Thanks

Maybe quite some people don't like random ideas being shared on the Forum?

Ah, I wasn't aware that that wasn't the conventional definition. Thanks for the correction.

Still, I think it's important to somehow manage both sets of people and we can probably do better, though my idea is quite random.

Well, yes, but I was thinking about what to do with sociopaths that are already in the community. If your policy is "we kick out every sociopath we identify", no sociopath is going to identify themselves to you. I'm not advocating for attracting new sociopaths.

Mind you, I'm assuming here that there are plenty of sociopaths that aren't that bad, and want to do good, but suffer from the disability of not being able to care emotionally for others. I think it would be good if we could at least keep them out of powerful positions.

This was a pretty uninformed thought of how to deal with sociopaths, but it does feel like a problem worth someone thinking more deeply about.

Here's another question I have:

• is SBF a sociopath, and should the community have a specific strategy for dealing with sociopaths?

(I think yes. Something like 1% of the population of sociopathic, and I think EA's utilitarianism attracts sociopaths at a higher level than population baseline. Many sociopaths don't inherently want to do evil, especially not those attracted to EA. If sociopaths could somehow receive integrity guidance and be excluded from powerful positions, this would limit risk from other sociopaths.)

Random idea:

Maybe we should - after this question of investigation or not has been discussed in more detail - organize community-wide vote on whether there should be an investigation or not?

Thanks Rob! Fixed it.

I have not been very closely connected to the EA community the last couple of years, but based on communications, I was expecting:

• an independent and broad investigation
• reflections by key players that "approved" and collaborated with SBF on EA endeavors, such as Will MacAskill, Nick Beckstead, and 80K.

For example, Will posted in his Quick Takes 9 months ago:

I had originally planned to get out a backwards-looking post early in the year, and I had been holding off on talking about other things until that was published. That post has been repeatedly delayed, and I’m not sure when it’ll be able to come out. https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/TeBBvwQH7KFwLT7w5/william_macaskill-s-shortform?commentId=yxK8NCxrZQBjAxpCL

It now turns out that this has changed into podcasts, which is better than nothing, but doesn't give room to conversation or accountability.

I think 80K has been most open in reflecting on their mistakes and taking responsibility.

I was also implicitly expecting:

• a broader conversation in the community (on the Forum and/or at conferences) where everyone could ask questions and some kind of plan of improvement would be made

It is disappointing that too little had happened, and it feels kind of like a relationship where a bad thing happened, where the immediate fallout was addressed, but then never quite aired out. I think it would be very healthy for the community to take these steps and reflect on & learn from the SBF affair as well as the mismanaged aftermath, and then hopefully we can all move forward.

I would like to know what the disagree votes* mean here.

*At the time of this comment, it's 7 Agree - 7 Disagree

I hope you are correct! As an outsider, I find it very hard to judge without standardized non-gameable benchmarks for agents.

I hope you are correct. I find it very hard to judge without standardized, non-gameable benchmarks for agents.