Do you agree with my comparative claim? EA vs. Democrats or Republicans, for example, or EA vs. Social Justice, or EA vs. idk pick some other analogous movement.
What I expect for a movement of this scale or larger where a prominent figure has a scandal of this level, is that many people wring their hands over it, some minor changes, people taking lots of defensive PR actions, but nobody is in a position to really fix the underlying problems and it isn’t really tried. Some substantive status allocation changes and trust is lowered, and then it continues on regardless. I currently cannot distinguish the Effective Altruism ecosystem from this standard story. Beyond FTX, who has been fired?Who has stepped forward and taken responsibility? Who has admitted to major fault?
I suspect the main thing that has happened better in the EA ecosystem does less actively criminal or unethical behavior in the cover-up and in the PR defense, while not actually fixing anything. That is a low bar and this is still best described as “a failure”.
I also think any of those movements/ecosystems would have a ton of energy for discussion and finger-pointing and attempts to use this issue to change people’s status. Perhaps you are misreading “lots of bickering” as “there has been a reckoning”. The EA Forum is filled with squabbling of this sort and is a substantial reason for why I do not read it.
I am outraged, and I don’t know which emotion is stronger: my utter rage at Sam (and others?) for causing such harm to so many people, or my sadness and self-hatred for falling for this deception.
...
If FTX misused customer funds, then I personally will have much to reflect on. Sam and FTX had a lot of goodwill – and some of that goodwill was the result of association with ideas I have spent my career promoting. If that goodwill laundered fraud, I am ashamed.
As a community, too, we will need to reflect on what has happened, and how we could reduce the chance of anything like this from happening again. Yes, we want to make the world better, and yes, we should be ambitious in the pursuit of that.
But that in no way justifies fraud. If you think that you’re the exception, you’re duping yourself.
We must make clear that we do not see ourselves as above common-sense ethical norms, and must engage criticism with humility.
I know that others from inside and outside of the community have worried about the misuse of EA ideas in ways that could cause harm. I used to think these worries, though worth taking seriously, seemed speculative and unlikely.
I was probably wrong. I will be reflecting on this in the days and months to come, and thinking through what should change.
I read this as an admission of guilt and responsibility. What do you wish he had said?
I read this as an admission of guilt and responsibility. What do you wish he had said?
Does it matter what he said? What has he done? As far as I’m aware he is mostly getting along with being a prominent figurehead of EA and a public intellectual.
Also this is hardly an admission of guilt. It primarily says “This seems bad and I will reflect on it.” He didn’t say
“This theft of many thousands of people’s life savings will forever be part of the legacy of Effective Altruism, and I must ensure that this movement is not responsible for something even worse in the future. I take responsibility for endorsing and supporting this awful person and for playing a key role in building an ecosystem in which he thrived. I have failed in my leadership position and I will work to make sure this great injustice cannot happen again and that the causes are rectified, and if I cannot accomplish that with confidence within 12 months then I will no longer publicly support the Effective Altruism movement.”
I read this as an admission of guilt and responsibility. What do you wish he had said?
I think it’s a decent opening and it clearly calls for reflection, but you might notice that indeed no further reflection has been published, and Will has not published anything that talks much about what lessons he has taken away from them.
To be clear, as I understand the situation Will did indeed write up a bunch of reflections, but then the EV board asked him not to because that posed too much legal and PR risk. I agree this is some evidence about Will showing some remorse, but also evidence that the overall leadership does not care very much about people learning from what happened (at least compared to increased PR and legal risk).
I think this is a potentially large cost of the fiscal sponsorship umbrella. Will can’t take on the risk personally or even for just his org, it’s automatically shared with a ton of other orgs.
That seems quite plausible. If that is his reasoning, then I think he should say that.
“I had planned to write in more details about my relationship to Sam and FTX, what actions I took, and in what ways I think my actions did and did not enable these crimes to take place; but due to concerns about risking the jobs of 100+ people I have chosen to not share information about this for the following 1-4 years (that is, until any legal and financial investigation of Effective Ventures has concluded, an org that I’m on the board of and that facilitated a lot of financial grantmaking for FTX).
This obviously largely prohibits the Effective Altruism ecosystem from carrying out a collective fact-finding effort around those who were closely involved with Sam and FTX within the next 1-4 years, and substantially obstructs a clear fault analysis and post-mortem from occurring, and I expect as a result of this many readers should correctly update that by-default that the causes of these problems will not be fixed.
I hope that this is not the death of the Effective Altruism ecosystem that I have worked to build over the last 10+ years, but I am not sure how people working and living in this ecosystem can come to trust that crimes of a similar magnitude will not happen again after seeing little-to-no accounting of how this criminal was funded and supported, nor any clear fixes implemented in the ecosystem to prevent such crimes from occurring in the future, and I sadly expect many good people will rightly leave the ecosystem because of it.”
I wish he had said (perhaps after some time to ponder) “I now realize that SBF used FTX to steal customer funds. SBF and FTX had a lot of goodwill, that I contributed to, and I let those people and the entire community down.
