Habryka [Deactivated]'s Quick takes

By Habryka [Deactivated] @ 2023-11-21T00:59 (+9)

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Habryka [Deactivated] @ 2025-03-02T19:07 (+106)

So long and thanks for all the fish. 

I am deactivating my account.[1] My unfortunate best guess is that at this point there is little point and at least a bit of harm caused by me commenting more on the EA Forum. I am sad to leave behind so much that I have helped build and create, and even sadder to see my own actions indirectly contribute to much harm.

I think many people on the forum are great, and at many points in time this forum was one of the best places for thinking and talking and learning about many of the world's most important topics. Particular shoutouts to @Jason, @Linch, @Larks, @Neel Nanda and @Lizka for overall being great commenters. It is rare that I had conversations with any of you that I did not substantially benefit from. 

Also great thanks to @JP Addison🔸 for being the steward of the forum through many difficult years. It's been good working with you. I hope @Sarah Cheng can turn the ship around as she takes over responsibilities. I still encourage you to spin out of CEA. I think you could fundraise. Of course the forum is responsible for more than 3% of CEA's impact by I think most people's lights, and all you need is 3% of CEA's budget to make a great team.

I have many reasons for leaving, as I have been trying to put more distance between me and the EA community. I won't go into all of them, but I do encourage people to read my comments over the last 2 years to get a sense of them, I think there is some good writing in there. 

The reason I think I would be most amiss to not mention here is the increasing sense of disconnect I have been feeling between what once was a thriving and independent intellectual community, open to ideas and leadership from any internet weirdo that wants to do as much good as they can, and the present EA community whose identity, branding and structure is largely determined by a closed-off set of leaders with little history of intellectual contributions, and with little connection to what attracted me to this philosophy and community in the first place. The community feels very leaderless and headless these days, and in the future I only see candidates for leadership that are worse than none. Almost everyone who has historically been involved in a leadership position has stepped back and abdicated that role.

I no longer really see a way for arguments, or data, or perspectives explained on this forum to affect change in what actually happens with the extended EA community, especially in domains like AI Safety Research, AGI Policy, internal community governance, or more broadly steering humanity's development of technology in positive directions. I think while shallow criticism often gets valorized, the actual life of someone who tries to make things better by trying to reward and fund good work and hold people accountable, is one of misery and adversarial relationship, accompanied by censure, gaslighting and overall a deep sense of loneliness.

To be clear, there has always been an undercurrent of this in the community. When I was at CEA back in 2015 we frequently and routinely deployed highly adversarial strategies to ensure we maintained more control over what people understood what EA meant, and who would get so shape it, and the internet weirdos were often a central target of our efforts to make others less influential. But it is more true now. The EA Forum was not run by CEA at the time, and maybe that was good, and funding was not so extremely centralized in a single large foundation, and that foundation still had a lot more freedom and integrity back then.

It's been a good run. Thanks to many of you, and ill wishes to many others. When the future is safe, and my time is less sparse, I hope we can take the time and figure out who was right in things. I certainly don't speak with confidence on many things I have disagreed with others on, only with conviction to try to do good even in a world as confusing and uncertain as this and to not let the uncertainty prevent me from saying what I believe. It sure seems like we all made a difference, just unclear what sign.

  1. ^

    I won't use the "deactivate account" future which would delete my profile. I am just changing my user name and bio to indicate I am no longer active.

Sarah Cheng @ 2025-03-03T21:37 (+47)

Habryka, just wanted to say thank you for your contributions to the Forum. Overall I've appreciated them a lot! I'm happy that we'll continue to collaborate behind the scenes, at least because I think there's still plenty I can learn from you. I think we agree that running the Forum is a big responsibility, so I hope you feel free to share your honest thoughts with me.

I do think we disagree on some points. For example, you seem significantly more negative about CEA than I am (I'm probably biased because I work there, though I certainly don't think it's perfect). I also think that the discussions on the Forum do affect real change, though of course it's hard to know how much with any real confidence. I know of at least two specific cases when a person in a position with some power (in the real world, not in the EA community) has taken action based on something they read on the Forum, and my impression is that many people who have power within the EA community continue to read the Forum even if they don't make time to write here. Of course, it's true that they could ignore serious criticism is they wanted to, but my sense is that people actually quite often feel unable to ignore criticism. So I guess I am more optimistic that the Forum, as an extremely public community space, can continue to provide value by playing this role.

By the way, I personally care a lot about EA reaching its future potential for doing the most good. Habryka, I don't know the details of what you went through when trying to make things better, but I'm sorry to hear that it felt so bad. I'll just say that, if anyone feels like they are trying to make things better in EA and are unable to do so, you're welcome to reach out to me directly (you can message me via the Forum). I will at least hear you out and give you my thoughts, and perhaps you can convince me to help.

