Epistemic status: Probably speaking too strongly in various ways, and probably not with enough empathy, but also feeling kind of lonely and with enough pent-up frustration about how things have been operating that I want to spend some social capital on this, and want to give a bit of a “this is my last stand” vibe.
It’s been a few more days, and I do want to express frustration with the risk-aversion and guardedness I have experienced from CEA and other EA organizations in this time. I think this is a crucial time to be open, and to stop playing dumb PR games that are, in my current tentative assessment of the situation, one of the primary reasons why we got into this mess in the first place.
I understand there is some legal risk, and I am trying to track it myself quite closely. I am also worried that you are trying to run a strategy of “try to figure out everything internally and tell nice narratives about where we are all at afterwards”, and I think that strategy has already gotten us into is so great that I don’t think now is the time to double-down on that strategy.
Please, people at CEA and other EA organizations, come and talk to the community. Explore with us what wrong things happened. Figure out how we should change and what lessons we should learn. We will not figure out a new direction for EA behind closed doors. I am afraid some of you will try to develop some kind of consolidated narrative about what happened and where we are at, and try to present it as fact, when I think the reality of the situation is confusing and messy. I don’t want to cooperate with a lot of the PR-focused storytelling that I think EA has had far too much of in the last few years, and especially in this whole FTX situation, and I both want to be clear that I will push back on more of those kinds of narratives, and want to maybe make right now the time where we stop that kind of stuff.
It isn’t my job to answer a lot of straightforward question that people have on Twitter and on the EA Forum that other EA organizational leaders are much better placed to answer, and I think many others are better places to give context and answer people’s questions. When you talk about legal risk, I think you are only in a limited way talking about legal risk to the movement, but are instead primarily talking about legal risk to you personally and to your organizations, and your organizations are not the movement. I feel like when you say this, there is some equivocation that you are acting in the best interest of the movement by being hesitant around legal risk, when I think in this case that hesitation is at odds with what is actually good for the world. I have a feeling that one thing we are missing now and have missed before is courage to speak true things even when it is difficult, and I wish we had more of that right now.
Yes, you might get dragged into some terrible legal proceedings, and possibly even be fined some amount of money as you get caught in the legal crossfire. I expect given my comments on the forum I will probably also get dragged into those terrible legal proceedings. But if indeed we played a part in one of the biggest frauds of the 21st century, then I think we maybe should own up to spending a few hundred hours in legal proceedings, and take on some probability of having some adverse legal consequences. I think it’s worth it for actually having us learn from this whole mess.
[Edit: Edited a bunch of stuff to have a somewhat more nuanced sentiment, also added an epistemic status]
It’s been a few more days, and I do want to express frustration with the risk-aversion and guardedness I have experienced from CEA and other EA organizations in this time. I think this is a crucial time to be open, and to stop playing dumb PR games that are, in my current tentative assessment of the situation, one of the primary reasons why we got into this mess in the first place.
This feels like you characterising the current situation to suit your agenda.
If you characterise it as “PR games,” then you get to say that current behaviour is (many have claimed) “one of the primary reasons why we got into this mess in the first place.”
However, if you characterise it as “risk-aversion and guardedness,” then you should probably say that current behaviour is a healthy update awayfrom the risky, move-fast-and-break-things behaviour that is (many have claimed) one of the primary reasons why we got into this mess in the first place?
Could this not just be a case of “CEA and other EA organizations” deciding that when they find themselves wrapped up in hugely consequential situations, they should wait “weeks or months” rather than days to make big, non-urgent decisions like how to write about the situation? Are they damned if they’re risk-averse and damned if they’re not?
And yes I don’t think it’s urgent. I don’t quite understand why so many people are demanding answers now. I can understand grantees facing urgent financial/career decisions wanting info relating to that now, but not people who just want to know details of what happened, what people think about that, how they’re planning to change things etc.
