Almost every company has lots of public documents outlining their commitments to moral virtues.
EA posts are very unlike company virtue statements. They include philosophical arguments (at least some of screenshots and linked posts do). I agree that there’s more that can (and maybe should) be said, but I think linking to extensive discussion of naive/act utilitarianism vs. global consequentialism, ethical injunctions, etc., is a great way to show that EAs have seriously engaged with these topics and come down pretty decisively on one side of it.
I think it’s nice, but I also think we should be raising the bar of the evidence we need to trust people.
SBF and the inner FTX crew seemed very EA. SBF had a utilitarian blog[1] that I thought was pretty good (for the time, it was ~2014).
He repeatedly spoke about how important it was for crypto exchanges to not do illegal activity. He even actively worked to regulate the industry.
I’d bet that SBF spent a lot more effort speaking and advocating about the importance of trustworthiness in crypto, then perhaps any of us on the importance of trust and regularly-good moral principles.
From what I understand, he was the poster boy for what trustworthy crypto looks like.
We at very least could really use measures that would have caught a SBF-lite.
> EA posts are very unlike company virtue statements.
Sure, but SBF definitely got through. I’m sure any of his co-conspirators also would have. EA-adjacent people an clearly fool EAs using these sorts of methods.
(I considered raising this issue more in the first post, but am happy to add it now that there’s push-back.)
I can’t find the blog now, and wouldn’t be surprised if it were no longer online. It’s possible I’m misremembering. I remember the blog having like ~6 posts or so, in around 2014. If anyone else has a link, it seems valuable to share it.
I think coming back to this, my point isn’t straightforwardly fair. My post above uses a lot of evidence in a way that makes it seem like the point is very obvious.
I think that bars like “does the person have public writing showing they deeply understand EA principles” are generally pretty decent and often have worked decently well.
The case with SBF does seem extremely unusual to me. Protecting against it isn’t just some “obvious set of regular measures”. It might take a fair deal of thought and effort.
I think that we should be thinking about how to that thought of effort. I think we should be working to find and assume ways of verification that would have at least caught some lite-SBF.
So, the example of SBF seemed too good to not share, but it is extreme, so can’t be taken too much as a typical example to be worried about.
I still think that we should set the bar higher than a few blog posts for situations like this though, and assume that Will would agree. (He meant this much more as a quick public statement, and not real evidence of innocence to EAs, I assume)
You should find a better example. The video above doesn’t contain any a relevant warning. Her criticism is that SBF is pro-regulation. Not that he was defrauding his customers and neither does she make any predictions about his exchange going down due to insolvency.
I agree with Lukas, though I also suspect this was mostly a failure of bureaucracy / competence / a few individuals’ moral character, rather than a failure that has much connection to EA ideology. I expect we’ll have more clarity on that later, as facts come to light.
Eh, let’s not overrate how much abstract arguments actually work to achieve their goals. Now the broader EA sphere has responded surprisingly well, but we need to move beyond abstract words, and instead focus more on what they actually do.
EA posts are very unlike company virtue statements. They include philosophical arguments (at least some of screenshots and linked posts do). I agree that there’s more that can (and maybe should) be said, but I think linking to extensive discussion of naive/act utilitarianism vs. global consequentialism, ethical injunctions, etc., is a great way to show that EAs have seriously engaged with these topics and come down pretty decisively on one side of it.
[Edit: I have a reply to this in the comments]
I think it’s nice, but I also think we should be raising the bar of the evidence we need to trust people.
SBF and the inner FTX crew seemed very EA. SBF had a utilitarian blog[1] that I thought was pretty good (for the time, it was ~2014).
He repeatedly spoke about how important it was for crypto exchanges to not do illegal activity. He even actively worked to regulate the industry.
I’d bet that SBF spent a lot more effort speaking and advocating about the importance of trustworthiness in crypto, then perhaps any of us on the importance of trust and regularly-good moral principles.
Sam literally argued for trust and accountability to congress.
From what I understand, he was the poster boy for what trustworthy crypto looks like.
We at very least could really use measures that would have caught a SBF-lite.
> EA posts are very unlike company virtue statements.
Sure, but SBF definitely got through. I’m sure any of his co-conspirators also would have. EA-adjacent people an clearly fool EAs using these sorts of methods.
(I considered raising this issue more in the first post, but am happy to add it now that there’s push-back.)
I can’t find the blog now, and wouldn’t be surprised if it were no longer online. It’s possible I’m misremembering. I remember the blog having like ~6 posts or so, in around 2014. If anyone else has a link, it seems valuable to share it.
I believe this is SBF’s blog: http://measuringshadowsblog.blogspot.com/
I think coming back to this, my point isn’t straightforwardly fair. My post above uses a lot of evidence in a way that makes it seem like the point is very obvious.
I think that bars like “does the person have public writing showing they deeply understand EA principles” are generally pretty decent and often have worked decently well.
The case with SBF does seem extremely unusual to me. Protecting against it isn’t just some “obvious set of regular measures”. It might take a fair deal of thought and effort.
I think that we should be thinking about how to that thought of effort. I think we should be working to find and assume ways of verification that would have at least caught some lite-SBF.
So, the example of SBF seemed too good to not share, but it is extreme, so can’t be taken too much as a typical example to be worried about.
I still think that we should set the bar higher than a few blog posts for situations like this though, and assume that Will would agree. (He meant this much more as a quick public statement, and not real evidence of innocence to EAs, I assume)
This lady posted this 3 weeks ago. Some people in the crypto space have been warning about SBF, and FTX for over a year.
You should find a better example. The video above doesn’t contain any a relevant warning. Her criticism is that SBF is pro-regulation. Not that he was defrauding his customers and neither does she make any predictions about his exchange going down due to insolvency.
Not sure if you find this a better example:
https://twitter.com/Hedgeye/status/1591240664779743232
I agree with Lukas, though I also suspect this was mostly a failure of bureaucracy / competence / a few individuals’ moral character, rather than a failure that has much connection to EA ideology. I expect we’ll have more clarity on that later, as facts come to light.
Eh, let’s not overrate how much abstract arguments actually work to achieve their goals. Now the broader EA sphere has responded surprisingly well, but we need to move beyond abstract words, and instead focus more on what they actually do.
What do you mean, this community is largely composed of people who do really weird things in their day job based on abstract arguments.
Thanks for verifying that for me.