Rohin Shah @ 2025-03-04T10:27 (+15)

Of course, it's true that they could ignore serious criticism is they wanted to, but my sense is that people actually quite often feel unable to ignore criticism.

As someone sympathetic to many of Habryka's positions, while also disagreeing with many of Habryka's positions, my immediate reaction to this was "well that seems like a bad thing", c.f.

shallow criticism often gets valorized

I'd feel differently if you had said "people feel obliged to take criticism seriously if it points at a real problem" or something like that, but I agree with you that the mechanism is more like "people are unable to ignore criticism irrespective of its quality" (the popularity of the criticism matters, but sadly that is only weakly correlated with quality).

Sarah Cheng @ 2025-03-04T17:03 (+8)

I appreciate you sharing your views on this! I agree that as a whole, this is suboptimal.

I don't currently feel confident enough about the take that "shallow criticism often gets valorized" to prioritize tackling it, though I am spending some time thinking about moderation and managing user-generated content and I expect that the mod team (including myself) will discuss how we'd like to handle critical comments, so this will probably come up in our discussions.

I'm kind of worried that there's not necessarily an objective truth to how shallow/low-quality any particular criticism is, and I personally would prefer to err on the side of allowing more criticism. So it's possible that not much changes in the public discourse, and any interventions we do may need to be behind the scenes (such as our team spending more time talking with people who get criticized).

Ben_West🔸 @ 2025-03-04T18:47 (+19)

It feels appropriate that this post has a lot of hearts and simultaneously disagree reacts. We will miss you, even (perhaps especially) those of us who often disagreed with you. 

I would love to reflect with you on the other side of the singularity. If we make it through alive, I think there's a decent chance that it will be in part thanks to your work.

OscarD🔸 @ 2025-03-04T11:56 (+5)

fyi for anyone like me who doesn't have lots of the backstory here and doesn't want to read through Habryka's extensive corpus of EAF writings, here is Claude 3.7 Sonnet's summary based on the first page of comments Habryka links to.

Based on Habryka's posts, I can provide a summary of his key disagreements with EA leadership and forum administrators that ultimately led to his decision to leave the community.

Key Disagreements

  1. Leadership and Accountability: Habryka repeatedly expresses concern about what he sees as a "leaderless" EA community. He believes the community has shifted from being driven by independent intellectual contributors to being determined by "a closed-off set of leaders with little history of intellectual contributions." He argues that almost everyone who was historically in leadership positions has stepped back and abdicated their roles.
  2. Institutional Integrity: He criticizes EA organizations, particularly CEA (Centre for Effective Altruism), for prioritizing growth, prestige, and public image over intellectual integrity. In his posts, he describes personal experiences at CEA where they "deployed highly adversarial strategies" to maintain control over EA's public image and meaning.
  3. FTX Situation: Habryka was particularly critical of how EA leadership handled Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) and FTX. He claims to have warned people about SBF's reputation for dishonesty, but these warnings were not heeded. He criticizes Will MacAskill and others for their continued endorsement of SBF despite red flags, and was frustrated by the lack of transparency and open discussion after FTX's collapse.
  4. Risk-Aversion and PR Focus: He repeatedly criticizes what he perceives as excessive risk-aversion and PR-mindedness among EA organizations. He argues this approach prevents honest discussion of important issues and contributes to a culture of conformity.
  5. Funding Centralization: Habryka expresses concern about EA funding being increasingly centralized through a single large foundation (likely referring to Open Philanthropy), arguing this concentration of resources creates unhealthy power dynamics.
  6. Community Culture: He criticizes the shift in EA culture away from what he describes as "a thriving and independent intellectual community, open to ideas and leadership from any internet weirdo" toward something more institutional and conformist.
  7. Failure to Create Change: Habryka states that he no longer sees "a way for arguments, or data, or perspectives explained on this forum to affect change in what actually happens with the extended EA community," particularly in domains like AI safety research and community governance.

His departure post suggests a deep disillusionment with the direction of the EA community, expressing that while many of the principles of EA remain important, he believes "EA at large is causing large harm for the world" with "no leadership or accountability in-place to fix it." He recommends others avoid posting on the EA Forum as well, directing them to alternatives like LessWrong.

Will Aldred @ 2025-03-04T14:49 (+42)

Hmm, I’m not a fan of this Claude summary (though I appreciate your trying). Below, I’ve made a (play)list of Habryka’s greatest hits,[1] ordered by theme,[2][3] which might be another way for readers to get up to speed on his main points:

Leadership

Reputation[5]

Funding

Impact

  1. ^

    ‘Greatest hits’ may be a bit misleading. I’m only including comments from the post-FTX era, and then, only comments that touch on the core themes. (This is one example of a great comment I haven’t included.)

