To add—I strongly do not think MacAskill is the key figure here, which I take to be in step 5 ‘EA support for launching the FTX Foundation’. The key decisions were taken—and the (presumably defective) due dilligence was conducted—in and around October 2021, ahead of the re-launch of the FTX Foundation in early November 2021.
MacAskill didn’t get listed publicly as involved until 3-4 months later, only in an unpaid capacity, had little due diligence/grantmaking experience, and was presumably busy with the writing and publicity for What We Owe The Future.
I think it would be important and useful to hear more from Beckstead about that period and those decisions, but he presumably faces even more legal risk than MacAskill, and has much less experience talking and writing publicly.
I think part of the issue is that the Time article sort of contains a very serious allegation about Will specifically, which he hasn’t (yet*) publicly given evidence against (or clearly denied), namely Naia Bouscal’s allegation that he threatened Tara Mac Aulay. I say “sort of”, because saying someone “basically” X-ed, where X-ing is bad arguably carries the implication that it maybe wasn’t really X exactly, but something a bit like it. Which makes it a bit hard to tell exactly what Naia was actually accusing Will of. Alas, as far as I know, she’s not said more on here (she might have in another venue.)
Culpable mistakes and failures of integrity around very rich people with large amounts of money, are I expect common, and not *necessarily* a (strong) sign of personal bad character. Genuinely threatening someone in an ‘I will end your career in this space’ sort of way on the other hand, seems to me to be genuinely an indication of bad character.
*We’ll here what if anything he has to say about it in his interview on the Clearer Thinking podcast tonight.
To add—I strongly do not think MacAskill is the key figure here, which I take to be in step 5 ‘EA support for launching the FTX Foundation’. The key decisions were taken—and the (presumably defective) due dilligence was conducted—in and around October 2021, ahead of the re-launch of the FTX Foundation in early November 2021.
MacAskill didn’t get listed publicly as involved until 3-4 months later, only in an unpaid capacity, had little due diligence/grantmaking experience, and was presumably busy with the writing and publicity for What We Owe The Future.
I think it would be important and useful to hear more from Beckstead about that period and those decisions, but he presumably faces even more legal risk than MacAskill, and has much less experience talking and writing publicly.
I think part of the issue is that the Time article sort of contains a very serious allegation about Will specifically, which he hasn’t (yet*) publicly given evidence against (or clearly denied), namely Naia Bouscal’s allegation that he threatened Tara Mac Aulay. I say “sort of”, because saying someone “basically” X-ed, where X-ing is bad arguably carries the implication that it maybe wasn’t really X exactly, but something a bit like it. Which makes it a bit hard to tell exactly what Naia was actually accusing Will of. Alas, as far as I know, she’s not said more on here (she might have in another venue.)
Culpable mistakes and failures of integrity around very rich people with large amounts of money, are I expect common, and not *necessarily* a (strong) sign of personal bad character. Genuinely threatening someone in an ‘I will end your career in this space’ sort of way on the other hand, seems to me to be genuinely an indication of bad character.
*We’ll here what if anything he has to say about it in his interview on the Clearer Thinking podcast tonight.
But I do take your point that Will was not the only person involved, or necessarily the most important internally.