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Comment by throwawayk7h | Hacker News Reader

That castle was found to be more cost-effective than any other space the group could have purchased, for the simple reason that almost nobody wants castles anymore. It was chosen because it was the best calculation; the optics of it were not considered.

It would be less disingenuous if you were to say EA is the "it's objectively better for humanity if you give us money to buy a conference space in France than whatever you'd do with it" crowd -- the fact that it was a castle shouldn't be relevant.

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Nobody wants castles anymore because they’re impractical and difficult to maintain. It’s not some sort of taboo or psychological block, it’s entirely practical.

Actually, the fact that people think castles are cool suggests that the going price for them is higher than their concrete utility would make it, since demand would be boosted by people who want a castle because it’s cool.

Did these guys have some special use case where it made sense, or did they think they were the only ones smart enough to see that it’s actually worth buying?

> That castle was found to be more cost-effective than any other space the group could have purchased

In other words, they investigated themselves and cleared themselves of any wrongdoing.

It was obvious at the time that they didn't need a 20 million dollar castle for a meeting space, let alone any other meeting space that large.

They also put the castle up for sale 2 years later to "use the proceeds from the sale to support high-impact charities" which was what they were supposed to be doing all along.

The depressing part is that the "optics" of buying a castle are pretty good if you care about attracting interest from elite "respectable" donors, who might just look down on you if you give off the impression of being a bunch of socially inept geeks who are just obsessed with doing the most good they can for the world at large.

Both are factual, the longer statement has more nuance, which is unsurprising. If the emphasis on the castle and SBF - out of all the things and people you could highlight about EA - concisely gives away that I have a negative opinion of it then that was intended. I view SBF as an unsurprising, if extreme, consequence of that kind of thinking. I have a harder time making any sense of the OP story in this context, that's why I was seeking clarification here.

The irony of pure rationalists buying a castle, unable to see what every other market participant can.

Why buy a conference space. Most pubs will give you a seperate room if you promise to spend some money at the bar. There are probably free spaces had they researched.

If I am donating money and you are buying a conference space on day 1 I'd want it to be filled with experienced ex-UN field type of people and Nobel peace prize winners.

Otherwise it looks like a grift.

Somewhere between “once a year” conferences hosted at hotels and the continual conferences of a university lies the point where buying a building makes sense.

The biggest downside, of course, is all your conferences are now in the same location

I'd love to see the logic they used to determine the castle was the best option.

Optics are an important part of being effective

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