“EA Adjacency as FTX Trauma” by Mjreard
This is a Forum Team crosspost from Substack. Matt would like to add: "Epistemic status = incomplete speculation; posted here at the Forum team's request" When you ask prominent Effective Altruists about Effective Altruism, you often get responses like these: For context, Will MacAskill and Holden Karnofsky are arguably, literally the number one and two most prominent Effective Altruists on the planet. Other evidence of their ~spouses’ personal involvement abounds, especially Amanda's. Now, perhaps they’ve had changes of heart in recent months or years – and they’re certainly entitled to have those – but being evasive and implicitly disclaiming mere knowledge of EA is comically misleading and non-transparent. Calling these statements lies seems within bounds for most.[1] This kind of evasiveness around one's EA associations has been common since the collapse of FTX in 2022, (which, for yet more context, was a major EA funder that year and [...] ---Outline:(03:32) Why can't EAs talk about EA like normal humans (or even normal executives)?(05:54) Coming of age during the Great Awokening(07:15) Bad Comms Advice(08:22) Not understanding how words work (coupled with motivated reasoning)(11:05) TraumaThe original text contained 5 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: April 8th, 2025 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/6NCYo7RFYfkEjLAtn/ea-adjacency-as-ftx-trauma --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.