EA Meta for 7 years!
COO of Ambitious Impact (previously Charity Entrepreneurship).
Co-Founder of High Impact Professionals. We enable working professionals to maximize their positive impact by supporting them in donating their time, skills and resources effectively.
Ex-CTO and MD of Germany for Founders Pledge. Big on promoting Effective Giving.
Originally from New York, living in Berlin.
I agree with most of your points, but strongly disagree with number 1 and surprised to have heard over time that so many people thought this point was daft.
I don’t disagree that “existential risk” is being employed in a very different sense, so we agree there, in the two instances, but the broader point, which I think is valid, is this:
There is a certain hubris in claiming you are going to “build a flourishing future” and “support ambitious projects to improve humanity’s long-term prospects” (as the FFF did on its website) only to not exist 6 months later and for reasons of fraud to boot.
Of course, the people who sank untold hours into existential risk research aren’t to blame, and it isn’t an argument against x-risk/longtermist work, but it does show that EA, as a community missed something dire and critical and importantly something that couldn’t be closer to home for the community. And in my opinion that does shed light on how successful one should expect the longer term endeavours of the community to be.