I personally would give Will the benefit of the doubt of his involvement in/knowledge about the specific details of the FTX scandal
Of course. This reads as almost bizarre: it would be a baby-eater-type conspiracy theory to think that Will (or anyone else in EA leadership) knew about this. That’s just not how things work in the world. The vast majority of people at Alameda/FTX didn’t know (inner circle may have been as small as four). I mean, maybe there’s a tiny chance that Sam phoned up someone a week ago and wanted a billion in secret, but you can see how ridiculous that sounds. I mean picture the conversation: “Hey [EA leader], turns out I fucked up. Can you wire me a billion? You’re down with me secretly trading with customer funds, right?”
In any case, I think that isn’t Kerry’s point. The point isn’t “Did Will know about concrete fraud,” but rather, “Was there reason to think fraud is unusually likely? And if so, did people take the types of precautions that you’d want to take if you thought you were dealing with someone capable of doing shady things?”
For comparison, think of Zuckerberg. If the Social Network movie is roughly accurate, then Zuckerberg acted in utterly despicable and unethical ways, lying to the Winklevoss twins repeatedly and stealing their idea (and then screwing over the guy played by Justin Timberlake). So anyone aware of this would’ve been faced with the choice to (1) not trust him at all and not invest in facebook or associate with him; (2) trust him like you’d trust any nice-seeming person without a suspicious history; (3) try to talk to him (e.g., give feedback, try to lecture or mentor, etc.) about how that was unacceptable, ask for concrete ways for him to change, maybe use leverage you have to set up good governance structures and accountability procedures or at least nudge things that way, etc. I’d say (2) is clearly stupid and immoral. (3) might be defensible depending on one’s judgment call (and subsequent execution), and (1) can certainly be appropriate. In the case of facebook, I don’t know if Zuckerberg got any feedback from anyone or how facebook set up its board or accountability procedures, but it looks like, so far, that Zuckerberg never ended up doing anything crazy illegal that destroyed billions in value. (Though maybe some would argue that social media isn’t good for the world and that other inventors could maybe have taken more precautions to make it less bad.)
I don’t think leadership needed to know how the sausage was made to be culpable to some degree. Many people are claiming that they warned leadership that SBF was not doing things above board and if true then has serious implications, even if they didn’t know exactly what SBF was up to.
Not I am not claiming that anyone, specific or otherwise, knew anything.
Thanks for your response. On reflection, I don’t think I said what I was trying to say very well in the paragraph you quoted, and I agree with what you’ve said.
My intent was not to suggest that Will or other FTX future fund advisors were directly involved (or that it’s reasonable to think so), but rather that there may have been things the advisors chose to ignore, such as Kerry’s mention of Sam’s unethical behaviour in the past. Thus, we might think that either Sam was incredibly charismatic and good at hiding things, or we might think there actually were some warning signs and those involved with him showed poor judgement of his character (or maybe some mix of both).
Facebook parent company fined in largest campaign finance penalty in U.S. history
Oct. 27th, 2022
— A Washington state judge on Wednesday fined Facebook parent company Meta nearly $25 million for repeatedly and intentionally violating campaign finance disclosure law, in what is believed to be the largest campaign finance penalty in U.S. history.
The penalty issued by King County Superior Court Judge Douglass North was the maximum allowed for more than 800 violations of Washington's Fair Campaign Practices Act, passed by voters in 1972 and later strengthened by the Legislature. Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson argued that the maximum was appropriate considering his office previously sued Facebook in 2018 for violating the same law.
Of course. This reads as almost bizarre: it would be a baby-eater-type conspiracy theory to think that Will (or anyone else in EA leadership) knew about this. That’s just not how things work in the world. The vast majority of people at Alameda/FTX didn’t know (inner circle may have been as small as four). I mean, maybe there’s a tiny chance that Sam phoned up someone a week ago and wanted a billion in secret, but you can see how ridiculous that sounds. I mean picture the conversation: “Hey [EA leader], turns out I fucked up. Can you wire me a billion? You’re down with me secretly trading with customer funds, right?”
In any case, I think that isn’t Kerry’s point. The point isn’t “Did Will know about concrete fraud,” but rather, “Was there reason to think fraud is unusually likely? And if so, did people take the types of precautions that you’d want to take if you thought you were dealing with someone capable of doing shady things?”
For comparison, think of Zuckerberg. If the Social Network movie is roughly accurate, then Zuckerberg acted in utterly despicable and unethical ways, lying to the Winklevoss twins repeatedly and stealing their idea (and then screwing over the guy played by Justin Timberlake). So anyone aware of this would’ve been faced with the choice to (1) not trust him at all and not invest in facebook or associate with him; (2) trust him like you’d trust any nice-seeming person without a suspicious history; (3) try to talk to him (e.g., give feedback, try to lecture or mentor, etc.) about how that was unacceptable, ask for concrete ways for him to change, maybe use leverage you have to set up good governance structures and accountability procedures or at least nudge things that way, etc. I’d say (2) is clearly stupid and immoral. (3) might be defensible depending on one’s judgment call (and subsequent execution), and (1) can certainly be appropriate. In the case of facebook, I don’t know if Zuckerberg got any feedback from anyone or how facebook set up its board or accountability procedures, but it looks like, so far, that Zuckerberg never ended up doing anything crazy illegal that destroyed billions in value. (Though maybe some would argue that social media isn’t good for the world and that other inventors could maybe have taken more precautions to make it less bad.)
I don’t think leadership needed to know how the sausage was made to be culpable to some degree. Many people are claiming that they warned leadership that SBF was not doing things above board and if true then has serious implications, even if they didn’t know exactly what SBF was up to.
Not I am not claiming that anyone, specific or otherwise, knew anything.
Thanks for your response. On reflection, I don’t think I said what I was trying to say very well in the paragraph you quoted, and I agree with what you’ve said.
My intent was not to suggest that Will or other FTX future fund advisors were directly involved (or that it’s reasonable to think so), but rather that there may have been things the advisors chose to ignore, such as Kerry’s mention of Sam’s unethical behaviour in the past. Thus, we might think that either Sam was incredibly charismatic and good at hiding things, or we might think there actually were some warning signs and those involved with him showed poor judgement of his character (or maybe some mix of both).
Actually...
Facebook parent company fined in largest campaign finance penalty in U.S. history
Oct. 27th, 2022
— A Washington state judge on Wednesday fined Facebook parent company Meta nearly $25 million for repeatedly and intentionally violating campaign finance disclosure law, in what is believed to be the largest campaign finance penalty in U.S. history.
The penalty issued by King County Superior Court Judge Douglass North was the maximum allowed for more than 800
violations of Washington's Fair Campaign Practices Act,
passed by voters in 1972 and later strengthened by the Legislature. Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson argued that the maximum was appropriate considering his office previously sued Facebook in 2018 for violating the same law.