All of MaxDalton's Comments + Replies

Also, a tougher question: how over-determined was this hiring?

[Just speaking for myself based on being a member of the hiring committee, without running this take past anyone else.]

I do think that Zach was in our top 5-10 most promising people at the start of the process. So I think that directionally the update is that we spent too much time/energy on this process, since the outcome wasn't that surprising.

However, I'm not sure if we should have spent that much less time/energy:

  • In general I think that this is a really crucial hire, and finding someone marg
... (read more)

I’m delighted that Zach has agreed to join CEA, and I’m excited for CEA’s future under his leadership.

I think that Zach is an extremely strong leader and manager, who thrives under pressure and cares deeply about building a better world. We dug deep into his strengths and weaknesses, through strategy discussions, work-history interviews, and reference calls. He has many outstanding references from people who have worked closely with him at Open Philanthropy and Effective Ventures US.

Thank you to everyone on the search committee, advisors to the search comm... (read more)

Thank you for all of your hard work over many years, Will. I've really valued your ability to slice through strategic movement-buliding questions, your care and clear communication, your positivity, and your ability to simply inspire massive projects off the ground. I think you've done a lot of good. I'm excited for you to look after yourself, reflect on what's next, and keep working towards a better world.

Makes sense! I was thinking of Effectiv Spenden, but I see that that's an ambiguous example. Another public attendee who is doing on-the-ground community building is Kuhan Jeyapragasan (and I think that there were 1-2 others who were invited but can't make it, or aren't public).

7
James Herbert
7mo
Maybe I'm being picky but hasn't it been quite a while since Kuhan was involved in the day-to-day running of EA Stanford? Wasn't it around 2021? Because I don't think I'd count SERI or CBAI as EA community building either. (I appreciate this is probably very irritating if you've got 1-2 people from the 12 non-public names who are perfect examples of people who have been doing on-the-ground EA community building in the past two years or so). 

Thanks for sharing James! We did invite a few people doing more on-the-ground community building in various university/national groups, and some of them (e.g. Anne Schulze) are attending (note that not all attendees are public). But I'm not sure whether we got the balance right here, maybe we should have invited more such people.

Cheers! I haven't met Anne, does she do community building work alongside her role as a Co-director at Effektiv Spenden? Because I don't think I'd count Effektiv Spenden as a community building organisation, and certainly not in the way I'd count EA Germany as a community building organisation.  

[Brief comment, sorry!]

Thanks for those thoughts - we're planning to do some of those (e.g. have people write memos on important topics before the event), and I think we've considered doing all of those things. (Not sure if we made the right decision on how to handle each of these, and not explaining our stance on all of them because of time.)

Re trust: Sorry, that second sentence is rather confusing. What I mean is that: we're not guaranteeing that everyone attending the event is 100% trustworthy. And I hope that the event will allow attendees to understan... (read more)

7
JamesN
6mo
I do very much agree with Nathan's sentiment here. I appreciate the original post announcing this forum is aims to expectation manage and temper potential concerns people will have about this group producing a 'grand strategy' for EA or similarly agree solutions to all the big problems. However, there is also acknowledgment that the event is aiming to help plan the next two years and set the trajectory going forward.  These are important topics and issues (as reflected by the significant senior time involved in the event), and pretty much all of them require a lot of individual and group reasoning under uncertainty. As such I do think there is a very beneficial role for robust methods to help facilitate discussion and decision-making.  I don't know what things you may already be planning to implement, so I'm mostly just putting a flag down to say if you haven't already, it'd be worth investing in such methods. So I'm not entirely 'talk and no suggestion', some very basic things to introduce (if not already) at low/cost and effort could be: * Clear framework for all attendees on how uncertainty and predictions should be communicated during the event to ensure consistency and transparency of reasoning between attendees, to help reduce misinterpretation errors which is always a risk in such forums/events. * External/third party (to the attendees but could still be EA) to provide a mediation and challenge function (similar to what Nathan suggested).  * Collection of prior positions on key topics, with confidence %'s provided before the event. With updating rounds during and at the event of the event, with short notes on what contributed to any % change (one to show impact of the event, but also helps identify where and with whom the more intractable differences lie - which can help more focused action/discussion later).  
6
Nathan Young
7mo
I vastly prefer a brief comment to none, thanks for your time.