As a community, we need to recognize that this happened in part because of us. And I recognize that this happened partly because of me, in particular. Yes, we want to make the world better, and yes, we should be ambitious in the pursuit of that. But we have been doing so in a way that we can now see can set people on extremely dark and destructive paths.
No promise to do good justifies fraud, or the encouragement of fraud. We have to find a philosophy that does not drive people towards fraud.
We must not see or treat ourselves as above common-sense ethical norms, and must engage criticism with humility. We must fundamentally rethink how to embody utilitarianism where it is useful, within such a framework, recognizing that saying ‘but don’t lie or do fraud’ at the end often does not work.
I know others have worried that our formulation of EA ideas could lead people to do harm. I used to think this was unlikely. I now realize it was not, and that this was part of a predictable pattern that we must end, so that we can be a force for good once more.
I was wrong. I will continue to reflect in the coming months.”
And then, ya know, reflect, and do some things.
The statement he actually made I interpret as a plea for time to process while affirming the bare minimum. Where was his follow-up?
Your proposal seems to me to be pretty similar to what he actually said, just a bit stronger here and there. Ben’s proposal below, by contrast, is much stiffer stuff, mostly because of the last sentence.
Can you give an example of a movement of this scale or larger that had a scandal of this level, and reacted better than EA did?
None come to mind. (To be clear, this doesn’t seem cruxy for whether Effective Altruism has succeeded at reforming itself.)
I think instructive examples to look into would be things like:
How the justice system itself investigates crimes. I really like reading published reports where an investigator has been given a lot of resources to figure something out and then writes up what they learned. In many countries it is illegal to lie to an investigator when they are investigating a crime, which means that someone can go around and just ask what happened, then share that and prosecute any unlawful behavior.
How countries deal with their own major human rights violations. I am somewhat interested in understanding things like how the Truth and Reconciliation process went in South Africa, and also how Germany has responded post WWII, where I think both really tried to reform to ensure that the same thing couldn’t happen again.
How companies investigate disasters. Sometimes a massive company will have a disaster or screw-up (e.g. the BP Oil Spill, the Boeing crashes, Johnson & Johnson Tylenol poisoning incident) and sometimes conduct serious investigations and try to fix the problem. I’d be interested in reading successful accounts there and how they went about finding the source of the problem and fixing it.
Religious reformations. The Protestant split was in response to a bunch of theological and pragmatic disagreements and also concerns of corruption (the clergy leading lavish lives). I’d prefer to not have a split and instead have a reform, I suspect there are other instances of major religious reform that went well that one can learn lessons from (of course also many to avoid).
Can you give an example of a movement of this scale or larger that had a scandal of this level, and reacted better than EA did?
I think almost any large organization/company would have gone through a much more comprehensive fault-analysis and would have made many measurable improvements. For examples of this you could read through the history of Apple, or Tesla, or TSMC, or Intel. You could also look into the reforms that happened to lots of investment banks post 2008.
Companies are different than social movements, though my sense is that in the history of religion there have also been many successful reform efforts in response to various crises, which seems more similar.
As another interesting example, it also seems to me that Germany pretty successfully reformed its government and culture post World-War 2.
I think Germany is an extreme outlier here fwiw, (eg) Japan did far worse things and after WW2 cared more about covering up wrongdoing than with admitting fault; further, Germany’s government and cultural “reformation” was very much strongarmed by the US and other allies, whereas the US actively assisted Japan in covering up war crimes.
I started writing a comment reply to elaborate after getting some disagreevotes on the parent comment, but decided that it’d be a distraction from the main conversation; I might expand on my position in an LW shortform at some point in the near future.
I think almost any large organization/company would have gone through a much more comprehensive fault-analysis and would have made many measurable improvements.
What I expect for a movement of this scale or larger where a prominent figure has a scandal of this level, is that many people wring their hands over it, some minor changes, people taking lots of defensive PR actions, but nobody is in a position to really fix the underlying problems and it isn’t really tried. Some substantive status allocation changes and trust is lowered, and then it continues on regardless. I currently cannot distinguish the Effective Altruism ecosystem from this standard story. Beyond FTX, who has been fired? Who has stepped forward and taken responsibility? Who has admitted to major fault?
I suspect the main thing that has happened better in the EA ecosystem does less actively criminal or unethical behavior in the cover-up and in the PR defense, while not actually fixing anything. That is a low bar and this is still best described as “a failure”.
I also think any of those movements/ecosystems would have a ton of energy for discussion and finger-pointing and attempts to use this issue to change people’s status. Perhaps you are misreading “lots of bickering” as “there has been a reckoning”. The EA Forum is filled with squabbling of this sort and is a substantial reason for why I do not read it.
That’s helpful thanks. Can you give an example of a movement of this scale or larger that had a scandal of this level, and reacted better than EA did?
IIRC Will MacAskill admitted to major fault, though I don’t remember what he said and wasn’t paying close attention. Here’s the statement I remembered: A personal statement on FTX — EA Forum (effectivealtruism.org)
I read this as an admission of guilt and responsibility. What do you wish he had said?
Does it matter what he said? What has he done? As far as I’m aware he is mostly getting along with being a prominent figurehead of EA and a public intellectual.
