To put my money where my mouth is, I will be cutting my salary back to “minimum wage” in October.
ElliotJDavies
Consider Earning Less
[Question] EA’s Achievements in 2022
I hope a fair read of the subtext of your comment is: available evidence points towards community health concerns being dealt with properly, and: there’s not much more the community could do. I want to try to steelman an argument in response to this:
I am not very well connected in “hubs” like London and the Bay area, but despite a lack of on the ground information, I have found examples of poor conduct that go largely unpunished.
Take the example of Kat Woods and Emerson Spartz. Allegations of toxic and abusive behaviour towards employees were made 4 months ago (months after being reported to CEA). Despite Kat Woods denying these concerns and attempting to dismiss and discredit those who attest to their abusive behaviour, both Kat Woods and Emerson Spartz continue to: post in the EA-forum and get largely upvotes ; employ EA’s; be listed on the EA opportunity board; and control $100,000s in funding. As far as I can tell, nonlinear incubated projects (which they largely control) also continue to be largely supported by the community.
I’ve accounted further evidence of similar levels of misconduct by different actors, largely continuing without impediment (I’m currently working on resolving these). And (if I understand correctly) Oliver Habryka, who knows both rationalist and EA communities well, seems to be surprised by low levels of integrity in these communities (though he’s not attempting to benchmark off of larger society).
The argument would go: the reason cases in the article seem to be dealt with sufficiently, is that these are the only women who are willing to risk their reputation in rationalist/EA spaces by calling attention to bad actors. They were, after generating sufficient amounts of alarm, able to catalyse the problems to be fixed. However, they recognise in most cases this will not happen, and point to risk factors that make misconduct more likely (lack of social norms, polyamory ect.).
I’m concerned that Davis’ comment was not interpreted in good faith.
I imagine a comment criticising a culture of alcohol consumption in a community, leading to higher rates of violence. I reply stating what will the community do to stop me safely and legally consume alcohol, ban me from drinking it?
This “personalised oppression” framing is seems obviously fallacious if you substitute polyamory for any other behaviour.
Relevant info: this is essentially a CRM database (Customer Relations Management), which very commonly used by companies and non-profits. Your name is likely on hundreds of different CRM databases.
Let’s imagine for example, my interaction with Greenpeace. I signed a petition for Greenpeace when I was a teenager, which input my phone number, email and name into a Greenpeace CRM. Greenpeace then might have some partners who match names and email address with age and earning potential. They categorise me as a student, with low earning potential but with potential to give later, so they flag me for a yearly call to try to get me to sign up to be a member. If I was flagged as being a particularly large earner, I imagine more research would have been done on me, and I would receive more intensive contact with Greenpeace.
CRMs are by design pretty “creepy”, for example, if you use Hub Spot for newsletters, it shows de-anonymised data for who viewed what, and for how long. I imagine CRMs that have access to browser cookies are 100x more “creepy” than this.
Multiple high-profile women have told me that they felt pressured to be polyamorous by men in the community
I too have (consistently) seen this, so I am grateful to hear it being brought up publicly
Quickly skimming the dashboards linked and this post, I feel the post above is hyperbolic & alarmist. At several points it reads like a continuation of a trendline is attributed to FTX, and parsimonious explanations (e.g. there hasn’t been as much media outreach post FTX) could relax the reader quite a bit.
HLI’s relationship with StrongMinds is no different to GiveWell’s relationship with the charities they recommend.
From an outside view, I see Happier Lives Institute as an advocacy organisation for mental health interventions, although I can imagine HLI see themselves as a research organisation working on communicating the effectiveness of mental health interventions. Ultimately, I am not sure there’s a lot distinguishing these roles.
Givewell however, is primarily a research and donor advisory organisation. Unlike HLI, it does not favour a particular intervention, or pioneer new metrics in support of said interventions.
Some things that HLI does that makes me think HLI is an advocacy org:
Recommend only 1 charity (StrongMinds)
Appear publicly on podcasts ect., and recommend StrongMinds
Write to Effective Giving platforms, requesting they add Strong Minds to their list of recommended organisations
Edit: Fixed acronym in first paragraph
- Evaluating StrongMinds: how strong is the evidence? by 19 Jan 2023 0:12 UTC; 118 points) (
- Why SoGive is publishing an independent evaluation of StrongMinds by 17 Mar 2023 22:46 UTC; 99 points) (
- 28 Dec 2022 1:15 UTC; 76 points) 's comment on StrongMinds should not be a top-rated charity (yet) by (
- 10 Jul 2023 22:22 UTC; 45 points) 's comment on The Happier Lives Institute is funding constrained and needs you! by (
- 11 Jul 2023 8:48 UTC; 1 point) 's comment on The Happier Lives Institute is funding constrained and needs you! by (
Why would it be bad if he was given advance warning about this report?
