[Linkpost] Sam Bankman-Fried funded a group with racist ties. FTX wants its $5m back
Surprised nobody else has posted this yet.
From the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/jun/16/sam-bankman-fried-ftx-eugenics-scientific-racism
Talks about Lightcone & Manifest.
As others have noted, it looks like the journalists got a lot of basic things wrong in this reporting. I’m doubly frustrated by this because basically all of the EA/rationalist discourse on Twitter is about these mistakes, with almost no discussion of the unchallenged allegations in the piece: that Manifold’s conference had attendees/speakers with ties to eugenicist and racist people and groups.
For example, whether or not Richard Hanania uses prediction markets, I want him nowhere near EA or EA-funded groups/events. For why, see this.
I think it’s somewhat fair to criticize Manifold for their selection of speakers (though I would be hesitant to infer endorsement).
But I think it’s pretty unfair to criticize Manifold for attendees who bought tickets for an event that anyone in the world can buy tickets to. I agree that in as much as any substantial fraction (like idk >10%) of an event ends up full of people who take harmful actions, then that makes sense to be concerned about, but there were 600 people at Manifest, and so I don’t think finding a few attendees who have harmful effects on society and the world is much evidence about Manifest.
People are notoriously bad at assessing these things, so do take this with a major grain of salt: I would believe >10% of the people present were HBD curious or would endorse and partake in discussions around HBD. If we want better data a survey could be sent to the participants.
Oh, I would totally partake in discussions around HBD. In as much as people consider that a harmful action, I strongly disapprove. I think a lot of the claims around it are bunk, and disagree with many people in the space, but I would totally talk to people about it, as I am willing to talk to people about almost everything.
This is helpful context. I think it is still a bit unsettling that there was a noticeable strain of this type of stuff from the attendees (like if I went to a ticketed party and noticed that 5% of it was into race science somehow, I’d feel uncomfortable and want to leave.)
It’s probably good to note that Manifold is not an EA organisation, and Manifest (iiuc) was not funded by EA funders or branded as an EA event (though I think Manifest was trying to channel some of the EA vibe, and many attendees were involved in EA in some way).
This is helpful, though Lighthaven is definitely backed by EA money.
Lighthaven will generally rent the space to whoever pays us enough money to make it worth it (and we made on-net money on Manifest, even taking into account staff time), barring some very exceptional circumstances.
I do think overall Manifest was great and I would subsidize it, but I want to set clear expectations that I absolutely do not endorse everyone who rents space from us (like, I think there is a substantial chance we will host team retreats for capability teams at AI scaling labs, and there is basically no group of people whose actions I condemn more than them, but I still think it’s the right choice to rent space to them).
There are many factual inaccuracies in this post. Oliver Habryka (who runs this Lightcone) wrote a tweet thread explaining some of the most egregious errors.
For example, contrary to the article’s claim no FTX funds were used in the purchase of Lighthaven. According to Kelsey Piper (a journalist at Vox) this “is a really, really bad mistake of the kind that should have been caught in even cursory fact checking”.
To be fair to the Guardian, the article is citing those allegations to the complaint filed against Lightcone and related entities in bankruptcy court.
Here are relevant quotes from the complaint (click here and search for 24-50066)
[Note: Upon information and belief is lawyer-speak for we are guessing that . . . . But that’s usually considered OK in the context of a complaint, because the plaintiff hasn’t had a chance to dig through the defendant’s records, depose their officers, and otherwise prove up their case.]
Turning to the article:
(emphases mine).
These statements seem at least generally consistent with the complaint at first glance. Could someone point out where they are not?
I think it’s generally fair for media outlets to report what is being alleged in complaints filed in litigation of public importance. This isn’t a self-represented person alleging that the U.S. government is holding Elvis captive. This is a serious adversary complaint by a serious law firm, that is subject to the norms and sanctions of Bankruptcy Rule 8011.
The complaint may be wrong, of course—many complaints ultimately are show to be, or are at least shown to be unproven. But money is fungible, it is undisputed that one transfer from an FTX source was somehow related to the Rose Garden Inn, and it it appears that at least some significant FTX funding was legally unrestricted. I do not think the Guardian was obliged not to report the allegations because Lightcone denied them, nor was it obliged to conduct a forensic audit of Lightcone’s books before reporting on what was alleged in a public court complaint.
I believe the estate has a strategic litigation reason for claiming that FTX money was involved with the RG Inn, and so I would temper any credence in the allegations in light of that angle. But what’s sauce for the goose is for the gander as well—Lightcone may have a countervailing strategic litigation reason for denying a connection.
Sure, they hedged in some places. But the literal title just states it outright:
Now I know people often say that writers do not choose their titles. But the Guardian as a newspaper did, so I think they can fairly be criticized for it, and somehow I doubt the author registered any objection to the title.
Nor did the article in any way alert the reader, likely less knowledgeable about bankruptcy procedures than you, about the potential fallibility of bankruptcy complaints, or the strategic issues involved. Even after the corrections made to the article, they wait until the 10th paragraph to mention the fact Habryka denies it, and not until the 50th paragraph do we learn that he presented evidence the allegations are false.
