I think it could be a cost-effective use of $3-10 billion (I don’t know where you got the $8-15 billion from, looks like the realistic amounts were closer to 3 billion). My guess is it’s not, but like, Twitter does sure seem like it has a large effect on the world, both in terms of geopolitics and in terms of things like norms for the safe development of technologies, and so at least to me I think if you had taken Sam’s net-worth at face-value at the time, this didn’t seem like a crazy idea to me.
The 15 billion figure comes from Will’s text messages themselves (page 6-7). Will sends Elon a text about how SBF could be interested in going in on Twitter, then Elon Musk asks, “Does he have huge amounts of money?” and Will replies, “Depends on how you define “huge.” He’s worth $24B, and his early employees (with shared values) bump that up to $30B. I asked how much he could in principle contribute and he said: “~1-3 billion would be easy, 3-8 billion I could do, ~8-15b is maybe possible but would require financing”
It seems weird to me that EAs would think going in with Musk on a Twitter deal would be worth $3-10 billion, let alone up to 15 (especially of money that at the time, in theory, would have been counterfactually spent on longtermist causes). Do you really believe this? I’ve never seen ‘buying up social media companies’ as a cause area brought up on the EA forum, at EA events, in EA-related books, podcasts, or heard any of the leaders talk about it. I find it concerning that some of us are willing to say “this makes sense” without, to my knowledge, ever having discussed the merits of it.
I don’t know why Will vouched so hard for Sam though, that seems like a straightforward mistake to me. I think it’s likely Will did not consult anyone else, as like, it’s his right as a private individual talking to other private individuals.
I don’t agree with this framing. This wasn’t just a private individual talking to another private individual. It was Will Macaskill (whose words, beliefs, and actions are heavily tied to the EA community as a whole) trying to connect SBF (at the time one of the largest funders in EA) and Elon Musk to go in on buying Twitter together, which could have had pretty large implications for the EA community as a whole. Of course it’s his right to have private conversations with others and he doesn’t have to consult anyone on the decisions he makes, but the framing here is dismissive of this being a big deal when, as another user points out, it could have easily been the most consequential thing EAs have ever done. I’m not saying Will needs to make perfect decisions, but I want to push back against this idea of him operating in just a private capacity here.
The 15 billion figure comes from Will’s text messages themselves (page 6-7). Will sends Elon a text about how SBF could be interested in going in on Twitter, then Elon Musk asks, “Does he have huge amounts of money?” and Will replies, “Depends on how you define “huge.” He’s worth $24B, and his early employees (with shared values) bump that up to $30B. I asked how much he could in principle contribute and he said: “~1-3 billion would be easy, 3-8 billion I could do, ~8-15b is maybe possible but would require financing”
Makes sense, I think I briefly saw that, and interpreted the last section as basically saying “ok, more than 8b will be difficult”, but the literal text does seem like it was trying to make $8b+ more plausible.
It seems weird to me that EAs would think going in with Musk on a Twitter deal would be worth $3-10 billion, let alone up to 15 (especially of money that at the time, in theory, would have been counterfactually spent on longtermist causes). Do you really believe this? I’ve never seen ‘buying up social media companies’ as a cause area brought up on the EA forum, at EA events, in EA-related books, podcasts, or heard any of the leaders talk about it. I find it concerning that some of us are willing to say “this makes sense” without, to my knowledge, ever having discussed the merits of it.
I have actually talked to lots of people about it! Probably as much as I have talked with people about e.g. challenge trials.
My guess is there must be some public stuff about this, though it wouldn’t surprise me if no one had made a coherent writeup of it on the internet (I also strongly reject the frame that people are only allowed to say that something ‘makes sense’ after having discussed the merits of it publicly. I have all kinds of crazy schemes for stuff that I think in-expectation beats GiveWell’s last dollar, and I haven’t written up anything close to a quarter of them, and likely never will).
I also remember people talking about buying Twitter during the Trump presidency and somehow changing it, since it seemed like it might have substantially increased nuclear war risk at the time, so there was at least some public discourse about it.