Some people - to be completely frank, like yourself—will use advanced notice to schedule their friends, fans and colleagues to write defensive comments. A high concentration of these types of comments can distort the quality of the conversation. This is commonly referred to as brigading.
This strategy is so effective, that foreign governments have setup “troll-farms”, and companies have setup “astroturfing” operations to benefit from degrading the quality of certain conversations on the internet.Also, it does say in the document that Owen was given advanced notice. His document says that he saw the draft and disagreed with aspects of it that they didn’t address in the post.
I would create a distinction between giving someone a read of a draft ahead of time, and actively communicating the date and time something is posted.
Edit: Added third paragraph, changed wording on first sentence of second paragraph.
I’m a little late to this thread, but I think this is very regrettable. I feel quite strongly that CEA should be building and growing a “big tent” Effective Altruism, around the core principles of EA. I think this announcement is quite corrosive to that goal.
I strongly support cause-specific field building, but this is best suited for sister organisations and not the Centre for Effective Altruism.
A lot of organisations in the EA community building space are underperforming, including CEA and including the organisation that I run. That’s okay. We just need to make steady progress to get where we need to be. But I believe this a significant step backwards, both in terms of the core vision of CEA and it’s actual output.
We show Chloe’s work contract in the third row of the very first table.
Can I confirm I am seeing the correct image. I see a screenshot of a google document. As oppose to contract signed by both parties. Would you be able to confirm this contract was signed by both parties?
The link you share isn’t saying that pharmacies are illegal, it’s saying that they sometimes sell counterfeit drugs, and that’s illegal.
It indeed looks like the article I linked was related to counterfeit drugs, and not necessarily dispensing drugs without prescription. Although, I still suspect the reason adderall is accessible in tourist areas, is not related to their inherent legality, but instead some of the themes this article. I will research this further and make edits below.
I googled it, asked ChatGPT to search for it, and asked a lawyer friend of mine if they’ve ever heard of somebody being arrested for traveling with a single pack of ADHD medicine without a prescription. Nothing showed up (except for going to a place like Japan with famously strict laws around that).
If I understand these complaints to have been made in 2021, ChatGPT was launched in Nov 2022. Is it possible you are mistaken here?
If I understand you correctly, you were aware that by asking your employee to bring drugs across the border, she would be committing a crime?
While I don’t think that was inappropriate, it seems fair to give Owen at least some lead time to prepare a statement of his perspective on the matter.
I think your right about this, and have changed my mind.
In my opinion, including a photo section was surprising and came across as near completely misunderstanding the nature of Ben’s post. It is going to make it a bit hard to read any further with even consideration
In addition to the overall tone of this post being generally unprofessional.
As noted by others, I am also regretful to reflect on how much stress this has caused the FLI team.
However, I think it’s important to note I still have some concerns, for 2 reasons:
1) The FAQ linked makes a lot of sense assuming a Texas Sharpshooter setup (i.e. many far-right newspapers apply for grants from FLI, and one makes it through ), but I think this seems much less plausible because of the personal connections FLI board members have to the newspaper.
5) Was nepotism involved? In particular, would FLI’s president’s brother have profited in any way had the grant been awarded?
This is the only section of the FAQ I can see this that addresses this concern. However, the prompted question I read as a (perhaps accidental) straw-man. I have not seen any comments on the associated blog posts, around the concern that the brother would financially benefit. I don’t generally assume that being a far-right journalist/communicator is particularly profitable. My understanding is that far-right communicators exist because of ideological motivations.
2) There seems to be a repeated subtext, that it was initially hard to identify the newspaper as far-right. I reject this proposition in entirety—a cursory glance of the website will immediately inform you they are not aligned with FLI’s goals. I find it much more plausible there was no background check whatsoever in the initial stage, or that said background check was done by someone with a nepotistic bias.
The following statement is what prompted me to leave this comment:
He [The brother who wrote for the newspaper] was shocked by the recent revelations of extremism and plans no further association with the newspaper.
I find it extremely unplausible that the brother, despite contributing significantly to the newspaper, had no-knowledge that he was writing for a far-right newspaper.
I am not sure why FLI would suggest this with high confidence, especially since it has little relevance to the matter at hand.
Hey Julia, this reads as if these problems have not been reported to the community health team. I understand (with modest confidence) that they have.
Some loose thoughts
If there is a problem with EA efforts/funding re: alignment, this kind of discussion seems very important. Hopefully we can flag and resolve
I’m always a little of concerned with people identifying a problem, and catastrophising . I’m often concerned this occurs when discussing management or skill gap related to bottlenecks in EA. I am not sure it is relevant here, but maybe
I suspect, similar to the global health space, most interventions (i.e. setting up a co-working office) will be net neutral. This probably provides a good argument for taking ToC’s and impact and evaluation more seriously.
