope you’re able to find funding for the proposal to research the EA brand relative to other alternatives. That seems like a really fundamental issue to understand, and your proposed study could provide a lot of valuable information for a very modest price.

AnonymousEAForumAccount Mar 29, 2024, 2:05 AM
6 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: David_Moss’s comment on: Updates on Community Health Survey Results
Thanks so much for this additional data and analysis! Really interesting stuff here. To me, the most interesting things are:
1. The midpoint of the satisfaction scale being a pretty good threshold for the point at which we see behavior changes
2. The relatively high frequency of people with high satisfaction temporarily stopping promoting EA (and the general flatness of this curve)
3. I was surprised that for the cohort that changed their behavior, “scandal” was just one of many reasons for dissatisfaction and didn’t really stand out. The data you provide looks quite consistent with Luke Freeman’s observation: “My impression is that that there was a confluence of things that peaking around the FTX-collapse. There was building hostility towards some of the more avant garde EA ideas an actions of those associated with EA^[1] (towards both accurate and also misrepresentations of those ideas and actions) that seemed to get traction around just prior to the launch of WWOTF which meant there were a lot of people/opinions that got a lot more light when WWOTF was getting lots of attention and FTX failed so spectacularly. Then there was so much energy and angst in the system (both within the community and its critics) that I think the other issues compounded more than any individual one would have. The confluence of all this has sadly left a bad taste in a lot of people’s mouths that costs fairly uncontroversially good things a lot in terms of action and advocacy.”

AnonymousEAForumAccount Mar 29, 2024, 2:03 AM
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: David_Moss’s comment on: Updates on Community Health Survey Results
That makes sense. That said, while it might not be possible to quantify the extent of selectin bias at play, I do think the combination of a) favoring simpler explanations and b) the pattern I observed in the data makes a pretty compelling case that dissatisfied people being less likely to take the survey is probably much more of an issue than dissatisfied people being more likely to take the survey to voice their dissatisfaction.