EA - Trying to keep my head on straight by ChanaMessinger

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Trying to keep my head on straight, published by ChanaMessinger on November 19, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum.I’m a little confused who this is for: I think it’s for anyone who might want thoughts on orienting to the FTX situation in ways they’d most endorse later, especially if they are in a position of leadership or have people relying on them for guidance. It might not be coherent, it's just some thoughts, in the spirit of Scattered Takes and Unsolicited Advice.This is written in my personal capacity, not as an employee of CEASomething I’m thinking about a lot right now is how rationality, values, and judgment can be hardest to use when you need them most. My vision of a community is one that makes you most likely to be your best self in those times. I think I'm seeing a lot of this already, and I hope to see even more.So for anyone thinking about FTX things, or talking about them with others, or planning to write things in that strange dialect known as “comms”, here’s my set of things I don’t want to forget. Please feel encouraged to add your own in the comments.IntegrityThere is no party line (I say by fiat) - I want EA to be ok after this, and it’s sure true that there are things people could say that would make that less likely, but I just really really don’t want EA to be a place where people can’t think and say thingsI want to give explicit okness to questions and wondering around judgment, decision quality or integrity of EA, EAs and EA leaders, and I don’t want to have a missing mood about people’s understandable curiosity and concernThat said, obviously people in sensitive situations may not answer all questions you’re curious about, and in fact many of them have legal reasons not to.It is not your job by dint of being an EA to protect “EA the brand”. You may decide that the brand is valuable in service of its goals; you may also have your own opinions on what the brand worth protecting is.Sometimes I have opinions about what makes sense to share based on confidentiality or other things, but at a broad stroke, I tend to be into people saying the truth out loud (or if my system 1 says different, I want to be into it).Soldier-iness (here meaning the feeling of wanting to defend “your tribe”) is normal and some of it is tracking real and important things about the value of what we’ve built here. Integrity doesn’t mean highlighting every bad faith criticism. (But also don’t let the desire to protect what is valuable warp your own beliefs about the world)There are going to be a lot of incentives to pile on, especially if any particular narrative starts emerging, and I also want EA to be a place where you can say “this thing that looks bad doesn’t seem actually object level bad to me for these reasons”, or “Utilitarianism is good, actually” or “EA is/isn’t worse than the reference class on this” or “I think the ways in which EA is different from other movements was a worthwhile bet, even if it added risk” or “I don’t think I know enough about this to have a take.”Updating your views makes sense, but probably you for the moment have most of the same views you had two weeks ago, and overupdating also lands you in the wrong placeI would be sad if people jumped too quickly to repudiate their system of ethics, or all the unusual features of it that have let us aim at doing an unusual amount of good. I would also be sad if the vibe of our response felt disingenuous - aiming to appear less consequentialist than is the case (whatever that true case is), less willing to think about tradeoffs, etc.You don’t even need to have one take - you can just say a lot of things that seem true to youI want to say things here, on twitter, out loud, etc, that are filtered by “is this helping me and others think better and more clearly”. I might not always be ma...