Owen statement/apology discourse thread.

This feels like a missed opportunity.

My sense is that this was an opportunity to give a "big picture view" rather than note a particular underrated aspect. 

If you think there were more important improvements, why not say them, at least as context, in one of the largest forums on this topic?

Thanks for your work :)

My thoughts here are something like:

• Do orgs get cut off? Are there examples of OP being like "you just aren't efficient enough"
• I guess there are benefits to scale when do these take off?
• When should an org split into two?
• I guess I like that GiveWell is it's own org and theoretically it could get less funding from OpenPhil if something else filled that space. I hope that would happen and maybe 50% that it would.

Thanks for writing this.

It feels off to me that this is a forum reply. Seems like it is important enough that it should be a post and then showed to people in accordance with that. 

I think the missing step here is that revealed preference suggest that most Sentinelese people would change their lives to become like us, but we wouldn't change to become like them. So the model doesn't predict what people actually want.

I think I'd bet at like 6% that evidence will come out in the next 10 years that Nick knew funds were likely fraudulently obtained. I think by normal definitions of those words it seems very unlikely to me.

There are lots of workshops one could go to and a quick sense of content will help me decide whether it's for me.

Fwiw I have little private information but think that:

• I sense this misses some huge successes in EA getting where it is. Seems we've done pretty well all things considered. Wasn't will part of that?
• Will is a superlative networker
• He is a very good public intellectual. Perhaps Ord could be if his books were backed to that extent. Perhaps Will could be better if he wrote different books. But he seems really good at it. I would guess that on that public intellectual side he's a benefit not a cost
• If I'd had the ability to direct billions in philanthropy I probably would have, even with nagging doubts. 
• It seems he's maybe less good at representing the community or managing orgs. I don't know if thats the case, but I can believe it. 
• If so, it seems possible there is a role as a public intellectual associated with EA but who isn't the only one
• I feel bad when writing criticism because personally I hope he's well and I'm very grateful to him.

Also thanks Habryka for writing this. I think surfacing info like this is really valuable and I guess it has personal costs to you.

Yes! I love this. 

I disagree. 

I just think being a leader would be really hard. I am much less public that these people and I find dealing with that difficult. Now imagine billions of $ and 1000s of poeple looking to you to be a good role model.

I think we should hold our leaders to high standards, but we should be gracious when they fail. While I have criticisms of Will MacAskill, I think he's one of the best we have. 

I think I'd prefer to see us discuss what the errors were and see if he can work on them, because he's already way ahead of most of us in terms of relevant competences. I am open to people stepping down, but I don't think permanently. We all make errors, it's about whether we can credibly convince relevant people that we won't make them again.

From my DMs:

"Publicly commenting on who knew what when means a significant risk of being subpoenaed or having to appear in court as a witness, which would be a huge hassle and time cost for whoever speaks out (and possibly also for their employer and other people they're connected to). I believe this is one of the main reasons why senior figures aren't commenting on this."

Note Will MacAskill has written a shortform today saying among other things: "I won’t comment publicly on FTX at least until the independent investigation commissioned by EV is over. Unfortunately, I think that’s a minimum of 2 months, and I’m still sufficiently unsure on timing that I don’t want to make any promises on that front. I’m sorry about that: I’m aware that this will be very frustrating for you; it’s frustrating for me, too."

1. I disagree. I upload 60% opinions all the time. I would about gossip if I thought I could control it. 
2. I think we could build systems to handle this. I think there is something whistleblower marketty 
3. I think he would have as FTX got going. Also he might in 2018. 

I think that the wiki could solve this. Having public records that someone hard nosed (like me) could write on others behalf.

I know that my messing with prediction markets around this hasn't always gone well (sorry) but I think there is something good in that space too. I think Sam's "chance of fraud" would have been higher than anyone else's.

Again, I think I'd like more public sharing on professional misdeeds, on the margin. Many EA orgs have mistakes pages for this reason and that's good. 

Sorry what does "cause prioritisation (average) mean here? I feel like I expect one line from 1 to 5 not 2 lines?

Well I'd still like to know. My general stance is that information about misdeeds should more often be public. I wish that I'd known what many knew about SBF.

Feel free to DM me, I've complained before, I'll complain again.

