All of Will Bradshaw's Comments + Replies

I also thought the Oakland venue was a very good choice, and was glad the events team chose it again in 2024.

No self-interested person is ever going to point this out because it pisses off the mods and CEA, who ultimately decide whose voices can be heard - collectively, they can quietly ban anyone from the forum / EAG without any evidence, oversight, or due process.

I've heard the claim that the EA Forum is too expensive, repeatedly, on the EA Forum, from diverse users including yourself. If CEA is trying to suppress this claim, they're doing a very bad job of it, and I think it's just silly to claim that making that first claim is liable to get you banned.

By supporting Ozy’s post, Rafael agrees that anyone who reads all the words previously written on the issue belongs to an elite group. The definition of ‘elite’ is ‘a select group that is superior in terms of ability or qualities to the rest of a group or society’.

I think it's fairly clear that the use of "elite" in that paragraph was a joke.

"How many people die in road accidents" doesn't tell you much about the badness of speeding without the denominator - which in the US is approximately everybody approximately all the time.

This is an excellent comment.

That link doesn't say anything about the Hamas attacks.

Whatever Hamas' plan was, what actually happened included gunning down hundreds of helpless civilians at a music festival and massive, brutal sexual violence against large numbers of women.

This isn't hard. Hamas' Oct 7 attacks were a brutal massacre of innocent civilian life. It's possible to acknowledge that at the same time as strongly condemning Israel's conduct, either in the current war specifically or in their history with Palestinians in general.

I downvoted this comment, even though I'm pretty sympathetic to many of the factual claims it contains: in particular, I don't believe that Israeli civilian or military leadership are doing everything they can to avoid civilian casualties. Nevertheless, this comment feels quite out-of-place and vaguely inappropriate to me, given the framing and emotional tone of the OP, which feels much more about explaining one person's feelings and thought processes than an actual attempt to make a strong argument for a specific position.

I also think it's needlessly host... (read more)

The stated reason is the same as Nick's: since the FTX collapse he's been reused from too much board business for staying on the board to make sense:

Since last November, I’ve been recused from the board on all matters associated with FTX and related topics, which has ended up being a large proportion of board business. (This is because the recusal affected not just decisions that were directly related to the collapse of FTX, but also many other decisions for which the way EV UK has been affected by the collapse of FTX was important context.) I know I ini

TIL!

I think this strengthens my confidence in my original comment re: nearly all EA roles being paid under market rate.

Yeah, I agree this is a real and hard case.

Similarly, I think there are roles where the only readily available benchmarks are in academia or the nonprofit sector - in these cases we can assume that those benchmarks are too low, but we don't know by how much, so determining fair compensation is hard. Community building plausibly falls into this bucket.

Interesting. Are there any examples of EA jobs which are more poorly-paid than their private-sector counterparts?

I think this is the great majority of EA jobs that aren't in operations.

In our case (as an EA-adjacent biosecurity org), it's simultaneously the case that (a) most of our staff are well-paid relative to academic and nonprofit benchmarks, and (b) most of our staff could make much more money working in the private sector. Several of our best (and best-compensated) performers took dramatic pay cuts to work for us. I think this is the norm for EA-ad... (read more)

I'm also curious about this. Boston is convenient to me as a Cambridge resident, but I'd guess that holding an event in DC would be more valuable.

I don't think I agree that CEA shouldn't be doing cause specific events, and I think that given how the past couple of Bay Area EAGs went this is a pretty natural decision.

But it does seem pretty regrettable that there'll be no cause-general EAG in the Americas next year.

Another two weeks later, and with no response or acknowledgement from Nonlinear (or even a statement about when they plan to give a response), I'm personally updating moderately towards the view that Nonlinear's communications around the initial release of this post were more about FUD/DARVO than honesty. I've also updated further towards the position that it was right for Ben to post when he did, and that delaying would have been playing into the hands of bad actors. These remain defeasible positions, but I'm not holding my breath.

I think there are practical reasons why it might take longer to prepare a comprehensive public response than the private response they were envisaging for Ben + Lightcone. That said, I also think that there are a lot of non-comprehensive responses that would have taken less time to write while still supporting their version of events, and I think it's reasonable to update against Nonlinear in their absence.