I kind of get the impression that you just want everyone to say what they think all of the time, putting negligible weight on whether people are in situations where adversaries are very likely to severely punish mistakes and to publish quotes out of context in places where corrections can’t be made (at least not fast enough)...with the exception of interviews with journalists, although I don’t quite see why that scenario gets special treatment.
I wouldn’t be surprised by the occasional rationalist placing such a huge value on immediately saying publicly whatever you think you know about anything almost regardless of the situation. But I’ve been very surprised by the amount of support you’re getting and I’m still struggling to understand why.
If you characterise it as “PR games,” then you get to say that current behaviour is (many have claimed) “one of the primary reasons why we got into this mess in the first place.”
However, if you characterise it as “risk-aversion and guardedness,” then you should probably say that current behaviour is a healthy update awayfrom the risky, move-fast-and-break-things behaviour that is (many have claimed) one of the primary reasons why we got into this mess in the first place?
I agree that there is a genuine tension here, and that I should argue more coherently that the problem was not insufficient risk-aversion and guardedness (indeed, in the PR sphere SBF was also highly risk-averse and guarded), and am working on a post trying to make that argument (In short, I think risk-aversion in PR domains is much more harmful than in other domains, since it makes collective sense-making much harder, and indeed I think a common pattern of behavior is “reckless in your actions, but highly concerned about your reputation”).
And yes I don’t think it’s urgent. I don’t quite understand why so many people are demanding answers now. I can understand grantees facing urgent financial/career decisions wanting info relating to that now, but not people who just want to know details of what happened, what people think about that, how they’re planning to change things etc.
To be clear, I do not support people rushing to conclusions about how EA should change, and what kind of huge institutional changes we should make. I do believe a number of related things:
I do think there is urgency in people sharing enough information that other people can orient to the situation and can start doing their own sense-making and aggregating the data in their head.
I also separately think that right now will be the time when most people’s attention is already hijacked by this whole situation, and it’s better to share info and takes now, and I don’t think there will be a natural Schelling-time later on where that conversation can happen in a way that won’t cost much more attention in the long run.
And third, I also think that now is a good time for people to register predictions and stick their neck out, now that we have confirmation that this is a huge deal, but do not yet have all the info on what happened. I think this will later on make discussion easier because we will be less blinded by hindsight bias.
And finally, fourth, I also think that there are just a good number of people who have to make pretty crucial decisions soon because they were relying on FTX funding, and I do think the absence of information makes that topic harder to navigate. I think the people needing to make decisions here is more than just FTX grantees, since I think almost everyone working in EA, or being interested in working in EA, has plans whose details are dependent on the future funding situation
with the exception of interviews with journalists, although I don’t quite see why that scenario gets special treatment.
I do think interviews with journalists are uniquely bad at communicating with the public. Usually you won’t even have access to the full transcript, and journalists are very happy to quote you out of context.
If you write yourself online, usually the journalist will at least link back to the full context, or people can find the full context, and while this doesn’t help with the lowest-context readers, it does genuinely help with people who are trying to understand what is going on, if you can just link a confused reader to the thread with the full context and have them see for themselves that your quote was out-of-context.
(This account is negative toward your aims but positive of you personally. It seems good to state things like this when using anonymous accounts).
I think this is a crucial time to be open, and to stop playing dumb PR games that are, in my current tentative assessment of the situation, one of the primary reasons why we got into this mess in the first place.
I don’t want to cooperate with a lot of the PR-focused storytelling...We will not figure out a new direction for EA behind closed doors.
Explore with us what wrong things happened. Figure out how we should change and what lessons we should learn.
We can address this by object-level discussion. You said this.
I had sat down my whole team, swore them to secrecy, and told them various pretty clearly illegal things that I heard Sam had done [sadly all unconfirmed, asking for confidentiality and only in rumors] that convinced me that we should avoid doing business with him as much as possible (this was when we were considering whether to do a bunch of community building in the Bahamas). Like, in my worldview, I did do my due diligence, and FTX completely failed my due diligence, and I just failed to somehow propagate that knowledge.
I think it is very unlikely that you knew of the level of outright theft of customer funds or observed actual criminality.
