> Obviously this kind of thing is why everyone hates effective altruists. People got so mad at some British EAs who used donor money to “buy a castle”.
This feels like a spin on how this all went down. A lot of the anger about that group utilizing funds to, literally, buy a castle came from EA groups too.
Trying to downplay the situation and pretend that the anger was only coming from uninformed outsiders feels like a dishonest attempt to rewrite history.
There was a lot of debate about it in EA circles. A lot of it turned into mental gymnastics as they tried to find ways to explain how spending a
amount of money on a literal castle so they could meet in it somehow had an expected value that was positive for humanity or something.
Weird to see this incident pop up in an article about kidney donation, but even weirder to see the critics of the decision downplayed and sneered as uninformed outsiders when so much of the anger came from inside the EA community. Really feels like a subtle signal that if you don’t toe the line on every EA organization decision, you must be an outsider.
>Really feels like a subtle signal that if you don’t toe the line on every EA organization decision, you must be an outsider.
Bingo. I like Scott's writing in general, I've interacted with him a few times, and EA criticism is one of three or so topics where disagreement gets you the outsider treatment.
He's slightly more amenable if you can provide an example that would've been "more effective," but "this was a bad decision"-type critiques will default to "the bigwigs are smarter than you."
This feels like a spin on how this all went down. A lot of the anger about that group utilizing funds to, literally, buy a castle came from EA groups too.
Trying to downplay the situation and pretend that the anger was only coming from uninformed outsiders feels like a dishonest attempt to rewrite history.
If you’re not familiar with this story, here’s a source: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/08/15/the-reluctant-...
There was a lot of debate about it in EA circles. A lot of it turned into mental gymnastics as they tried to find ways to explain how spending a amount of money on a literal castle so they could meet in it somehow had an expected value that was positive for humanity or something.
Weird to see this incident pop up in an article about kidney donation, but even weirder to see the critics of the decision downplayed and sneered as uninformed outsiders when so much of the anger came from inside the EA community. Really feels like a subtle signal that if you don’t toe the line on every EA organization decision, you must be an outsider.