I disagree with harsh comment’s about WWOTF. I think promoting the book was a great bet, just high variance. I agree the Precipice was a better book, and it would have been great if it gotten promoted to the same extent. But it’s not action relevant since you can’t release a book twice. I think CEA and Will where trying to be ambitious and “shooting their shot”. It’s sad we discourage this. [Note: I do think from a community health/fairness perspective, things were weird. But this can be fixed retrospectively by promoting other philosophers more, and Will less, as looks to be happening (will didn’t speak at EAG Bay)]
Interesting to hear these new plans. I have some questions:
Are there any concerns that targeting a small group of people, and actively employing those people under CEA, you are essentially locking CEA into path whereby it is unrepresentative of a wider global movement?
I am already concerned about how representative CEA is of a wider movement, in particular I have concerns that much of CEA’s hiring consists of using direct and personal networks within universities close to your headquarters. At the same time, I believe EA could rapidly grow in the world and be an effective force for change. If EA sees significant growth, I could forsee that the “baking in” of current founder effects to CEA (i.e. small group of “elite”) could be pretty disastrously sub-optimal (in the context of a larger global movement).
On a similar note:
Do you plan on head hunting for these roles?
Off the top of my head there’s a few incredibly successful university groups that have successfully flourished under their own volition (e.g. NTNU, PISE). There’s likely people in these groups who would be exceptionally good at community growth if given the resources you’ve described above, but I suspect that they may not think to apply for these roles.
Do you plan on comparing the success of the project, against similar organisations?
There are many organisations that aim to facilitate and build communities on University campuses. There are even EA adjacent organisations, i.e. GFI. It makes sense to me to measure the success of your project against these (especially GFI), as they essentially provide a free counterfactual regarding a change of tactics.
I ask this because I strongly suspect GFI will show stronger community building growth metrics than CEA. They provide comprehensive and beautifully designed resources for students. They public and personable (i.e. they have dedicated speakers who speak for any audience size (at least that’s what it appears to me)). And they seem to have a broader global perspective (so perhaps I am a bit bias). But in general they seem to have “the full package” which CEA is currently missing.
Is this indicative of your wider plans?/ Is CEA planning on keeping a narrow focus re: universities?
I understood that CEA community building plans were temporarily narrow, due to executive and staffing bottlenecks, but this post appears to point in the direction of CEA continuing to move in this narrow direction. Basically, I see two options 1) A tiered approach whereby “Focus” universities get the majority of attention 2) “Focus” universities get all of CEA’s attention at the exclusion of all of universities.
Can you expand on how much money you plan on spending on each campus?
I noticed you say “managing a multi-million dollar budget within three years of starting” can you explain what exactly this money is going to be spent on? Currently this appears to me (perhaps naively) to be an order of magnitude larger than the budget for the largest national organisations. How confident are you that you will follow through on this? And how confident are you that spending millions of dollars on one campus is more efficient than community building across 10 countries?
(3) I didn’t do a detailed look at every row in the “Short summary overview table”, but for the ones I did look into in more detail, I found Nonlinear’s counter evidence to be compelling. That table is organized by claim and is in an easy-to-navigate structure, so I suggest people take a look for themselves at the evidence Nonlinear provided regarding whatever claims they think are important.
I would have loved to hear in your own words the most important claims that you think have been rebutted, and why you think so. When I look through the appendix document, I see a tangle of screenshots; mildly to moderately related points about these screenshots; and subjective claims about the ex-employees’ personal dispositions. I am not sure if this is because nonlinear is highly dysfunctional, or whether this is practicing a “[...] see what sticks” strategy.
Taking two important claims from Ben’s post. (1) Chloe wasn’t paid what she was promised (2) The employees were asked to transport drugs across a border.
(1) The first thing any union employee, HR person, or employment lawyer will ask: Was there a contract and what does it say?
When I come away from reading the appendix, I am unable to answer this, and my followup question remains also unanswered.
(2) The screenshots and related claims are even more confusing in this case. I’m left with the impression that it was pretty common for the nonlinear team to make these kinds of requests, including to “load up” on antibiotics. This is a pretty strange professional culture, from my perspective. So whilst I can see that the screenshot does not mention any recreational drugs, it’s not updating me negatively towards the likeliness of the claim.
Also, a quick legal note: it’s necessarily legal to fly with drugs, even if you purchased them legitimately. Buying drugs without a prescription in Mexico, and flying them to the US where you require a prescription, would be a crime.
Edit: it looks to me like the Mexican government is trying to shut down illegal pharmacies that dispense these kinds of medications without prescriptions. So they likely would have been both illegal to purchase in Mexico and illegal to import into the US.
I’ve confirmed with a commenter here, whom left a comment positive of non-linear, that they were asked to leave that comment by nonlinear. I think this is low-integrity behaviour on behalf of nonlinear, and an example of brigading. I would appreciate the forum team looking into this.
Edit: I have been asked to clarify that they were encouraged to comment ’by nonlinear, rather than asked to comment positively (or anything in particular).