There are however a number of things we ARE at fault for here.
We as a community idolised SBF, including promoting him in many presentations, a relatively fawning interview by 80K which continued to promote the idea that SBF was living frugally (surely people knew by then that was bs). We could have chosen not to do this
Will MacAskell made the introduction to Elon to try and get SBF to help buy twitter. We still have no public information why, but this would have given SBF more power and used a lot of money that could have been used on doing good to that end. Why?
Carrick Flynn campaign; we as a community hugely supported this campaign which was quite blatantly SBF and GBF trying to buy a seat for their interests. Sure, we as a community thought this was also our interests (and I still assume Carrick would have done a good job?) but once again this was a way the community encouraged and didn’t question SBFs power
Will MacAskell knew SBF for 9 years, seemingly relatively closely. Its not Wills fault SBF committed fraud, but it is partially Wills fault SBF became such a face for the community within and outside of it. Maybe no ordinary person could have known SBF was a fraudster. But then, if we only expect from Will what we expect of “ordinary people” why are we happy trusting him with so much power in the community? The only justification I can think of is he is just so so so much better at decision making, having a reliably positive impact and avoiding risks to the community and project of EA. Its clear that Will isn’t this uniquely good. So why do we trust him (and others) with so much power in the community
There are however a number of things we ARE at fault for here.
Yes, assuming that these were foreseeably bad calls. Seems good to separately ask “what responsibility do EAs bear for Sam’s bad decisions ?” and “what did we otherwise do wrong, or right?”. E.g., if it were true that Sam would have made all the same missteps in the absence of EA, it could still be the case that we made Sam-related mistakes like “failing to propagate info about Sam’s past bad behavior”.
2. Will MacAskell made the introduction to Elon to try and get SBF to help buy twitter. We still have no public information why, but this would have given SBF more power and used a lot of money that could have been used on doing good to that end.
It would have given SBF a different kind of power. I’m skeptical of the claim that SBF would be more powerful if he’d poured his money into Twitter, since that implies that Twitter is a more useful, leveraged thing to spend money on than SBF’s other alternatives.
It seems more likely to me that either buying Twitter would reduce SBF’s power/influence (because Twitter isn’t very important), or that buying Twitter is a not-crazy sort of thing for EAs to try to do (because Twitter is very important).
Of course, SBF owning Twitter could have been bad insofar as SBF’s judgment and character were flawed. But then we’re just repeating the critique “EAs should have known that SBF was a bad guy”, not separately critiquing Will for thinking the Twitter buy was a good idea.
I think more of an argument needs to be given for “buying Twitter was a dumb idea” in order to include this on a list of “things EAs are at fault for”.
3. Carrick Flynn campaign; we as a community hugely supported this campaign which was quite blatantly SBF and GBF trying to buy a seat for their interests. Sure, we as a community thought this was also our interests (and I still assume Carrick would have done a good job?) but once again this was a way the community encouraged and didn’t question SBFs power
This seems totally wrong to me. First, because I knew Carrick pre-campaign, I think he’s awesome and would make an amazing elected official, and it doesn’t update me at all to know that Carrick (like a ton of excellent, well-intentioned EAs) got FTX funding.
And second, because AFAIK Carrick is an FHI guy who SBF later decided to support in his primary race (because he’s an EA and SBF wanted more EAs in politics), not someone with close ties to SBF. Quoting Carrick in a Vox interview:
First, I’ve never met [Sam Bankman-Fried], I’ve never talked to him. I don’t have any information that anyone else doesn’t have. I actually don’t have any information that’s not public with, I guess, one exception, which is information I think other people think they have, which is they think I’m involved in crypto or something. That is not the case. I’m not a crypto person. I don’t know very much about it. I’ve never looked at regulations for it. I don’t think it’s a priority.
Left with that information, my take is speculative, but what I will say is it seems to me like Sam Bankman-Fried is someone who legitimately wants to prevent pandemics from happening again. I am on board. I love that, great goal. Let’s do it. I see why he would want to support me for that, since I’ve made this my first priority and I’ve got a history in this. He’s also supported other candidates and sitting congresspersons who have good pandemic prevention policies, with less money, but I can see why he’d want to give more to the person with more background in it.
Someone could make an awesome elected official (as I am sure he would have done) and still be a seat essentially bought for SBFs interests as well… like that’s exactly how lobbying works!
Also it’s clearly untrue that Carrick did not have close ties to SBF. AFAIK (and I may be wrong) he was pretty good mates with Gabe Bankman Fried (I may be wrong though)
There are however a number of things we ARE at fault for here.
We as a community idolised SBF, including promoting him in many presentations, a relatively fawning interview by 80K which continued to promote the idea that SBF was living frugally (surely people knew by then that was bs). We could have chosen not to do this
Will MacAskell made the introduction to Elon to try and get SBF to help buy twitter. We still have no public information why, but this would have given SBF more power and used a lot of money that could have been used on doing good to that end. Why?
Carrick Flynn campaign; we as a community hugely supported this campaign which was quite blatantly SBF and GBF trying to buy a seat for their interests. Sure, we as a community thought this was also our interests (and I still assume Carrick would have done a good job?) but once again this was a way the community encouraged and didn’t question SBFs power
Will MacAskell knew SBF for 9 years, seemingly relatively closely. Its not Wills fault SBF committed fraud, but it is partially Wills fault SBF became such a face for the community within and outside of it. Maybe no ordinary person could have known SBF was a fraudster. But then, if we only expect from Will what we expect of “ordinary people” why are we happy trusting him with so much power in the community? The only justification I can think of is he is just so so so much better at decision making, having a reliably positive impact and avoiding risks to the community and project of EA. Its clear that Will isn’t this uniquely good. So why do we trust him (and others) with so much power in the community
Yes, assuming that these were foreseeably bad calls. Seems good to separately ask “what responsibility do EAs bear for Sam’s bad decisions ?” and “what did we otherwise do wrong, or right?”. E.g., if it were true that Sam would have made all the same missteps in the absence of EA, it could still be the case that we made Sam-related mistakes like “failing to propagate info about Sam’s past bad behavior”.
It would have given SBF a different kind of power. I’m skeptical of the claim that SBF would be more powerful if he’d poured his money into Twitter, since that implies that Twitter is a more useful, leveraged thing to spend money on than SBF’s other alternatives.
It seems more likely to me that either buying Twitter would reduce SBF’s power/influence (because Twitter isn’t very important), or that buying Twitter is a not-crazy sort of thing for EAs to try to do (because Twitter is very important).
Of course, SBF owning Twitter could have been bad insofar as SBF’s judgment and character were flawed. But then we’re just repeating the critique “EAs should have known that SBF was a bad guy”, not separately critiquing Will for thinking the Twitter buy was a good idea.
I think more of an argument needs to be given for “buying Twitter was a dumb idea” in order to include this on a list of “things EAs are at fault for”.
This seems totally wrong to me. First, because I knew Carrick pre-campaign, I think he’s awesome and would make an amazing elected official, and it doesn’t update me at all to know that Carrick (like a ton of excellent, well-intentioned EAs) got FTX funding.
And second, because AFAIK Carrick is an FHI guy who SBF later decided to support in his primary race (because he’s an EA and SBF wanted more EAs in politics), not someone with close ties to SBF. Quoting Carrick in a Vox interview:
Someone could make an awesome elected official (as I am sure he would have done) and still be a seat essentially bought for SBFs interests as well… like that’s exactly how lobbying works! Also it’s clearly untrue that Carrick did not have close ties to SBF. AFAIK (and I may be wrong) he was pretty good mates with Gabe Bankman Fried (I may be wrong though)