I don’t know much about how this all works but how relevant do you think this point is?
If Sequoia Capital can get fooled—presumably after more due diligence and apparent access to books than you could possibly have gotten while dealing with the charitable arm of FTX FF that was itself almost certainly in the dark—then there is no reasonable way you could have known.
[Edit: I don’t think the OP had included the Eliezer tweet in the question when I originally posted this. My point is basically already covered in the OP now.]
It’s a relevant point but I think we can reasonably expect EA leadership to do better at vetting megadonors than Sequoia due to (a) more context on the situation, e.g. EAs should have known more about SBF’s past than Sequoia and/or could have found it out more easily via social and professional connections (b) more incentive to avoid downside risks, e.g. the SBF blowup matters a lot more for EA’s reputation than Sequoia’s.
To be clear, this does not apply to charities receiving money from FTXFF, that is a separate question from EA leadership.
You expect the people being given free cash to do a better job of due diligence than the people handing someone a giant cash pile?
Not to mention that the Future Fund donations probably did more good for EA causes than the reputational damage is going to do harm to them (making the further assumption that this is actually net reputational damage, as opposed to a bunch of free coverage that pushes some people off and attracts some other people).
If we are so f*****g clever as to know what risks everyone else misses and how to avoid them, how come we didn’t spot that one of our best and brightest was actually a massive fraudster
And also the community’s reputation to a very significant degree. It was arguably the biggest mistake EA has made thus far (or the biggest one that has become obvious – could imagine we’re making other mistakes that aren’t yet obvious).
Do you think EAs should stop having opinions on extinction risks because they made a mistake in a different relevant domain (insufficient cynicism in the social realm)? I don’t see the logic here.
I think a) and b) are good points. Although there’s also c) it’s reasonable to give extra trust points to a member of the community who’s just given you a not-insignificant part of their wealth to spend on charitable endeavours as you see fit.
Note that I’m obviously not saying this implied SBF was super trustworthy on balance, just that it’s a reasonable consideration pushing in the other direction when making the comparison with Sequoia who lacked most of this context (I do think it’s a good thing that we give each other trust points for signalling and demonstrating commitments to EA).
The thing is, whilst SBF pledged ~all his wealth to EA causes, he only actually gave ~1-2% before the shit hit the fan. It seems doubtful that any significant amounts beyond this were ever donated to a non-SBF/FTX-controlled separate legal entity (e.g. the Future Fund or FTX Foundation). That should’ve raised some suspicions for those in the know. (Note this is speculation based on what is said in the Future Fund resignation post; would be good to actually hear from them about this).
The quote you’re citing is an argument for abject helplessness. We shouldn’t be so confident in our own utter lack of capacity for risk management that we fund this work with $0.
I don’t know much about how this all works but how relevant do you think this point is?
[Edit: I don’t think the OP had included the Eliezer tweet in the question when I originally posted this. My point is basically already covered in the OP now.]
It’s a relevant point but I think we can reasonably expect EA leadership to do better at vetting megadonors than Sequoia due to (a) more context on the situation, e.g. EAs should have known more about SBF’s past than Sequoia and/or could have found it out more easily via social and professional connections (b) more incentive to avoid downside risks, e.g. the SBF blowup matters a lot more for EA’s reputation than Sequoia’s.
To be clear, this does not apply to charities receiving money from FTXFF, that is a separate question from EA leadership.
You expect the people being given free cash to do a better job of due diligence than the people handing someone a giant cash pile?
Not to mention that the Future Fund donations probably did more good for EA causes than the reputational damage is going to do harm to them (making the further assumption that this is actually net reputational damage, as opposed to a bunch of free coverage that pushes some people off and attracts some other people).
Also, to be pithy:
If we are so f*****g clever as to know what risks everyone else misses and how to avoid them, how come we didn’t spot that one of our best and brightest was actually a massive fraudster
I haven’t expected EAs to have any unusual skill at spotting risks.
EAs have been unusual at distinguishing risks based on their magnitude. The risks from FTX didn’t look much like the risk of human extinction.
But half our resources to combat human extinction were at risk due to risks to FTX. Why didn’t we take that more seriously.
And also the community’s reputation to a very significant degree. It was arguably the biggest mistake EA has made thus far (or the biggest one that has become obvious – could imagine we’re making other mistakes that aren’t yet obvious).
Do you think EAs should stop having opinions on extinction risks because they made a mistake in a different relevant domain (insufficient cynicism in the social realm)? I don’t see the logic here.
I think a) and b) are good points. Although there’s also c) it’s reasonable to give extra trust points to a member of the community who’s just given you a not-insignificant part of their wealth to spend on charitable endeavours as you see fit.
Note that I’m obviously not saying this implied SBF was super trustworthy on balance, just that it’s a reasonable consideration pushing in the other direction when making the comparison with Sequoia who lacked most of this context (I do think it’s a good thing that we give each other trust points for signalling and demonstrating commitments to EA).
The thing is, whilst SBF pledged ~all his wealth to EA causes, he only actually gave ~1-2% before the shit hit the fan. It seems doubtful that any significant amounts beyond this were ever donated to a non-SBF/FTX-controlled separate legal entity (e.g. the Future Fund or FTX Foundation). That should’ve raised some suspicions for those in the know. (Note this is speculation based on what is said in the Future Fund resignation post; would be good to actually hear from them about this).
The quote you’re citing is an argument for abject helplessness. We shouldn’t be so confident in our own utter lack of capacity for risk management that we fund this work with $0.