I don’t agree with this framing. This wasn’t just a private individual talking to another private individual. It was Will Macaskill (whose words, beliefs, and actions are heavily tied to the EA community as a whole) trying to connect SBF (at the time one of the largest funders in EA) and Elon Musk to go in on buying Twitter together, which could have had pretty large implications for the EA community as a whole. Of course it’s his right to have private conversations with others and he doesn’t have to consult anyone on the decisions he makes, but the framing here is dismissive of this being a big deal when, as another user points out, it could have easily been the most consequential thing EAs have ever done. I’m not saying Will needs to make perfect decisions, but I want to push back against this idea of him operating in just a private capacity here.
Oh, to be clear, I think Will fucked up pretty badly here. I just don’t think any policy that tries to prevent even very influential and trusted people in EA talking to other people in private about their honest judgement of other people is possibly a good idea. I think you should totally see this as a mistake and update downwards on Will (as well as EAs willingness to have him be as close as possible to a leader as we have), but I think from an institutional perspective there is little that should have been done at this point (i.e. all the mistakes were made much earlier, in how Will ended up in a bad epistemic state, and maybe the way we delegate leadership in the first place).
My guess is there must be some public stuff about this, though it wouldn’t surprise me if no one had made a coherent writeup of it on the internet (I also strongly reject the frame that people are only allowed to say that something ‘makes sense’ after having discussed the merits of it publicly. I have all kinds of crazy schemes for stuff that I think in-expectation beats GiveWell’s last dollar, and I haven’t written up anything close to a quarter of them, and likely never will).
Yeah, there could be some public stuff about this and I’m just not aware of it. And sorry, I wasn’t trying to say that people are only allowed to say that something ‘makes sense’ after having discussed the merits of it publicly. I was more trying to say that I would find it concerning for major spending decisions (billions of dollars in this case) to be made without any community consultation, only for people to justify it afterwards because at face value it “makes sense.” I’m not saying that I don’t see potential value in purchasing Twitter, but I don’t think a huge decision like that should be justified based on quick, post-hoc judgements. If SBF wanted to buy Twitter for non-EA reasons, that’s one thing, but if the idea here is that purchasingTwitter alongside Elon Musk is actually worth billions of dollars from an EA perspective, I would need to see way more analysis, much like significant analysis has been done for AI safety, biorisk, animal welfare, and global health and poverty. (We’re a movement that prides itself on using evidence and reason to make the world better, after all.)
Oh, to be clear, I think Will fucked up pretty badly here. I just don’t think any policy that tries to prevent even very influential and trusted people in EA talking to other people in private about their honest judgement of other people is possibly a good idea. I think you should totally see this as a mistake and update downwards on Will (as well as EAs willingness to have him be as close as possible to a leader as we have), but I think from an institutional perspective there is little that should have been done at this point (i.e. all the mistakes were made much earlier, in how Will ended up in a bad epistemic state, and maybe the way we delegate leadership in the first place).
Thanks for clarifying that—that makes more sense to me, and I agree that there was little that should have been done at that specific point. The lead-up to getting to that point is much more important.
If SBF wanted to buy Twitter for non-EA reasons, that’s one thing, but if the idea here is that purchasingTwitter alongside Elon Musk is actually worth billions of dollars from an EA perspective, I would need to see way more analysis, much like significant analysis has been done for AI safety, biorisk, animal welfare, and global health and poverty.
If you think investing in Twitter is close to neutral from an investment perspective (maybe reasonable at the time, definitely not by the time Musk was forced to close) then the opportunity cost isn’t really billions of dollars. Possibly this would have been an example of marginal charity.
I can see where you’re coming from with this, and I think purely financially you’re right, it doesn’t make sense to think of it as billions of dollars ‘down the drain.’
However, if I were to do a full analysis of this (in the framing of this being a decision based on an EA perspective), I would want to ask some non-financial questions too, such as:
Does the EA movement want to be further associated with Elon Musk than we already are, including any changes he might want to make with Twitter? What are the risks involved? (based on what we knew before the Twitter deal)
Does the EA movement want to be in the business of purchasing social media platforms? (In the past, we have championed causes like global health and poverty, reducing existencial risks, and animal welfare—this is quite a shift from those into a space that is more about power and politics, particularly given Musk’s stated political views/aims leading up to this purchase)
How might the EA movement shift because of this? (Some EAs may be on board, others may see it as quite surprising and not in line with their values.)
