How exactly do you disassociate SBF from EA? The guy grew up with two utilitarian philosopher parents, explicitly started Alameda on earn to give principles, used EA social connections to do Alameda’s first major trades (the yen-denominated BTC arbitrage), and gave a ton of money to EA causes. If he isn’t an effective altruist, no one is!
Yeah, that’s why I think ben.smith’s comment in the same thread here is important. Handling the fallout well requires nuance and some additional degree of self-reflection on the part of EA leaders. (I say “some additional degree” because it’s not like people were completely unaware of these risks – see here.) And I think it would be wrong (and too easy) to see Sam as some kind of cartoon villain. It strongly looks as though some actions were far away from “defensible” but I don’t for a second doubt that his motivation to do good was sincere, and he got impressively far with it and you can understand how he might have felt increasingly more empowered to act in naive-consequentialist ways after seeing all that success.
(Edit: To be clear, “understand” isn’t the same as condone; with enough effort you can maybe also “understand” why the Taliban flew a plane into a building, etc.)
It is important to wait and see what happened in more light. We must not have EA used as a defense of criminal activities, if anything illegal did take place. I don’t mean to throw anyone under the bus here, and I don’t really think I mean ‘disassociate SBF from EA’, I mean we should avoid EA becoming associated with Crypto failures because frankly I believe this will be the first introduction many people have to EA.
Let’s try avoid this trending meme on Twitter becoming the general conception of EA
But EA is, almost certainly, an important part of the story here . It would be very strange to pretend that EA and utilitarian philosophy have nothing to do with why SBF took these risks. It’s not exactly some mysterious connection.
It’s not a mysterious connection but EA must not become synonymous with Fraud under the guise of ‘good’. People should not rob banks to send money to CEA.
Edit: This is a random example, I am not saying Sam robbed a bank!
he probably did rob a bank, actually, insofar as I strongly suspect that Silvergate Capital has some loans outstanding to Alameda that they aren’t getting back....
How exactly do you disassociate SBF from EA? The guy grew up with two utilitarian philosopher parents, explicitly started Alameda on earn to give principles, used EA social connections to do Alameda’s first major trades (the yen-denominated BTC arbitrage), and gave a ton of money to EA causes. If he isn’t an effective altruist, no one is!
Yeah, that’s why I think ben.smith’s comment in the same thread here is important. Handling the fallout well requires nuance and some additional degree of self-reflection on the part of EA leaders. (I say “some additional degree” because it’s not like people were completely unaware of these risks – see here.) And I think it would be wrong (and too easy) to see Sam as some kind of cartoon villain. It strongly looks as though some actions were far away from “defensible” but I don’t for a second doubt that his motivation to do good was sincere, and he got impressively far with it and you can understand how he might have felt increasingly more empowered to act in naive-consequentialist ways after seeing all that success.
(Edit: To be clear, “understand” isn’t the same as condone; with enough effort you can maybe also “understand” why the Taliban flew a plane into a building, etc.)
It is important to wait and see what happened in more light. We must not have EA used as a defense of criminal activities, if anything illegal did take place. I don’t mean to throw anyone under the bus here, and I don’t really think I mean ‘disassociate SBF from EA’, I mean we should avoid EA becoming associated with Crypto failures because frankly I believe this will be the first introduction many people have to EA.
Let’s try avoid this trending meme on Twitter becoming the general conception of EA
https://imgur.com/a/7tYOa7M
And, maybe, this is all water under the bridge in a week and it just goes away.
But EA is, almost certainly, an important part of the story here . It would be very strange to pretend that EA and utilitarian philosophy have nothing to do with why SBF took these risks. It’s not exactly some mysterious connection.
It’s not a mysterious connection but EA must not become synonymous with Fraud under the guise of ‘good’. People should not rob banks to send money to CEA.
Edit: This is a random example, I am not saying Sam robbed a bank!
he probably did rob a bank, actually, insofar as I strongly suspect that Silvergate Capital has some loans outstanding to Alameda that they aren’t getting back....