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Don’t teach your kids Consequentialism folks.

• candiddevmike 3y ago
  Do teach your kids not to steal from rich people, lest there be real consequences
  • gizajob 3y ago
    Kind of my point. His mother, as part of her role as a professor of legal ethics, wrote a paper or two in support of consequentialism - that only the consequences of ethical actions are what is important. The issue with this, is that one can't tell in advance what they are, especially if it leads one to becoming completely ethically bankrupt while hoping for the best of all possible outcomes.
  • jowea 3y ago
    A bunch of average people who put their money into FTX too. Consider all the advertising.
• alephnan 3y ago
  Effective Consequentialism
• sp332 3y ago
  And if you teach them about expected value, also teach risk of ruin.
  • slibhb 3y ago
    Extremely prescient exchange between SBF and Tyler Cowen: COWEN: Okay, but let’s say there’s a game: 51 percent, you double the Earth out somewhere else; 49 percent, it all disappears. Would you play that game? And would you keep on playing that, double or nothing? BANKMAN-FRIED: With one caveat. Let me give the caveat first, just to be a party pooper, which is, I’m assuming these are noninteracting universes. Is that right? Because to the extent they’re in the same universe, then maybe duplicating doesn’t actually double the value because maybe they would have colonized the other one anyway, eventually. COWEN: But holding all that constant, you’re actually getting two Earths, but you’re risking a 49 percent chance of it all disappearing. BANKMAN-FRIED: Again, I feel compelled to say caveats here, like, “How do you really know that’s what’s happening?” Blah, blah, blah, whatever. But that aside, take the pure hypothetical. COWEN: Then you keep on playing the game. So, what’s the chance we’re left with anything? Don’t I just St. Petersburg paradox you into nonexistence? BANKMAN-FRIED: Well, not necessarily. Maybe you St. Petersburg paradox into an enormously valuable existence. That’s the other option.
• Smaug123 3y ago
  The consequences were in fact catastrophic for SBF, so this surely can't be a demonstration that consequentialism is bad. If a magic oracle (that's always been right before) had told SBF that this was going to happen, he presumably wouldn't have done it, because as a good consequentialist he would recognise that its consequences were bad for him. He literally told us the problem, at least once, when he appeared on Conversations with Tyler well before all this came out. He said himself that he would fall victim to the St Petersburg paradox: > COWEN: Then you keep on playing the game. So, what’s the chance we’re left with anything? Don’t I just St. Petersburg paradox you into nonexistence? > BANKMAN-FRIED: Well, not necessarily. Maybe you St. Petersburg paradox into an enormously valuable existence. That’s the other option. (When I listened to it at the time, I didn't believe he could possibly believe this, because it's so patently absurd. I even remember exactly where I was at the time that I heard him say this on the podcast, it stuck out so badly. But it turns out he did believe it!)
• jowea 3y ago
  What part of consequentialism tells you anything Sam from getting involved into cryptocurrency to going on a media tour did was a good idea?
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]