I could imagine making that case, but what’s the point of all the Givewell-style analysis of evidence, or all the detailed attempts to predict and value the future, if in the end, what would have been the single biggest allocation of EA funds for all time was being proposed based on vibes?
Like with Wytham Abbey, I’m really surprised by people in this thread confusing investments with donations.
If SBF had invested some billions in Twitter, the money wouldn’t be burned, see e.g. what happened with Anthropic.
From his (and most people’s) perspective, SBF was running FTX with ~1% the employees of comparable platforms, so it seemed plausible he could buy Twitter, cut 90% of the workforce like Musk did, and make money while at the same time steering it to be more scout-mindset and truth-seeking oriented.
I’ve never seen a good business case for valuing Twitter at anywhere near the $44B it took to acquire. SBF didn’t have nearly that much available, so he’d still be looking at Musk as the majority owner....and it was 100 percent foreseeable that Musk had his own ideological axes to grind. That SBF ran FTX lean seems weak evidence that he could cut 90 percent of Twitter staff without serious difficulties, and the train wreck caused by Musk’s cuts suggest that never was realistic.
Finally, the idea that SBF could somehow make Twitter significantly “more scout-mindset and truth-seeking oriented” has never been fleshed out AFAIK. Also, it would be a surprising and suspicious convergence that the way to run Twitter profitably would also have been the way to run it altruistically.
I could imagine making that case, but what’s the point of all the Givewell-style analysis of evidence, or all the detailed attempts to predict and value the future, if in the end, what would have been the single biggest allocation of EA funds for all time was being proposed based on vibes?
Like with Wytham Abbey, I’m really surprised by people in this thread confusing investments with donations.
If SBF had invested some billions in Twitter, the money wouldn’t be burned, see e.g. what happened with Anthropic.
From his (and most people’s) perspective, SBF was running FTX with ~1% the employees of comparable platforms, so it seemed plausible he could buy Twitter, cut 90% of the workforce like Musk did, and make money while at the same time steering it to be more scout-mindset and truth-seeking oriented.
I’ve never seen a good business case for valuing Twitter at anywhere near the $44B it took to acquire. SBF didn’t have nearly that much available, so he’d still be looking at Musk as the majority owner....and it was 100 percent foreseeable that Musk had his own ideological axes to grind. That SBF ran FTX lean seems weak evidence that he could cut 90 percent of Twitter staff without serious difficulties, and the train wreck caused by Musk’s cuts suggest that never was realistic.
Finally, the idea that SBF could somehow make Twitter significantly “more scout-mindset and truth-seeking oriented” has never been fleshed out AFAIK. Also, it would be a surprising and suspicious convergence that the way to run Twitter profitably would also have been the way to run it altruistically.
Is the consensus currently that the investment in Twitter has paid off or is ever likely to do so?
No, but in expectation it wasn’t very far from the stock market valuation. It’s very possible that it was positive EV even if it didn’t work out