I think this is a somewhat useful post to prompt discussion and reflection, and agree there is probably some motivated reasoning going on. That being said, some pushbacks:
The EA forum expresses almost zero empathy for the individuals who put money/crypto on the FTX exchange and then were criminally defrauded by FTX.
I think this is demonstrably false—from some of the most upvoted posts on this issue alone:
First sentence: ”This is a thread of my thoughts and feelings about the actions that led to FTX’s bankruptcy, and the enormous harm that was caused as a result, involving the likely loss of many thousands of innocent people’s savings.”
“One or more leaders at FTX have betrayed the trust of everyone who was counting on them.
Most importantly FTX’s depositors, who didn’t stand to gain on the upside but were unwittingly exposed to a massive downside and may lose savings they and their families were relying on.
FTX leaders also betrayed investors, staff, collaborators, and the groups working to reduce suffering and the risk of future tragedies that they committed to help.
No plausible ethics permits one to lose money trading then take other people’s money to make yet more risky bets in the hope that doing so will help you make it back.”
It is dirty money, the proceeds of FTX’s criminal fraud. Real people have been victimized by FTX.
Keeping FTX grant money is ratifying the criminal fraud.
Where do you draw the line for “clean money”? Is it due to the alleged criminal behavior? Or is it due to real people being victimized?
E.g. if your justification is due to “real people being victimized”, then real people have been victimized by Facebook, should we not accept that money also? If your grandparents get their pension funds, they probably invest in and profit from companies that directly cause harm to real people, should you you tell them to decline that? Crypto assets globally use more electricity than entire countries like Argentina or Australia, does that count as real harm? Does spending that money count as ratifying those harmful actions? What about fossil fuels?
While I do think it’s worth having a conversation about what the EA community or individual grantees’ obligation are, and I think you’re directionally correct about the motivated reasoning claims (though we might disagree about extent), I think I would be interested in a bit more nuance around what you are proposing, unless you literally mean: “all money received from FTX should be returned, no matter what”, in which case I guess I’d be interested in stronger justification. FTX grantees aren’t a monolith, the feasibility of returning the money will vary significantly, and while most of the retail investors were not at fault, nor were most of the FTX grantees. I think I’d consider a claim like “All FTX grantees should return money regardless of their personal situation” to be supererogatory, and not a moral requirement (you may have scenarios where a grantee is just taking the place of another victim, through no fault of their own, and it’s unclear how this is actually net positive or fair, because neither victim is more ‘blameworthy’). I’d be interested if you think otherwise. Again, I agree there was harm done, and I agree there’s motivated reasoning going on, but the existence of motivated reasoning and harm done doesn’t seem sufficient to suggest all FTX grantees should return all their money.
You are correct that there have been expressions of sympathy for the ripped-off FTX investors. I overstated the lack of empathy expressed by the forum.
What appears absent, however, is anyone saying, “I received a grant from FTX and I am returning the money.” So verbal expressions of empathy exist, but actions appear lacking.
Raising the issue of where does one abstractly draw the line between clean money and dirty money—this is the kind of misdirection and casting around for rationalizations to keep the grant money that raise eyebrows to non-EA people like me who read this forum. Wherever that line is drawn in the abstract, FTX’s criminal fraud crossed it and FTX’s money is dirty, tainted proceeds of theft. Saying, “what about fossil fuels?” does not change FTX’s criminal fraud. That’s the concrete issue at hand.
Nice try at implying that grant recipients are equal victims to FTX’s depositors. Grant recipients are not victims at all. Grant recipients received gifts of money from FTX. Money they now know was stolen.
Many of the grant recipients appear to be making a lack-of-knowledge argument to justify their keeping the money. They didn’t know it was stolen when they received it, so now they want to feel justified retaining it.
At the same time they don’t want the cognitive dissonance of recognizing that by keeping the grant money they just gave up their pretense of EA ideals. So they search around for rationalizations, and this lack of knowledge argument is one.
It’s not persuasive. Say you are walking down the street and you see person A rob person B at gunpoint. You then ask person A for money and he tosses you B’s wallet. Hopefully everyone would agree you should give the wallet back to B.
