Did people in the general EA polysphere know about the FTX polycule environment, and in particular that the CEOs of FTX and Alameda were sleeping together on a regular basis? If so, this probably should have raised a lot of people’s estimates of financial misconduct. I wouldn’t expect EAs to be especially savvy as to all the weird arbitrage trades in the crypto space and how they could go wrong, so missing that is very forgivable, but I would expect high-level EAs to be extremely aware of who is fucking who.
Normally I would downvote a claim without evidence. But if this is true, it would help explain why FTX bailed out Alameda using customer funds. And it would have important implications for how EA views conflicts of interest from romantic relationships in other areas.
AI Safety has plenty of romantic relationships between important people. To name just one relationship that has been made fully public and transparent, Holden Karnofsky is married to Daniella Amodei, President of Anthropic and sister to Dario Amodei, an advisor to OpenPhil on AI Safety. I think it’s reasonable to believe that Dario has had more influence over OpenPhil’s institutional views, and that OpenPhil has a higher opinion of Anthropic, than would be true without this romantic relationship.
My perception is that many EAs think romantic relationships don’t often cause problematic conflicts of interest. Sabs’ comment was downvoted heavily for reasons such as Lukas’s below. I have previously drafted posts similar to this one and not published them because of fear of backlash.
I don’t want to name other relationships mostly because it wouldn’t solve the problem. I don’t think romance between coworkers is always wrong — I’m currently dating someone I used to work with, though our relationship only started after she left the company. But when grantmakers are taking advice from or giving grants to people they’re romantically involved with, I think there’s a lot of room for compromised decision making. These conflicts of interest should at least be public, and better yet avoided entirely.
I’d add that some (maybe even many) potential conflicts of interest can be legitimately waived, but that it is not the decision of the person with the potential conflict to make. Furthermore, the waiver decision should generally be based on the best interests of the organization, employer, community, mission, etc. rather than the conflicted party’s own interests.
Downvoted for several reasons: because I would expect colleagues in any work environment to hook up, because I think it’s very unkind to assume sexual relations in the workplace are indicative of a problem, because I’m against outing people’s sex lifes unless directly relevant to a scandal. And finally, because it seems unnecessary to mention polyamory when talking about two people hooking up.
(Retracted after more consideration. I still disagree with the wording of the comment I responded to but can now see it points towards a real problem)
This is nonsense. Financial firms typically have strict disclosure rules about relationships between colleagues because ppl will commit fraud out of loyalty to ppl they’re fucking. As, y’know, may well have happened here!
This would be reportable and disqualifying in a lot of industries. For instance, if a prosecutor is having (or recently had) a sexual relationship with a defense attorney, it would be wildly inappropriate for them to be on the same case. It is impossible to maintain objectivity in that kind of dual relationship. A foundation employee should not be evaluating a grant proposal from someone they are sleeping with. And so on. So one doesn’t even have to even considered the possibility of fraud to have realized how improper this would have been if true.
To generalize the your earlier comment, and to probably sound older than I am, it sounds like FTX/Alameda was not at all run in a professionally appropriate or “grown up” manner. How aware was the community of that characteristic more generally?
There was likely no FTX polycule (a Manifold question resolved 15%) but I was aware that the FTX and Alameda CEOs were dating. I had gone to a couple of FTX events but try to avoid gossip, so my guess is that half of the well-connected EAs had heard gossip about this.
I do not know whether there was a polycule environment in FTX. However, if there was and such environment is materially correlated with financial misconduct, I think it is legitimate to use that as evidence for financial misconduct.
Did people in the general EA polysphere know about the FTX polycule environment, and in particular that the CEOs of FTX and Alameda were sleeping together on a regular basis? If so, this probably should have raised a lot of people’s estimates of financial misconduct. I wouldn’t expect EAs to be especially savvy as to all the weird arbitrage trades in the crypto space and how they could go wrong, so missing that is very forgivable, but I would expect high-level EAs to be extremely aware of who is fucking who.
Normally I would downvote a claim without evidence. But if this is true, it would help explain why FTX bailed out Alameda using customer funds. And it would have important implications for how EA views conflicts of interest from romantic relationships in other areas.
AI Safety has plenty of romantic relationships between important people. To name just one relationship that has been made fully public and transparent, Holden Karnofsky is married to Daniella Amodei, President of Anthropic and sister to Dario Amodei, an advisor to OpenPhil on AI Safety. I think it’s reasonable to believe that Dario has had more influence over OpenPhil’s institutional views, and that OpenPhil has a higher opinion of Anthropic, than would be true without this romantic relationship.
My perception is that many EAs think romantic relationships don’t often cause problematic conflicts of interest. Sabs’ comment was downvoted heavily for reasons such as Lukas’s below. I have previously drafted posts similar to this one and not published them because of fear of backlash.
I don’t want to name other relationships mostly because it wouldn’t solve the problem. I don’t think romance between coworkers is always wrong — I’m currently dating someone I used to work with, though our relationship only started after she left the company. But when grantmakers are taking advice from or giving grants to people they’re romantically involved with, I think there’s a lot of room for compromised decision making. These conflicts of interest should at least be public, and better yet avoided entirely.
Julia Wise writes about this a bit here: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/fovDwkBQgTqRMoHZM/power-dynamics-between-people-in-ea
I’d add that some (maybe even many) potential conflicts of interest can be legitimately waived, but that it is not the decision of the person with the potential conflict to make. Furthermore, the waiver decision should generally be based on the best interests of the organization, employer, community, mission, etc. rather than the conflicted party’s own interests.
Downvoted for several reasons: because I would expect colleagues in any work environment to hook up, because I think it’s very unkind to assume sexual relations in the workplace are indicative of a problem, because I’m against outing people’s sex lifes unless directly relevant to a scandal. And finally, because it seems unnecessary to mention polyamory when talking about two people hooking up.
(Retracted after more consideration. I still disagree with the wording of the comment I responded to but can now see it points towards a real problem)
This is nonsense. Financial firms typically have strict disclosure rules about relationships between colleagues because ppl will commit fraud out of loyalty to ppl they’re fucking. As, y’know, may well have happened here!
This would be reportable and disqualifying in a lot of industries. For instance, if a prosecutor is having (or recently had) a sexual relationship with a defense attorney, it would be wildly inappropriate for them to be on the same case. It is impossible to maintain objectivity in that kind of dual relationship. A foundation employee should not be evaluating a grant proposal from someone they are sleeping with. And so on. So one doesn’t even have to even considered the possibility of fraud to have realized how improper this would have been if true.
To generalize the your earlier comment, and to probably sound older than I am, it sounds like FTX/Alameda was not at all run in a professionally appropriate or “grown up” manner. How aware was the community of that characteristic more generally?
I sense there wasn’t an FTX polcule. Though disagreevote if you think there was.
There was likely no FTX polycule (a Manifold question resolved 15%) but I was aware that the FTX and Alameda CEOs were dating. I had gone to a couple of FTX events but try to avoid gossip, so my guess is that half of the well-connected EAs had heard gossip about this.
It resolved to my personal credence so you shouldn’t take that more seriously than “nathan thinks it unlikely that”
I do not know whether there was a polycule environment in FTX. However, if there was and such environment is materially correlated with financial misconduct, I think it is legitimate to use that as evidence for financial misconduct.