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When I look at large foundations making multimillion-dollar decisions while keeping their data and reasoning "confidential" – all I see is a gigantic pile of the most unbelievably mind-blowing arrogance of all time. I'm serious.

— Holden Karnofsky

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More quotes by Holden Karnofsky

I have more pet peeves than anyone else I know, and one of the very biggest ones is what I call flakes: people who say they'll do something, then back out without giving me the communication I need to adjust my plans.

I'm creative and intelligent and able to rock the boat and do things that can create uncomfortable situations and then not be bothered about it. But I'm not the best diplomat, I don't have a lot of patience for being sunny and making people happy.

These days, my answer is if it's really primarily of interest to a very cosmopolitan philanthropist trying to help the whole future, and there's no one client and it's not frontier advancing, then I think that does make it pretty plausible to me that there's no one doing it.

I update negatively on people who mislead (including expressing great confidence while being wrong, and especially including avoidable mischaracterizations of others' views); people who do tangible damage (usually by misleading); and people who create little of value despite large amounts of opportunity and time investment.

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Holden Karnofsky (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.