I think someone should do an investigation much wider in scope than what happened at FTX, covering the entire causal chain from SBF first talking to EAs at MIT to the damage done to EA. Here are some questions Iâm particularly curious about:
Did SBF show signs of dishonesty early on at MIT? If so, why did he not have a negative reputation among the EAs there?
To what extent did EA âcreate SBFââinfluence the values of SBF and others at FTX? Could a version of EA that placed more emphasis on integrity, diminishing returns to altruistic donations, or something else have prevented FTX?
Alameda was started by various traders from Jane Street, especially EAs. Did they do this despite concerns about how the company would be run, and were they correct to leave at the time?
[edited to add] I have heard that Tara Mac Aulay and others left Alameda in 2018. Mac Aulay claims this was âin part due to concerns over risk management and business ethicsâ. Do they get a bunch of points for this? Why did this warning not spread, and can we even spread such warnings without overloading the community with gossip even more than it is?
Were Alameda/âFTX ever highly profitable controlling for the price of crypto? (edit: ruling out that FTXâs market share was due to artificially tight spreads due to money-losing trades from Alameda). How should we update on the overall competence of companies with lots of EAs?
SBF believed in linear returns to altruistic donations (I think he said this on the 80k podcast), unlike most EAs. Did this cause him to take on undue risk, or would fraud have happened if FTX had a view on altruistic returns similar to that of OP or SFF but linear moral views?
What is the cause of the exceptionally poor media perception of EA after FTX? When i search for âeffective altruism newsâ, around 90% of articles I could find negative and none positive, including many with extremely negative opinions unrelated to FTX. One would expect at least some article saying âHereâs why donating to effective causes is still goodâ. (In no way do I want to diminish the harms done to customers whose money was gambled away, but it seems prudent to investigate the harms to EA per se)
My guess is that this hasnât been done simply because itâs a lot of work (perhaps 100 interviews and one person-year of work), no one thinks itâs their job, and conducting such an investigation would somewhat entail someone both speaking for the entire EA movement and criticizing powerful people and organizations.
is SBF a sociopath, and should the community have a specific strategy for dealing with sociopaths?
(I think yes. Something like 1% of the population of sociopathic, and I think EAâs utilitarianism attracts sociopaths at a higher level than population baseline. Many sociopaths donât inherently want to do evil, especially not those attracted to EA. If sociopaths could somehow receive integrity guidance and be excluded from powerful positions, this would limit risk from other sociopaths.)
If youâve concluded that someone is a âsociopath,â wouldnât it be better to show them the door? [in quotes because there is no commonly accepted definition of this term as far as I know]
I know that doesnât protect the broader society from their risk, but itâs not clear to me that sociopath risk reduction makes sense as an EA cause area generally. (Ensuring that the EA community does not enable sociopathic behavior is distinct from that.)
Well, yes, but I was thinking about what to do with sociopaths that are already in the community. If your policy is âwe kick out every sociopath we identifyâ, no sociopath is going to identify themselves to you. Iâm not advocating for attracting new sociopaths.
Mind you, Iâm assuming here that there are plenty of sociopaths that arenât that bad, and want to do good, but suffer from the disability of not being able to care emotionally for others. I think it would be good if we could at least keep them out of powerful positions.
This was a pretty uninformed thought of how to deal with sociopaths, but it does feel like a problem worth someone thinking more deeply about.
Maybe some of this is coming from a definitional differenceâsociopathy as a âdisability of not being able to care emotionally for othersâ is different from it being akin to, if not an obsolete synonym for, antisocial personality disorder. I donât think calling people who lack affective empathy, without more, sociopaths is likely to be helpful.
I think someone should do an investigation much wider in scope than what happened at FTX, covering the entire causal chain from SBF first talking to EAs at MIT to the damage done to EA. Here are some questions Iâm particularly curious about:
Did SBF show signs of dishonesty early on at MIT? If so, why did he not have a negative reputation among the EAs there?
To what extent did EA âcreate SBFââinfluence the values of SBF and others at FTX? Could a version of EA that placed more emphasis on integrity, diminishing returns to altruistic donations, or something else have prevented FTX?
Alameda was started by various traders from Jane Street, especially EAs. Did they do this despite concerns about how the company would be run, and were they correct to leave at the time?
[edited to add] I have heard that Tara Mac Aulay and others left Alameda in 2018. Mac Aulay claims this was âin part due to concerns over risk management and business ethicsâ. Do they get a bunch of points for this? Why did this warning not spread, and can we even spread such warnings without overloading the community with gossip even more than it is?
Were Alameda/âFTX ever highly profitable controlling for the price of crypto? (edit: ruling out that FTXâs market share was due to artificially tight spreads due to money-losing trades from Alameda). How should we update on the overall competence of companies with lots of EAs?
SBF believed in linear returns to altruistic donations (I think he said this on the 80k podcast), unlike most EAs. Did this cause him to take on undue risk, or would fraud have happened if FTX had a view on altruistic returns similar to that of OP or SFF but linear moral views?
What is the cause of the exceptionally poor media perception of EA after FTX? When i search for âeffective altruism newsâ, around 90% of articles I could find negative and none positive, including many with extremely negative opinions unrelated to FTX. One would expect at least some article saying âHereâs why donating to effective causes is still goodâ. (In no way do I want to diminish the harms done to customers whose money was gambled away, but it seems prudent to investigate the harms to EA per se)
My guess is that this hasnât been done simply because itâs a lot of work (perhaps 100 interviews and one person-year of work), no one thinks itâs their job, and conducting such an investigation would somewhat entail someone both speaking for the entire EA movement and criticizing powerful people and organizations.
See also: Ryan Careyâs comment
Hereâs another question I have:
is SBF a sociopath, and should the community have a specific strategy for dealing with sociopaths?
(I think yes. Something like 1% of the population of sociopathic, and I think EAâs utilitarianism attracts sociopaths at a higher level than population baseline. Many sociopaths donât inherently want to do evil, especially not those attracted to EA. If sociopaths could somehow receive integrity guidance and be excluded from powerful positions, this would limit risk from other sociopaths.)
If youâve concluded that someone is a âsociopath,â wouldnât it be better to show them the door? [in quotes because there is no commonly accepted definition of this term as far as I know]
I know that doesnât protect the broader society from their risk, but itâs not clear to me that sociopath risk reduction makes sense as an EA cause area generally. (Ensuring that the EA community does not enable sociopathic behavior is distinct from that.)
Well, yes, but I was thinking about what to do with sociopaths that are already in the community. If your policy is âwe kick out every sociopath we identifyâ, no sociopath is going to identify themselves to you. Iâm not advocating for attracting new sociopaths.
Mind you, Iâm assuming here that there are plenty of sociopaths that arenât that bad, and want to do good, but suffer from the disability of not being able to care emotionally for others. I think it would be good if we could at least keep them out of powerful positions.
This was a pretty uninformed thought of how to deal with sociopaths, but it does feel like a problem worth someone thinking more deeply about.
Maybe some of this is coming from a definitional differenceâsociopathy as a âdisability of not being able to care emotionally for othersâ is different from it being akin to, if not an obsolete synonym for, antisocial personality disorder. I donât think calling people who lack affective empathy, without more, sociopaths is likely to be helpful.
Ah, I wasnât aware that that wasnât the conventional definition. Thanks for the correction.
Still, I think itâs important to somehow manage both sets of people and we can probably do better, though my idea is quite random.