The same is true of any overhead costs, right? Should they be running conferences at all? How much should CEOs of EA organizations be paid?
I think this decision was poorly communicated and helps highlight the potential for schism in EA, but it’s not a unique issue, either. It also highlights that, while they often fund EA causes, it’s ridiculous at this point for anyone to consider OpenPhil an effective altruism organization itself or even one strongly influenced by effective altruism (it might be petty, but capital-EA versus lowercase is a simple way to highlight one distinction, too).
Edit: I’m apparently insufficiently familiar with discussion norms here, and would appreciate a reply on the strength of disagreement with this comment.
While AI safety has sucked up a lot of attention recently, EA’s most famous and most well-funded efforts have been focused in Africa- malaria bednets, deworming, vitamin supplementation, etc etc. There’s a post at least monthly, maybe weekly, about how EA isn’t diverse enough, that it’s a tragedy, and how they can and should improve that.
I find it difficult to consider the majority of EA actions could possibly be outweighed by one person’s terribly stupid statement almost three decades ago, no matter how high-status that person is within the community. I find it difficult to think that a movement that has spent hundreds of millions of dollars improving the lives of the less-fortunate (mostly in Africa, but there was also that 300M$ experiment in criminal justice reform that would mostly help black people if it worked) has a racism problem, and that their hundreds of millions of dollars of actions, don’t speak louder than one goofus and his poor apology.
But if I try to put myself in that headspace, where this movement does have a serious racism problem despite all the evidence suggesting the contrary, one paragraph of PR-speak is not going to be the least bit comforting.
Could you, or any readers, help me understand that mindset better?