Now imagine you are walking down the street and A runs around the corner. You ask him for money and he tosses you a wallet and runs off. Two seconds later a crowd of people, including B, come around the corner. They explain that A robbed B of his wallet 30 seconds ago, and that you are holding the wallet. Do you start arguing that you too are the victim because when A gave you the wallet you didn’t know it was stolen? Well you know now and you should return it to B. Or, if you decide to keep the wallet, you should not pretend you are doing so out of anything other than pure self-interest.
You are correct that there have been expressions of sympathy for the ripped-off FTX investors. I overstated the lack of empathy expressed by the forum.
What appears absent, however, is anyone saying, “I received a grant from FTX and I am returning the money.” So verbal expressions of empathy exist, but actions appear lacking.
This seems wrong to me. E.g. Paul Christiano has written:
Earlier this year ARC received a grant for $1.25M from the FTX foundation. We now believe that this money morally (if not legally) belongs to FTX customers or creditors, so we intend to return $1.25M to them.
1. Fair, I haven’t spent enough time reading the comments to push back on this. Not sure if you consider something like this as reasonable or a rationalization.
2. I’m not making a case that FTX grantees should keep the money where possible, I’m just pointing out that if your principle is that people shouldn’t spend money they know to have an unclean source, then it actually isn’t as obvious as you are making it out to be. If your argument is around harm done, then clearly there are also considerations around what harms might occur as a result of returning this money (and I hope you would also want to push strongly for those who are involved with returning money to be prioritizing harm mitigation, as one consideration is there might a lot more money available to be redirected from that pool than the EA one). If your argument is about legal proceedings, then I’m hopeful that EAs will follow the law here, and I would condemn EAs who tried to keep the money if it was against the law to. If your argument is about something like—“doing right by retail investors”, then I think you still have to make a case that the retail investors are now the strongest focus of moral obligation for all grantees for that pool of money (though I think that could easily be true for some or even most grantees).
I’m also not casting around for rationalizations to keep the grant money because I’ve never received an FTX grant.
3. I didn’t claim that grant recipients are equal victims to FTX’s depositors, I said there could be scenarios where a grantee takes the place of another victim, through no fault of their own. You can reasonably interpret that as “sometimes grant recipients are also victims”. It sounds like you disagree because you say “Grant recipients are not victims at all.” but I strongly disagree with this.
Suppose someone quits their job to do independent research funded by the FTX future fund. then they lose the “gift” of money that they made some major life changes around, but now have no job to return to, meaning they quit their job for nothing.
Say an organization with 10 researchers who was running in part on FTX money now lose funding. But they’ve also spent millions of FTX money last year. Should they fire everyone and go bankrupt trying to return this money?
I don’t understand how you have so much (and rightly so!) empathy for the retail investors, but at the same time don’t see how it’s possible for grant recipients to also be victims.
4. I think this is not a great analogy, because most of the time you don’t expect people to throw you a wallet and run off, and grant recipients don’t really receive money like that. A better analogy might be: you apply to a scholarship to college. you successfully get this scholarship, and then 2 weeks into college, you find out that Gaddafi funded your scholarship. Should you now decline your scholarship? Now you find out that half of all the college entrance scholarships in your country was funded by Gaddafi, but you’re not actually required to pay it back legally—but a third party is starting a process that allows you to pay it back, should you choose to. Should all those people be morally obliged to return their scholarships, regardless of the situation? What if you can’t go to college if you didn’t have this scholarship? What if 75% of the money wasn’t going to go back to the people harmed by Gaddafi if you declined the scholarship, but kept by the third party? What if you thought you could do better than 75% if you didn’t voluntarily return the money? I mean this is also not a great analogy but I’m mainly trying to illustrate why you could have recipients of grants also be a victim, as well as why modelling grants as wallets that a stranger throws you while running away isn’t great.
FWIW, I think if you’re not going to face major financial issues, then I do think it’s likely morally preferable to return the money than not, all else equal. And I think if you would be in a financially stable situation if you return the money and choose not to, then you should be very careful about the reasoning for your justification, because it would be very easy for there to be some degree of motivated reasoning. But again, I think you haven’t made a case for why it is a moral requirement for all grant recipients to return the money regardless of circumstance, as opposed to something supererogatory.