I think that the last one was in July 2022.

Thank you for all of your hard work in this role, Nick. 

When I was still new to leading CEA (and fairly new to management), your advice as active trustee was incredibly useful. I learned a lot from you about how to manage people, and your feedback on our plans was always perceptive. I think that I would have done a much worse job without your advice and support.

I've always found you tirelessly kind, thoughtful, and collaborative, and I've really enjoyed working with you.

I have to say, this really worries me.

I can't speak for other people who filled out the survey but: I agree that orgs should be transparent about their motivations. 

The questions asks (basically) "should 80k be more transparent [than it currently is]", and I think I gave a "probably not" type answer, because I think that 80k is already fairly transparent about this (e.g. it's pretty clear when you look at their problem profiles or whatever).

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you want EVF to do, but when I go to the page that you linked to I see a list of trustees with bios at the bottom of it. (This doesn't solve the "contact" problem, but it does solve "who they are and what they do".)

My sincere apologies, I had missed that it had been updated! V. Embarrassing. Thankyou for doing that

-9
David M
9mo

We received over 400 nominations for the CEA CEO role, and are planning to reach out to over 100 people, roughly one third of whom have not worked in EA orgs before.[1] 

I think that EA context is helpful in the role, and it is at least important that people can get up to speed quickly. But outside perspective and experience is also helpful, so we're considering people with different degrees of EA engagement.

  1. ^

    At a quick skim, I didn't look into this rigorously.

6
Jason
9mo
Could you re-post this on your quick takes (fka shortform) or somewhere? Right now it's hidden behind a collapsed post with -22 karma. This is a good update that deserves to be seen!
6
Kirsten
9mo
That's a great update, thanks Max!

Thanks! I agree with this post. 

I notice that I want to reframe this more positively, as "If you meet someone who is not a good fit for your approach to doing good, you should try to signpost them to communities/organizations that are a better fit". (But maybe that's saying something importantly different from your point?)

This is close to what I am saying, but I might phrase it stronger. For example, a large donor may consistently be a potential fit for your field, but I still believe it's important to be considerate about how far you push them. Similarly, a highly talented individual might require more than just signposting; they also should not be perceived as second-class or unintelligent for having a different viewpoint.

5
Vaidehi Agarwalla
10mo
Related: this excellent article on generous exclusion by Priya Parker with specific examples of how to do this: https://www.priyaparker.com/art-of-gathering-newsletter/why-the-more-is-not-always-the-merrier

Thanks for the feedback! We're still discussing how we should get community input on visions later on in the process, so I don't yet have a clear answer, sorry. One thing that we've (briefly) discussed is asking candidates (probably anonymously) to share their visions on the Forum, for people to comment on. But there's some disagreement among committee members about whether that would make sense, and it might depend a bit on the visions/candidates, so we don't have firm plans yet.

5
Jason
1y
Thanks, Max! If you go down that path, I would encourage candidates to be especially clear about the extent to which they are implying a vision of where the meta as a whole should go, versus focusing on a vision of where CEA fits into that meta. I think people may sometimes conclude that a speaker is talking about the former when the speaker intends to convey the latter.  Of course, both are potentially relevant (e.g., to pick a less likely example, someone could propose CEA get out of the conference business because they don't think conferences add much value, or because being in the conference business doesn't jive well with the rest of their specific vision for CEA). 

I'm not sure if this is answering your first question, but they wouldn't just be CEO for two weeks! Instead we'd design particular work trials to test attributes they would need in the role, set up meetings for them to get to know staff and stakeholders, and give them time and information to begin to develop a vision for CEA.

Re your second question: as we say, this is our ideal but we'd shape things around candidates. We know that this might not work for some candidates, but we think that it would work for others. If it did work out for candidates, it woul... (read more)

If they don't trust GW, why would they trust your calculation, which also rests on GW's analysis? Here's a spreadsheet with GW's analysis: I think that the 159,000 figure is just them doing a pretty similar BOTEC to yours, but across all of their top charities (and they seem to have a higher figure for total donations to AMF, not sure what's driving the difference there).

