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It’s not the amount you donate relative to others, it’s the amount you donate relative to how much you are capable of donating. Not many people would work a hig

It’s not the amount you donate relative to others, it’s the amount you donate relative to how much you are capable of donating. Not many people would work a high-stress, high-barrier-to-entry job and give away almost everything they earned, while their peers live richly. Even if we accept that the average person usually acts morally when confronted with an obvious moral choice, they still fall morally behind someone who actively exerts themselves to the limit of their ability for the benefit of needy people who they’ve never even met. Maybe we just disagree about where the “average person” is morally? Or maybe you’re ascribing selfish intent to selfless action because the hypothetical person works in finance and/or makes lots of money?

tptacek 4y ago
That is not what Scott Aaronson said. It's what you might believe; fair enough! Sacrificial giving is a big thing in the religion I belong to, too! Aaronson is making a point that minmaxing absolute donations (even, in this specific case, if it means defrauding thousands of customers) is a pathway towards moral superiority.
- rcoveson 4y ago
  I think I'm confused about whether you're rejecting the proposition about the investor all on its own, or if it's the broader argument from the Aaronson post that you're rejecting. Your parenthetical makes me think we're not talking about the charitable-investor-propsition anymore; we're now talking about a specific investor who did something that appears to have been very risky and possibly very unethical. My interpretation of Aaronson is that he thinks the hypothetical charitable investor is a good example of a very moral person, and we can use that example to imagine how we might have felt about SBF in an alternate universe where his bets paid off. But Aaronson also concludes: > At any rate, I’d try to impress on him, as I do on anyone reading now, that the choice between linear and concave utilities, between risk-neutrality and risk-aversion, is not bloodless or technical—that it’s essential to make a choice that’s not only in reflective equilibrium with your highest values, but that you’ll still consider to be such regardless of which possible universe you end up in. This isn't a post lionizing SBF. He is compared to but also contrasted with the "charitable traditional investor". The contrast is the degree of risk which, as you say, could be considered fraud. I don't come away from this thinking that Aaronson believes that SBF in particular is "way ahead of most of us morally".

tptacek 4y ago

That is not what Scott Aaronson said. It's what you might believe; fair enough! Sacrificial giving is a big thing in the religion I belong to, too! Aaronson is making a point that minmaxing absolute donations (even, in this specific case, if it means defrauding thousands of customers) is a pathway towards moral superiority.

rcoveson 4y ago
I think I'm confused about whether you're rejecting the proposition about the investor all on its own, or if it's the broader argument from the Aaronson post that you're rejecting. Your parenthetical makes me think we're not talking about the charitable-investor-propsition anymore; we're now talking about a specific investor who did something that appears to have been very risky and possibly very unethical. My interpretation of Aaronson is that he thinks the hypothetical charitable investor is a good example of a very moral person, and we can use that example to imagine how we might have felt about SBF in an alternate universe where his bets paid off. But Aaronson also concludes: > At any rate, I’d try to impress on him, as I do on anyone reading now, that the choice between linear and concave utilities, between risk-neutrality and risk-aversion, is not bloodless or technical—that it’s essential to make a choice that’s not only in reflective equilibrium with your highest values, but that you’ll still consider to be such regardless of which possible universe you end up in. This isn't a post lionizing SBF. He is compared to but also contrasted with the "charitable traditional investor". The contrast is the degree of risk which, as you say, could be considered fraud. I don't come away from this thinking that Aaronson believes that SBF in particular is "way ahead of most of us morally".