You make some reasonable points. I think it would be quite good for the EA ecosystem to now take steps to (a) make sure it isn’t possible in the future (nor has already happened elsewhere) that someone who will take unethical action to get money and respect can gain this much power and leadership in the community, and (b) make costly, public signals that it thinks fraud is immoral and unacceptable, so that future trade partners are able to trust the morality of the EA ecosystem. I think there are healthy ways of doing that, I suspect for the latter for example some form of survey or signed letter for the latter would be a good step (e.g. “We believe the principles of Effective Altruism are inconsistent with defrauding people — signed by10,000 people who subscribe to the principles of Effective Altruism”), and I think there are other more substantive ideas here too. This has also left me thinking about ideas for how to do the former thing in my own spaces, including various whisteblower setups.
I think the thing that you’re most missing is that I have not been pushing on EA marketing and EA growth for many years nor explicitly speaking on its behalf or as a representative of it, and a lot of what has been said by the marketing people has not reflected me or had my buy-in. For 4-5 years now this has increasingly been not my movement, especially in terms of growth and publicity. I still use a lot of the principles and respect some of the people involved, but the love is substantially gone. I specifically feel like the post is asking me to post on my social media (it talks about people with any ‘public platform’) and participate in propagating the ‘collective beliefs’ of the movement, as though I have been previously involved in saying the ‘collective beliefs’ in the direction of growth of EA on social media and in old-media or thought that it was a good idea, as opposed to thinking most of the public-facing marketing has been horrendous, costly, and net-negative. Over many years some other people went and tried to publicly say what ‘we believe’ which I found alienating and epistemically suspect, and now that a bunch of the moral respect has been burned, I’m being demanded to come in and take responsibility for propagating more of what ‘we’ stand for in those communication channels, with communication tools I was against in the first place. Like, insofar as I had spoken in this way and lent my word to it, then I think the post title would be far more reasonable, but I’ve almost entirely been against it and seen it done against my desires, and I have felt alienated. At this point I’m open to, and might do so, if asked respectfully and not in a way that implied I was already bought-in and not being a team player for not being bought-in, but I am strongly resistant to the implication that I am obligated to show up to propagate a collective belief because I do not endorse propagating these collective beliefs in general. I understand that it may looks like EA is inconsistent and shameful from the outside, but I am not responsible for the inconsistency in its public messaging, I was against advertising collective beliefs and have not been doing so.
I think it’s correct for me to personally take some shoulder of blame for the bad consequences of EA, which I have been in a good trade relationship with (organizing retreats, building software for, etc), and I’m still thinking on what to do about that.
I also agree it’s a time for moral reflection.
I agree it’s important for the EA ecosystem to send a strong signal of saying that fraud is not permitted by EA principles. I think that if anyone wants me to participate in that signal, they ought to put in some hard work and find a route that does not sacrifice my epistemological principles in the doing of it, even if it is urgent to do so for the reputation of the ecosystem. The epistemology is just really not for the giving up. Yes, what Sam+Caroline did was probably horrendous (I am not 100% certain, more information may come to light). Yes, if so the EA ecosystem must clearly send costly signals that it does not endorse this behavior in order to continue to be respected as a moral entity. But I’m not okay with that method being a post whose title isn’t trying to inform, but is instead saying words because of the coordination effects it hopes to have on people, and is (in a pretty key point in time) trying to move speech acts from the truth toward signaling.
P.S. It’s one o’clock in the morning. I will later regret not reflecting more on this comment before posting, but I will also regret not posting anything at all because I am busy all of tomorrow and won’t be able to reply then either, and I’d like to respond to this promptly. Which is to say, I may later on realize I don’t quite endorse something or other I said here.
You make interesting points in return! And I have no strong disagreement with any of them. certainly I do think that none of us are SBF, but we are lower graph distance than many, and had some path proximity to algorithm choice he appears to have potentially used. seems like we’re near the same page here.
