EA - Selective truth-telling: concerns about EA leadership communication. by tcelferact

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Selective truth-telling: concerns about EA leadership communication., published by tcelferact on November 15, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum.IntroI have had concerns about EA leadership communication as long as I've known about EA, and the FTX meltdown has persuaded me I should have taken them more seriously.(By leadership I mean well-known public-facing EAs and organizations.)This post attempts to explain why I'm concerned by listing some of the experiences that have made me uncomfortable. tl;dr: EA leadership has a history of being selective in the information they share in a way that increases their appeal, and this raises doubts for me over what was and wasn't known about FTX.I do not think I'm sharing any major transgressions here, and I suspect some readers will find all these points pretty minor.I'm sharing them anyway because I'm increasingly involved in EA (two EAGs and exploring funding for an EA non-profit) and I've lost confidence in leadership of the movement. A reflection on why I've lost confidence and what would help me regain it seems like useful feedback, and it may also resonate with others.i.e. This is intended to be a personal account of why I'm lacking confidence, not an argument for why you, the reader, should also lack confidence.2014: 80K promotional event in Oxford.I really wish I could find/remember more concrete information on this event, and if anyone recognizes what I'm talking about and has access to the original promotional material then please share it.In 2014 I was an undergraduate at Oxford and had a vague awareness of EA and 80,000 hours as orgs that cared about highly data-driven charitable interventions. At the time this was not something that interested me, I was really focussed on art!I saw a flyer for an event with a title something like 'How to be an artist and help improve the world!' I don't remember any mention of 80K or EA, and the impression it left on me was 'this is an event on how to be a less pretentious version of Bono from U2'. (I'm happy to walk all of this back if someone from 80K still has the flyer somewhere and can share it, but this is at least the impression it left on me.)So I went to the event, and it was an 80K event with Ben Todd and Will MacAskill. The keynote speaker was an art dealer (I cannot remember his name) who talked about his own career, donating large chunks of his income, and encouraging others to do the same. He also did a stump speech for 80K and announced ~£180K of donations he was making to the org.This was a great event with a great speaker! It was also not remotely the event I had signed up for. Talking to Ben after the event didn't help: his answers to my questions felt similar to the marketing for the event itself, i.e. say what you need to say to get me in the door. (Two rough questions I remember: Q: Is your approach utilitarian? A: It's utilitarian flavoured. Q: What would you say to someone who e.g. really cares about art and doesn't want to earn to give? A: Will is actually a great example of someone I think shouldn't earn to give (he intended to at the time) as we need him doing philosophical analysis of the best ways to donate instead.)This all left me highly suspicious of EA, and as a result I didn't pay much attention to them after that for years. I started engaging again in 2017, and more deeply in 2021, when I figured everyone involved had been young, they had only been minorly dishonest (if I was even remembering things correctly), and I should just give them a pass.Philosophy, but also not Philosophy?: Underemphasizing risk on the 80K websiteMy undergraduate degree was in philosophy, and when I started thinking about EA involvement more seriously I took a look at global priorities research. It was one of five top-recommended career paths on 80K's web...