What were SBF’s personal/business motivations for wanting to acquire Twitter, and how would those intersect with EA’s vision for the platform?
What trade offs would be made that would impact other cause areas?
This is the bit I think was missed further up the thread. Regardless of whether buying a social media company could reasonably be considered EA, it’s fairly clear that Elon Musk’s goals both generally and with Twitter are not aligned with EA. MacAskill is allowed to do things that aren’t EA-aligned, but it seems to me to be another case of poor judgement by him (in addition to his association with SBF).
For what it’s worth connecting SBF and Musk might’ve been a time sensitive situation for a reason or another. There would’ve also still been time to debate the investment in the larger community before the deal would’ve actually gone through.
Seems quite implausible to me that this would have happened and unclear if it would have been good. (Assuming “larger EA community” implies more than private conversations between a few people. )
My reading (and of course I could be completlely wrong) is that SBF wanted to invest in Twitter (he seems to have subsequently pitched the same deal through Michael Grimes), and Will was helping him out. I don’t imagine Will felt it any of his business to advise SBF as to whether or not this was a good move. And I imagine SBF expected the deal to make money, and therefore not to have any cost for his intended giving.
Part of the issue here is that people have been accounting the bulk of SBF’s net worth as “EA money”. If you phrase the question as “Should EA invest in Twitter?” the answer is no. EA should probably also not invest in Robinhood or SRM. If SBF’s assets truly were EA assets, we ought to have liquidated them long ago and either spent them or invested them reasonably. But they weren’t.
I feel like anyone reaching out to Elon could say “making it better for the world” because that’s exactly what would resonate with Elon. It’s probably what I’d say to get someone on my side and communicate I want to help them change the direction of Twitter and “make it better.”
I disagree with the implied principle. E.g., I think it’s good for me to help animal welfare and global poverty EAs with their goals sometimes (when I’m in an unusually good position to help out), even though I think their time and money would be better spent on existential risk mitigation.
Agreed that a principle of ‘only cooperate on goals you agree with’ is too strong. On the object-level, if MacAskill was personally neutral or skeptical on the object-level question of whether SBF should buy Twitter, do you think he should have helped SBF out?
When is cooperation inappropriate? Maybe when the outcome you’re cooperating on is more consequential (in the bad direction, according to your own goals) than the expected gains from establishing reciprocity.
This would have been the largest purchase in EA history, replacing much or most of FTXFF with “SBF owns part of Twitter”. I think when the outcome is as consequential as that, we should hold cooperators responsible as if they were striving for the outcome, because the effects of helping SBF buy Twitter greatly outweigh the benefits from improving Will’s relationship with SBF (which I model as already very good).
if MacAskill was personally neutral or skeptical on the object-level question of whether SBF should buy Twitter, do you think he should have helped SBF out
If Will had no reason to think SBF was a bad egg, then I’d guess he should have helped out even if he thought the thing was not the optimal use of Sam’s money. (While also complaining that he thinks the investment is a bad idea.)
If Will thought SBF was a “bad egg”, then it could be more important to establish influence with him, because you don’t need to establish influence (as in ‘willingness to cooperate’) with someone who is entirely value-aligned with you.
My reading (and of course I could be completlely wrong) is that SBF wanted to invest in Twitter (he seems to have subsequently pitched the same deal through Michael Grimes), and Will was helping him out. I don’t imagine Will felt it any of his business to advise SBF as to whether or not this was a good move. And I imagine SBF expected the deal to make money, and therefore not to have any cost for his intended giving.
I agree that it’s possible SBF just wanted to invest in Twitter in a non-EA capacity. My comment was a response to Habryka’s comment which said:
I think it could be a cost-effective use of $3-10 billion (I don’t know where you got the $8-15 billion from, looks like the realistic amounts were closer to 3 billion). My guess is it’s not, but like, Twitter does sure seem like it has a large effect on the world, both in terms of geopolitics and in terms of things like norms for the safe development of technologies, and so at least to me I think if you had taken Sam’s net-worth at face-value at the time, this didn’t seem like a crazy idea to me.