Unless somehow it is me, in which case get someone to make a prediction market and bet it up using a newly created google account.

Well if only there was someone we could ask.

I feel glad.

Personally it doesn't need to be soon, but I appreciate something I can hold you to a lot, that makes me not worry that this trying to minimise.

Thanks for giving honest quotes on a serious crime. On balance I'm in favour of your giving quotes here and that can't have been easy (though I feel the article is inaccurate in tone).

I'm sad to hear that this is tiring, though I still am gonna say things I think. Feel free to DM me if you think I'm wrong but don't want to engage publicly.

My error, By normal I don't mean good, I mean "not usual". 

I sense there were this level of concern externally about facebook, that google did some pretty shifty shit, that Gates and Bezos were similarly cutthroat.

Do you disagree.

I don't know what the emails contained. My general stance:

• Only share private messages if there was serious wrongdoing
• I would support those who warned sharing their emails
• I would not support general email sharing

I sense Lawrence and I disagree on this a bit.

Personal feelings (which I don't imply are true or actionable)

I am annoyed and sad.

I want to feel like I can trust the leaders of this community are playing by a set of agreed rules. Eg I want to hear from them. And half of me trusts them and half feels I should take an outside view that leaders often seek to protect their own power. The disagreement between these parts causes hurt and frustration.

I also variously feel hurt, sad, afraid, compromised, betrayed.

I feel ugly that I talk so much about my feelings too. It feels kind of obscene.

I feel sad that saying negative things, especially about Will. I sense he's worked really hard. I feel ungrateful and snide. Yuck.

Object level

I don't think this article moves me much This article moves me a bit on a number of important things:

• We have some more colour around the specific warnings that were given
• It becomes much more likely that MacAskill backed Bankman-Fried in the aftermath of the the early Alameda disagreements which was ex-ante, dubious and ex-post disasterous. The comment about threatening Mac Auley is very concerning.
• I update a bit that Sam used this support as cover
• I sense that people ought to take the accusations of inappropriate sexual relationships more seriously to be consistent, though I personally I am uncertain cos we don't have much information
• edit mainly after talking to Naia in the comments, I update towards being uncertain about whether we knew SBF was unusually badly behaved (from being confident he wasn't). ie maybe we did  have the information required to be pretty sure he wasn't worth funding or to keep him at arms length. As I say I am uncertain but previously I dismissed this
• The 80k interview feels even worse researched/too soft than I previously thought
• I still sense that core EAs take this seriously
• I still think they don't think they can talk
• I still don't understand why they can't give a clear promise of when they will talk and that the lack of this makes me trust them less
• I think we had lots of info that sam was a bit dodgy before the FTX crash, but that this was not above normal the levels of many CEOs of rapidly growing business (I have read most about Google's early days and it was very shifty)
  • Perhaps EA should have higher standards, but I sense not.
  • I still think that we should have been much more careful linking ourselves reputationally to FTX
• I think the big thing here to note is that even those who saw sam at his worst did not expect the FTX crash, so I guess the question is "should sam have been lauded, given his early behaviour at alameda". I think no, but given what we knew I am uncertain whether he should have been condemned  not condemned either
• I think not talking while there is in investigation is reasonable
• I have made both criticisms and defences of MacAskill and Beckstead and stand by them
  • I still think they are both very talented, perhaps more so as a result of the growth and wisdom this will engender in them (I have often thought it was dumb that people remove leaders who make mistakes) edit Though this article does add additional concerns
  • I would still like an argument that they shouldn't be removed from boards, when almost any other org would. I would like the argument made and seen to be made. 
• I have noticed how hard it is to talk publicly about these things. Recently I've updated more in favour that there just are emotional, social and some career costs (and benefits) to trying to have accurate semi-public discussions about these things. People DM me. I hear people are annoyed, I build both social credit and debt. I think less than some say, but more than none.
  • I cannot deny that I am tempted to mediate my comments so that people will like me and probably do a bit

Missing context

• I have a reasonable amount of time for the notion that EA leaders should have an independent investigation and I don't think the article gives that enough credit
• Many business leaders are disagreeable people who do grey things. Uber's activities were deliberately illegal in many countries and I probably on balance support that. edit I am less in agreement with my tone here. The article mentions this, but in my opinion it should be written in big letters in the top that: 

None of the early Alameda employees who witnessed Bankman-Fried’s behavior years earlier say they anticipated this level of alleged criminal fraud. There was no “smoking gun,” as one put it, that revealed specific examples of lawbreaking. Even if they knew Bankman-Fried was dishonest and unethical, they say, none of them could have foreseen a fraud of this scope.

