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His actions made perfect sense from his utilitarian Effective Altruist worldview. He was stealing from rich people, and giving the money to what he saw as "wort
by _yb2s 3y ago
His actions made perfect sense from his utilitarian Effective Altruist worldview. He was stealing from rich people, and giving the money to what he saw as "worthy causes."
He was pretty open even before the collapse about how he decided to get as rich as possible, as fast as possible, at all costs, as long as (in his own moral calculus) the net benefits were positive.
EAs are arguably a 'cult' obsessed with AI risk, which they mostly believe will end the world in the next few years. So to them, that pretty much justifies anything that could help mitigate that risk. He would see it as immoral not to become a criminal in order to fund AI risk research.
Personally, I think these AI risk concerns are legitimate, but I don't agree with these methods.
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- jaidhyani 3y ago> His actions made perfect sense from his utilitarian Effective Altruist worldview. They don't. Everyone in EA (AFAICT) has been pretty clear about this. Lying and undermining trust and institutions does tremendous lasting harm. I am also tired of "people are very concerned about X and think that it's important, so they're basically a cult".
- _yb2s 3y agoI've been involved (or at least following) the rationalist and EA communities since the beginning. I call it a cult somewhat tongue in cheek, but it certainly has a lot more cult-like aspects beyond just "pretty concerned about AI risk." I mean, they have a charismatic leader whose unusual ideas about everything from AI risk to sexuality are more or less carbon copied, and practiced in group houses, etc. in some pretty creepy ways. Literally anyone from the outside would easily be convinced they were pretty much your standard apocalyptic sex cult, just from accurately describing it. I don't really care if people on EA forums don't all agree with SBF, but his type of thinking is standard if you use utilitarianism to make decisions in the real world, and it leads to some pretty horrific stuff. Consequentialism / utilitarianism are widely accepted in EA, and if you take that to the extreme, it can justify things like this.
- bluepizza 3y agoYou won't see me defending EA often. Or ever, actually. But the fact that a few extremists would take an idea way beyond any measure of reason is a human effect, not an EA effect. I can't think of any good ideas that haven't been distorted by a few. That's no reason to abandon them. My personal opinion is that EA is mostly worthless navel gazing, but that doesn't mean that we should dismiss it over the SBFs.
- morelisp 3y agoInstitutionally, EA was defending SBF up until he was arrested, not up until the point he started saying stupid shit. He was doing that for a long time before he was arrested. https://time.com/6262810/sam-bankman-fried-effective-altruism-alameda-ftx/ https://time.com/6262810/sam-bankman-fried-effective-altruis...
- eddtries 3y agoI disagree with this because I was vocally against SBF in the EA forums prior to him being arrested, as were many others.
- morelisp 3y agoWho are you?
- eddtries 3y agoSomeone who used to be vocal on EA Forums & was around for a couple years. I got less involved for other reasons after the whole SBF stuff.
- morelisp 3y agoSo I got "guy who posted on forum" on one side and William MacAskill and Nick Beckstead (and, well, SBF himself - he left CEA voluntarily right?) on the other - which of these would you say has the institutional support?
- wombat-man 3y agoYou still think he was actually going to give away his money?
- eddtries 3y agoI know for a fact he did give away money. I did some data analysis voluntary work for a charity aggregator he used and saw records, he absolutely donated sizeable amounts to charity (as he said he did).
- dustingetz 3y agohe gave away other people’s money to charity, specifically his users’ money that he was entrusted with.
- wombat-man 3y agoOh I didn't know that. He also got a lot of praise for saying he'd give all his fortune away someday. They called him there most generous man. Idk, maybe he would have.
- eddtries 3y agoI think he definitely went off the rails with spending on himself, but he absolutely donated the way he said he was too. There were a lot of questions from charity founders who received funding wondering if they should give back, and there were much larger organisations where they probably had similar discussions but not in the open so I didn’t see them Edit: for context this was a large aggregator for “effective charities” with other billionaires and if you sorted by max he was on top for the years I did data analysis
- TheFreim 3y ago> He was stealing from rich people I am not familiar with all of the intimate details, I did not think that the scam was targeted at "rich people" but rather advertised generally and preyed upon get-rich-quick crypto attitudes. Am I mistaken?
- omginternets 3y agoI share your assessment, and have further observed that the financially insecure are over-represented among the get-rich-quick crowd. Rich people are by and large good at not losing money.
- simonebrunozzi 3y ago> He was stealing from rich people Are you sure? My gut says that he mostly damaged not-rich people. I don't know too much about the specific case, but I know enough about the general crypto space to have an opinion, although not sure how to provide data to support it. You don't provide data either, though.
- kodapoda 3y agoI have a growing concern that by engaging with this argument we are making it more acceptable. It's not OK to steal from "rich people". It's not OK to blame everything on the 1%. Online platforms are filled with garbage about the 1%, and most posters are Americans, all of whom actually are in this 1% globally. If you own a car and/or a home - are you rich? Is it acceptable to steal your $1K investment and spend it on pseudo-EA causes? An argument so ethically bankrupt, I can't believe people even type it on a public forum.
- simonebrunozzi 3y agoMy point is not that it's ok to steal from the rich people. My point is that I suspect that SBF stole mostly from non-rich people, which is also NOT ok.
- kodapoda 3y agoMy frustration about engaging with this argument is in agreement with you—sorry if I wasn't clear. The parent commenter made it seem like FTX only defrauded some abstract rich people, which, according to them, would somehow make it more acceptable.
- kodapoda 3y ago> His actions made perfect sense from his utilitarian Effective Altruist worldview. He was stealing from rich people, and giving the money to what he saw as "worthy causes." Clearly this is a false assumption. He was not stealing from rich people (as if stealing from reach people is a justifiable EA practice), and was not spending the majority of the stolen money on worthy causes (worthy by EA standards). He was buying property for himself and his circle, signing deals with stadiums, covering Alameda Research losses, etc. Even for a deluded man like SBF, don't think it's possible to interpret that as an improvement of the world's conditions.