I think it’s worth being clear about what exactly “this” is.
My mainline story right now (admitting that I’m not fully caught up) is that prior to 2022:
There was a lack of capital controls, that would have made fraud and large mistakes easier;
There was plenty of reason to doubt SBF’s ethics;
But there was no actual fraud.
Professional investors and EA would both have cared about the first point. But it’s not clear how investors would have felt about it; I could believe anything from “this is a dealbreaker” to “this is positive on net”. (Is Sam doing fraud bad in expectation for his investors? He might not get caught; and if he does, they’ll lose money but probably won’t take most of the flak.) Professional investors probably wouldn’t have cared about the second point much, though I could see it being a mild negative or mild positive.
So, “should EA have caught the fraud”? I think that might be asking too much.
“Should EA have noticed the lack of controls and reacted to that?” Or, “should EA have noticed Sam’s lack of ethics and reacted to that?” I currently think those would have been possible, and “but professional investors didn’t” isn’t much of a defense.
Noting that that’s a separate question, possible answers that come to mind (which I’m not necessarily endorsing) include:
Not holding up Sam as an exemplar of EA, as I gather kind of happened
Declining to take more than $X from Sam, on the grounds that “a large amount of EA funding being dependent on someone with bad ethics seems bad”
Noticing that the combination “bad ethics and bad capital controls” makes fraud both easy and likely, and explicitly warning people about that. (And taking the lack-of-ethics as a reason to look into capital controls, if they didn’t know about that.)
I do think “EA knows about SBF’s ethics and acts exactly as they did anyway” is not a story that’s flattering about EA.
EA is not an entity that knows or doesn’t know. Individual players in the field know or don’t know and make decisions based on what they know. If you want to critique it makes sense to think about which players should have made different decisions.
This feels like an isolated demand for a thing that I’m not trying to do.
Yes, obviously if I have concrete suggestions that would be great, and likely those would involve looking inside EA at the people and organizations within it and identifying specific points of intervention that could have avoided this problem, or something.
But I’m not trying to identify a solution, I’m trying to identify a problem. A thing where I think EA could have done better. I think it’s ridiculous to suggest either that I can’t do that without also suggesting improvements, or that I can’t do it without looking inside EA.
Maybe you’re not intending to suggest anything like that? But it feels to me like you are, and I find it annoying.
So like, these do seem related, but… I think I feel like you think they’re more closely related than I think they are? Like the kind of thing they’re using as a branching-off point is different from the kind of thing my comment was.
So I’d summarize those posts as saying: “if you’re going to say “let’s _”, it would be nice if you went into more detail about how to _ and what exactly _ looks like”.
But I’m not saying “let’s _”. I’m saying “we might think we can’t _ because [...], but that doesn’t hold because [...]. I currently think _ is possible.” And now I’m similarly being asked to go into detail about how to _ and what exactly _ looks like, and...
Yeah, there’s an implied “let’s _” in my comment, and it’s a perfectly fine question in general, but...
It feels like it’s missing the point of what I said; and in this context, and the way it’s been asked, it feels kind of aggressive and offputting to me.
(I would much less have this reaction, if my second comment in this thread had been my first one. The kind of thing my second comment is, feels much more the kind of thing those posts are reacting to. But I only made my second comment after being asked, and I explicitly said that it was a different question and I didn’t necessarily endorse my answers.)
I think it’s worth being clear about what exactly “this” is.
My mainline story right now (admitting that I’m not fully caught up) is that prior to 2022:
There was a lack of capital controls, that would have made fraud and large mistakes easier;
There was plenty of reason to doubt SBF’s ethics;
But there was no actual fraud.
Professional investors and EA would both have cared about the first point. But it’s not clear how investors would have felt about it; I could believe anything from “this is a dealbreaker” to “this is positive on net”. (Is Sam doing fraud bad in expectation for his investors? He might not get caught; and if he does, they’ll lose money but probably won’t take most of the flak.) Professional investors probably wouldn’t have cared about the second point much, though I could see it being a mild negative or mild positive.
So, “should EA have caught the fraud”? I think that might be asking too much.
“Should EA have noticed the lack of controls and reacted to that?” Or, “should EA have noticed Sam’s lack of ethics and reacted to that?” I currently think those would have been possible, and “but professional investors didn’t” isn’t much of a defense.
How would such a reaction have looked like?
Noting that that’s a separate question, possible answers that come to mind (which I’m not necessarily endorsing) include:
Not holding up Sam as an exemplar of EA, as I gather kind of happened
Declining to take more than $X from Sam, on the grounds that “a large amount of EA funding being dependent on someone with bad ethics seems bad”
Noticing that the combination “bad ethics and bad capital controls” makes fraud both easy and likely, and explicitly warning people about that. (And taking the lack-of-ethics as a reason to look into capital controls, if they didn’t know about that.)
I do think “EA knows about SBF’s ethics and acts exactly as they did anyway” is not a story that’s flattering about EA.
EA is not an entity that knows or doesn’t know. Individual players in the field know or don’t know and make decisions based on what they know. If you want to critique it makes sense to think about which players should have made different decisions.
This feels like an isolated demand for a thing that I’m not trying to do.
Yes, obviously if I have concrete suggestions that would be great, and likely those would involve looking inside EA at the people and organizations within it and identifying specific points of intervention that could have avoided this problem, or something.
But I’m not trying to identify a solution, I’m trying to identify a problem. A thing where I think EA could have done better. I think it’s ridiculous to suggest either that I can’t do that without also suggesting improvements, or that I can’t do it without looking inside EA.
Maybe you’re not intending to suggest anything like that? But it feels to me like you are, and I find it annoying.
Related: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/aHPhh6GjHtTBhe7cX/proposals-for-reform-should-come-with-detailed-stories and https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Pz7RdMRouZ5N5w5eE/ea-should-taboo-ea-should
So like, these do seem related, but… I think I feel like you think they’re more closely related than I think they are? Like the kind of thing they’re using as a branching-off point is different from the kind of thing my comment was.
So I’d summarize those posts as saying: “if you’re going to say “let’s _”, it would be nice if you went into more detail about how to _ and what exactly _ looks like”.
But I’m not saying “let’s _”. I’m saying “we might think we can’t _ because [...], but that doesn’t hold because [...]. I currently think _ is possible.” And now I’m similarly being asked to go into detail about how to _ and what exactly _ looks like, and...
Yeah, there’s an implied “let’s _” in my comment, and it’s a perfectly fine question in general, but...
It feels like it’s missing the point of what I said; and in this context, and the way it’s been asked, it feels kind of aggressive and offputting to me.
(I would much less have this reaction, if my second comment in this thread had been my first one. The kind of thing my second comment is, feels much more the kind of thing those posts are reacting to. But I only made my second comment after being asked, and I explicitly said that it was a different question and I didn’t necessarily endorse my answers.)