Some troubling relevant updates on EA Funds from the past few hours:
On April 20th, Kerry Vaughan from CEA published an update on EA Funds on the EA Forum. His post quotes the previous post in which he introduced the launch of EA Funds, which said:
We only want to focus on the Effective Altruism Funds if the community believes it will improve the effectiveness of their donations and that it will provide substantial value to the EA community. Accordingly, we plan to run the project for the next 3 months and then reassess whether the project should continue and if so, in what form.
In short, it was promised that a certain level of community support would be required to justify the continuation of EA Funds beyond the first three months of the project. In an effort to communicate that such a level of support existed, Kerry commented:
Where we’ve received criticism it has mostly been around how we can improve the website and our communication about EA Funds as opposed to criticism about the core concept.
(I stand corrected by the reply to this comment which addressed this bullet point: the original post on which I had commented wasn’t hidden from the EA Forum; I just needed to log out of my account on the EA Forum to see it after having downvoted it.)
Between the fact that the EA Funds project has taken significant criticism, failed to implement a plan to address it, acted as if its continuation was justified on the basis of having not received any such criticism, and signaled its openness to being deceptive in the future by doing all of this in a way that wasn’t plausibly deniable, my personal opinion is that there is not sufficient reason to allow the EA Funds to continue to operate past their three-month trial period, and additionally, that I have less reason to trust other projects run by CEA in light of this debacle.
When you downvote something on the EA forum, it becomes hidden. Have you tried viewing it while not logged in to your account? It’s still visible to me.
Well, that’s embarrassing for me. You’re entirely right; it does become visible again when I log out, and I hadn’t even considered that as a possibility. I guess I’ll amend the paragraph of my above comment that incorrectly stated that the thread had been hidden on the EA Forum; at least I didn’t accuse anyone of anything in that part of my reply. I do still stand by my criticisms, though knowing what I do now, I would say that it wasn’t necessary of me to post this here if my original comment and the original post on the EA Forum are still publicly visible.
Some troubling relevant updates on EA Funds from the past few hours:
On April 20th, Kerry Vaughan from CEA published an update on EA Funds on the EA Forum. His post quotes the previous post in which he introduced the launch of EA Funds, which said:
In short, it was promised that a certain level of community support would be required to justify the continuation of EA Funds beyond the first three months of the project. In an effort to communicate that such a level of support existed, Kerry commented:
Around 11 hours ago, I pointed out that this claim was patently false.
(I stand corrected by the reply to this comment which addressed this bullet point: the original post on which I had commented wasn’t hidden from the EA Forum; I just needed to log out of my account on the EA Forum to see it after having downvoted it.)
Between the fact that the EA Funds project has taken significant criticism, failed to implement a plan to address it, acted as if its continuation was justified on the basis of having not received any such criticism, and signaled its openness to being deceptive in the future by doing all of this in a way that wasn’t plausibly deniable, my personal opinion is that there is not sufficient reason to allow the EA Funds to continue to operate past their three-month trial period, and additionally, that I have less reason to trust other projects run by CEA in light of this debacle.
When you downvote something on the EA forum, it becomes hidden. Have you tried viewing it while not logged in to your account? It’s still visible to me.
Well, that’s embarrassing for me. You’re entirely right; it does become visible again when I log out, and I hadn’t even considered that as a possibility. I guess I’ll amend the paragraph of my above comment that incorrectly stated that the thread had been hidden on the EA Forum; at least I didn’t accuse anyone of anything in that part of my reply. I do still stand by my criticisms, though knowing what I do now, I would say that it wasn’t necessary of me to post this here if my original comment and the original post on the EA Forum are still publicly visible.