If SBF did just want to invest in Twitter (as an investor/as a billionaire/as someone who is interested in global politics, and not from an EA perspective) and asked Will for help, that is a different story. If that’s the case, Will could still have refused to introduce SBF to Elon, or pushed back against SBF wanting to buy Twitter in a friend/advisor capacity (SBF has clearly been heavily influenced by Will before), but maybe he didn’t feel comfortable with doing either of those.
You’re right to say people had been assuming SBF’s wealth belonged to EA: I had. In the legal sense it wasn’t, and we paid a price for that. I think it was fair to argue that the wealth ‘rightfully’ belonged to the EA community, in the sense that SBF should defer to representatives of EA on how it should be used, and would be defecting by spending a few billion on personal interests. The reason for that kind of principle is to avoid a situation where EA is captured or unduly influenced by the idiosyncratic preferences of a couple of mega-donors.
The answer is different for each side of your slash.
I see two kinds of relationships EA can have to megadonors:
uneasy, arms’ length, untrusting, but still taking their money
friendly, valorizing, celebratory, going to the same parties, conditional on the donor ceding control of a significant fraction of their wealth to a donor-advised fund (rather than just pledging to give)
Investing in assets expected to appreciate can be a form of earning to give (not that Twitter would be a good investment IMO). That’s how Warren Buffett makes money and probably nobody in EA has criticized him for doing that. Investing in a for-profit something is very different and is guided by different principles from donating to something, because you are expecting to (at least) get your money back and can invest it again or donate it later (this difference is one of the reasons microloans became so hugely popular for a while).
On the downside, concentrating assets (in any company, not just Twitter) is a bad financial strategy, but on the upside, having some influence at Twitter could be useful to promote things like moderation rules that improve the experience of users and increase the prevalence of genuine debate and other good things on the platform.
The 15 billion figure comes from Will’s text messages themselves (page 6-7). Will sends Elon a text about how SBF could be interested in going in on Twitter, then Elon Musk asks, “Does he have huge amounts of money?” and Will replies, “Depends on how you define “huge.” He’s worth $24B, and his early employees (with shared values) bump that up to $30B. I asked how much he could in principle contribute and he said: “~1-3 billion would be easy, 3-8 billion I could do, ~8-15b is maybe possible but would require financing”
It seems weird to me that EAs would think going in with Musk on a Twitter deal would be worth $3-10 billion, let alone up to 15 (especially of money that at the time, in theory, would have been counterfactually spent on longtermist causes). Do you really believe this? I’ve never seen ‘buying up social media companies’ as a cause area brought up on the EA forum, at EA events, in EA-related books, podcasts, or heard any of the leaders talk about it. I find it concerning that some of us are willing to say “this makes sense” without, to my knowledge, ever having discussed the merits of it.
I don’t agree with this framing. This wasn’t just a private individual talking to another private individual. It was Will Macaskill (whose words, beliefs, and actions are heavily tied to the EA community as a whole) trying to connect SBF (at the time one of the largest funders in EA) and Elon Musk to go in on buying Twitter together, which could have had pretty large implications for the EA community as a whole. Of course it’s his right to have private conversations with others and he doesn’t have to consult anyone on the decisions he makes, but the framing here is dismissive of this being a big deal when, as another user points out, it could have easily been the most consequential thing EAs have ever done. I’m not saying Will needs to make perfect decisions, but I want to push back against this idea of him operating in just a private capacity here.
Makes sense, I think I briefly saw that, and interpreted the last section as basically saying “ok, more than 8b will be difficult”, but the literal text does seem like it was trying to make $8b+ more plausible.
I have actually talked to lots of people about it! Probably as much as I have talked with people about e.g. challenge trials.
My guess is there must be some public stuff about this, though it wouldn’t surprise me if no one had made a coherent writeup of it on the internet (I also strongly reject the frame that people are only allowed to say that something ‘makes sense’ after having discussed the merits of it publicly. I have all kinds of crazy schemes for stuff that I think in-expectation beats GiveWell’s last dollar, and I haven’t written up anything close to a quarter of them, and likely never will).