• If even they didn't think this, I don't think we should be surprised that core EAs didn't either.

Relevant things people may or may not have known:

• In the early days of Alameda, SBF reneged on deals with other EAs and had very poor financial management. Many core EAs knew this

Other:

• My gut says that Naia Bouscal is telling the truth, since before I knew her in relation to this, I thought she was a pretty straight shooting twitter account.

Edited to combine two comments (one personal one more general) into one and add points as I think of them.

How do you feel?
 

What do you think?

Edited to just be the markets.

Prediction markets are pretty well calibrated and help us see a median view on things.

Before this article was published the below market was at 15%. Though it should be noted that I am the second largest holder of "No" and Naia, featured in the article is the third largest holder of "Yes"

We can see how much this shifts the market.
 

Also:

Finally: Will SBF plead guilty. if he doesn't then there is gonna be a public trial and that's gonna be pretty punishing for us.

I respect you a lot for doing something costly and weird because you thought it was the right thing to do, especially since it cuts against the longtermist norms of "more".

No idea if you are right though.

I am confused by this. Is it a quote, if so, what's your comment on that quote?

I mean, in some sense I revel in this. If we can figure out how to do this discourse better than we can manage something that the rest of the internet can't. Perhaps we can have men feel comfortable to admit failures in public without destroying them for it but taking responsibility and growing and staying part of the community. What a world.

Yes, it may not be a good idea.

I really like the below list of advice. I mostly endorse it. But I don't think calling these people "perpetrators" will lead more to read this useful advice. For people whose behaviour causes harm feels like a frame that a reader could look at and say "yeah, that's me".

For perpetrators

Here are things that perpetrators could do besides soliciting direct feedback from those they’ve harmed:

• Describe what happened to your friends (especially female friends) and ask for ideas on what went wrong. (Understand that your side of the story won’t capture all relevant details!)
• Solicit anonymous feedback on your behavior from anyone who is happy to give it (not just people who were harmed by you).
• Spend more energy paying attention to how people are feeling. (Read facial expressions and nonverbal cues. Verbally check in, but know that’s not foolproof.)
• Become comfortable with rejection. Make people feel safe turning you down at any point.
• Read books or online materials on consent, power dynamics, and how to avoid making people uncomfortable.
• Exercise great caution with romantic/sexual advances (or halt them entirely) until you’re certain that these advances can be made without harm.

These ideas could also be helpful for people who are concerned they’ve caused harm but aren’t sure of it. Or for people who are concerned they might cause harm.

I mean I'm not sure I take women's sadness seriously enough. That's part of the whole complexity here. This isn't just an abstract discussion for me and I guess many others, it's a discussion about my actual actions and if I change my mind my behaviour changes, sometimes significantly (I definitely flirted with fewer people at EAG after parties as a result of this).

I know that's not your intention, but I want to flag that that's how it feels. I don't think Emma could say anything  that would get her cancelled here. Me? No I'm pretty sure I could easily earn scorn if I'm not careful. 

As for misphrasing, I agree, though there is a discussion on twitter that suggests screenshots of the forum are fair game. I disagree - while public, this is a different kind of public than twitter. If screenshots are fair game then rephrasing or retracting is out the window.

l agree that I'm sure it's exhausting for Emma and other women to talk about this. That Emma has done so so well is to her extreme credit. I think this is a really good piece.

But I guess Emma's exhaustion comes from a fear of sharing something vulnerable or
perhaps of not being taken seriously. Perhaps of the difficulty of writing on this forum in the
first place.

My fear is different. It is of being disliked and becoming a pariah. I feel it in my spine and across my back. What if I misphrase this idea l'm playing with and everyone thinks I don't take women's sadness seriously?'

Perhaps one might respond "Maybe don't play with ideas then?" 

But then I don't feel like I'm in a discussion, in this dicussion I feel like I'm being told to agree or shut up. I sense others feel it even more than I do.

