A milder statement of this is almost certainly already accepted by EA leadership and we should see the impact when the EA brownout ends.
A year ago, generating more SBFs was the brief argument for the high EV of community building. A common refrain: "SBF is contributing so much to EA causes, if what we're spending on community building generates even just one more SBF it will be worth it."
Now turn SBF to a negative value in that equation, or even merely a zero. The end result may be non-negative, but the EV of community building is greatly reduced.
Many in EA positions who have funded community-building orgs are probably now smarting at having mis-invested based on a false perception of SBF's value.
If there is a hard part, it will be convincing ourselves that although SBF was not high value, it will be hard to resist including hypothetical non-fraudulent SBFs in our EV calculations, as we have habituated to that way of thinking.
A milder statement of this is almost certainly already accepted by EA leadership and we should see the impact when the EA brownout ends.
A year ago, generating more SBFs was the brief argument for the high EV of community building. A common refrain: "SBF is contributing so much to EA causes, if what we're spending on community building generates even just one more SBF it will be worth it."
Now turn SBF to a negative value in that equation, or even merely a zero. The end result may be non-negative, but the EV of community building is greatly reduced.
Many in EA positions who have funded community-building orgs are probably now smarting at having mis-invested based on a false perception of SBF's value.
If there is a hard part, it will be convincing ourselves that although SBF was not high value, it will be hard to resist including hypothetical non-fraudulent SBFs in our EV calculations, as we have habituated to that way of thinking.