4
Nathan Young
1y
Because in my case the GW analysis is one step further back in the calculation and attached to things that one can more easily grasp.   In your comment, the reader can go "oh GW is an EA thing of course they'd say that"  In mine they have to dispute that nets save 1 in 1000 lives or that nets cost $5 each. While GiveWell is backing up those numbers the concepts are much easier to grasp so the trust to GiveWell is much less. Now, this is really optimising for the small chance that someone will dispute, but in the case that they do,  Yours "Why should we trust givewell" seems hard to answer Mine "Why should we beleive that 1000 nets save a life" seems trivial "well do you think that number seems way off .. seems about right to me" Note to the reader. I think the concept I'm trying to pin down here is worth noting. How well does your argument deal with the reflexive responses of someone who was always going to disagree. Here, without dubious epistemics I railroad them into disagreeing with pretty concrete facts. This is not a trick, AMF just does really clear work - you either have to disagree with the costs or the effectiveness of bednets

Thanks! I edited - does it seem clearer now?

Moreover, GiveWell estimate that "GiveWell-directed donations to our recommended charities between 2009 and 2021 will avert over 159,000 deaths" (accounting for all top charities, not just AMF).

2
Nathan Young
1y
This feels a bit insider baseball to me. If someone doesn't trust GiveWell why will they trust this number. 
  1. I'm not sure, but I'll ask someone who knows to respond. (Though looks like you managed to delete a comment below, so maybe you figured it out?)
  2. I think another thing you could do is message the author (go to their profile page and then click "message"), but I think that commenting is also fine. Pointing out typos is an act of community service, so I think that people will be OK with you leaving the comment up!

I interpreted that as "against exceptionalism" or "place lower credence in EA exceptionalism", but I'm not sure.

4
Larks
1y
That was my guess, but other phrases like Uncompromising utilitarianism do not get the same treatment. Maybe exceptionalism is a theory about the world while the others are policies that can be adopted or rejected?  
1
Diego Oliveira
1y
Hmm, to my surprise, I just found out that I can't delete the comment, but only "retract" it (which amounts to striking the text through). Two questions: 1. Did I miss a way of really deleting the comment? 2. If there is no way to delete it, is there a better way to report the typos than pointing them out in the comments section?

You can read a bit more about why we did this here. We handed the funding side off to OP, and we hoped someone else would take on the support side, but no-one did. OP are currently handling funding only, and we would work on support only, which reduces much of the risk of duplication.

I'll ask someone on the groups team to explain more about why we're more optimistic about our approach now.

Hey Ryan, thanks for writing this up - keen to explain this and reflect more.

First, I do think that I could have written this post better: e.g. given the disclaimer about not focusing on FTX up front.

I think that a lot of this is a substantive disagreement about how CEA’s year went, which I think might be driven by a substantive disagreement about what CEA is.[1]

I’m aware that some people (possibly including you) have a model that’s a bit like “CEA is responsible for what happens in the EA community. A big bad thing happened to the EA community, so CE... (read more)

6
Fermi–Dirac Distribution
1y
Hm, if you don’t mind the question — what are other significant risks you are thinking about? IMO, the FTX fraud scheme is a big deal if anything deserves to be called a big deal, from what I’ve read in the devastating legal documents about the situation, and given how SBF was framed as a poster child of EA and was a significant funder. The only more significant risk I can think of is EA funding dangerous AI capabilities research via Anthropic, but that isn’t even unrelated to FTX (since FTX slash Alameda slash their leadership was Anthropic’s main funder). Also, my guess is that mitigating AI risk is not within the Community Health team’s scope. 

Thanks for the response. Out of the four responses to nitpicks, I agree with the first two. I broadly agree about the third, forum quality. I just think that peak post quality is at best a lagging indicator - if you have higher volume and even your best posts are not as good anymore, that would bode very poorly. Ideally, the forum team would consciously trade off between growth and average post quality, and in some cases favouring the latter, e.g. performing interventions that would improve the latter even if they slowed growth. And the fourth, understatem... (read more)

Thanks - that’s a good point. We do discuss this in the latter sections of the post, but I think you’re right that we should have mentioned it up front to set expectations.

Re criticism contest, agree that it's a disappointment that that contest didn't surface more criticism of FTX. I also think that overall it drove some meaningful and useful criticism of core EA ideas and institutions, and that's worth highlighting. Not sure if we got the right balance between those two sides in the post.