I am not comparing the size of different emotions. Just talking about how I feel. I imagine those feelings make it harder for us to come to useful agreement here.

Thanks so much for writing this. Yes I agree that there is a lot of emotional and norm-based complexity we aren't seeing so far, but I'm optimistic.

In particular I guess the forum seems judgy because many people are scared and tired. But I think we can build trust and a language to discuss this. It seems to me that the last few posts have been getting better and better.

I think if I knew that I could trade "we all obey some slightly restrictive set of romance norms" for "EA becomes 50% women in the next 5 years" then that's a trade I would advise we take. 

That's a big if. But seems trivially like the right thing to do - women do useful work and we should want more of them involved.

To say the unpopular reverse statement, if I knew that such a set of norms wouldn't improve wellbeing in some average of women in EA and EA as a whole then I wouldn't take the trade. 

Seems worth acknowledging there are right answers here, if only we knew the outcomes of our decisions.

Reading this makes me think something like "what should the right number be" - I think the implication is like "even if we got to representative numbers of POC, we might still want to focus on specific sub groups" but then it seems like that argument can often be made.

I guess "what are we aiming for here?"

What information would say "this is good?"

 I'm a little scared to write this. This topic is always really hard to discuss well. I drafted this comment about 3 times.

• I really like clarity of you writing about your experiences. Thanks for taking the time and effort to do this
• While I agree that I don't expect women to write their experiences, I think is really valuable
• What other ways can we try and get the same benefit
• I think the fear of more rationalist EAs is kind of underrated in this discussion, so thanks for creating space for disagreement

Thank you for writing about your experiences. I think that a really healthy thing for our community here is empathy - that we spend the right amount of time empathising those involved, because how readily people come to mind affects our actions^[1]. Most of what gets written is either news articles or apologies, so unless I ask my friends directly, I don't often pieces written by women in language that's easy for me to empathise with^[2]. I'm sad these things happened to you, but thank you for taking the time and effort to write this. I think it's much easier to not book that flirtatious meeting when I have read the outcome where someone is further exhausted by it happening.

Sometimes those who have faced situations are the experts. "[let's not let] the burdens and costs fall overwhelmingly on those who have experienced it" is something I want to say, but I think those people are really well placed to make these arguments, so I am unsure. In particular, there is no way that I could have covered this with the nuance or grace you have. While we might not want women to spend effort doing this kind of explaining, they are, in my experience just a lot better at it^[3]. I don't know the answer here, but thank you for taking the effort to create value.

So what ways could others get the same benefits without the effort being placed on those who have had experiences?

• Create a way for men to talk about experiences they aren't sure about and for other men/women to provide feedback, perhaps having men's groups in EA? Personally I find a lot of value in getting/receiving "training data" on how to be a kinder person, which I am sometimes not.
• I'm glad to see the community health team trying to understand people's views on the topic
• Being aware of the costs this places on women talking about their experiences. I think if we can visualise that this is stressful and exhausting for someone the discussion that happens can be more gracious and flow better. This is something I'm trying to work on.
• I really like @titotal's article here, that provides some concrete experience working on this area from a community they were part of. I'd love to see more of this

I think that both parties in this current sexual norms discourse find this discussion exhausting. I do think the ability to safely push back is part of the trust required to change ones mind. I think you've modelled that superbly^[4]. But I think it's just so hard to do on a topic like this. I think it's worth noting that some of those who are trying to disgree with, say, the Time and Bloomberg's articles, are also scared of their lifestyles changing or of social opprobrium. This in turn makes all involved in the discussion tired and defensive. 

Thanks for writing this, for being so clear and vulnerable and for saying on twitter that it was okay for people to disagree. I think you've been just hugely competent here in a way that's underrated. 

1. ^{^}

   As an analagous story, I spent time reading first hand accounts of those who had lost money on FTX because I wanted them to loom much larger in my mind than those I was mainly empathising with - SBF and EAs involved. This sounds humble braggy it's not. I just imagine I am more liable to ignore the suffering of those involved than is true to reality.

2. ^{^}

   This feels like an ugly thing to say. But I think it's true. 

