Not sure how to post these two thoughts so I might as well combine them.
In an ideal world, SBF should have been sentenced to thousands of years in prison. This is partially due to the enormous harm done to both FTX depositors and EA, but mainly for basic deterrence reasons; a risk-neutral person will not mind 25 years in prison if the ex ante upside was becoming a trillionaire.
However, I also think many lessons from SBF’s personal statements e.g. his interview on 80k are still as valid as ever. Just off the top of my head:
Startup-to-give as a high EV career path. Entrepreneurship is why we have OP and SFF! Perhaps also the importance of keeping as much equity as possible, although in the process one should not lie to investors or employees more than is standard.
Ambition and working really hard as success multipliers in entrepreneurship.
A career decision algorithm that includes doing a BOTEC and rejecting options that are 10x worse than others.
It is probably okay to work in an industry that is slightly bad for the world if you do lots of good by donating. [1] (But fraud is still bad, of course.)
Just because SBF stole billions of dollars does not mean he has fewer virtuous personality traits than the average person. He hits at least as many multipliers than the average reader of this forum. But importantly, maximization is perilous; some particular qualities like integrity and good decision-making are absolutely essential, and if you lack them your impact could be multiplied by minus 20.
[1] The unregulated nature of crypto may have allowed the FTX fraud, but things like the zero-sum zero-NPV nature of many cryptoassets, or its negative climate impacts, seem unrelated. Many industries are about this bad for the world, like HFT or some kinds of social media. I do not think people who criticized FTX on these grounds score many points. However, perhaps it was (weak) evidence towards FTX being willing to do harm in general for a perceived greater good, which is maybe plausible especially if Ben Delo also did market manipulation or otherwise acted immorally.
Also note that in the interview, SBF didn’t claim his donations offset a negative direct impact; he said the impact was likely positive, which seems dubious.
Watch team backup: I think we should be incredibly careful about saying things like, “it is probably okay to work in an industry that is slightly bad for the world if you do lots of good by donating”. I’m sure you mean something reasonable when you say this, similar to what’s expressed here, but I still wanted to flag it.
I’m surprised by the disagree votes. Is this because people think I’m saying, ‘in the case of whether it is ever OK to take a harmful job in order to do more good, one ought not to say what one truly believes’?
To clarify, that’s not what I’m trying to say. I’m saying we should have nuanced thoughts about whether it is ever OK to take a harmful job in order to do more good, and we should make sure we’re expressing those thoughts in a nuanced fashion (similar to the 80k article I linked). If you disagree with this I’d be very interested in hearing your reasoning!
Not sure how to post these two thoughts so I might as well combine them.
In an ideal world, SBF should have been sentenced to thousands of years in prison. This is partially due to the enormous harm done to both FTX depositors and EA, but mainly for basic deterrence reasons; a risk-neutral person will not mind 25 years in prison if the ex ante upside was becoming a trillionaire.
However, I also think many lessons from SBF’s personal statements e.g. his interview on 80k are still as valid as ever. Just off the top of my head:
Startup-to-give as a high EV career path. Entrepreneurship is why we have OP and SFF! Perhaps also the importance of keeping as much equity as possible, although in the process one should not lie to investors or employees more than is standard.
Ambition and working really hard as success multipliers in entrepreneurship.
A career decision algorithm that includes doing a BOTEC and rejecting options that are 10x worse than others.
It is probably okay to work in an industry that is slightly bad for the world if you do lots of good by donating. [1] (But fraud is still bad, of course.)
Just because SBF stole billions of dollars does not mean he has fewer virtuous personality traits than the average person. He hits at least as many multipliers than the average reader of this forum. But importantly, maximization is perilous; some particular qualities like integrity and good decision-making are absolutely essential, and if you lack them your impact could be multiplied by minus 20.
[1] The unregulated nature of crypto may have allowed the FTX fraud, but things like the zero-sum zero-NPV nature of many cryptoassets, or its negative climate impacts, seem unrelated. Many industries are about this bad for the world, like HFT or some kinds of social media. I do not think people who criticized FTX on these grounds score many points. However, perhaps it was (weak) evidence towards FTX being willing to do harm in general for a perceived greater good, which is maybe plausible especially if Ben Delo also did market manipulation or otherwise acted immorally.
Also note that in the interview, SBF didn’t claim his donations offset a negative direct impact; he said the impact was likely positive, which seems dubious.
Watch team backup: I think we should be incredibly careful about saying things like, “it is probably okay to work in an industry that is slightly bad for the world if you do lots of good by donating”. I’m sure you mean something reasonable when you say this, similar to what’s expressed here, but I still wanted to flag it.
I’m surprised by the disagree votes. Is this because people think I’m saying, ‘in the case of whether it is ever OK to take a harmful job in order to do more good, one ought not to say what one truly believes’?
To clarify, that’s not what I’m trying to say. I’m saying we should have nuanced thoughts about whether it is ever OK to take a harmful job in order to do more good, and we should make sure we’re expressing those thoughts in a nuanced fashion (similar to the 80k article I linked). If you disagree with this I’d be very interested in hearing your reasoning!