Maybe "naive" isn't the right language -- I mean it mostly in the sense of "it's a bad idea to commit crimes in the service of charity" rather than "the expected value was negative".

If Mario cared sufficiently little about being imprisoned, damaging a masterpiece, or generating opposition to famine relief writ large, I could see the theft as a positive-EV move from his perspective. But on the "benefit" side of the tradeoff, I'm skeptical that there was even a remote possibility of the Belgian government putting up ~$17 million to ransom the painting, especially on the deadline he set. (Claude notes that governments have a strong incentive not to set a precedent by making public ransom payments.)

That said, when I did some more reading on the case, I saw this:

"According to the Dutch art historian and Vermeer expert Albert Blankert, Roymans' demands were "alarmingly well received" by the Dutch public. Petitions were circulated urging authorities to rescind the warrant for his arrest and there were spontaneous initiatives in favor of the refugees from East Pakistan. A wave of sympathy spread across the country, and slogans in favor of Royman's cause were seen chalked on bridges and walls."

So it may have been a surprisingly effective publicity stunt, if the public's reactions were really so positive! (That's not something I'd expect in the modern world.) 

But I continue to think it's generally misguided to steal money so you can give it away,* for reasons including "I wouldn't want someone stealing my money to support their own favorite charity" and "if your cause draws attention because thieves support it, you should expect people to turn against it".

*But if you can steal bread to feed your starving child, why not someone else's children? As the guy who played Javert in my high school's production of Les Mis, I can't help thinking about Jean Valjean here. But I'm not inclined to spend the time I'd need to work through the relevant arguments and counterarguments.

TIL: In 1971, Mario Pierre Roymans stole a Vermeer painting and tried to ransom it for a donation to starving Bengali refugees. It's an interesting example of naive altruistic utilitarianism before EA — inspired by the same famine that led Peter Singer to write "Famine, Affluence, and Morality".

(Roymans was apprehended and spent six months in prison; no ransom was paid. )

Excellent post! 

I appreciated the steelmanning, the clear action item, and the discussion of how EA's strengths could overlap with the need in this area. A lot of posts asking "why doesn't EA do X?" conclude that EA must be defective in some way for not making X a primary cause area; this post shows a refreshing understanding of community dynamics and makes a modest ask (making something a "normal problem" — good phrasing).

I was glad to hear about the Democracy Unconference, and I hope that people/groups with fewer legal concerns than CEA will continue to work on strategy in this space. It's tough for a movement built around elite persuasion and donations to work with nigh-unpersuadable elites in an environment where the wrong donation could disqualify you from a civil service job. But EA is capable of being flexible; we've found many different ways to create change over the last 15 years. Just on priors, I think there's room for creative action by the smart, motivated people in our tent.

As the person who led the development of that policy (for whatever that's worth), I think the Forum team should be willing to make an exception in this case and allow looser restrictions around political discussion, at least as a test. As Nick noted, the current era isn't so far from qualifying under the kind of exception already mentioned in that post.

(The "Destroy Human Civilization Party" may not exist, but if the world's leading aid funder and AI powerhouse is led by a group whose goals include drastically curtailing global aid and accelerating AI progress with explicit disregard for safety, that's getting into natural EA territory -- even without taking democratic backsliding into account.)

The core point of the post is, in fact, true! (And all the other points, to the best of my knowledge.)

I'll make the same offer Joseph did; I'd be happy to talk to you in depth about this post, review a resume, and try to be otherwise helpful. I've run some hiring processes, failed some applications, and had a lot of conversations with people in similar positions (thanks to this post).

Do you have any updates on whether the Los Angeles summit is happening?

I didn't see any mention of Loretta Mayer's work here. She is testing what seems to be a viable product in several major cities (here's some NYT coverage). Do you see this work as having a different purpose/target market?

(I only skimmed the post — sorry if I missed an obvious reference!)

I didn't read the full post, but the gist of it aligns with what I did as an organizer (started Yale EA):

• I ran another organization (and joined many others) before founding YEA, which gave me some experience with logistics/keeping a group on task. I also talked to a few other new organizers to share ideas and observations (though we were all newbies at that point).
• The most important aspect of the group was that we had fun and became friends. The times I remember aren't the quixotic "EA" activities (which were pretty shambolic, since there were no intro courses back then), but the lunch conversations and movie nights and hard personal things we dealt with together. College is a very crowded time, but people returned to meetings and went to parties because they liked the nerdy, good-natured group we had formed.
  • I never even met the person who became the leader for several years after I left — turns out (IIRC) that they attended one party we held and liked the atmosphere so much that they decided to join the year after. If we hadn't been hosting parties with very light theming, the group may not have lasted through the 2010s.

Low-effort comment!

There are many stories I enjoy despite plot holes because the setting/characters/prose delight me so much that it's fun to imagine what hidden factors could justify the plot holes — I can trust an author so much that I assume they'll explain things later (or that there's a hidden explanation they created for me to discover myself).

Recent examples include Sousou no Frieren (lots of symbolism and emotion to obscure thin worldbuilding, I feel so many feelings that I barely think about the plot) and Moonfall (written like a fable from the perspective of someone who doesn't fully understand the world, so that I can imagine any plot holes may be due to something they don't see).

This isn't rational, but not all fiction is meant to be rational. And in some sense, isn't all fiction "wireheading"? Even reading rationalfic is an escape of sorts, into a world unlike our own, one that is more interesting and fun to think about (on average).