I also remember people talking about buying Twitter during the Trump presidency and somehow changing it, since it seemed like it might have substantially increased nuclear war risk at the time, so there was at least some public discourse about it.
Oh, to be clear, I think Will fucked up pretty badly here. I just don’t think any policy that tries to prevent even very influential and trusted people in EA talking to other people in private about their honest judgement of other people is possibly a good idea. I think you should totally see this as a mistake and update downwards on Will (as well as EAs willingness to have him be as close as possible to a leader as we have), but I think from an institutional perspective there is little that should have been done at this point (i.e. all the mistakes were made much earlier, in how Will ended up in a bad epistemic state, and maybe the way we delegate leadership in the first place).
Yeah, there could be some public stuff about this and I’m just not aware of it. And sorry, I wasn’t trying to say that people are only allowed to say that something ‘makes sense’ after having discussed the merits of it publicly. I was more trying to say that I would find it concerning for major spending decisions (billions of dollars in this case) to be made without any community consultation, only for people to justify it afterwards because at face value it “makes sense.” I’m not saying that I don’t see potential value in purchasing Twitter, but I don’t think a huge decision like that should be justified based on quick, post-hoc judgements. If SBF wanted to buy Twitter for non-EA reasons, that’s one thing, but if the idea here is that purchasingTwitter alongside Elon Musk is actually worth billions of dollars from an EA perspective, I would need to see way more analysis, much like significant analysis has been done for AI safety, biorisk, animal welfare, and global health and poverty. (We’re a movement that prides itself on using evidence and reason to make the world better, after all.)
Thanks for clarifying that—that makes more sense to me, and I agree that there was little that should have been done at that specific point. The lead-up to getting to that point is much more important.
If you think investing in Twitter is close to neutral from an investment perspective (maybe reasonable at the time, definitely not by the time Musk was forced to close) then the opportunity cost isn’t really billions of dollars. Possibly this would have been an example of marginal charity.
I can see where you’re coming from with this, and I think purely financially you’re right, it doesn’t make sense to think of it as billions of dollars ‘down the drain.’
However, if I were to do a full analysis of this (in the framing of this being a decision based on an EA perspective), I would want to ask some non-financial questions too, such as:
Does the EA movement want to be further associated with Elon Musk than we already are, including any changes he might want to make with Twitter? What are the risks involved? (based on what we knew before the Twitter deal)
Does the EA movement want to be in the business of purchasing social media platforms? (In the past, we have championed causes like global health and poverty, reducing existencial risks, and animal welfare—this is quite a shift from those into a space that is more about power and politics, particularly given Musk’s stated political views/aims leading up to this purchase)
How might the EA movement shift because of this? (Some EAs may be on board, others may see it as quite surprising and not in line with their values.)
What were SBF’s personal/business motivations for wanting to acquire Twitter, and how would those intersect with EA’s vision for the platform?
What trade offs would be made that would impact other cause areas?
This is the bit I think was missed further up the thread. Regardless of whether buying a social media company could reasonably be considered EA, it’s fairly clear that Elon Musk’s goals both generally and with Twitter are not aligned with EA. MacAskill is allowed to do things that aren’t EA-aligned, but it seems to me to be another case of poor judgement by him (in addition to his association with SBF).
For what it’s worth connecting SBF and Musk might’ve been a time sensitive situation for a reason or another. There would’ve also still been time to debate the investment in the larger community before the deal would’ve actually gone through.
Seems quite implausible to me that this would have happened and unclear if it would have been good. (Assuming “larger EA community” implies more than private conversations between a few people. )
My reading (and of course I could be completlely wrong) is that SBF wanted to invest in Twitter (he seems to have subsequently pitched the same deal through Michael Grimes), and Will was helping him out. I don’t imagine Will felt it any of his business to advise SBF as to whether or not this was a good move. And I imagine SBF expected the deal to make money, and therefore not to have any cost for his intended giving.