  2. ^

    although the themes overlap a fair amount

  3. ^

    My ordering is quite different to the karma ordering given on the GreaterWrong page Habryka links to. I think mine does a better job of concisely covering Habryka’s beliefs on the key topics. But I’d be happy to take my list down if @Habryka disagrees (just DM me).

  4. ^

    For context, Zachary is CEA’s CEO.

  5. ^

Toby Tremlett🔹 @ 2025-03-04T13:00 (+4)

FWIW it looks like claude is only summarising this quick take (all the quotes are from it)

Pablo @ 2025-03-04T15:22 (+4)

Here's another summary. I used Gemini 2.0 Flash (via the API), and this prompt:

The following is a series of comments by Habryka, in which he makes a bunch of criticisms of the effective altruism (EA) movement. Please look at these comments and provide a summary of Habryka’s main criticisms.

  1. Lack of leadership and accountability: He believes EA leadership is causing harm and lacks mechanisms for correcting course.
  2. Emphasis on PR and narrative control: He condemns EA organizations' risk aversion, guardedness, and attempts to control the narrative around FTX, prioritizing public image over transparency.
  3. Inadequate community health: He laments conformity pressures, fears of reprisal for dissent, and insufficient efforts to cultivate a culture of open disagreement.
  4. Entanglement with FTX: He faults EA leadership, particularly Will MacAskill, for endorsing Sam Bankman-Fried and entangling the movement with FTX despite warnings about SBF's character.
  5. Hero worship and lack of respect for intellectual leaders: He criticizes the hero worship of MacAskill, contrasting it with MacAskill's perceived lack of engagement with other intellectual leaders in the community. He sees this as part of a pattern of MacAskill prioritizing popularity and prestige over community health and epistemic integrity.
  6. Misleading communications and lack of transparency: He criticizes CEA for making inaccurate and misleading statements, for omitting crucial context in communications, and for concealing information about funding decisions.
  7. Scaling too quickly and attracting grifters: He worries that EA's rapid growth and increased funding attract deceptive actors and create perverse incentives.
  8. Overreliance on potentially compromised institutions: He expresses concerns about EA's deep ties to institutions like Oxford University, which may stifle intellectual exploration and operational capacity.
  9. Ignoring internal warnings about FTX: He reveals that he and others warned EA leadership about Sam Bankman-Fried's reputation for dishonesty, but those warnings went unheeded. He suggests he personally observed potentially illegal activities by SBF but chose not to share this information more widely.
  10. Flawed due diligence and poor judgment in grantmaking: He feels EA leadership's due diligence on SBF was inadequate and that they made poor judgments in providing him with substantial resources. He extends this criticism to grantmaking practices more generally.
  11. Unfair distribution of resources: He argues that the current distribution of funds within EA doesn't adequately compensate those doing object-level work and undervalues their contributions relative to donors. He argues for a system that recognizes the implicit tradeoff many have made in pursuing lower-paying EA-aligned careers.
  12. Centralized media policy and negative experiences with journalists: While supporting a less centralized media policy, he also cautions against interacting with journalists, as they frequently misrepresent interviewees and create negative experiences.
     
OscarD🔸 @ 2025-03-04T13:45 (+2)

Hmm true, I gave it the whole Greater Wrong page of comments, maybe it just didn't quote from those for some reason.

James Herbert @ 2025-03-04T11:34 (+5)

This is a pity. My impression is that you added a lot of value, and the fact you're leaving is a signal we’ll have fewer people like you involved. It’s probably a trade-off, but I don’t know if it’s the right trade-off. Thanks for your contribution! 

Habryka @ 2023-11-21T00:59 (+97)

EV US has made a court motion to settle with the FTX estate for 100% of the funds received in 2022 for a total of $22.5M. See this public docket for the details:  https://restructuring.ra.kroll.com/FTX/Home-DocketInfo (Memo number 3745). 

My guess is Open Phil is covering this amount. Seems very relevant to anyone who is exposed to FTX clawback risk, or wants to understand what is going on with FTX things.

Zachary Robinson @ 2023-11-21T18:59 (+39)

Cross posting from here

 

Thanks for flagging! New donations won’t be used for this settlement. The funding for the settlements has already been secured, and none of EV’s projects will need to allocate any additional funding. Besides funding that came from FTX, no funds that have previously been donated to a specific project will be used as part of this settlement.

As noted by Jason, the EV US settlement remains subject to court approval, and we won’t be commenting on it further while the settlement process is still underway. With that being said, we didn’t want any misunderstandings to disrupt CEA’s fundraising efforts in the meantime. 

Also, as a minor correction, the motion to approve the settlement was not filed by EV US – it was filed by the FTX debtors (this is standard practice for approval of settlements in bankruptcy cases).

Jason @ 2023-11-21T02:43 (+35)

Totally unsurprising to me.  

Why would EV US have settled?

