They bought one mansion to host fundraisers with the super-rich, which I believe is an important correction. You might disagree with that reasoning as well, but it's definitely not as described.
As far as I know it's never hosted an impress-the-oligarch fundraiser, which as you say would at least have a logic behind it[1] even if it might seem distasteful.
For a philosophy which started out from the point of view that much of mainstream aid was spent with little thought, it was a bit of an end of Animal Farm moment.
(to their credit, a lot of people who identified as EAs were unhappy. If you drew a Venn diagram of the people that objected, people who sneered at the objections[2] and people who identified as rationalists you might only need two circles though...)
[1]a pretty shaky one considering how easy it is to impress American billionaires with Oxford architecture without going to the expense of operating a nearby mansion as a venue, particularly if you happen to be a charitable movement with strong links to the university...
[2]obviously people are only objecting to it for PR purposes because they're not smart enough to realise that capital appreciates and that venues cost money, and definitely not because they've got a pretty good idea how expensive upkeep on little used medieval venues are and how many alternatives exist if you really care about the cost effectiveness of your retreat, especially to charitable movements affiliated with a university...
> If you drew a Venn diagram of the people that objected, people who sneered at the objections[2] and people who identified as rationalists you might only need two circles though...)
I’m a bit confused by this one.
Are you saying that no-one who identifies as rationalist sneered at the objections? Because I don’t think that’s true.
Nope, I'm implying the people sneering at the objections were the self proclaimed rationalists. Other, less contrarian thinkers were more inclined to spot that a $15m heritage building might not be the epitome of cost-effective venues...
They bought one mansion to host fundraisers with the super-rich, which I believe is an important correction. You might disagree with that reasoning as well, but it's definitely not as described.