I’ve had similar feelings to Alice. Part of it is that group membership serves a role of signalling information about yourself to others. Its very different to describe yourself to others as an EA when the primary association with it is “slightly weird but well meaning group of charitable people” vs when its “those weird crypto/eugenics people”. And in the latter case you are better off moving to labelling yourself as something else
projectionconfusion
Feels like it was a mistake to tell people to change their strategy if it can be reversed by a single donor having issues. All the emphasis on “we’re not funding constrained” may have done long term harm by reducing future donations from a wider pool of people.
EA seems to have a bit of a “not invented here” problem, of not taking onboard tried and tested mechanisms from other areas. E.g. with the boring standard conflict of interest and transparency mechanisms that are used by charitable organisations in developed countries.
Part of this seems to come from only accepting ideas framed in certain ways, and fitting cultural norms of existing members. (To frame it flippantly, if you proposed a decentralised blockchain based system for judging the competence of EA leaders you’d get lots of interest, but not if you suggested appointing non-EA external people to audit.)
There might be some value to posts taking existing good practices in other domains and presenting them in ways that are more palatable to the EA audience, though ideally you wouldn’t need to.
Why is big tent EA an end in itself? The EA movement exists for the purpose of doing good, not for having a movement. If multiple smaller movements are more effective at doing good then we should do that.
Multiple groups make it easier to specialise and avoid having single points of failure. Though you lose some economies of scale and coordination benefits.
Yeah this is my biggest concern. The whole value proposition of EA was to get away from the normal failure modes of charities. If they are falling into the same traps of using shoddy reasoning to justify self serving behaviour that’s a major structural problem, not just a matter of a single decision.
A meta level structural problem may be that so much decision making seems to be focused on a relatively small group of people without much oversight. Even with the best people in the world that’s going to lead to group think and blind spots. Other charities and non-profits have extensive oversight systems that may be worth imitating.
I feel like there’s also an ambiguity in the term “community” being used to both mean:
A relatively small and tightly knit social group of people in specific areas who know each-other in real life;
And a larger global community of people who are involved in EA to varying levels, but it doesn’t make up the majority of their social life.
A lot of the posts about EA community issues seems to be implicitly about the stereotypical “people who go to Bay Area house parties” community. Which is not representative of the wider community of people who might attend EA conferences, work/volunteer in EA orgs or donate.
I’m not particularly young anymore, and work in a non-EA field where reputation is a concern, which is a large part of why I post pseudonymously. I think it would be bad if it became the norm that people could only be taken seriously if they posted under their real names, and discussion was reserved for “professional EAs”.
I think EA has a particular problem where the emphasis on getting people who are “value aligned” means they don’t get in experienced people from outside. Software startups have at least learned to bring in an experienced COO to help run day to day things
How concerned were you about crypto generally being unethical?
Also to add to that, whether or not crypto is in itself ethical its known to be a very unstable sector and one with a particularly negative reputation. Was there any discussion of how to compensate for that potential volatility, and of potential reputational risks of being associated?
There’s a general lack of competence in (and at times active disdain for) skills in PR and communications in EA. Which for a movement that wants to convince people of things and attract membership seems problematic
Its not specific communications so much as it is the level of activity around specific causes. How many posts and how much discussion time is spent on AI and other cool intellectual things, vs. more mundane but important things like malaria. Danger of being seen as just a way for people to morally justify doing the kind of things they already want to do.
Same. I’m fairly confident in my writing skills but lack any talent in the other areas and would find doing so embarassing
I feel like a lot of this is downstream from people being reluctant to hire experienced people who aren’t already associated with EA. Particularly for things like operations roles experience doing similar roles is going to make far more of a difference to effectiveness than deep belief in EA values.
When Coke need to hire new people they don’t look for people who have a deep love of sugary drinks brands, they find people in similar roles for other things and offer them money. I feel like the reason EA orgs are reluctant to do this is that there’s a degree of exceptionalism in EA.
I have a job outside EA where reputation is a concern, so as is normal for people in such industries I post mostly anonymously online, and start new accounts periodically to prevent potential information leakage. If the only way to engage with EA discussion online was under my real name I wouldn’t do so.
That’s probably on the extreme end, but I think lots of people exist somewhere on this spectrum and it would probably be bad for the movement if discussions were limited to only people willing to post under their real names, or persistent identities, as that would exacerbate problems of insularity and group think.
This is not just a question of the attitude of EA employers but of wider society. I have been involved in EA for a long time but now work in a professional role where reputation is a concern, so do all my online activity pseudonymously.
I would dislike it if it became the norm that people could only be taken seriously if they posted under their real names, and discussion was reserved for “professional EAs”. And that would probably be bad for the variety of perspectives and expertise in EA discussions.
My own observation has been that people are open to intellectual discussion (your discounting formula is off for x reasons) but not to more concrete practical criticism, or criticism that talks about specific individuals.
I share this feeling. I feel like EA has trended in the direction of some other groups I’ve dealt with where the personalities and interpersonal issues of a small number of people at the top come to be overly dominant.
I’ve also had my faith in the movement fractured a bit by seeing how much of how things were run seems to be based on friends of friends networks. I had naively assumed they were doing the kind of due diligence and institutional division of power that other charitable organisations do.
A lot of this isn’t a particular specific set of issues, but its a general sense of ones estimates of people being shifted downward
We all agree expanding the moral circle is an end in itself so this seems obviously correct
Please feel free to “be that guy” as hard as possible when we are talking about massive financial fraud.