I think this is a somewhat useful post to prompt discussion and reflection, and agree there is probably some motivated reasoning going on. That being said, some pushbacks:
I think this is demonstrably false—from some of the most upvoted posts on this issue alone:
We must be very clear: fraud in the service of effective altruism is unacceptable
”It is clear that many people—customers and employees—have been deeply hurt by FTX’s collapse. People’s life savings and careers were very rapidly wiped out. I think that compassion and support for those people is very important.”
A personal statement on FTX
First sentence:
”This is a thread of my thoughts and feelings about the actions that led to FTX’s bankruptcy, and the enormous harm that was caused as a result, involving the likely loss of many thousands of innocent people’s savings.”
My reaction to FTX: appalled
“One or more leaders at FTX have betrayed the trust of everyone who was counting on them.
Most importantly FTX’s depositors, who didn’t stand to gain on the upside but were unwittingly exposed to a massive downside and may lose savings they and their families were relying on.
FTX leaders also betrayed investors, staff, collaborators, and the groups working to reduce suffering and the risk of future tragedies that they committed to help.
No plausible ethics permits one to lose money trading then take other people’s money to make yet more risky bets in the hope that doing so will help you make it back.”
(edit: see Pranay’s comment for more examples)
Where do you draw the line for “clean money”? Is it due to the alleged criminal behavior? Or is it due to real people being victimized?
E.g. if your justification is due to “real people being victimized”, then real people have been victimized by Facebook, should we not accept that money also? If your grandparents get their pension funds, they probably invest in and profit from companies that directly cause harm to real people, should you you tell them to decline that? Crypto assets globally use more electricity than entire countries like Argentina or Australia, does that count as real harm? Does spending that money count as ratifying those harmful actions? What about fossil fuels?
While I do think it’s worth having a conversation about what the EA community or individual grantees’ obligation are, and I think you’re directionally correct about the motivated reasoning claims (though we might disagree about extent), I think I would be interested in a bit more nuance around what you are proposing, unless you literally mean: “all money received from FTX should be returned, no matter what”, in which case I guess I’d be interested in stronger justification. FTX grantees aren’t a monolith, the feasibility of returning the money will vary significantly, and while most of the retail investors were not at fault, nor were most of the FTX grantees. I think I’d consider a claim like “All FTX grantees should return money regardless of their personal situation” to be supererogatory, and not a moral requirement (you may have scenarios where a grantee is just taking the place of another victim, through no fault of their own, and it’s unclear how this is actually net positive or fair, because neither victim is more ‘blameworthy’). I’d be interested if you think otherwise. Again, I agree there was harm done, and I agree there’s motivated reasoning going on, but the existence of motivated reasoning and harm done doesn’t seem sufficient to suggest all FTX grantees should return all their money.
You are correct that there have been expressions of sympathy for the ripped-off FTX investors. I overstated the lack of empathy expressed by the forum.
What appears absent, however, is anyone saying, “I received a grant from FTX and I am returning the money.” So verbal expressions of empathy exist, but actions appear lacking.
Raising the issue of where does one abstractly draw the line between clean money and dirty money—this is the kind of misdirection and casting around for rationalizations to keep the grant money that raise eyebrows to non-EA people like me who read this forum. Wherever that line is drawn in the abstract, FTX’s criminal fraud crossed it and FTX’s money is dirty, tainted proceeds of theft. Saying, “what about fossil fuels?” does not change FTX’s criminal fraud. That’s the concrete issue at hand.
Nice try at implying that grant recipients are equal victims to FTX’s depositors. Grant recipients are not victims at all. Grant recipients received gifts of money from FTX. Money they now know was stolen.
Many of the grant recipients appear to be making a lack-of-knowledge argument to justify their keeping the money. They didn’t know it was stolen when they received it, so now they want to feel justified retaining it.
At the same time they don’t want the cognitive dissonance of recognizing that by keeping the grant money they just gave up their pretense of EA ideals. So they search around for rationalizations, and this lack of knowledge argument is one.