Agreed that there are significant problems with the article as a whole. My reaction was specific to the statements about the finances of the RG Inn purchase and renovation.
One major crux for me is whether the Guardian actually sent a request for comment to Habryka. If they didn’t, that would update my view of the fairness of the representations downward significantly. If they did—and the internet ate the e-mail somehow—then the allegations in the complaint were uncontested on the evidence before them despite having given Lightcone an opportunity to respond. Not commenting is the ordinary response where litigation is pending, so there would have been nothing to clue the Guardian in that the lack of response was due to technological failure.
Although the ordinary reader doesn’t have an attorney’s skeptical eye in reading complaints, it is clear enough that the complaint was written in an attempt to get a court to command Lightcone et al. to fork over ~$5MM to the plaintiffs. To me, that does put the reader on notice that the complaint may take a one-sided perspective and include copious amounts of spin. Does anyone expect that they will see truth-seeking behavior out of (at least!) ordinary private litigants?
Wow that’s really bad, I hope a bunch of people have at least e-mailed the guardian already? I’ve e-mailed papers a couple of times and they did make corrections to their credit...
I think Oliver has talked with the writer on twitter already!
It seems like a garbage and incredibly badly fact checked article. I broadly don’t think it’s a good use of time to read bad faith hit pieces, and prefer them not to be on the forum (though no fault on you for posting it! There’s also an argument that it’s good to be aware)
It’s a bad article, but it seems more important to me that the central accusation that they invited a lot of fascists and fash-adjacent people is correct.
I don’t think “Manifest invited a bunch of fascists” is an accurate statement. The “fash-adjacent” part is hard to operationalize, since like, IDK, Scott Alexander has spent a bunch of time arguing with fascists, which in some sense makes him “fash-adjacent”, but excluding him on that basis seems quite bad.
I do think some more of those people bought tickets, but anyone could buy a ticket to Manifest. I do think it’s important to think about aggregation effects like this, and the loss of control that’s associated with doing a fully openly-ticketed event like this is one reason why I’ve historically been hesitant to run openly-ticketed events, though I think it went pretty surprisingly well for LessOnline.
I feel like a key point in the article has been drowned out by the discussion of inaccuracies (which is legitimate, but I want to track this other point): that the FTX estate has an active suit against Lightcone/CFAR, and that Lightcone/CFAR didn’t respond to multiple communication attempts by FTX last year. Even if the money Lightcone received from FTX wasn’t used to pay for the Rose Garden Inn, it seems like they still received money from FTX that they haven’t returned. The court documents list several payments made from the FTX Foundation or FTX Trading Ltd. to CFAR in 2022, including on March 3, July 8, July 13, August 18, September 20, and October 3 (in total, allegedly millions of dollars).
My prior was that Oliver Habryka has been particularly vocal about EA’s role in FTX-related harms. In trying to avoid perpetuating or participating in these harms, I would have expected that Lightcone would have reached a settlement with the FTX estate or paid them back for any FTX money that they received that could have been from fraud. I’m curious why this hasn’t happened.
I’m seeing commenters criticise this piece for factual errors (e.g. misidentifying Manifund as a prediction market) and I think The Guardian should issue corrections for those errors.
But I’m much more concerned about the racist ties:
I’m unfamiliar with these people but I don’t like what I’m learning. Khan wrote a letter to “a white nationalist website” about “the threat of the United States becoming ‘more genetically and culturally Mexican’.” Chau believes “the narrative” around George Floyd’s death “was every bit as fake as an AI-generated video”. And Richard Hanania, also invited to Manifest, believes “we need more policing, incarceration and surveillance of black people.”
The response by a Manifest representative is also concerning:
I think “high decouplers” believe there is negligible risk in platforming intolerant people because rationalists can isolate their relevant thoughts (e.g. prediction markets) from their dangerous thoughts (e.g. there should be more incarceration of Black people).
But the poor quality of reasoning demonstrated in somebody’s more controversial thinking should reflect poorly on their general intellectual rigour. Do you really have a lot to learn from somebody who, like Chau, thinks the US is a “Black supremacist country” or is that person maybe just a controversialist?
And it seems disingenuous to suggest that rationalists aren’t interested in those controversial views. We know that rationalists are unusually and disturbingly pro-eugenics. And it’s hard to see it as a coincidence that this event attracted ~five racist public intellectuals.
Manifest’s representative also said:
As with critiquing factual errors without engaging the central claims about racist ties, declining this opportunity to condemn scientific racism goes some way to validating the report’s argument: that rationalists have a blind spot on racism.
As an effective altruist, not a rationalist, I align instead with the Centre for Effective Altruism’s statement in response to Nick Bostrom’s email:
(I’m writing in a personal capacity)
You should put “linkpost” in the title. Otherwise it looks like the headline is you speaking, not The Guardian.
Done, thanks!
Seems like some other person wrote about this: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/MHenxzydsNgRzSMHY/my-experience-at-the-controversial-manifest-2024