“protect people from dependencies on SBF” is the thing for which I see a clear causal chain and am confident in what could have fixed it.
I do have a more speculative hope that an environment where things like “this billionaire firehosing money is an unreliable asshole” are easy to say would have gotten better outcomes for the more serious issues, on the margin. Maybe the FTX fraud was overdetermined, even if it wasn’t and I definitely don’t have enough insight to be confident in picking a correction. But using an abstract version of this case as an example for how I think a more open environment could have led to better outcomes:
My sense is SBF just kept taking stupid unethical bets and having them work out for him financially and socially. Maybe small consequences early on would have reduced the reward to stupid unethical bets.
Before the implosion, SBF(’s public persona) was an EA success story that young EAs aspired to copy. Less of that on the margin would probably lead to less fraud 5 years from now, especially in the world where the FTX fraud took longer to discover.
I think aping SBF’s persona was bad for other reasons, but they’re harder to justify.
SBF would have gotten more push back from staff (unless the fact that he was a known asshole made people more likely to leave, which seems good for them but not an improvement vis a vis fraud).
FTX would have had a harder time recruiting, which would have slowed them down.
Some EAs chose to trade on FTX out of ingroup loyalty, and maybe that would have happened less.
An environment where you’re free to share information about SBF being an unreliable asshole is more hospitable to sharing and hearing other negative information, and this has a snowball effect. Who knows what else would have been shared if the door had been open a crack.
Maybe Will MacAskill would have spent less time telling the press that SBF was a frugal virtue wunderkind.
Maybe other people would have told Will MacAskill to stop telling the press that SBF was a frugal virtue wunderkind.
Maybe Will MacAskill would have pushed that line to the press, but other people would have told the press “no he isn’t”, and that could have been a relatively gentle lesson for SBF and Will.
My sense is Will isn’t the only prominent EA who gave SBF a lot of press, just the most prominent and the one I heard the most about. Hopefully all of that would be reduced.
Maybe people would have been more open when considering if FTX money was essentially casino money, and what are the ethical implications of that?
“protect people from dependencies on SBF” is the thing for which I see a clear causal chain and am confident in what could have fixed it.
I do have a more speculative hope that an environment where things like “this billionaire firehosing money is an unreliable asshole” are easy to say would have gotten better outcomes for the more serious issues, on the margin. Maybe the FTX fraud was overdetermined, even if it wasn’t and I definitely don’t have enough insight to be confident in picking a correction. But using an abstract version of this case as an example for how I think a more open environment could have led to better outcomes:
My sense is SBF just kept taking stupid unethical bets and having them work out for him financially and socially. Maybe small consequences early on would have reduced the reward to stupid unethical bets.
Before the implosion, SBF(’s public persona) was an EA success story that young EAs aspired to copy. Less of that on the margin would probably lead to less fraud 5 years from now, especially in the world where the FTX fraud took longer to discover.
I think aping SBF’s persona was bad for other reasons, but they’re harder to justify.
SBF would have gotten more push back from staff (unless the fact that he was a known asshole made people more likely to leave, which seems good for them but not an improvement vis a vis fraud).
FTX would have had a harder time recruiting, which would have slowed them down.
Some EAs chose to trade on FTX out of ingroup loyalty, and maybe that would have happened less.
An environment where you’re free to share information about SBF being an unreliable asshole is more hospitable to sharing and hearing other negative information, and this has a snowball effect. Who knows what else would have been shared if the door had been open a crack.
Maybe Will MacAskill would have spent less time telling the press that SBF was a frugal virtue wunderkind.
Maybe other people would have told Will MacAskill to stop telling the press that SBF was a frugal virtue wunderkind.
Maybe Will MacAskill would have pushed that line to the press, but other people would have told the press “no he isn’t”, and that could have been a relatively gentle lesson for SBF and Will.
My sense is Will isn’t the only prominent EA who gave SBF a lot of press, just the most prominent and the one I heard the most about. Hopefully all of that would be reduced.
Maybe people would have been more open when considering if FTX money was essentially casino money, and what are the ethical implications of that?