Part of the issue here is that people have been accounting the bulk of SBF’s net worth as “EA money”. If you phrase the question as “Should EA invest in Twitter?” the answer is no. EA should probably also not invest in Robinhood or SRM. If SBF’s assets truly were EA assets, we ought to have liquidated them long ago and either spent them or invested them reasonably. But they weren’t.
It’s hard to read the proposal as only being motivated by a good business investment, because Will says in his opening DM:
[sorry for multiple comments, seems better to split out separate points]
I feel like anyone reaching out to Elon could say “making it better for the world” because that’s exactly what would resonate with Elon. It’s probably what I’d say to get someone on my side and communicate I want to help them change the direction of Twitter and “make it better.”
Will helping SBF out is de facto making it more likely to happen, and so he should only do it if he thinks it’s a good move.
I disagree with the implied principle. E.g., I think it’s good for me to help animal welfare and global poverty EAs with their goals sometimes (when I’m in an unusually good position to help out), even though I think their time and money would be better spent on existential risk mitigation.
Agreed that a principle of ‘only cooperate on goals you agree with’ is too strong. On the object-level, if MacAskill was personally neutral or skeptical on the object-level question of whether SBF should buy Twitter, do you think he should have helped SBF out?
When is cooperation inappropriate? Maybe when the outcome you’re cooperating on is more consequential (in the bad direction, according to your own goals) than the expected gains from establishing reciprocity.
This would have been the largest purchase in EA history, replacing much or most of FTXFF with “SBF owns part of Twitter”. I think when the outcome is as consequential as that, we should hold cooperators responsible as if they were striving for the outcome, because the effects of helping SBF buy Twitter greatly outweigh the benefits from improving Will’s relationship with SBF (which I model as already very good).
If Will had no reason to think SBF was a bad egg, then I’d guess he should have helped out even if he thought the thing was not the optimal use of Sam’s money. (While also complaining that he thinks the investment is a bad idea.)
If Will thought SBF was a “bad egg”, then it could be more important to establish influence with him, because you don’t need to establish influence (as in ‘willingness to cooperate’) with someone who is entirely value-aligned with you.
I agree that it’s possible SBF just wanted to invest in Twitter in a non-EA capacity. My comment was a response to Habryka’s comment which said:
If SBF did just want to invest in Twitter (as an investor/as a billionaire/as someone who is interested in global politics, and not from an EA perspective) and asked Will for help, that is a different story. If that’s the case, Will could still have refused to introduce SBF to Elon, or pushed back against SBF wanting to buy Twitter in a friend/advisor capacity (SBF has clearly been heavily influenced by Will before), but maybe he didn’t feel comfortable with doing either of those.
You’re right to say people had been assuming SBF’s wealth belonged to EA: I had. In the legal sense it wasn’t, and we paid a price for that. I think it was fair to argue that the wealth ‘rightfully’ belonged to the EA community, in the sense that SBF should defer to representatives of EA on how it should be used, and would be defecting by spending a few billion on personal interests. The reason for that kind of principle is to avoid a situation where EA is captured or unduly influenced by the idiosyncratic preferences of a couple of mega-donors.
Are you arguing that EA shouldn’t associate with / accept money from mega-donors unless they give EA the entirety of their wealth?
The answer is different for each side of your slash.
I see two kinds of relationships EA can have to megadonors:
uneasy, arms’ length, untrusting, but still taking their money
friendly, valorizing, celebratory, going to the same parties, conditional on the donor ceding control of a significant fraction of their wealth to a donor-advised fund (rather than just pledging to give)
Investing in assets expected to appreciate can be a form of earning to give (not that Twitter would be a good investment IMO). That’s how Warren Buffett makes money and probably nobody in EA has criticized him for doing that. Investing in a for-profit something is very different and is guided by different principles from donating to something, because you are expecting to (at least) get your money back and can invest it again or donate it later (this difference is one of the reasons microloans became so hugely popular for a while).
On the downside, concentrating assets (in any company, not just Twitter) is a bad financial strategy, but on the upside, having some influence at Twitter could be useful to promote things like moderation rules that improve the experience of users and increase the prevalence of genuine debate and other good things on the platform.