The question of whether you interpret Whytham Abbey as a sign of lavish spending and motivated reasoning or as a a very reasonable investment largely depends on your view of EA and whether you trust EA/CEA/EVF

The question of whether you interpret Bob's habit of wiping his ass with donation money as a sign of lavish spending and motivated reasoning or as a a very reasonable investment largely depends on your view of Bob and whether you trust Bob.

Those who do not trust Bob will say he could use toilet paper or at least smaller denominations. People who do trust Bob will point out that keeping guests comfortable is very important to Bob, that toilet paper doesn't have the right softness and that Bob can save more lives if he doesn't have to worry about hemorrhoids.

While there may be no obvious, evidence based conclusion to reach, I think we can all agree that Bob should have managed perception of his ass wiping money more thoughtfully.

what is this weak shit? the only points I’m picking out are:

• the context for them purchasing an extremely expensive castle is they had a lot of money (no shit)
• the org that bought it hid the purchase until it was too late and hasn’t given any altruistic reason for the purchase since then (they “refuse to show their equations” on why it’s a charitable purchase, meaning there aren’t any)
• most EAs disagreed with the purchase in ways that included rightfully calling it out as an obvious grift (which the article spins as a PR problem)

is this whole thing meant to be read as politely damning? I already know the answer to this since it’s fucking obvious and always has been, but is EA so much of a cult that you can’t disagree with and demand action on major problems within the EA community without cloaking it in a thick layer of either bad memes or fake politeness? are these people really just reinventing Mormonism but with AI and Bayes instead of stone tablets covered in fake Egyptian hieroglyphics?

I'm disappointed that they never (to my knowledge) tried to justify the purchase by saying they needed a castle to build a fortified base that would be safe against marauders in the event of civilizational collapse. The return on investment for keeping a catastrophic failure from becoming an existential one is (handwave, handwave) at least 10^69.

"We need a castle for Isaac Asimov's Foundation Beyond Thunderdome" would, at least, be on brand.

They originally wanted a place that had a motte (and bailey).

The problem is just transparency, you see -- if they could just show people the math that led them to determining that this would save X million more lives, then everyone would realize that it was actually a very good and sensible decision!

They saved 200k lives! They are allowed a castle, or two.