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I wouldn't say that the movement was entirely associated with him at all! He donated to a lot of EA organizations, sure, but Bernie Madoff donated to a lot of J

I wouldn't say that the movement was entirely associated with him at all! He donated to a lot of EA organizations, sure, but Bernie Madoff donated to a lot of Jewish charities yet that doesn't cause Judaism to be associated with scam artists. Now the complaint that EA influenced SBF to do the bad things that he did, that's a much more valid complaint about the principles. But i think that's just a coincidental association, rather then a causal one. Nowhere does EA suggest doing short term bad things in exchange for long term good things. It suggests "earning to give", but that's not at all why SBF is considered a bad person. He stole money and committed fraud, plain and simple. EA has advocated against that in the past, and continues to. The most you can say about EA imo is that it's concern about alleviating large scale suffering allowed SBF to internally justify doing bad things in exchange for doing a lot of future good. And sure, if your message is corruptible easily that's a problem with your message. But there is literally always going to be people mis-interpreting your message, or worse yet people intentionally using your message as cover while knowing full well they are disobeying it. That happens with social justice movements, leftist movement, rightist movements, literally any message ever has had this problem. It's a problem that should have lessons learned from it, but if it invalidated the movement i don't think there is a single valid movement left on earth.

BlueTemplar 3y ago
One question is : how exactly did SBF come to his... "interesting" interpretation of the expected value of money ? And the vocabulary and the whole framework that he has been using to think about these issues come with their own values and consequences, AFAIK widely shared inside EA ?
jprete 3y ago
I think there's a strand of EA that goes hardcore utilitarian, because utilitarianism is the only thing that is both logical and universally fair. And that specific strand of EA is IMO very very vulnerable to ends-justify-means kind of thinking. SBF doesn't even have to be a fake EAer to have done what he did. He just has to be a hard-utilitarian EAer who thinks there's a way to rob the world and repurpose the money to the most likely path to infinite utility.
- metalcrow 3y ago
  Agreed, utilitarianism definitely causes people to suffer from "i am smarter than everyone else"-itis (and i say that as a hardcore utilitarian). The good news from this is that hopefully this make other utilitarians enter the odds of failure, and that they are less likely to succeeded then they think, into their calculus. The only difference between a utilitarian that creates a positive impact (Bill Gates for example, even though i don't think he's utilitarian) and SBF is that SBF was overconfident and suffered from delusions of grandeur.
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    Possibly Bill Gates' focus on solving a massive problem, without utilitarian whataboutism, is what makes him genuinely effective.
    - metalcrow 3y ago
      The utilitarianism "whataboutism" is what allows most people to see and be motivated to solve (real) massive problems. Most people don't care about solving world hunger, it's only if you really understand the depth and suffering of that problem do you know how badly it has to be solved. You either get lucky enough to have your emotions line up with it, or you figure it out via utility. Plus, emotions can lead you into solving fake massive problems just as easily as real. Mormons are certainly highly motivated into solving the problems of a lack of God in our society.
      - robertlagrant 3y ago
        > You either get lucky enough to have your emotions line up with it, or you figure it out via utility Emotions are what enable us to decide what is the most utility. It's accounting, not finance.
sanderjd 3y ago
> I wouldn't say that the movement was entirely associated with him at all! Unfortunately, this is a bubble perspective. I (and I assume you) have known people who have been interested in or involved with or have been talking about effective altruism for many years. This is probably true of most people here on HN and in our broader techie bubbles. But for every person like us who first heard of effective altruism years ago, there are now a couple orders of magnitude more people who have only heard of it within the past year, entirely because of SBF's rise and fall. It's a shame! But that's just how it works when some niche thing becomes mainstream via some famous person. Sometimes that publicity is good for that niche thing, but it is fundamentally a risky proposition, because famous people are fallible and their reputations are inevitably tied into the things associated with them.
- metalcrow 3y ago
  Fair point. Although just in terms of PR, that is at least fixable. But yes, you're absolutely right about the bubble.
  - sanderjd 3y ago
    Frankly, I very much doubt it is fixable. But perhaps it is re-brandable. Few enough people know what effective altruism actually is, that if people start talking about the same thing under a different name, not all that many people will make the connection that it's the same thing they have this hazy negative association with.

BlueTemplar 3y ago

One question is : how exactly did SBF come to his... "interesting" interpretation of the expected value of money ? And the vocabulary and the whole framework that he has been using to think about these issues come with their own values and consequences, AFAIK widely shared inside EA ?

jprete 3y ago

I think there's a strand of EA that goes hardcore utilitarian, because utilitarianism is the only thing that is both logical and universally fair. And that specific strand of EA is IMO very very vulnerable to ends-justify-means kind of thinking. SBF doesn't even have to be a fake EAer to have done what he did. He just has to be a hard-utilitarian EAer who thinks there's a way to rob the world and repurpose the money to the most likely path to infinite utility.

metalcrow 3y ago
Agreed, utilitarianism definitely causes people to suffer from "i am smarter than everyone else"-itis (and i say that as a hardcore utilitarian). The good news from this is that hopefully this make other utilitarians enter the odds of failure, and that they are less likely to succeeded then they think, into their calculus. The only difference between a utilitarian that creates a positive impact (Bill Gates for example, even though i don't think he's utilitarian) and SBF is that SBF was overconfident and suffered from delusions of grandeur.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  Possibly Bill Gates' focus on solving a massive problem, without utilitarian whataboutism, is what makes him genuinely effective.
  - metalcrow 3y ago
    The utilitarianism "whataboutism" is what allows most people to see and be motivated to solve (real) massive problems. Most people don't care about solving world hunger, it's only if you really understand the depth and suffering of that problem do you know how badly it has to be solved. You either get lucky enough to have your emotions line up with it, or you figure it out via utility. Plus, emotions can lead you into solving fake massive problems just as easily as real. Mormons are certainly highly motivated into solving the problems of a lack of God in our society.
    - robertlagrant 3y ago
      > You either get lucky enough to have your emotions line up with it, or you figure it out via utility Emotions are what enable us to decide what is the most utility. It's accounting, not finance.

sanderjd 3y ago

> I wouldn't say that the movement was entirely associated with him at all! Unfortunately, this is a bubble perspective. I (and I assume you) have known people who have been interested in or involved with or have been talking about effective altruism for many years. This is probably true of most people here on HN and in our broader techie bubbles. But for every person like us who first heard of effective altruism years ago, there are now a couple orders of magnitude more people who have only heard of it within the past year, entirely because of SBF's rise and fall. It's a shame! But that's just how it works when some niche thing becomes mainstream via some famous person. Sometimes that publicity is good for that niche thing, but it is fundamentally a risky proposition, because famous people are fallible and their reputations are inevitably tied into the things associated with them.

metalcrow 3y ago
Fair point. Although just in terms of PR, that is at least fixable. But yes, you're absolutely right about the bubble.
- sanderjd 3y ago
  Frankly, I very much doubt it is fixable. But perhaps it is re-brandable. Few enough people know what effective altruism actually is, that if people start talking about the same thing under a different name, not all that many people will make the connection that it's the same thing they have this hazy negative association with.