I will report back after EAG Boston if it updates me, but this has not been my experience at all, and I am curious what persistent changes you believe I should have noticed, other than adapting to the new funding situation.
Well, we probably aren’t talking to the same people. But (a) the people I know haven’t regressed to thinking SBF was good actually. They still think that was a huge disaster, we were wrong to trust him and work for him, we were gullible, too naively consequentialist, etc. And (b) they still seem to have made a generic update towards common-sense morality and a bigger generic update towards integrity/honesty being important. As a result, I claim (c) that if something like SBF started to happen again, many people would like antibodies speak up and crush it before it got nearly so big. In fact now that I mention it I think there are even two or three examples of this happening already (immune system reactions).
To be clear I’m not confident in any of this and I’m still worried, especially about the naive consequentialism.
My original comment was “citation needed,” could you at least say more about why you think the change died away quickly? Maybe give some examples of bad behavior (possibly anonymized if you like) that happened pre-SBF, stopped happening after SBF, and then started up again?
a bigger generic update towards integrity/honesty being important.
This seems backwards to me. For example, Open Phil as a grantmaker substantially increased the degree to which they are concerned about PR and how much they should overall obfuscate or distort, with the reasoning that FTX’s collapse substantially increased the risk that various people would take opportunities to attack EA-affiliated things, and also clearly demonstrated that PR risks are real and have really bad consequences.
In-general I’ve mostly seen people update that EA should now try harder to not look bad and to me more concerned about our reputation in a way I think quite straightforwardly trades off against honesty and integrity.
To be clear, this is not universal, and some people I know have updated in ways that put more emphasis on integrity, but I think most of the update is backwards.
OK, interesting, thanks. I don’t have much of an opinion about this myself but I agree that insofar as the update is mostly towards PRishness and not genuine integrity, that’s bad. I’d be curious to hear more about it if you want to talk about it.
What I meant was that I saw talk of need for systemic/philosophical change and to update, that talk died down, and what I see now does not seem so different from what I saw then. As Ben points out, there has been little turnover. I don’t see a difference in epistemics of discussions. I don’t see examples of decisions being made using better theories. And so on.
Concretely recently: Reaction to Elizabeth’s post seemed what I would have expected in 2021, from both LW and EA Forum. The whole nonlinear thing was only exposed after Ben Pace put infinite hours into it, otherwise they were plausibly in process of rooting a lot of EA. Etc. My attempts to get various ideas across don’t feel like they’re getting different reactions from EAs than I would have expected in 2021.
Yes, people have realized SBF the particular person was bad, but they have not done much to avoid making more SBFs that I can see? Or to guard against such people if they don’t do exactly the same thing next time?
Situation with common sense morality and honesty seem not to have changed much from where I sit, and note e.g. that Oliver/Ben who interact with them more seem to basically despair on this front.
Reaction to Elizabeth’s post seemed what I would have expected in 2021, from both LW and EA Forum. … My attempts to get various ideas across don’t feel like they’re getting different reactions from EAs than I would have expected in 2021.
Would you mind explaining both of these things? I’m not very plugged in to this sort of thing.
Situation with common sense morality and honesty seem not to have changed much from where I sit, and note e.g. that Oliver/Ben who interact with them more seem to basically despair on this front.
Also curious to understand more about what this means.
Citation needed? In my experience it seems like the change has been permanent.
I will report back after EAG Boston if it updates me, but this has not been my experience at all, and I am curious what persistent changes you believe I should have noticed, other than adapting to the new funding situation.
Well, we probably aren’t talking to the same people. But (a) the people I know haven’t regressed to thinking SBF was good actually. They still think that was a huge disaster, we were wrong to trust him and work for him, we were gullible, too naively consequentialist, etc. And (b) they still seem to have made a generic update towards common-sense morality and a bigger generic update towards integrity/honesty being important. As a result, I claim (c) that if something like SBF started to happen again, many people would like antibodies speak up and crush it before it got nearly so big. In fact now that I mention it I think there are even two or three examples of this happening already (immune system reactions).
To be clear I’m not confident in any of this and I’m still worried, especially about the naive consequentialism.
My original comment was “citation needed,” could you at least say more about why you think the change died away quickly? Maybe give some examples of bad behavior (possibly anonymized if you like) that happened pre-SBF, stopped happening after SBF, and then started up again?
This seems backwards to me. For example, Open Phil as a grantmaker substantially increased the degree to which they are concerned about PR and how much they should overall obfuscate or distort, with the reasoning that FTX’s collapse substantially increased the risk that various people would take opportunities to attack EA-affiliated things, and also clearly demonstrated that PR risks are real and have really bad consequences.
In-general I’ve mostly seen people update that EA should now try harder to not look bad and to me more concerned about our reputation in a way I think quite straightforwardly trades off against honesty and integrity.
To be clear, this is not universal, and some people I know have updated in ways that put more emphasis on integrity, but I think most of the update is backwards.
OK, interesting, thanks. I don’t have much of an opinion about this myself but I agree that insofar as the update is mostly towards PRishness and not genuine integrity, that’s bad. I’d be curious to hear more about it if you want to talk about it.
Will send you a link to some drafts I’ve been writing. Hopefully I’ll publish some things eventually.
Lmk if I can help with that, via dialogues, co-writing, or something else
What I meant was that I saw talk of need for systemic/philosophical change and to update, that talk died down, and what I see now does not seem so different from what I saw then. As Ben points out, there has been little turnover. I don’t see a difference in epistemics of discussions. I don’t see examples of decisions being made using better theories. And so on.
Concretely recently: Reaction to Elizabeth’s post seemed what I would have expected in 2021, from both LW and EA Forum. The whole nonlinear thing was only exposed after Ben Pace put infinite hours into it, otherwise they were plausibly in process of rooting a lot of EA. Etc. My attempts to get various ideas across don’t feel like they’re getting different reactions from EAs than I would have expected in 2021.
Yes, people have realized SBF the particular person was bad, but they have not done much to avoid making more SBFs that I can see? Or to guard against such people if they don’t do exactly the same thing next time?
Situation with common sense morality and honesty seem not to have changed much from where I sit, and note e.g. that Oliver/Ben who interact with them more seem to basically despair on this front.
I’d be interested in having a call with you + Ben Pace + maybe Habryka or whoever else you like, to discuss in a higher-bandwidth way, if you like.
Yeah actually I would be interested in having a dialogue on this, with yourself and any of the other folks you mention.
Sounds good! Sign me up! :)
Would you mind explaining both of these things? I’m not very plugged in to this sort of thing.
Also curious to understand more about what this means.