Matt Goodman

• Matt GoodmanDec 18, 2022, 10:31 AM

  10 points

  5 ∶ 0

  on: I’m less ap­prov­ing of the EA com­mu­nity now than be­fore the FTX collapse

  EA’s earlier relationship with a sketchy billionaire (and the degree to which this was covered up)

  This is the first time I’m hearing about this. Am I right in understanding that EA has got involved with not one, but two crypto billionaires who are on the wrong side of the law?

  Wikipedia link in the original quote is broken btw.

[Question] Is there an ‘Apostates in EA’ group?

• Matt GoodmanDec 16, 2022, 6:36 PM

  19 points

  5 ∶ 8

  on: The Effec­tive Altru­ism move­ment is not above con­flicts of interest

  I think this criticism be extended beyond cryptocurrency, to Social Media. Specifically, EA is heavily reliant on funding from Dustin Moskovitz, co-founder Facebook. (I’m fairly ignorant as to details of Moskovitz’s finance, I believe he still owns shares in Meta and so has at least some controlling interest in the company, but I could be off-base here)

  Social media is criticised for a lot of things, but here I’m just going to link the following article, because it’s recent, and because it seems topical to a lot of EA global health/​development stuff: Meta faces $1.6bn lawsuit over Facebook posts inciting violence in Tigray war.

  There’s a story here that goes ‘Man who’s made billions in technology that significantly damages social and political institutions, including spreading misinformation about elections, covid, vaccines, and allowing people to spread abuse and incite violence, now wants to use that money for the good of society ’. And to the degree that you think that’s true, you might think that the harms done by Meta outweigh the good done by Open Philanthropy.

  ---

  There’s a critique of EA, that goes ‘EA is more focused on individual donations than systemic change’. I used to think this was off-base, because there’s plenty of EAs who want to do system-changing things, like advocate for animal welfare laws, or work in government policy.

  Now I read this criticism more like:

  “By relying on one or two extremely rich donors for a large portion of EA funding, EA is less likely to be advocate for the kind of systemic change that would be harmful to the financial interests of these donors”,

  or (and I’m thinking of crypto and social media here:)

  “By relying on one or two extremely rich donors who’ve made their fortunes in ‘disruptive’ technology, EA is less likely to be critical of the harms that these technologies do to the world”.

  And I actually think that’s quite a valid criticism.

• Matt GoodmanDec 1, 2022, 6:02 PM

  1 point

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: c.trout’s comment on: SBF’s com­ments on ethics are no sur­prise to virtue ethicists

  Ok, I didn’t pick up that was where the prediction was in the article. I think of (good) predictions as having a clear, falsifiable hypothesis. Whereas this seems to be predicting … that virtue ethicists continue believing whatever they already believed about EAs?

  The reason I downvoted this article is the use of the term ‘moral schizophrenia’. Even if it’s not your term originally, I think using it is:

  a) Super unclear as a descriptive term. I understand in mainstream culture it’s seen as a kind of Jeckyll/​Hyde split personality thing, so maybe it’s meant to describe that. But I’m pretty sure that’s an inaccurate description of actual schizophrenia.

  b) Harmful to those who have schizophrenia when used in this kind of negative fashion. Especially as it seems to be propagating the Jeckyll/​Hyde false belief about the condition.

  Lastly, the ‘moral schizophrenia’/​coldness described here seems much more like a straw-man of EAs than an accurate description of an EAs I’ve met. The EAs I know IRL are warm and generous towards their families and friends, and don’t seem to associate being that way as at all incompatible with EA kind of reasoning. Sure, online and even irl discussions can seem dry, but it would be hard to have any discussions if we had to express, with our emotions, the magnitude of what was being discussed.

• Matt GoodmanDec 1, 2022, 12:01 PM

  14 points

  5 ∶ 1

  on: SBF’s com­ments on ethics are no sur­prise to virtue ethicists

  I’m quite skeptical of post-hoc articles with titles like ‘X was no surprise’, they’re usually full of hindsight bias. Like, if it was no surprise, did you predict it coming?

  Although there’s almost nothing about SBF here, is this part 1 of a series?

• Matt GoodmanNov 30, 2022, 7:29 PM

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Adam Shriver’s comment on: Why Neu­ron Counts Shouldn’t Be Used as Prox­ies for Mo­ral Weight

  Thanks, that makes sense. For some reason I read it as a kind of generalisable statement about epistemics, rather than in relation to the neuron count issues discussed in the article.

• Matt GoodmanNov 30, 2022, 6:14 PM

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Why Neu­ron Counts Shouldn’t Be Used as Prox­ies for Mo­ral Weight

  “the more measurable a metric we choose, the less accurate it is, and the more we prioritize accuracy, the less we are currently able to measure”

  Can you expand on this? Is it a reference to Goodheart’s Law?

BBC news ar­ti­cle on Jeff Be­zos, Sam Bankman-Fried, and EA

• Matt GoodmanNov 24, 2022, 9:44 AM

  11 points

  3 ∶ 0

  on: Ter­ror­ism in our Univer­sity En­vi­ron­ment: Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers.

  Hi emmannaemeka, I don’t know how best to respond to this, but please know that you have my sympathies for you in this situation. I often read news of terrorism and kidnapping in Nigeria, and it is a terrible thing to see. I admire that you resist against this and continue providing education!

[Question] How use­ful is monthly dona­tion (as com­pared to yearly dona­tion)?