My guess is that you probably observed:
Accounts of the chaotic organization and operational structure
Accounts by Tara and others who left SBF on terrible terms in the past
Accounts of dubious or predatory projects in cryptocurrency (SRM, MAPS), liquidation protected trading accounts, self dealing between Alameda and FTX
Is this correct, is the information you received similar in class or severity to the above?
Is this correct, is the information you received similar in class or severity to the above?
I think the above is a good chunk of the information, though I think there is more than that.
For example, I remember someone mentioning the Alameda “ZERO RISK” flier that they handed out back in 2018, when I think they and I were quite confident that Alameda was very much not zero risk, and there was always a substantial chance it would blow up all the investor money when crypto goes down. I also heard some other similar concerns for which I am still upholding confidentiality. I think this is one step more severe into the “I assign substantial probability they lied to investors about their books and accounting” direction, than just the points you listed above, and I think constitutes more straightforwardly criminal activity.
I was also quite confident, mostly based on contradictory information that I heard from people around Sam, that Sam’s opinions on actual regulators and crypto-regulation were extremely cynical (in line with the Kelsey Piper interview), in contrast to the things he testified before congress, and the things he maintained publicly on Twitter and in various news articles.
That said, absolutely did not expect or consider that the whole thing would blow up this badly. I mean, I might have predicted with >10% probability that Sam’s net-worth becomes negative or zero, but I would not have predicted the business to be predicated on remotely as much fraud as it seems to have been.
Also, the whole situation with Sam and his propensity for dishonesty had already left a very bad taste in my mouth and had already been a major reason for why I had started disengaging from the EA community substantially more (together with the OpenAI situation which I think shares most of the same pathologies) before it all exploded. And like, I think it’s pretty plausible I just got lucky in this specific take (not too hard given that I think I have a somewhat low opinion of multiple parts of the EA ecosystem), but I think at the moment I do want to at least explore the hypothesis pretty strongly .
I think tension and anxiety is very high high now.
I want to reply to your comment. I believe that most paths in the consequent discussion contain ideas and content that would probably reduce tension a lot.
However, I need to take a pause for unrelated reasons. I don’t want this pause to extend tension (so I declare the above).
I also want to leave this TikTok here for everyone to enjoy:
(for the record, I do not know why this comment is downvoted. I upvoted it. I think people should feel comfortable taking a break from commenting any time, and I think cute TikTok videos are fine)
I think this is pretty well said and I too am worried that what I’m seeing is a certain amount of turning inward and hastily figuring out “some kind of consolidated narrative” behind closed doors.
A major consideration is that no one wants to enter a space (the EA forum) where the LW/MIRI community easily dominates voting and sentiment. The EA forum is widely believed to be now transformed into an arena to suit your agenda.
Epistemic status: Probably speaking too strongly in various ways, and probably not with enough empathy, but also feeling kind of lonely and with enough pent-up frustration about how things have been operating that I want to spend some social capital on this, and want to give a bit of a “this is my last stand” vibe.
It’s been a few more days, and I do want to express frustration with the risk-aversion and guardedness I have experienced from CEA and other EA organizations in this time. I think this is a crucial time to be open, and to stop playing dumb PR games that are, in my current tentative assessment of the situation, one of the primary reasons why we got into this mess in the first place.
I understand there is some legal risk, and I am trying to track it myself quite closely. I am also worried that you are trying to run a strategy of “try to figure out everything internally and tell nice narratives about where we are all at afterwards”, and I think that strategy has already gotten us into is so great that I don’t think now is the time to double-down on that strategy.
Please, people at CEA and other EA organizations, come and talk to the community. Explore with us what wrong things happened. Figure out how we should change and what lessons we should learn. We will not figure out a new direction for EA behind closed doors. I am afraid some of you will try to develop some kind of consolidated narrative about what happened and where we are at, and try to present it as fact, when I think the reality of the situation is confusing and messy. I don’t want to cooperate with a lot of the PR-focused storytelling that I think EA has had far too much of in the last few years, and especially in this whole FTX situation, and I both want to be clear that I will push back on more of those kinds of narratives, and want to maybe make right now the time where we stop that kind of stuff.