Also this is hardly an admission of guilt. It primarily says “This seems bad and I will reflect on it.” He didn’t say
I think it’s a decent opening and it clearly calls for reflection, but you might notice that indeed no further reflection has been published, and Will has not published anything that talks much about what lessons he has taken away from them.
To be clear, as I understand the situation Will did indeed write up a bunch of reflections, but then the EV board asked him not to because that posed too much legal and PR risk. I agree this is some evidence about Will showing some remorse, but also evidence that the overall leadership does not care very much about people learning from what happened (at least compared to increased PR and legal risk).
I think this is a potentially large cost of the fiscal sponsorship umbrella. Will can’t take on the risk personally or even for just his org, it’s automatically shared with a ton of other orgs.
That seems quite plausible. If that is his reasoning, then I think he should say that.
Pretty big if true. If EV actively is censoring attempts to reflect upon what happened, then that is important information to pin down.
I would hope that if someone tried to do that to me, I would resign.
That’s what I told Will to do. He felt like that would be uncollaborative with broader EA leadership.
I wish he had said (perhaps after some time to ponder) “I now realize that SBF used FTX to steal customer funds. SBF and FTX had a lot of goodwill, that I contributed to, and I let those people and the entire community down.
As a community, we need to recognize that this happened in part because of us. And I recognize that this happened partly because of me, in particular. Yes, we want to make the world better, and yes, we should be ambitious in the pursuit of that. But we have been doing so in a way that we can now see can set people on extremely dark and destructive paths.
No promise to do good justifies fraud, or the encouragement of fraud. We have to find a philosophy that does not drive people towards fraud.
We must not see or treat ourselves as above common-sense ethical norms, and must engage criticism with humility. We must fundamentally rethink how to embody utilitarianism where it is useful, within such a framework, recognizing that saying ‘but don’t lie or do fraud’ at the end often does not work.
I know others have worried that our formulation of EA ideas could lead people to do harm. I used to think this was unlikely. I now realize it was not, and that this was part of a predictable pattern that we must end, so that we can be a force for good once more.
I was wrong. I will continue to reflect in the coming months.”
And then, ya know, reflect, and do some things.
The statement he actually made I interpret as a plea for time to process while affirming the bare minimum. Where was his follow-up?
Your proposal seems to me to be pretty similar to what he actually said, just a bit stronger here and there. Ben’s proposal below, by contrast, is much stiffer stuff, mostly because of the last sentence.
None come to mind. (To be clear, this doesn’t seem cruxy for whether Effective Altruism has succeeded at reforming itself.)
I think instructive examples to look into would be things like:
How the justice system itself investigates crimes. I really like reading published reports where an investigator has been given a lot of resources to figure something out and then writes up what they learned. In many countries it is illegal to lie to an investigator when they are investigating a crime, which means that someone can go around and just ask what happened, then share that and prosecute any unlawful behavior.
How countries deal with their own major human rights violations. I am somewhat interested in understanding things like how the Truth and Reconciliation process went in South Africa, and also how Germany has responded post WWII, where I think both really tried to reform to ensure that the same thing couldn’t happen again.
How companies investigate disasters. Sometimes a massive company will have a disaster or screw-up (e.g. the BP Oil Spill, the Boeing crashes, Johnson & Johnson Tylenol poisoning incident) and sometimes conduct serious investigations and try to fix the problem. I’d be interested in reading successful accounts there and how they went about finding the source of the problem and fixing it.
Religious reformations. The Protestant split was in response to a bunch of theological and pragmatic disagreements and also concerns of corruption (the clergy leading lavish lives). I’d prefer to not have a split and instead have a reform, I suspect there are other instances of major religious reform that went well that one can learn lessons from (of course also many to avoid).
I think almost any large organization/company would have gone through a much more comprehensive fault-analysis and would have made many measurable improvements. For examples of this you could read through the history of Apple, or Tesla, or TSMC, or Intel. You could also look into the reforms that happened to lots of investment banks post 2008.
Companies are different than social movements, though my sense is that in the history of religion there have also been many successful reform efforts in response to various crises, which seems more similar.
As another interesting example, it also seems to me that Germany pretty successfully reformed its government and culture post World-War 2.
I think Germany is an extreme outlier here fwiw, (eg) Japan did far worse things and after WW2 cared more about covering up wrongdoing than with admitting fault; further, Germany’s government and cultural “reformation” was very much strongarmed by the US and other allies, whereas the US actively assisted Japan in covering up war crimes.
EDIT: See shortform elaboration: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/s58hDHX2GkFDbpGKD/linch-s-shortform?commentId=ywf8R3CobzdkbTx3d
Here are some notes on why I think Imperial Japan was unusually bad, even by the very low bar set by the Second World War.
Curious why you say “far worse” rather than “similarly bad” though this isn’t important to the main conversation.
I started writing a comment reply to elaborate after getting some disagreevotes on the parent comment, but decided that it’d be a distraction from the main conversation; I might expand on my position in an LW shortform at some point in the near future.
Update: OK, now I agree. I encourage you to make a post on it.
I claim YCombinator is a counter example.
(The existence of one counterexample obviously doesn’t disagree with the “almost any” claim.)