I acknowledge that transparency is complex, that there are trade-offs and that it isn’t clear what the correct amount of transparency is. I also acknowledge that it is normal that regular grants are published with a delay. So I’m not making a general claim or demand that everything needs to be public (I even explicitly say that). What I say is that
a) I’m in favour of valuing transparency highly by default.
b) I feel in this specific case more communication would have helped
My intuition is that Open Phil overall is quite transparent. I was less sure about EVF, given that there are a relevant number of comments and posts on the forum criticising them for lack of transparency. But my data point is mostly this one where I feel more openness would have been helpful plus reading other people’s comments.
Given that, I think it’s especially weird to say EVF hasn’t said anything while linking to an explanation by the board member who was most involved.
I feel that characterisation is a bit uncharitable. I said
So far CEA/EVF hasn’t come out explaining their rationale in detail (albeit some of those involved in the decision have commented under an EA Forum Post asking about the decision and shared their perspectives)
At the time when Émile posted on Twitter, this was definitely true. And even today I find it fair to say that Owen’s response was not a detailed explanation by CEA/EVF (maybe you’re right and it’s Open Phil that should do the explaining, but that is not the main point). Owen’s comment was a response to a question / criticism by someone else, was a comment under a post by someone else and felt mostly like a personal account to me. And he doesn’t give much information on the assumptions involved, from his post it wasn’t even clear where the money came from. To be clear: I’m glad he posted his thoughts. But I think it’s also fair to say that this isn’t the kind of official announcement or detailed explanation targeted to convince someone who isn’t already mostly convinced that the decision was reasonable.
I think your criticism of bikeshedding somewhat misses the point people are raising. Of course the amount of money spent on WA is tiny compared to other things. The reason it’s worth talking about it is that it tells you something about EA culture and how EA operates.
This is in large parts a discussion about what culture the movement should have, what EA wants to be and how it wants to communicate to the world. The reason you care about how someone builds a bike shed is because that carries information about what kind of person they are, how trustworthy they are and how they might approach building a reactor.
The discussion is 1-2 steps away from the actual decision precisely because
a) we don’t have the information necessary to have a discussion on the actual decision (i.e. the numbers) and
b) things like decision processes are important.
There is a PR element to my original post—I think CEA/EVF could have communicated smarter and it’s important to point that out. But what is at heart of all this is not at all about PR, spin and appearance. Not about appearing virtuous, but about being virtuous. It’s about processes, what culture EA should foster and the value of transparency.