It isn’t my job to answer a lot of straightforward question that people have on Twitter and on the EA Forum that other EA organizational leaders are much better placed to answer, and I think many others are better places to give context and answer people’s questions. When you talk about legal risk, I think you are only in a limited way talking about legal risk to the movement, but are instead primarily talking about legal risk to you personally and to your organizations, and your organizations are not the movement. I feel like when you say this, there is some equivocation that you are acting in the best interest of the movement by being hesitant around legal risk, when I think in this case that hesitation is at odds with what is actually good for the world. I have a feeling that one thing we are missing now and have missed before is courage to speak true things even when it is difficult, and I wish we had more of that right now.
Yes, you might get dragged into some terrible legal proceedings, and possibly even be fined some amount of money as you get caught in the legal crossfire. I expect given my comments on the forum I will probably also get dragged into those terrible legal proceedings. But if indeed we played a part in one of the biggest frauds of the 21st century, then I think we maybe should own up to spending a few hundred hours in legal proceedings, and take on some probability of having some adverse legal consequences. I think it’s worth it for actually having us learn from this whole mess.
[Edit: Edited a bunch of stuff to have a somewhat more nuanced sentiment, also added an epistemic status]
I’m very sympathetic and would like to figure out how to say more.
This feels like you characterising the current situation to suit your agenda.
If you characterise it as “PR games,” then you get to say that current behaviour is (many have claimed) “one of the primary reasons why we got into this mess in the first place.”
However, if you characterise it as “risk-aversion and guardedness,” then you should probably say that current behaviour is a healthy update away from the risky, move-fast-and-break-things behaviour that is (many have claimed) one of the primary reasons why we got into this mess in the first place?
Could this not just be a case of “CEA and other EA organizations” deciding that when they find themselves wrapped up in hugely consequential situations, they should wait “weeks or months” rather than days to make big, non-urgent decisions like how to write about the situation? Are they damned if they’re risk-averse and damned if they’re not?
And yes I don’t think it’s urgent. I don’t quite understand why so many people are demanding answers now. I can understand grantees facing urgent financial/career decisions wanting info relating to that now, but not people who just want to know details of what happened, what people think about that, how they’re planning to change things etc.
I kind of get the impression that you just want everyone to say what they think all of the time, putting negligible weight on whether people are in situations where adversaries are very likely to severely punish mistakes and to publish quotes out of context in places where corrections can’t be made (at least not fast enough)...with the exception of interviews with journalists, although I don’t quite see why that scenario gets special treatment.
I wouldn’t be surprised by the occasional rationalist placing such a huge value on immediately saying publicly whatever you think you know about anything almost regardless of the situation. But I’ve been very surprised by the amount of support you’re getting and I’m still struggling to understand why.
I agree that there is a genuine tension here, and that I should argue more coherently that the problem was not insufficient risk-aversion and guardedness (indeed, in the PR sphere SBF was also highly risk-averse and guarded), and am working on a post trying to make that argument (In short, I think risk-aversion in PR domains is much more harmful than in other domains, since it makes collective sense-making much harder, and indeed I think a common pattern of behavior is “reckless in your actions, but highly concerned about your reputation”).
To be clear, I do not support people rushing to conclusions about how EA should change, and what kind of huge institutional changes we should make. I do believe a number of related things:
I do think there is urgency in people sharing enough information that other people can orient to the situation and can start doing their own sense-making and aggregating the data in their head.
I also separately think that right now will be the time when most people’s attention is already hijacked by this whole situation, and it’s better to share info and takes now, and I don’t think there will be a natural Schelling-time later on where that conversation can happen in a way that won’t cost much more attention in the long run.
And third, I also think that now is a good time for people to register predictions and stick their neck out, now that we have confirmation that this is a huge deal, but do not yet have all the info on what happened. I think this will later on make discussion easier because we will be less blinded by hindsight bias.