We're coming up on two weeks now since this post was published, with no substantive response from Nonlinear (other than this). I think it would be good to get an explicit timeline from Nonlinear on when we can expect to see their promised response. It's reasonable to ask for folks to reserve judgement for a short time, but not indefinitely. @Kat Woods @Emerson Spartz 

I hope this doesn't seem heartless, but: Given the degree of contested narratives in this affair, can someone not-anonymous with access to Chloe confirm that this account speaks for her?

(i think it probably does, to be clear, but also think it's worth checking)

Thanks for this. I found the uncited claims about EA's "reputational collapse" in the OP quite frustrating and appreciated this more data-driven response.

I don't personally think posting this here is particularly helpful or adds much to the conversation.

Thanks for clarifying, I agree category #3 is the most dicey of the three.

How do you see these trials as differing from standard probation? Is it that the chance of a no-hire at the end is higher? Or the length? Or something else?

In general, I think it is helpful in discussing work trials if people (including the OP) distinguished between three different things that are commonly called work trials:

• Take-home trial tasks / timed online tests, which typically take somewhere in the region of 2-8 hours and are designed to be doable on a weekend or otherwise without work disruption.
• Short (usually 1-3-day) work trials prior to receiving a job offer. This is what I usually think of as being referred to by the term "work trial". While it's technically true that these "interruption of regula

One thing I'm confused about: Emerson is the one making threats, so how do I update on the rest of the Nonlinear team?

I was also uncertain about this, but Kat's comment above seems to indicate (though not outright say) that she supports the threat to sue.

Yeah, this seems right.

Most of the allegations in the OP seem comfortably out-of-distribution to me. (Unless the distribution includes FTX & Leverage, but we know how those went.)

I agree with this, and think it could have been a terrible day for EA if stuff like this surfaced later in a world where Nonlinear had become more influential. But thankfully* we're not in that world.

(* Thankfully assuming the allegations are broadly true etc etc.)

Thanks, I think taking the time to make this stronger phrasing publicly is quite valuable (and seems to match what everyone else is saying so far). It's important that we not engage in guilt-by-association.

Whatever its legitimate uses, defamation law is also an extremely useful cudgel that bad actors can, and very frequently do, use to protect their reputations from true accusations. The cost in money, time and risk of going through a defamation trial is such that threats of such can very easily intimidate would-be truth-tellers into silence, especially when the people making the threat have a history of retaliation. Making such threats even when the case for defamation seems highly dubious (as here), should shift us toward believing that we are in the defam... (read more)

I don't really see the "terrible day for EA" part? Maybe you think Nonlinear is more integral to EA as a whole than I do. To me it seems like an allegation of bad behaviour on the part of a notable but relatively minor actor in the space, that doesn't seem to particularly reflect a broader pattern.

Could be! I might end up with egg on my face here, in which case I will do my best to admit it. That said, my most important claim is my last: if you wanted me and others to truly withhold judgement, you really shouldn't have threatened to sue.

My thoughts, for those who want them:

• I don't have much sympathy for those demanding a good reason why the post wasn't delayed. While I'm generally quite pro sharing posts with orgs, I think it's quite important that this doesn't give the org the right to delay or prevent the posting. This goes double given the belief of both the author and their witnesses that Nonlinear is not acting in good faith.
• There seem to be enough uncontested/incontestable claims made in this post for me to feel comfortable recommending that junior folks in the community stay away f

The world is as it is, now. Tomorrow, it will be a little different. Some of that difference will be because of things you did, or didn't do.

The differences you make could be inside you, in things you've learned or decisions you've made. They could be things you've written or made, known only to you as yet, but ready to propagate through the world on your command. Or they could already be out there, in the world, jumping from person to person, a chain of effects starting with you but much larger than you, feeding into the great chaotic system that is the w... (read more)

Yeah, I also don't report despite continuing to make my pledge donations. It doesn't feel like a core part of the pledge to me.

This comment helped clarify my feelings here. It's not that the new style is bad, really - it's unremarkably fine, and after a while I'll probably stop noticing it. It's that the old Forum was a really unusually beautiful website, and throwing that away feels quite sad to me.

The functional/structural changes in the redesign seem good. I feel sad about the typographical changes.