1[anonymous]1y
Which criticisms did you find meaningful or useful? 

Hi Larks, as we mentioned in the post (especially the last two sections) we're actively reflecting on what, if anything, we should have done differently around FTX. I'm not yet confident what the conclusion of that will be, so it seemed premature to include it in the mistakes section, but maybe we should have mentioned it still. 

Once we're done with our reflection, we'll share more about our takeaways and (if necessary) update our mistakes page etc.

FYI we just posted our annual review here.

I think there's currently a bug with sequences - we're aware and someone's looking into a fix.

Hi, this is something we’re already exploring, but we are not in a position to say anything just yet.

We've now released a page on our website setting out our approach to moderation and content curation, which relates somewhat to this comment. Please feel free to share any feedback in comments or anonymously.

We've now released a page on our website setting out our approach to moderation and content curation, which partly addresses one of the points raised in this post. Please feel free to share any feedback in comments or anonymously.

3
AnonymousEAForumAccount
1y
Thanks for publishing that Max, and for linking to it from CEA's strategy page. I think that's an important improvement in CEA's transparency around these issues.
  1. Sure, it's currently Claire Zabel, but it was Nick Beckstead until July.
  2. We don't plan to do this in the next 3 months. If a volunteer did a good initial draft, I think there's an 80% chance that we use that in some way.

Ah cool, yeah agree that democracy is pretty strongly designed around responsibilities to the community, so it's probably better than an unelected board on that dimension.

The final paragraph in the comment I just linked to is about one-meta-level-up. The penultimate and antipenultimate paragraphs are just about the ideal governance structure. Sorry, that's maybe a bit unclear.

Thanks, and to clarify, by decision-makers, do you mean mostly the board or mostly staff? And do you want them to be representative on particular dimensions? Or maybe chosen by a representative process like elections? I expect that we disagree on what the right structure is, but still interested to understand your view.

Would you trust a governing body on the basis of someone you don't even personally know saying that their sense is that it's alright?
 

 Probably not - I understand if this doesn't update you much. I would suggest that you look at public records on what our board members do/have done, and see if you think that suggests that they would hold us accountable for this sort of thing. I admit that's a costly thing to do. I would also suggest that you look at what CEA has done, especially during the most recent (most relevant) periods - this post highlight... (read more)

4
Guy Raveh
2y
Ok, I now get what you mean about the electorate. But I think (it's been some time) my point was about responsibilities to the community rather than on following through. Regarding the last point, I'm a bit confused because in parallel to this thread we're discussing another one where I quoted this specific bit exactly, and you replied that it's not about who should govern CEA, but one meta-level up from that (who decides on the governance structure).

Coming back to this, I'm not sure that I have tonnes to add here: I think you're right that saying that would probably deter people.  I think generally in such cases we'd drop the second clause (just say "we're not currently working on that", without the "but we might in the future"), to decrease this effect.

I am also aware of some post-2019 instances where we put off people from working in an area. I think that this was mostly inadvertent, but still a significant mistake.  If you're open to DMing me about the instance you're thinking of, I'd be ... (read more)

My sense is that the board is likely to remain fairly stable, and fairly consistently interested in this. 

I also don't really see why democracy is better on the front of "checking that an org consistently follows through on what it says it's going to do": all of your arguments about board members would also seem like they could apply to any electorate. There might be other benefts of a democracy, of course (though I personally think that community democracy would be the wrong governance structure for CEA, for reasons stated elsewhere).

5
Guy Raveh
2y
I'm not sure I follow. Would you trust a governing body on the basis of someone you don't even personally know saying that their sense is that it's alright? Only for a limited time period - elected officials have to stand for re-election, and separation and balance of powers help keep them in check in the meantime. Changes in the community are also reflected by new elections. Could you please point to that 'elsewhere'? I don't think I've encountered your views on the matter.

On 1), there is a specific board member assigned to assessing CEA's performance (which would include this). I agree that 2) is somewhat missing.

I'm not aware of a policy on term limits for the Effective Ventures board, and can't speak for them. 

4
AnonymousEAForumAccount
1y
Re: 1, can you share which board member is responsible for this? Re: 2, is this something CEA plans to work on in say the next 3 months? If not, would it help if a volunteer did an initial draft?

Coming back to pay off this IOU.