It’s not persuasive. Say you are walking down the street and you see person A rob person B at gunpoint. You then ask person A for money and he tosses you B’s wallet. Hopefully everyone would agree you should give the wallet back to B.
Now imagine you are walking down the street and A runs around the corner. You ask him for money and he tosses you a wallet and runs off. Two seconds later a crowd of people, including B, come around the corner. They explain that A robbed B of his wallet 30 seconds ago, and that you are holding the wallet. Do you start arguing that you too are the victim because when A gave you the wallet you didn’t know it was stolen? Well you know now and you should return it to B. Or, if you decide to keep the wallet, you should not pretend you are doing so out of anything other than pure self-interest.
This seems wrong to me. E.g. Paul Christiano has written:
Excellent for ARC! I am heartened to hear this. ARC is to be commended and I applaud them. Well done, ARC.
1.
Fair, I haven’t spent enough time reading the comments to push back on this. Not sure if you consider something like this as reasonable or a rationalization.
2.
I’m not making a case that FTX grantees should keep the money where possible, I’m just pointing out that if your principle is that people shouldn’t spend money they know to have an unclean source, then it actually isn’t as obvious as you are making it out to be. If your argument is around harm done, then clearly there are also considerations around what harms might occur as a result of returning this money (and I hope you would also want to push strongly for those who are involved with returning money to be prioritizing harm mitigation, as one consideration is there might a lot more money available to be redirected from that pool than the EA one). If your argument is about legal proceedings, then I’m hopeful that EAs will follow the law here, and I would condemn EAs who tried to keep the money if it was against the law to. If your argument is about something like—“doing right by retail investors”, then I think you still have to make a case that the retail investors are now the strongest focus of moral obligation for all grantees for that pool of money (though I think that could easily be true for some or even most grantees).
I’m also not casting around for rationalizations to keep the grant money because I’ve never received an FTX grant.
3.
I didn’t claim that grant recipients are equal victims to FTX’s depositors, I said there could be scenarios where a grantee takes the place of another victim, through no fault of their own. You can reasonably interpret that as “sometimes grant recipients are also victims”. It sounds like you disagree because you say “Grant recipients are not victims at all.” but I strongly disagree with this.
Suppose someone quits their job to do independent research funded by the FTX future fund. then they lose the “gift” of money that they made some major life changes around, but now have no job to return to, meaning they quit their job for nothing.
Say an organization with 10 researchers who was running in part on FTX money now lose funding. But they’ve also spent millions of FTX money last year. Should they fire everyone and go bankrupt trying to return this money?
I don’t understand how you have so much (and rightly so!) empathy for the retail investors, but at the same time don’t see how it’s possible for grant recipients to also be victims.
4.
I think this is not a great analogy, because most of the time you don’t expect people to throw you a wallet and run off, and grant recipients don’t really receive money like that. A better analogy might be: you apply to a scholarship to college. you successfully get this scholarship, and then 2 weeks into college, you find out that Gaddafi funded your scholarship. Should you now decline your scholarship? Now you find out that half of all the college entrance scholarships in your country was funded by Gaddafi, but you’re not actually required to pay it back legally—but a third party is starting a process that allows you to pay it back, should you choose to. Should all those people be morally obliged to return their scholarships, regardless of the situation? What if you can’t go to college if you didn’t have this scholarship? What if 75% of the money wasn’t going to go back to the people harmed by Gaddafi if you declined the scholarship, but kept by the third party? What if you thought you could do better than 75% if you didn’t voluntarily return the money? I mean this is also not a great analogy but I’m mainly trying to illustrate why you could have recipients of grants also be a victim, as well as why modelling grants as wallets that a stranger throws you while running away isn’t great.
FWIW, I think if you’re not going to face major financial issues, then I do think it’s likely morally preferable to return the money than not, all else equal. And I think if you would be in a financially stable situation if you return the money and choose not to, then you should be very careful about the reasoning for your justification, because it would be very easy for there to be some degree of motivated reasoning. But again, I think you haven’t made a case for why it is a moral requirement for all grant recipients to return the money regardless of circumstance, as opposed to something supererogatory.