Thanks, I think this is all right. I think I didn't write what I meant. I want more specificity, but I do agree with you that it's wrong to expect full specificity (and that's what I sounded like I was asking for).

What I want something more like "CEA should investigate the staff of EVF for whether they knew about X and Y", not "Alice should investigate Bob and Carol for whether they knew about X and Y".

I do think that specificity raises questions, and that this can be a good thing. I agree that it's not reasonable for someone to work out e.g. exactly where the funding comes from, but I do think it's reasonable for them to think in enough detail about what they are proposing to realise that a) it will need funding, b) possibly quite a lot of funding, c) this trades off against other uses of the money, so d) what does that mean for whether this is a good idea. Whereas if "EA" is going to do it, then we don't need to worry about any of those things. I'm sure someone can just do it, right?

We do of course need to worry about the flip side: plenty of times (especially in political groups) you see people being told not to criticise the group's positions because it will make it less likely that the public in general will buy the overall picture (which the critic probably still agrees with). This can be pretty toxic.

I don't think Richard is advocating for that, but I think it's a risk once you legitimize this kind of argument.

At some point it surely has to be the case that they've done enough.

This doesn't seem true? It makes perfect sense for advocacy groups to continue advocating their position, since a lot of the point is to reach people for whom the message is new. 80k is (or at least was) all about how to use your career for good, I would expect them to always be talking about earning to give as an option.

I think I agree with Hypothetical EA that we basically know the broad picture.

• Probably nobody was actually complicit or knew there was fraud; and
• Various people made bad judgement calls and/or didn't listen to useful rumours about Sam

I guess I'm just... satisfied with that? You say:

But there are plenty of people, both within EA and outside of it, who legitimately just want to know what happened, and will be very reassured to have a clearer picture of the basic sequence of events, which orgs did a better or worse job, which processes failed or succeeded.

.. why? None of this seems that important to me? Most of it seems like a matter for the person/org in question to reflect/improve on. Why is it important for "plenty of people" to learn this stuff, given we already know the broad picture above?

I would sum up my personal position as: 

• We got taken for a ride, so we should take the general lesson to be more cautious of charismatic people with low scruples, especially bearing large sums of money.
• If you or your org were specifically taken for a ride you should reflect on why that happened to you and why you didn't listen to the people who did spot what was going on.

I'm against doing further investigation. I expressed why I think we have already spent too much time on this here.

I also think your comments are falling into the trap of referring to "EA" like it was an entity. Who specifically should do an investigation, and who specifically should they be investigating? (This less monolithic view of EA is also part of why I don't feel as bothered by the the whole thing: so maybe some people in "senior" positions made some bad judgement calls about Sam. They should maybe feel bad. I'm not sure we should feel much collective guilt about that.)

On the object level, the original question was:

> Are financial statements going to be released? In particular, how much was spent on estate agent fees, maintaince and bills? And the value of the events hosted. Is the reason for the change that EA has less money or that there was an error in the initial reasoning for buying it?

Even given the context I think this is asking too much. I would support a question like "I would love to know what the reasoning was: in particular, was the project financially unsustainable or were there other reasons?". 

Asking whether the financial statements for the project are going to be published is asking for way more  information than is necessary or useful. From the follow up question, it sounds like Dean is interested in doing a financial audit of the project and maybe thinks they were paying too much on maintenance or something? (Apologies if I'm putting words in your mouth, Dean, but I'm trying to talk about how it comes across to me as a reader) This doesn't seem like a reasonable avenue for Forum commenters to be encouraged to push down.

On the meta level, while there are not that many items at this level, the calls for random transparency are constant. Look at almost any post made by an EA org and you will see people asking for everything from full financial statements, to written documentation of hiring processes, to extensive reports on all kinds of internal operations.

To put it another way, by all means ask for transparency when it matters... but stick to when it matters, please!

I think there is a bit of tendency to assume that it is appropriate to ask for arbitrary amounts of transparency from EA orgs.  I don't think this is a good norm: transparency has costs, often significant, and constantly asking for all kinds of information (often with a tone that suggests that it ought to be presented) is I think often harmful.

I wonder if we would benefit from something like a system that hides the karma (and treats it as zero for visibility purposes) of posts that have less than <some quantity> of engagement. That way posts would get a "grace period" before getting hidden.

Again, I don’t think my picture here is a stretch from the normal English sense of the word “wholesomely”.

The more I read of these essays the less I agree with this. On my subjective authority as a native English speaker, your usage seems pretty far from the normal sense to me. I think what you're gesturing at is a reasonable concept but I think it's quite confusing to call it "wholesome". 

As some evidence, I kept finding myself having to reinterpret sentences to use your meaning rather than what I would consider the more normal meaning. For example, "What is wholesome depends on the whole system." This is IMO kind of nonsensical in normal English.

I don't think we would have been able to use the additional information we would have gained from delaying the industrial revolution but I think if we could have the answer might be "yes". It's easy to see in hindsight that it went well overall, but that doesn't mean that the correct ex ante attitude shouldn't have been caution!