My hope and expectation is that neither will be focused on EA
I’d be surprised [p<0.1] if EA was not a significant focus of the Michael Lewis book – but agree that it’s unlikely to be the major topic. Many leaders at FTX and Alameda Research are closely linked to EA. SBF often, and publically, said that effective altruism was a big reason for his actions. His connection to EA is interesting both for understanding his motivation and as a story-telling element. There are Manifold prediction markets on whether the book would mention 80′000h (74%), Open Philanthropy (74%), and Give Well (80%), but these markets aren’t traded a lot and are not very informative.[1]
This video titled The Fake Genius: A $30 BILLION Fraud (2.8 million views, posted 3 weeks ago) might give a glimpse of how EA could be handled. The video touches on EA but isn’t centred on it. It discusses the role EAs played in motivating SBF to do earning to give, and in starting Alameda Research and FTX. It also points out that, after the fallout at Alameda Research, ‘higher-ups’ at CEA were warned about SBF but supposedly ignored the warnings. Overall, the video is mainly interested in the mechanisms of how the suspected fraud happened, where EA is only one piece of the puzzle. One can equally get a sense of “EA led SBF to do fraud” as “SBF used EA as a front to do fraud”.
ETA: The book description[2] “mentions “philanthropy”, makes it clear that it’s mainly about SBF and not FTX as a firm, and describes the book as partly a psychological portrait.
“In Going Infinite Lewis sets out to answer this question, taking readers into the mind of Bankman-Fried, whose rise and fall offers an education in high-frequency trading, cryptocurrencies, philanthropy, bankruptcy, and the justice system. Both psychological portrait and financial roller-coaster ride, Going Infinite is Michael Lewis at the top of his game, tracing the mind-bending trajectory of a character who never liked the rules and was allowed to live by his own—until it all came undone.”
Yeah, unfortunately I suspect that “he claimed to be an altruist doing good! As part of this weird framework/community!” is going to be substantial part of what makes this an interesting story for writers/media, and what makes it more interesting than “he was doing criminal things in crypto” (which I suspect is just not that interesting on its own at this point, even at such a large scale).
The Panorama episode briefly mentioned EA. Peter Singer spoke for a couple of minutes and EA was mainly viewed as charity that would be missing out on money. There seemed to be a lot more interest on the internal discussions within FTX, crypto drama, the politicians, celebrities etc.
Maybe Panorama is an outlier but potentially EA is not that interesting to most people or seemingly too complicated to explain if you only have an hour.
Yeah I was interviewed for a podcast by a canadian station on this topic (cos a canadian hedge fund was very involved). iirc they had 6 episodes but dropped the EA angle because it was too complex.
Agree with this and also with the point below that the EA angle is kind of too complicated to be super compelling for a broad audience. I thought this New Yorker piece’s discussion (which involved EA a decent amount in a way I thought was quite fair—https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/10/02/inside-sam-bankman-frieds-family-bubble) might give a sense of magnitude (though the NYer audience is going to be more interested in these sort of nuances than most.
The other factors I think are: 1. to what extent there are vivid new tidbits or revelations in Lewis’s book that relate to EA and 2. the drama around Caroline Ellison and other witnesses at trial and the extent to which that is connected to EA; my guess is the drama around the cooperating witnesses will seem very interesting on a human level, though I don’t necessarily think that will point towards the effective altruism community specifically.
Yeah, “touches on EA but isn’t centred on it” is my modal prediction for how major stories will go. I expect that more minor stories (e.g. the daily “here’s what happened on day n of the trial” story) will usually not mention EA. But obviously it’s hard to predict these things with much confidence.
I’d be surprised [p<0.1] if EA was not a significant focus of the Michael Lewis book – but agree that it’s unlikely to be the major topic. Many leaders at FTX and Alameda Research are closely linked to EA. SBF often, and publically, said that effective altruism was a big reason for his actions. His connection to EA is interesting both for understanding his motivation and as a story-telling element. There are Manifold prediction markets on whether the book would mention 80′000h (74%), Open Philanthropy (74%), and Give Well (80%), but these markets aren’t traded a lot and are not very informative.[1]
This video titled The Fake Genius: A $30 BILLION Fraud (2.8 million views, posted 3 weeks ago) might give a glimpse of how EA could be handled. The video touches on EA but isn’t centred on it. It discusses the role EAs played in motivating SBF to do earning to give, and in starting Alameda Research and FTX. It also points out that, after the fallout at Alameda Research, ‘higher-ups’ at CEA were warned about SBF but supposedly ignored the warnings. Overall, the video is mainly interested in the mechanisms of how the suspected fraud happened, where EA is only one piece of the puzzle. One can equally get a sense of “EA led SBF to do fraud” as “SBF used EA as a front to do fraud”.
ETA:
The book description[2] “mentions “philanthropy”, makes it clear that it’s mainly about SBF and not FTX as a firm, and describes the book as partly a psychological portrait.
I also created a similar market for CEA, but with 2 mentions as the resolving criteria. One mention is very likely as SBF worked briefly for them.
“In Going Infinite Lewis sets out to answer this question, taking readers into the mind of Bankman-Fried, whose rise and fall offers an education in high-frequency trading, cryptocurrencies, philanthropy, bankruptcy, and the justice system. Both psychological portrait and financial roller-coaster ride, Going Infinite is Michael Lewis at the top of his game, tracing the mind-bending trajectory of a character who never liked the rules and was allowed to live by his own—until it all came undone.”
Yeah, unfortunately I suspect that “he claimed to be an altruist doing good! As part of this weird framework/community!” is going to be substantial part of what makes this an interesting story for writers/media, and what makes it more interesting than “he was doing criminal things in crypto” (which I suspect is just not that interesting on its own at this point, even at such a large scale).
The Panorama episode briefly mentioned EA. Peter Singer spoke for a couple of minutes and EA was mainly viewed as charity that would be missing out on money. There seemed to be a lot more interest on the internal discussions within FTX, crypto drama, the politicians, celebrities etc.
Maybe Panorama is an outlier but potentially EA is not that interesting to most people or seemingly too complicated to explain if you only have an hour.
Yeah I was interviewed for a podcast by a canadian station on this topic (cos a canadian hedge fund was very involved). iirc they had 6 episodes but dropped the EA angle because it was too complex.
Good to know, thank you.
Agree with this and also with the point below that the EA angle is kind of too complicated to be super compelling for a broad audience. I thought this New Yorker piece’s discussion (which involved EA a decent amount in a way I thought was quite fair—https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/10/02/inside-sam-bankman-frieds-family-bubble) might give a sense of magnitude (though the NYer audience is going to be more interested in these sort of nuances than most.
The other factors I think are: 1. to what extent there are vivid new tidbits or revelations in Lewis’s book that relate to EA and 2. the drama around Caroline Ellison and other witnesses at trial and the extent to which that is connected to EA; my guess is the drama around the cooperating witnesses will seem very interesting on a human level, though I don’t necessarily think that will point towards the effective altruism community specifically.
Michael Lewis wouldn’t do it as a gotcha/sneer, but this is a reason I’ll be upset if Adam McKay ends up with the movie.
Update: the court ruled SBF can’t make reference to his philanthropy
Yeah, “touches on EA but isn’t centred on it” is my modal prediction for how major stories will go. I expect that more minor stories (e.g. the daily “here’s what happened on day n of the trial” story) will usually not mention EA. But obviously it’s hard to predict these things with much confidence.