Some points:

  • The quote above is about who should decide how CEA is governed (note - it's not even about who should govern CEA, it's about who should decide the right governance structure). I still think that the board is best placed to do this, and it is their legal prerogative. I think that they should probably decide that there is more community governance/a slightly broader set of perspectives on CEA's governance (but I also think that the perspective of the current board is very helpful, and I don't think I would change i
... (read more)
3
Guy Raveh
2y
Hi, I upvoted because I appreciate that you took the time to give a detailed answer. I'm going to reply more thoroughly, but for now I'll highlight this: By this I'm referring to the decision-makers in CEA being representative of the community. Not participants of EA events. I still don't know how exactly you choose participants, and I think the problem there is not necessarily the way you choose, but the fact that nobody seems to know what it is. But this is way less important to me than the general decision-making and transparency in CEA.

Thanks for sharing your reasons here! I definitely don't think that this problem fully fixes this problem, and it's helpful to hear how it's falling short. Some reactions to your points:

  1. Yeah, this makes sense. 
  2. Totally makes sense. I haven't reflected deeply about whether I should offer to keep information shared in the form with other staff (currently I'm not offering this). On the one hand, this might help me to get more data. On the other hand, it seems good to be able to communicate transparently within the team, and I might be left wanting to act
... (read more)

I'm busy with EAG prep, so I can't respond properly right now, but I wanted to note that I think the comment thread above (Guy's original comment + Joshua's) doesn't quite capture how I'm thinking about CEA's relationship to the community or to representativeness, though I can see why you're taking these things from what I wrote.

9
MaxDalton
2y
Coming back to pay off this IOU. Some points: * The quote above is about who should decide how CEA is governed (note - it's not even about who should govern CEA, it's about who should decide the right governance structure). I still think that the board is best placed to do this, and it is their legal prerogative. I think that they should probably decide that there is more community governance/a slightly broader set of perspectives on CEA's governance (but I also think that the perspective of the current board is very helpful, and I don't think I would change it massively, and I'd regret losing the input of everyone on the current board). * Conor draws out of this the implication that a small elite group can judge impact better than the community. I agree with some versions of this and not others.  * I don't think that CEA staff have all of the answers here. We frequently ask other community members for their advice and input on many questions here.  * I do think that there are some community members (at CEA, but also at other organizations) whose judgement I trust significantly more than the average forum user on questions about assessing our impact. This is usually at least in part because they have thought seriously about such questions for a long while. They're not infallible. * I am coming around to the view that we should now be investing more in evaluations, including sharing more publicly. I don't think that was the right call for the last ~2 years, but I think we might be at a stage where we should focus on it more. I expect that if we share more public evaluations, the community will share useful perspectives. * We are really keen to hear feedback from the community about our programs, and feed that into our understanding. E.g. we do surveys at the end of each EAG, review all of the answers, and have that directly feed into our plans for subsequent events. * Then we move onto (paraphrasing very slightly) "CEA clearly aren't trying to be rep
3
Guy Raveh
2y
Thanks for saying this! I'll be happy to hear what you think when you have the time.

I'm aware of the form, and trying to think honestly about why I haven't used it/don't feel very motivated to. I think there's a few reasons:

  1. Simple akrasia. There's quite a long list of stuff I could say, some quite subjective, some quite dated, some quite personal and therefore uncomfortable to raise since it feels uncomfortable criticising individuals. The logistics of figuring out which things are worth mentioning and which aren't are quite a headache.
  2. Direct self-interest. In practice the EA world is small enough that many things I could say couldn't
... (read more)

Oh I should have said, I'm on holiday for the next week, so I won't be responding to replies in these threads for that period, hope that's ok!

3
AnonymousEAForumAccount
2y
No problem, have a great holiday :)

Thanks - I think you're right that the EA hive mind would also find some interesting things!

Re the % that should produce public evaluations: I feel pretty unsure. I think it's important that organizations that are 1) trying to demonstrate with a lot of rigor that they're extremely cost-effective, and 2) asking for lots of public donations should probably do public evaluations. Maybe my best guess is that most other orgs shouldn't do this, but should have other governance and feedback mechanisms? And then maybe the first type of organizations are like 20% of total EA orgs, and ~50% of current donations (numbers totally made up).

