I agree—I sympathise with the people who lost the money, and I can see them being furious after reading this article. People have different methods of dealing with stress, some binge eats, and some play video games. Still, I think we as a community need to be more compassionate towards SBF and provide him with the legal right to be treated as innocent until proven guilty.
How can we provide him with that legal right? We’re not a court. Are you suggesting we withhold moral judgement until a court provides one? Besides being far too high an epistemic bar for judging people’s actions, that will probably be years away, at which point EA’s reputation would (rightly) have withered away.
Legal rights, ok. Compassion? Not anymore. Anyone who still voluntarily associates with him (outside of formal services like legal representation), after being aware of both the NYT reporting of his tweets and what he has actually been doing with them, should be permanently exiled from the EA community, if the EA community wants to survive. This is obvious.
“exiled from community” is a bit too harsh, no? This edit is an excellent example of why one should not judge too quickly, or rather we as a community should not be too quick to judge. When SBF was able to contribute, we said SBF was a poster boy for earning to give; now, we say no one should even associate. We need to learn to slow down and listen deeply before we judge.
It may be difficult to parse what happened as an outsider, but for those who work in or near finance it is clear that Sam engaged in wildly unethical and illegal behaviour.
At a minimum, Sam played a reckless game with customer deposits and gambled with money that was never his. At the worst, Sam had suffered massive losses in his hedge fund and tried to use FTX deposits to survive (creating a form of Ponzi scheme). At the moment it appears a mix of the two of is true. It’s horrific fraud either way.
The hole he has dug is very, very deep (billions of dollars deep) and a redemption arc is not forthcoming.
I agree that “exiled from community” is strong language, but “slow down and listen deeply before we judge” doesn’t make any sense if you consider how many people lost money, careers, funding, etc from his poor decisions, which he is showing almost no remorse for. Taking naps and playing video games? That must be nice when people are genuinely in a bind because their projects were being funded by the FTX Future Fund.
Yes, I’m leaving the comment and edit in place as evidence for your point.
With that said, there is (i) some time pressure here, and (ii) the consequences of a mistake on my part were minimal if I was wrong, so I don’t regret my initial comments, I’m willing to eat the consequences for having guessed wrong. The tone of this NYT article makes it clear that there are powerful organizations and people still defending him as we speak. In the event there ever is clear evidence that he is STILL an “unlawful oathbreaker”, as opposed to being willing to walk the long road to redemption, no, I do not think “exiled from community” is too harsh a penalty for continued unnecessary association with him.
And I will stand by it, due to the magnitude of the problem and the visible power of his defenders.
Now, I’ve really only been EA-adjacent so far, I’ve never attended any EA-affiliated events beyond a solstice and a house gathering. But I do have some common sense about how trust works. I do not see an alternative path for the EA community to regain trust in the event he is proven to still be an unlawful oathbreaker.
Again, this does not apply if he was an oathbreaker but is now unusually accepting of the consequences.
I agree—I sympathise with the people who lost the money, and I can see them being furious after reading this article. People have different methods of dealing with stress, some binge eats, and some play video games. Still, I think we as a community need to be more compassionate towards SBF and provide him with the legal right to be treated as innocent until proven guilty.
How can we provide him with that legal right? We’re not a court. Are you suggesting we withhold moral judgement until a court provides one? Besides being far too high an epistemic bar for judging people’s actions, that will probably be years away, at which point EA’s reputation would (rightly) have withered away.
See my comment above.
Legal rights, ok. Compassion? Not anymore. Anyone who still voluntarily associates with him (outside of formal services like legal representation), after being aware of both the NYT reporting of his tweets and what he has actually been doing with them, should be permanently exiled from the EA community, if the EA community wants to survive. This is obvious.
EDIT: suspending judgment after https://twitter.com/ercwl/status/1592378315431550977 . The principle remains, though: if he tries to escape any consequences for what he did, that’s the last straw.
“exiled from community” is a bit too harsh, no? This edit is an excellent example of why one should not judge too quickly, or rather we as a community should not be too quick to judge. When SBF was able to contribute, we said SBF was a poster boy for earning to give; now, we say no one should even associate. We need to learn to slow down and listen deeply before we judge.
It may be difficult to parse what happened as an outsider, but for those who work in or near finance it is clear that Sam engaged in wildly unethical and illegal behaviour.
At a minimum, Sam played a reckless game with customer deposits and gambled with money that was never his. At the worst, Sam had suffered massive losses in his hedge fund and tried to use FTX deposits to survive (creating a form of Ponzi scheme). At the moment it appears a mix of the two of is true. It’s horrific fraud either way.
The hole he has dug is very, very deep (billions of dollars deep) and a redemption arc is not forthcoming.
I agree that “exiled from community” is strong language, but “slow down and listen deeply before we judge” doesn’t make any sense if you consider how many people lost money, careers, funding, etc from his poor decisions, which he is showing almost no remorse for. Taking naps and playing video games? That must be nice when people are genuinely in a bind because their projects were being funded by the FTX Future Fund.
Yes, I’m leaving the comment and edit in place as evidence for your point.
With that said, there is (i) some time pressure here, and (ii) the consequences of a mistake on my part were minimal if I was wrong, so I don’t regret my initial comments, I’m willing to eat the consequences for having guessed wrong. The tone of this NYT article makes it clear that there are powerful organizations and people still defending him as we speak. In the event there ever is clear evidence that he is STILL an “unlawful oathbreaker”, as opposed to being willing to walk the long road to redemption, no, I do not think “exiled from community” is too harsh a penalty for continued unnecessary association with him.
I will still push back on “exiled from community”—it almost makes it seem like EA is a cult, which I hope it’s not.
And I will stand by it, due to the magnitude of the problem and the visible power of his defenders.
Now, I’ve really only been EA-adjacent so far, I’ve never attended any EA-affiliated events beyond a solstice and a house gathering. But I do have some common sense about how trust works. I do not see an alternative path for the EA community to regain trust in the event he is proven to still be an unlawful oathbreaker.
Again, this does not apply if he was an oathbreaker but is now unusually accepting of the consequences.