Yes—I almost can’t believe I am reading a senior EA figure suggesting that every major financial institution has an unreasonably prurient interest in the sex lives of their risk-holding employees. EA has just taken a bath because it was worse at financial risk assessment than it thought it was. The response here seems to be to double-down on the view that a sufficiently intelligent rationalist can derive—from first principles—better risk management than the lessons embedded in professional organisations. We have ample evidence that this approach did not work in the case of FTX funding, and that real people are really suffering because EA leaders made the wrong call here.
Now is the time to eat a big plate of epistemically humble crow, and accept that this approach failed horribly. Conspiracy theorising about ‘voting rings’ is a pretty terrible look.
I feel like people are mischarachterizing what Eliezer is saying. It sounds to me like he’s saying the following.
“Sure, the fact that the two were dating or having sex makes it even more obvious that something was amiss, but the real problem was obviously that Alameda and FTX were entangled from the very start with Sam having had total control of Alameda before he started FTX, and there were no checks and balances and so on, so why are you weirdos focusing on the sex part so much and ignore all the other blatant issues?!”
That seems like a very charitable reading of the comment
“who EAs are fucking is none of EA’s business. There are very limited exceptions to this rule like … none of which are being suggested here.”
I’d suggest that given the high stakes of the situation at the moment it is especially important not to inadvertently give the impression that EA leadership think they have privileged insight into financial risk management that they actually don’t. If EY has merely mangled his argument (as you suggest) it would be very sensible for him to edit his comment to reflect that, and apologise for implying that vote rigging was the only reason he could have been down voted.
That seems like a very charitable reading of the comment
I was commenting on his overall stance from his comments throughout the threads here, not only on that particular first comment. I agree that the part you cite doesn’t sound defensible. I considered his further comments to be admissions of “Okay, you all have a point, but …” (If I’m right with my interpretation, he could’ve been more clear about the part of “sorry, you all have a point and the initial comment was too crude.”)
Edit: FWIW, I thought the info/arguments you gave about why it’s common practice in finance to carefully monitor romantic or sexual conflicts of interests were compelling, and your point about how EAs maybe shouldn’t think they can do better based on first-principles reasoning also seems wise.
Yes—I almost can’t believe I am reading a senior EA figure suggesting that every major financial institution has an unreasonably prurient interest in the sex lives of their risk-holding employees. EA has just taken a bath because it was worse at financial risk assessment than it thought it was. The response here seems to be to double-down on the view that a sufficiently intelligent rationalist can derive—from first principles—better risk management than the lessons embedded in professional organisations. We have ample evidence that this approach did not work in the case of FTX funding, and that real people are really suffering because EA leaders made the wrong call here.
Now is the time to eat a big plate of epistemically humble crow, and accept that this approach failed horribly. Conspiracy theorising about ‘voting rings’ is a pretty terrible look.
I feel like people are mischarachterizing what Eliezer is saying. It sounds to me like he’s saying the following.
“Sure, the fact that the two were dating or having sex makes it even more obvious that something was amiss, but the real problem was obviously that Alameda and FTX were entangled from the very start with Sam having had total control of Alameda before he started FTX, and there were no checks and balances and so on, so why are you weirdos focusing on the sex part so much and ignore all the other blatant issues?!”
That seems like a very charitable reading of the comment
“who EAs are fucking is none of EA’s business. There are very limited exceptions to this rule like … none of which are being suggested here.”
I’d suggest that given the high stakes of the situation at the moment it is especially important not to inadvertently give the impression that EA leadership think they have privileged insight into financial risk management that they actually don’t. If EY has merely mangled his argument (as you suggest) it would be very sensible for him to edit his comment to reflect that, and apologise for implying that vote rigging was the only reason he could have been down voted.
I was commenting on his overall stance from his comments throughout the threads here, not only on that particular first comment. I agree that the part you cite doesn’t sound defensible. I considered his further comments to be admissions of “Okay, you all have a point, but …” (If I’m right with my interpretation, he could’ve been more clear about the part of “sorry, you all have a point and the initial comment was too crude.”)
Edit: FWIW, I thought the info/arguments you gave about why it’s common practice in finance to carefully monitor romantic or sexual conflicts of interests were compelling, and your point about how EAs maybe shouldn’t think they can do better based on first-principles reasoning also seems wise.