They generally only know about EA through me, or by being tech-adjacent (VC, startup founders etc). No one I know who is an actual EA donor has messaged me about this, but I would consider all of them to be potential donors.
Magnus Hambleton
Karma: 54
I understand that, but this kind of thing fuels the fire of snark against the EA movement. Tweets like these are a great example of taking this out of context and using it to undermine the entire point of EA. I don’t think it makes sense to spend all our time optimising away opportunities for snark, but in this case it would have been so easily avoided: don’t buy a mansion, or if you do, get the granter buy it and lease it to you for 100 years or something.
I think the optics are particularly bad because english old stone mansions code as particularly luxurious in an american context — the price tag becomes much less important than the pictures of what looks like old school opulence.
Of course this can have a net positive EV, but if you’re holding me to the standard of finding specific future donors we have lost because of this, then I would like to hold you to the standard of pointing out specific future ideas and projects that this enables that will generate positive EV.
This is basically what I said, but thank you for the template answer, it’s good to have one. A few people have argued that it feels like this move shows that EA has reverted to the default path that charitable organisations take where they end up bloated and spending lots of money on ops, HR and lobbying. I’m not saying I believe this, but I think it’s bad for this image to be validated in any way.
This is honestly really embarrassing. I’ve read the comments and I don’t want to argue that the economic calculus doesn’t stack up, but the optics here makes this extremely EV negative. Every journalist is looking for material to write about EA since the SBF debacle and this kind of stuff is prime material.
Individual high profile media pieces can significantly reduce donations for years and years, kill startups and organisations and make it harder to find people to partner with due to lowered reputation. I have friends, colleagues and family message me about Wytham abbey and it makes me embarrassed, they are now less likely to donate to causes we care about here. I will not defend this decision to them, regardless of what the economic calculus around conferences/event costs says.
I got into EA for the empathetic and rational approach to doing good and I will continue donating to EA causes and using EA methodology for those same reasons. However, for outsiders, EA is a coherent “movement” that you “support” by donating. This must be taken into consideration when you act under the “EA brand”. This movement is big now and needs to be careful about the way this brand is managed, because, as unsexy as it is, both current and future donations depends on that brand.
I honestly only really know ~5 people who would consider themselves EAs and none of them tend to stay on top of current events much, they just donate every year to EA orgs. Haven’t heard anything from them, but I am not so embedded in the community. Agree that my perspective is not necessarily typical here but I also can’t tell if your comment is meant to dispute something I said or if you are agreeing?