(1) Most likely, EV US concluded that it had zero viable defenses to the clawback claims for 2022 transfers, and got concessions to drop clawbacks on the 2018 & 2019 claims. The estate's EV of litigating the 2018/19 claims may have been negative or minimal anyway, as there may have been viable to strong defenses for those.

(2) Plausibly, EV US thought that the financial expected value of litigation was positive, but that the optics costs were too high.

(3) Conspiratorally, EV US really wanted that release from discovery obligations in paragraph 9 of the stipulation (Doc. 3745-2 at 9). This is very unlikely, given that the stipulation expressly specifies that it does not impair the right to demand discovery from EV UK (which likely "knows" the bulk of what EV US would know).

One possible silver lining for some grantees is the recitation that pursuit of litigation against many smaller re-grantees would have been uneconomical (Doc. 3745 at 9, para. 23). There is also a recitation that recipients of re-grants from EV US may have had some additional defenses (id. at 8, para. 21, probably alluding to 11 USC 550(b)(1)), although without any detail it is hard to say whether the FTX estate's lawyers really believe this or whether it is the standard sort of possibility one mentions when asking a bankruptcy judge to sign off on a settlement.

Yarrow Bouchard @ 2023-11-21T01:02 (+1)

Can you explain in more straightforward terms what this means?

Ozzie Gooen @ 2023-11-21T01:28 (+8)

Very quickly, what I assume:
1. Pre-FTX-crisis, FTX funded EV for ~$22mil.
2. Post-FTX-bankruptcy, the current FTX bankruptcy lawyers are coming after many groups that FTX gave money to for clawbacks. I assume they threatened EV US with legal action, unless the money was fully returned.
3. The final agreement between the two is for EV US to give back all $22mil to FTX debtors. 

Jason @ 2023-11-21T02:22 (+29)

Very close. There were also some transfers in 2018 & 2019, totalling about $2.7MM. There was $22.54MM transferred in 2022, for a total of $25.24MM (some numbers rounded). The estate is basically giving up on recovering the 2018/2019 transfers in exchange for getting 100% of the 2022 ones back. 

I suspect the defenses on the 2018 transfers in particular were much more viable -- they were more than four years prior to bankruptcy filing, which (relying on memory) is a very important threshold in applicable law. In addition, that Alameda was insolvent may be much murkier in 2018 than in 2022. (The 2019 transfers were tiny, so they were probably an afterthought.) I don't have a firm opinion on whether they were winning, but if you offered me $100 if I correctly guessed whether the estate would win on the 2018 transfers, I'd say "no."

Ozzie Gooen @ 2023-11-21T03:19 (+2)

Thanks for the clarity here! 

ludwigbald @ 2023-11-21T13:49 (+1)

I wonder what EV projects the money was dedicated for. Which project actually ended up with a budget shortfall?

Jason @ 2023-11-21T15:01 (+4)

It's in Doc. 3745 -- this is for the EV US settlement only, the earmarks for the smaller EV US settlement are not included. TL;DR: Mostly CEA and Longview with 2.5MM for Atlas Fellowship, about 750K each for LTFF and GWWC. 

Someone needs to confirm whether ordinary donor funds might be used to cover any charge to LTFF, as that might influence some folks' end of year decisions. Edit: Zach confirmed they will not.

Jonas Vollmer @ 2023-11-21T22:52 (+4)

(FYI, Atlas won't be ending up with a budget shortfall as a result of this.)

Habryka @ 2024-05-22T19:04 (+9)

I was reading the Charity Commission report on EV and came across this paragraph: 

During the inquiry the charity took the decision to reach a settlement agreement in relation to the repayment of funds it received from FTX in 2022. The charity made this decision following independent legal advice they had received. The charity then notified the Commission once this course of action had been taken. The charity returned $4,246,503.16 USD (stated as ÂŁ3,340,021 in its Annual Report for financial year ending 30 June 2023). The Commission had no involvement in relation to the discussions and ultimate settlement agreement to repay the funds.

This seems directly in conflict with the settlement agreement between EV and FTX which Zachary Robinson summarized as: 

First, we’re pleased to say that both Effective Ventures UK and Effective Ventures US have agreed to settlements with the FTX bankruptcy estate. As part of these settlements, EV US and EV UK (which I’ll collectively refer to as “EV”) have between them paid the estate $26,786,503, an amount equal to 100% of the funds the entities received from FTX and the FTX Foundation (which I’ll collectively refer to as “FTX”) in 2022.

These two amounts hugely differ. My guess is this is because most of the FTX Funds were received by EV US and that wasn't included in the charity commission? But curious whether I am missing something. 

Rob Gledhill @ 2024-05-22T20:22 (+25)

Your guess that Zach's post refers to both EV US and EV UK, whereas the charity commission only looked at EV UK is correct - and this explains the difference in amounts

Habryka @ 2024-05-22T21:17 (+4)

Thank you!