8
AnonymousEAForumAccount
2y
Thanks for sharing your thinking on this.  FWIW, I think about this quite differently. My mental model is more along the lines of “EAs should hold EA charities to the same or higher standards of public evaluation (in terms of frequency and quality) as comparable (in terms of size and type of work) charities outside of EA.” I think the effective altruism homepage does a pretty good job of encapsulating those standards (“We should evaluate the work that charities do, and value transparency and good evidence”). The fact that this statement links to GiveWell (along with lots of other EA discourse) implies that we generally think that evaluation should be public. 

Thanks! I think that a lot of this is an area for the board more than for me (I'll flag this thread to them for input, but obviously they might not reply). I and the board are tracking how we can best scale governance (and aware that it might be hard to do this just with the current board), and we've also considered the ombudsman model (and not yet rejected it, though I think that many versions of it might not really change things too much - I think the board do care about CEA following through on its responsibilites to the community).

Re the EA twitter acc... (read more)

I think the board do care about CEA following through on its responsibilites to the community

I hope that's true, but there are at least two problems with that:

  1. It's impossible for the community to verify
  2. It can very easily change as:
  • Board members leave and new ones join
  • Board members' opinions on this change
  • Most importantly, the community itself changes in ways not reflected by the board

As far as I can see, only democratic mechanisms guarantee accountability that stays stable over time.

I think the board do care about CEA following through on its responsibilites to the community

I’m glad this is something the board cares about. That said, I think the board will have difficulty keeping CEA accountable for those responsibilities without 1) a specific board member being explicitly assigned this and 2) an explicit list of what those responsibilities so that CEA, its board, and the community all have the same understanding (and so non-obvious things, like the Twitter account, don’t get missed).

Related to CEA’s board: does CEA have any policies ... (read more)

Maybe I was a bit casual saying that "we try not to announce plans publicly". 

We've definitely updated in this direction since 2019, but I think that our current communications probably allow people to coordinate relatively well with us.

Let's look program-by-program:

  • We plan and announce events well ahead of time, at the point where we confirm venues (arguably we could give even more notice, this is something that we're working on).
  • The online team plans major goals on a monthly cycle and then does weekly sprints towards those goals, so there would be a
... (read more)
7
AnonymousEAForumAccount
2y
Yeah, I think you’re generally doing an improved job in this area and that people can currently coordinate fairly well, particularly around the “routine” work you describe. I guess I see part of the benefit of a public dashboard as making sure that routine commitments continue to be met (e.g. timely announcement of event dates and timely delivery of grant money). I’d also expect it to be helpful for monitoring how things are going with new projects that come up (the EA Librarian is a relatively recent example of a new project where commitments weren’t met, albeit one with pretty minor knock-on implications for the community). I think it’s great you’re open to people reaching out (though I’m somewhat concerned people will be reluctant to for fear of wasting your time). I also think it was a very positive step for CEA to publish a list of areas where you’re not focusing.  However, I get the sense (especially from your first bullet point) that you’re significantly underestimating how much people will want to avoid competing with CEA. It’s a huge hurdle to compete against a better funded, better connected, and better known organization. I’d guess that if someone inquired about CEA’s plans in an area and were told “we’re not currently working on that but might want to do something in a couple of years” that would still constitute a major deterrent.  I also think there’s an important historical context here, which Peter Wildeford described in late 2019: While CEA has improved in a lot of areas since 2019, I’m not sure how much progress has been made in this area (which, quite understandably, people are generally reluctant to discuss publicly). I can think of at least one post-2019 instance where, while not exactly matching the pattern Peter describes, I think CEA did much more gate-keeping of an area than was warranted. 

Honestly, I kind of agree! I think your piece is good, but I think there hasn't been enough really high-quality and well-presented criticism of longtermism from an EA perspective. (If I've missed anything, please let me know, but I've asked around a bit already.)

4
Denise_Melchin
2y
I'm afraid I don't know anything. While I still like my piece it wasn't intended to provide a strong case against longtermism, only to briefly explore my personal disagreements. In such a piece I would want to see the case against longtermism from different value systems as well as actually engaging with the empirics around cause prioritisation, apart from the obvious: being a lot more thorough than I was.

No need to apologize, I'd much rather have the more accurate information posted on your page!

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