And finally, fourth, I also think that there are just a good number of people who have to make pretty crucial decisions soon because they were relying on FTX funding, and I do think the absence of information makes that topic harder to navigate. I think the people needing to make decisions here is more than just FTX grantees, since I think almost everyone working in EA, or being interested in working in EA, has plans whose details are dependent on the future funding situation
I do think interviews with journalists are uniquely bad at communicating with the public. Usually you won’t even have access to the full transcript, and journalists are very happy to quote you out of context.
If you write yourself online, usually the journalist will at least link back to the full context, or people can find the full context, and while this doesn’t help with the lowest-context readers, it does genuinely help with people who are trying to understand what is going on, if you can just link a confused reader to the thread with the full context and have them see for themselves that your quote was out-of-context.
(This account is negative toward your aims but positive of you personally. It seems good to state things like this when using anonymous accounts).
We can address this by object-level discussion. You said this.
I think it is very unlikely that you knew of the level of outright theft of customer funds or observed actual criminality.
My guess is that you probably observed:
Accounts of the chaotic organization and operational structure
Accounts by Tara and others who left SBF on terrible terms in the past
Accounts of dubious or predatory projects in cryptocurrency (SRM, MAPS), liquidation protected trading accounts, self dealing between Alameda and FTX
Is this correct, is the information you received similar in class or severity to the above?
I think the above is a good chunk of the information, though I think there is more than that.
For example, I remember someone mentioning the Alameda “ZERO RISK” flier that they handed out back in 2018, when I think they and I were quite confident that Alameda was very much not zero risk, and there was always a substantial chance it would blow up all the investor money when crypto goes down. I also heard some other similar concerns for which I am still upholding confidentiality. I think this is one step more severe into the “I assign substantial probability they lied to investors about their books and accounting” direction, than just the points you listed above, and I think constitutes more straightforwardly criminal activity.
I was also quite confident, mostly based on contradictory information that I heard from people around Sam, that Sam’s opinions on actual regulators and crypto-regulation were extremely cynical (in line with the Kelsey Piper interview), in contrast to the things he testified before congress, and the things he maintained publicly on Twitter and in various news articles.
That said, absolutely did not expect or consider that the whole thing would blow up this badly. I mean, I might have predicted with >10% probability that Sam’s net-worth becomes negative or zero, but I would not have predicted the business to be predicated on remotely as much fraud as it seems to have been.
Also, the whole situation with Sam and his propensity for dishonesty had already left a very bad taste in my mouth and had already been a major reason for why I had started disengaging from the EA community substantially more (together with the OpenAI situation which I think shares most of the same pathologies) before it all exploded. And like, I think it’s pretty plausible I just got lucky in this specific take (not too hard given that I think I have a somewhat low opinion of multiple parts of the EA ecosystem), but I think at the moment I do want to at least explore the hypothesis pretty strongly .
I appreciate your reply very much.
I think tension and anxiety is very high high now.
I want to reply to your comment. I believe that most paths in the consequent discussion contain ideas and content that would probably reduce tension a lot.
However, I need to take a pause for unrelated reasons. I don’t want this pause to extend tension (so I declare the above).
I also want to leave this TikTok here for everyone to enjoy:
https://www.tiktok.com/@fatimashalash/video/7098523079541935403
(for the record, I do not know why this comment is downvoted. I upvoted it. I think people should feel comfortable taking a break from commenting any time, and I think cute TikTok videos are fine)
Thanks for posting this! Strong upvote. I made a similar point a couple of days ago in anticipation of continued silence.
I think this is pretty well said and I too am worried that what I’m seeing is a certain amount of turning inward and hastily figuring out “some kind of consolidated narrative” behind closed doors.
Thank you. While I expect I’d disagree with you on some of the details, I overall think this broadly pushes in the right direction.
A major consideration is that no one wants to enter a space (the EA forum) where the LW/MIRI community easily dominates voting and sentiment. The EA forum is widely believed to be now transformed into an arena to suit your agenda.