3. ^{^}

   Feels like there is a counterargument like "well you should just listen to what women say" though A) I literally don't think women's views are the only ones that matter here, though they matter a lot and B) EA women do not speak with one voice

4. ^{^}

   I am probably couching my views a bit here, so as to write something that I don't think I will regret, but I feel a lot more comfortable discussing here than on some other articles.

I love the concrete advice in this piece. Thanks for taking the time to write it.

Personally, I think this article was kind of sloppily written, but I still think the situation it describes is worth spending a lot of time trying to understand. 

My sense is that a lot of people really care about us handling this well so I want to try and do so

And in the ones where we know the accused, do people think the right thing happened?

In those where we don't, I'd like to know what outcomes people would have liked to have happened. 

I guess personally I struggle since it feels like there is energy to "do something" but I don't understand how it would fix the stories described. And if the question is [an iceberg of hidden cases] which I have time for, I guess there are 10  - 50 other bad stories and 1 - 10 other really bad stories, I want to know what actions we should take, ideally after trying to understand what has actually happened. 

I'd like for you to do a survey and a listening exercise and see if the results differ. I guess that a big quick survey would show most women are pretty happy with EA, but that a listening exercise might find that a small % really aren't and perhaps that people have left EA for this reason.

I'm curious about methods that might reveal things we don't expect or don't want to find out about what women really think.

I sense that it's good to publicly name serial harassers who have been kicked out of the community, even if the accuser doesn't want them to be. Other people's feeling matter too and I sense many people would like to know who they are. 

I think there is a difference between different outcomes, but if you've been banned from EA events then you are almost certainly someone I don't want to invite to parties etc.

Thanks so much to all who were involved!

I think there is starting to be social pressure on who to date. And there has been social pressure for which jobs to take for a while.

Seems worth considering that

A) EA has a number of characteristic of a "High Demand Group" (cult). This is a red flag and you should wrestle with it yourself.

B) Many of the "Sort of"s are peer pressure. You don't have to do these things. And if you don't want to, don't!

Feel free to add some. Also when noone has said their thinking, I think it's reasonable to be like "we should consider whether something should change"

In defence of Will MacAskill and Nick Beckstead staying on the board of EVF

While I've publicly said that on priors they should be removed unless we hear arguments otherwise, I was kind of expecting someone to make those arguments. If noone will, I will.

MacAskill

MacAskill is very clever, personally kind, is a superlative networker and communicator. Imo he oversold SBF, but I guess I'd do much worse in his place. It seems to me that we should want people who have made mistakes and learned from them.  Seems many EA orgs would be glad to have someone like him on the board. If anything, the question is if we don't want too many people duplicated across EA orgs (do we want this?) which board is it most valuable to have MacAskill on? I guess EVF? 

Beckstead 

Beckstead is, I sense, extremely clever (generally I find OpenPhil people to be powerhouses), personally kind. I guess I think that he dropped the ball on running FTXFF well - feels like had they hired more people to manage OPS they might have queried why money was going from strange accounts, but again I don't know the particulars (though I want to give the benefit of the doubt here). But again, it was a complicated project and I guess he sensed that speed of ramp up was the proirity. In many world's he'd have been right.

I guess perhaps the two of them seem to have pretty similar blindspots (kind intelligent academicish EAs who scaled things really fast) so perhaps it is worth only having one on the board. Maybe it's worth having someone who can say "hmm that seems likely too odd or shifty to be worth us doing it". But this isn't as much of a knockdown argument.

To just the movement, not the ideals.

I would like a 5 min google survey done on this topic.

I would like a place to report concerns to anonymously, like the community health team but for misbehaviour/fraud/etc. 

I would like to see a red team focused on investigating funders reputationally assocaited with EA.

The fact that some of the FTXFF funding went via weird orgs such as North Dimension reflects badly on someone at FTXFF, I think. I think on priors we'd expect something like this in relation to an $8bn fraud to lead to the removal of someone from a random board. So personally until I hear reasons for Beckstead to stay, I'll think he should go. I imagine that someone can make those arguments, but I'd like to actually hear them (Should I update before hearing them on expectation of hearing them, probably, but the fact it's been months and I haven't does feel bad to me)

Oh yeah I'm wrong.

Props for saying what is kind of a hard thing to say here. I agree there are people I listen to who I would not want in the community.