Grumpy Squid's Quick takes

This is an open call for CEA to be more transparent with its finances and allocation of resources to different projects (historically and currently)

1. A quick google shows pretty inconsistent reporting metrics and update cadence over the past several years, as well as reporting gaps.
2. There is no easily available breakdown of funding / budgeting for most years
3. It seems like CEA staff do share numbers when asked ad-hoc - e.g. see this comment from JP Addison on spending of the Online team. But if someone wants to get a quick overview it would be incredibly time consuming to compute all the numbers
4. So it’s not that they are entirely transparent, but that they aren’t making this information easy to access, which feels bad / like obfuscation. And I think they are succeeding - I don’t think many people do have the time or inclination to sift through data. 
    

As a key entity in the EA ecosystem (even if the scope changes), it seems good to demonstrate high transparency and data accessibility even if the decisions are not endorsed by the average community member.

Spicier take: I think they aren’t sharing it, in large part, because of optics. This feels like a bad reason not to be transparent. For example, I think right now, given FTX and less funding, the Events team in particular is hesitant to share how much they put into EAG(x)’s in 2022. Their update on spending post didn’t mention specific numbers. My understanding is that most people who requested it were given full travel & lodging subsidies (maybe up to $1500 per person, for thousands of individuals). This could be several million in funding in 2022 alone. 

Some people seem hopeful that the new CEA CEO will lead to important changes and improvements in CEA. I’m pessimistic. The CEO is a powerful role, but faces a lot of constraints from trustees, funders, past decisions, and organizational setup. 

While CEA’s finances are difficult to track down, it’s safe to assume a large chunk of their funding comes from OP, and specifically the OP LT team (estimated $30 million in general support from March 2022 - January 2023). The senior OP LT grantmaker who leads OP’s work on the EA community is one of three people on the search team. The search team has signaled openness to radical changes to CEA’s vision by CEO candidates, but also thinks CEA’s work has historically been “highly effective” and are open to candidates who just build on CEA’s existing work. 

It’s likely the Center for Effective Altruism will continue to act as a talent recruitment arm for OP’s EA LT team’s priorities and be unenthusiastic about transparency and accountability to the broader EA community in its programs. 

On the bright side, they may change their name to something more fitting, which would help publicize a vacuum that others can fill in - see prior discussion. This would help alleviate some of the historical problems of CEA wanting to have general community authority without responsibility towards to the EA community. 

Note that this won’t wholly fix the problem. In the past when CEA or 80K have tried to be clearer on the scope of their work and left some clearer gaps for others, those gaps sometimes haven’t been filled. Even when they are attempted to be filled, new parties may lack the trust, skills and networks to excel at filling the gap because they are starting from scratch from an institutional knowledge POV. 

The most likely possibility for fundamental improvements to CEA might be if someone very skilled who is also not deeply embedded within the EA community becomes CEO. But I’m pessimistic that this will happen. 

While I don’t doubt the search team’s desire to have a fair process that includes outsiders from EA, why would skilled outsiders want to be head of CEA when they could have many better, less thankless (and probably more impactful) jobs? 

An outside CEO will likely need to be a very impressive operator and communicator in addition to relevant alignment with the search committee and key funders and decision makers. Making fundamental improvements to CEA will involve a lot of cleaning up other people’s messes and making the best of bad situations for relatively little reward in the near-mid term. The dependence of funding on one megafunder with a niche vision and the complex web of relationships involved is not an easy problem to navigate for anyone, let alone someone seeking fundamental changes. And as an outsider it will take time and effort to simply understand the situation and what can be effectively changed and what can’t. Executing on real, substantive changes may inevitably involve some amount of conflict with powerful figures in EA. What would attract people who are capable of executing such tough tasks to the CEA CEO role? 

Moreover, why would the search committee take the risk of recommending an outsider to EA, when they seem content with the status quo and hiring an outsider could be easily seen as a predictable mistake by key EA decision makers if it runs into problems? I think an outsider suggesting radical changes to CEA, especially changes that might (intentionally or unintentionally) pull the rug back on previous bad decisions, would have to be significantly more skilled and impressive than the best insider to be hired. 

I think the best option might be a paired leadership role with one person more embedded in EA and the other less. But this seems unlikely. It can be difficult to construct and maintain co-leadership roles. Perhaps if there was an agreement for an insider to guide the outsider for some period of time before transitioning to the outsider being the sole leader, but this would require a level of commitment to the outsider that seems unlikely to be achieved even if deserved. 

To summarize, I expect some minor improvements and changes but fundamental problems to remain with CEA, except for a possible name (and clear scope) change. 

All that being said, I still recommended people apply for the role if they’re interested. Just be careful what you’re getting yourself into. 

(Note: Multiple people contributed to this note.)

I'm disappointed in the mod team's recent actions regarding this post on Yudkowsky.

1. As far as I know [edited] there hasn't been a previous rule around strong language not resulting in a front page ban since the language was toned down in response to feedback and the comments were civil and productive. (Note that the author still hasn't changed the title, which a number of people have commented on, but this doesn't seem like it would have changed the mod decision)

2. I also agree with Linch's point that correctness hasn't been a distinction point either. 

3. Several people left responses and criticisms of the decision, all were popular with readers but the mod team has not (yet) replied or substantively engaged with those comments (which seem reasonable).

Edits / notes since posting: 

I edited 1) and added point 2) after Linch's clarification comment. 

Note that Lizka responded to the post a few hours after this shortform went up (thanks for flagging Lorenzo)

Nice rendering! It’s very pretty

One problem with scandals is that there’s no real solution or steps taken in response to them. When stuff happens, there is a lot of discussion, but little changes structurally or institutionally. 

I think the community was not meant to scale. OP and EVF (affiliated organization) promoted EA growth in the past so they could get more people working on their priority problems but never set in place mechanisms to govern a larger community. 

Essentially, I think to some extent these organizations see the EA community as an means to an end, and don't want to take responsibility for the messiness that comes with building a community.  

I would like to see the EA community set up in ways to govern itself rather than depend on a few actors (OP/EVF ecosystem) whose incentives don't always line up with what is best for the community.