• Matt GoodmanNov 22, 2022, 8:09 PM

  8 points

  1 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Kei’s comment on: A so­cial­ist’s view on liberal pro­gres­sive crit­i­cisms of EA

  I agree with Kei here. It seems very odd to credit ‘EA’ as significant to the election result. To do so seems to imply that there was some kind of coordinated, unified effort to influence the election, whereas what OP is describing is major donations from one actor who was also associated with the EA movement.

  This is about much more than not unfairly associating EA with SBFs actions (and donating to the Democratic party is hardly a bad thing to be associated with, compared to SBFs other actions). It’s an incorrect description of EA beliefs and culture as a whole. I think if you asked 100 EAs ‘what’s the best thing you could do with a few billion dollars’, ‘donating to the Biden campaign’ would be fairly low down the list of results.

• Matt GoodmanNov 22, 2022, 8:09 AM

  12 points

  2 ∶ 0

  on: A so­cial­ist’s view on liberal pro­gres­sive crit­i­cisms of EA

  “This is despite EA significantly contributing to Biden’s win in 2020.”

  What makes you think this?

• Matt GoodmanNov 13, 2022, 9:02 PM

  4 points

  2 ∶ 0

  in reply to: oivavoi’s comment on: My re­ac­tion to FTX: appalled

  Interesting you say that. I was involved in an EA group that looked into campaigning for vaccine patent relief during COVID. There was the ‘One day sooner ’ campaign to allow human challenge trials (I believe this was EA aligned). There was an EA campaign against cuts to the UK’s foreign aid budget, and I can think of two similar efforts in other countries (I’m currently writing this on mobile, it’s hard to post links).

  Then there’s the whole animal welfare side to EA, which is distinctly ‘political’, running campaigns for stricter animal welfare laws and suing to uphold these laws. I don’t think EA is anywhere near as apolitical as you claim it to be.

  All that being said, these are all political campaigns focused on specific issues. I wouldn’t think the marginal benefit of just donating to a major political party is anywhere near as good as these examples.

• Matt GoodmanNov 12, 2022, 9:08 AM

  19 points

  2 ∶ 2

  in reply to: oivavoi’s comment on: My re­ac­tion to FTX: appalled

  What do you mean by:

  “downplaying engaging in politics in order to make societal institutions better and more just”?

  I can interpret it a couple of ways:

  • Criticism that EA doesn’t engage in politics enough

  • Warning about the risks of getting involved in politics

  Either way, SBF was a major political donor. I’m reading he was the 2nd biggest donor for the Democrats:

  https://​​www.google.com/​​amp/​​s/​​fortune.com/​​2022/​​11/​​10/​​sam-bankman-fried-ftx-joe-biden-democratic-party-second-biggest-donor/​​amp/​​

• Matt GoodmanNov 12, 2022, 8:54 AM

  6 points

  2 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Dvir Caspi’s comment on: IMPCO, don’t in­jure your­self by re­turn­ing FTXFF money for ser­vices you already provided

  Lawful good/​ neutral is part of a Dungeons and Dragons character’s ‘alignment’ chart. It’s a way people sometimes use to describe people’s morality and motivations in real life. https://​​www.wnyc.org/​​story/​​the-chart-that-explains-everyone-character-alignment/​​

• Matt GoodmanNov 2, 2022, 5:08 PM

  1 point

  0 ∶ 0

  on: A Po­ten­tial Cheap and High Im­pact Way to Re­duce Covid in the UK this Winter

  The way you are assessed for eligibility for a seasonal COVID booster in the UK is a short online questionnaire. I ticked that I “thought I might be at high risk of COVID” (I don’t, but I want a booster) and was able to book one without being asked for any extra supporting evidence.

  Now, this could be bad if the NHS relies on survey response data to estimate how many people are actually at risk (this seems very unlikely to me, given that they must have much higher quality data on disease rates in the UK). It could also be bad if the UK is constrained on supply of vaccines—but again this seems unlikely to me.

  All in, as a very mild act of civil disobedience, I think it’s net-positive, and worth it for me. I’d buy a dose if I was allowed to, but the UK gov won’t allow me to...

[Question] What is the ex­pected value of me giv­ing blood?

• Matt GoodmanSep 27, 2022, 11:40 PM

  1 point

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Ta­boo “Out­side View”

  Something I used to call ‘outside view’ is asking ‘what would someone other than me think of this’, like trying to imagine how someone outside of myself would view something. I think it’s a technique I learnt from CBT and would often take the form of ‘what would a wise, empathetic friend advise you to do?’ . I realised you could do it with various viewpoints. For example, you could imagine looking at current affairs from the viewpoint of an alien viewing earth from afar. I’m not sure what the term for this is.

• Matt Goodman 8 Aug 2022 8:32 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Marcel D’s comment on: The Kin­der­trans­port—re­view of a his­tor­i­cal al­tru­is­tic movement

  EDIT: I changed the section title to ‘Welcome Refugees’ and unlinked the Brian Caplan article. Noting this for clarity.

• Matt Goodman 8 Aug 2022 8:23 UTC

  1 point

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Marcel D’s comment on: The Kin­der­trans­port—re­view of a his­tor­i­cal al­tru­is­tic movement

  thanks for the feedback! I agree, I tried to focus on how relaxing visa requirements for people fleeing persecution can do a lot of good, and probably over-reached by naming the section ‘Open borders’ and linking the Brian Caplan article. Unsure what the forum’s rules for editing posts are, but I might change that section later.