The old Forum had a really nice, distinctive "bookish" style that I thought was classy, pleasant to read, and also somehow calming? The new design feels more crowded to me, and also more generic.

Thanks for bringing this to broader attention. I think I am opposed to this (admitting the journalist), mostly for the reasons you state.

I feel there's a bit of a "missing mood" in some of the comments here, so I want to say: 

I felt shocked, hurt, and betrayed at reading this. I never expected the Oxford incident to involve someone so central and well-regarded in the community, and certainly not Owen. Other EAs I know who knew Owen and the Oxford scene better are even more deeply hurt and surprised by this. (As other commenters here have already attested, tears have not been uncommon.)

Despite the length and thoughtfulness of the apology, it's difficult for me to see how someone who was... (read more)

It's now fallen off the front page, at least for me.

Pinning seems pretty important.

It does seem pretty unfortunate that the last paragraph of the top-level comment was in the same comment as the rest of it. 

Aside: I also recommend not immediately disabling my account when I comment once, as this creates weird consequent dynamics that are difficult to control.

Obviously, when someone keeps making dummy accounts over and over again to circumvent forum moderation, they should be disabled immediately. (Also, you should stop doing that.)

I appreciate where the sentiment is coming from (and I'd personally be in favour of stronger COI norms than a lot of EA funders seem to have) but the impact cost of this seems too high as stated. 

There's value is being squeaky clean, but there's also value in funding impactful projects, and I think having COI policies apply across the whole large org ("If anyone from our org is dating anyone from your org, we can't fund you") will end up costing way more value than it gains.

I hemmed and hawed about this but ultimately ended up strong-downvoting this post. The main reason is several instances of behaviour I consider strong and culpable norm-violations, including sharing private documents and emails without permission, outing people, and making various personal allegations that haven't been properly researched or verified prior to publication.

There's a broader theme where this post pitches itself as "just asking questions" but is pretty clearly written as an attempted exposé; I think if you do want to do an exposé, you should p... (read more)

Additionally the document notes that it shouldn't be shared publicly. I think you ask some important and good questions in this post, but I think this combined with you unnecessarily outing an employee, not engaging with most comments that provide answers to your questions, and your spreading of unconfirmed rumors are all harmful norms to promote on a public forum. I think posts like this raise similar questions while not being harmful and fostering beneficial discussion, and I wish this post was written similarly.

To be fair, the request not to share the d... (read more)

Historical note: If EA had emerged in the 1970s era of the gay rights movement rather than the 2010s, I can imagine an alternative history in which some EAs were utterly outraged and offended that gay or lesbian EAs had dared to invite them to a gay or lesbian event.

I think the comparison here is somewhat inapt. The actual case listed in the OP is "casually invit[ing] coworkers to go to sex parties with them to experiment with BDSM toys". If someone now invited a coworker to a gay sex party I think it would be quite reasonable to consider that unacceptable behaviour, even in the complete absence of homophobia.

It's very common in other forums I'm a part of for literally everyone except me to be various levels of pseudonymous and I find it pretty rare that people use their real name, especially for giving spicy takes that people disagree with. I'm actually pretty pleasantly surprised by the number of people in EA who give spicy takes with their real name attached.

I think there might be an important difference between pseudonymous and burner accounts here. I basically have no problem with consistent pseudonymous identities, whereas I share the feeling that having a bunch of throwaway accounts posting anonymous complaints is kind of bad. 

Wouldn't option 2 above mostly resolve these concerns? Community stuff would still be fully visible on the frontpage, just boxed into its own section rather than intermixed.

I also prefer option 2.

I'm really happy that the Shrimp Welfare Project exists. Listening to their 80K podcast gave me the most "classic EA" warm fuzzy feelings I've had in a while. I think it speaks really highly of CE that they incubated a project like that, and of other EA funders that they've helped support it.

Also this comment was just pure <3 for me:

I agree - it was a real priority for us to not have a curled shrimp in our logo (which was tricky!) for this reason. And you're right, most shrimps that are farmed are whiteish or brownish (though there are over 2,000 specie

(NB: I actually agree that Bay Area poly culture is probably a contributing factor to a lot of the recent allegations and broader cultural issues, and that people in that culture need to take that possibility really seriously and think carefully about possibilities for change. I don't think that legitimizes general anti-poly discrimination or derogatory language.)