You make some reasonable points. I think it would be quite good for the EA ecosystem to now take steps to (a) make sure it isn’t possible in the future (nor has already happened elsewhere) that someone who will take unethical action to get money and respect can gain this much power and leadership in the community, and (b) make costly, public signals that it thinks fraud is immoral and unacceptable, so that future trade partners are able to trust the morality of the EA ecosystem. I think there are healthy ways of doing that, I suspect for the latter for example some form of survey or signed letter for the latter would be a good step (e.g. “We believe the principles of Effective Altruism are inconsistent with defrauding people — signed by10,000 people who subscribe to the principles of Effective Altruism”), and I think there are other more substantive ideas here too. This has also left me thinking about ideas for how to do the former thing in my own spaces, including various whisteblower setups.
I think the thing that you’re most missing is that I have not been pushing on EA marketing and EA growth for many years nor explicitly speaking on its behalf or as a representative of it, and a lot of what has been said by the marketing people has not reflected me or had my buy-in. For 4-5 years now this has increasingly been not my movement, especially in terms of growth and publicity. I still use a lot of the principles and respect some of the people involved, but the love is substantially gone. I specifically feel like the post is asking me to post on my social media (it talks about people with any ‘public platform’) and participate in propagating the ‘collective beliefs’ of the movement, as though I have been previously involved in saying the ‘collective beliefs’ in the direction of growth of EA on social media and in old-media or thought that it was a good idea, as opposed to thinking most of the public-facing marketing has been horrendous, costly, and net-negative. Over many years some other people went and tried to publicly say what ‘we believe’ which I found alienating and epistemically suspect, and now that a bunch of the moral respect has been burned, I’m being demanded to come in and take responsibility for propagating more of what ‘we’ stand for in those communication channels, with communication tools I was against in the first place. Like, insofar as I had spoken in this way and lent my word to it, then I think the post title would be far more reasonable, but I’ve almost entirely been against it and seen it done against my desires, and I have felt alienated. At this point I’m open to, and might do so, if asked respectfully and not in a way that implied I was already bought-in and not being a team player for not being bought-in, but I am strongly resistant to the implication that I am obligated to show up to propagate a collective belief because I do not endorse propagating these collective beliefs in general. I understand that it may looks like EA is inconsistent and shameful from the outside, but I am not responsible for the inconsistency in its public messaging, I was against advertising collective beliefs and have not been doing so.
I think it’s correct for me to personally take some shoulder of blame for the bad consequences of EA, which I have been in a good trade relationship with (organizing retreats, building software for, etc), and I’m still thinking on what to do about that.
I also agree it’s a time for moral reflection.
I agree it’s important for the EA ecosystem to send a strong signal of saying that fraud is not permitted by EA principles. I think that if anyone wants me to participate in that signal, they ought to put in some hard work and find a route that does not sacrifice my epistemological principles in the doing of it, even if it is urgent to do so for the reputation of the ecosystem. The epistemology is just really not for the giving up. Yes, what Sam+Caroline did was probably horrendous (I am not 100% certain, more information may come to light). Yes, if so the EA ecosystem must clearly send costly signals that it does not endorse this behavior in order to continue to be respected as a moral entity. But I’m not okay with that method being a post whose title isn’t trying to inform, but is instead saying words because of the coordination effects it hopes to have on people, and is (in a pretty key point in time) trying to move speech acts from the truth toward signaling.
P.S. It’s one o’clock in the morning. I will later regret not reflecting more on this comment before posting, but I will also regret not posting anything at all because I am busy all of tomorrow and won’t be able to reply then either, and I’d like to respond to this promptly. Which is to say, I may later on realize I don’t quite endorse something or other I said here.
You make interesting points in return! And I have no strong disagreement with any of them. certainly I do think that none of us are SBF, but we are lower graph distance than many, and had some path proximity to algorithm choice he appears to have potentially used. seems like we’re near the same page here.