EA - Why I'm still going out to bat for the EA movement post FTX by Gemma Paterson

Welcome 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: Why I'm still going out to bat for the EA movement post FTX, published by Gemma Paterson on September 30, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.From the looks of it, next week might be rough for people who care about Effective Altruism. As CEA acting CEO Ben West pointed out on the forum:"Sam Bankman-Fried's trial is scheduled to start October 3, 2023, and Michael Lewis's book about FTX comes out the same day. My hope and expectation is that neither will be focused on EA .Nonetheless, I think there's a decent chance that viewing the Forum, Twitter, or news media could become stressful for some people, and you may want to pre-emptively create a plan for engaging with that in a healthy way.I really appreciated that comment since I didn't know that and I'm glad I had time to mentally prepare. As someone who does outward facing voluntary community building at my workplace and in London, I feel nervous. I've written this piece to manage that anxiety. I actually wrote a lot of it last year to process my feelings but now seems like a good time to share.Thoughts on EA after 2022During the spring/summer of 2022, I was studying for my final ICAS Chartered Accountancy case study exams. They usually involve:Being given a scenario where you are the qualified accountant and have been asked to do some analysis for a group of companies.As you need to meet a minimum standard of Public Trust and Ethics to join an accountancy body, there is usually a dodgy character or two involved at the client company or at the firm that employs you.The dodgy characters are lax about controls and risk - asking you as the accountant to "look the other way" and the case is usually set up that there is an incentive for you as the accountant to do that.There are often weak internal controls at the company which make fraud more likely. Some examples of weak internal controls:Lack of segregation of duties - one employee has end-to-end control of a process without oversightInadequate access controls - sensitive systems and data are not restricted to authorized personnelCircumvention of controls - existing controls are intentionally avoided or bypassed by employeesUnsigned approvals - documents requiring sign-off are not properly authorizedAt the end, you submit your technical accounting, finance, tax, internal controls, and general business advice that was requested as part of the case study. You also need to submit an ethics memo which would outline your concerns about the dodgy people or controls.You'll be glad to hear that after going through lots of practice papers, I passed!Then three months later, the news on FTX dropped.I'm not going to outline it here since I imagine the audience for this are already familiar - if someone has a good summary, please drop it in the comments. It wasn't just FTX, around that time, information was released on Wytham Abbey, Bostrom and the Time sexual harassment scandals.For context, I'm mostly interested in expanding the reach of effective giving / EA impact methodologies and personally put a high discount rate on the future vs existing suffering, so, I didn't follow the FTX Future Fund that closely.My primary feelings at the end of 2022 were anger and embarrassment.AngerI'm annoyed I must answer questions about the damned castle. I did not buy the castle. None of the charities I recommend you donate to bought the castle. Yet in my community building work, I have to answer questions about the castle. It was handled poorly and I'm angry about it.When the Time article came out, I was running the London Women (and NBs) in EA group. Honestly, I incorrectly assumed it was just about EA in the Bay area so when it was revealed it was Owen Cotton-Barrett, that was a shock and tbh I was annoyed at a lot of the responses.In hindsight, I wish I'd created a sp...