EA - FTX Community Response Survey Results by WillemSleegers

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: FTX Community Response Survey Results, published by WillemSleegers on March 15, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.SummaryIn December 2022, Rethink Priorities, in collaboration with CEA, surveyed the EA community in order to gather “perspectives on how the FTX crisis has impacted the community’s views of the effective altruism movement, its organizations, and leaders.”Our results found that the FTX crisis had decreased satisfaction with the EA community, and around half of respondents reported that the FTX crisis had given them concerns with EA meta organizations, the EA community and its norms, and the leaders of EA meta organizations.Nevertheless, there were some encouraging results. The reduction in satisfaction with the community was significant, but small, and overall average community sentiment is still positive. In addition, respondents tended to agree that the EA community had responded well to the crisis, although roughly a third of respondents neither agreed nor disagreed with this. Majorities of respondents reported continuing to trust EA organizations, though over 30% reported they had substantially lost trust in EA public figures or leadership.Respondents were more split in their views about how the EA community should respond. Respondents leaned slightly towards agreeing that the EA community should spend significant time reflecting and responding to this crisis, at the cost of spending less time on our other priorities, but slightly towards disagreement that the EA community should look very different as a result of this crisis.EA satisfactionRecalled satisfactionRespondents were asked about their current satisfaction with the EA community (after the FTX crisis) and to recall their satisfaction with the EA community at the start of November 2022, prior to the FTX crisis.Satisfaction with the EA community appears to be half a point (0.54) lower post-FTX compared to pre-FTX.Note that the median satisfaction scores are somewhat higher, but similarly showing a decrease (8 pre-FTX, 7 post-FTX).Satisfaction over timeAs the 2022 EA Survey was launched before the FTX crisis, we could assess how satisfaction with the EA community changed over time. We fit a generalized additive model in which we regressed the satisfaction ratings on the day the survey was taken.These results show that satisfaction went down after the FTX crisis first started.It should be noted however that this pattern of results could also be confounded by different groups of respondents taking the survey at different times. For example, we know that more engaged respondents tend to take the EAS earlier.We therefore also looked at how the satisfaction changed over time for different engagement levels. This shows that the satisfaction levels went down over time, regardless of engagement level.ConcernsRespondents were asked whether the FTX crisis has given them concerns with:Effective Altruism Meta Organizations (e.g., Centre for Effective Altruism, Open Philanthropy, 80,000 hours, etc.)Leaders of Effective Altruism Meta Organizations (e.g., Centre for Effective Altruism, Open Philanthropy, 80,000 hours, etc.)The Effective Altruism Community & NormsEffective Altruism Principles or PhilosophyMajorities of respondents reported agreement that the crisis had given them concerns with EA meta organizations (58%), the EA community and its norms (55%), just under half reported it giving them concerns about the leaders of EA meta organizations (48%).In contrast, only 25% agreed that the crisis had given them concerns about EA principles or philosophy, compared to 66% disagreeing. We think this suggests a somewhat reassuring picture where, though respondents may have concerns about the EA community in its current form, the FTX crisis has largely not caused respondents to become di...