I agree with what others have said re: pedestal, so am not going to produce more quotes or anecdotes. I stand by the claim, though.
I think people may have been inclined to put SBF on a pedestal because earning to give was the main thing people criticized about early EA. People were otherwise pretty supportive of early EA ideas; I mean, it’s hard not to support finding more cost-effective global health charities. When SBF emerged, I think this was a bit of a “see, we told you so” moment for EAs who had been around for a long time, especially because SBF had explicitly chosen to earn to give because of EA. So it wasn’t just: “look this guy is earning to give and has billions of dollars!” The subtext was also: “EA is really onto something with its thinking and advice.” He became a poster boy for the idea that we can actually intellectualize our way to making the world better (so fuck the haters).
I think a more plausible defense of senior EAs is not that this pedestal thing didn’t happen, but that (as @Stefan_Schubert suggests) it may not have made that much of a difference. EAs might well have rallied around SBF even if senior people hadn’t promoted him. And this is definitely possible, but I wonder if things would’ve played out pretty differently if senior EAs had been like “look, we’ll take your money, and we’ll recommend some great people to work for you, but we don’t want to personally serve on the board of FTX Foundation/vouch for you/have you on our podcast, etc because we have heard rumors about X, Y, and Z, and think they pose reputational risks to EA.”
Lastly: it looks like the three former Alameda employees accused SBF of having “inappropriate sexual relationships with subordinates” around the beginning of the #MeToo movement. Alameda launched in the fall of 2017 and the confrontation with Sam occurred in April of 2018. The NYT published its article about Harvey Weinstein on October 5th, 2017, and dozens of men were accused of harassment between then and February 2018. The fact that SBF’s alleged inappropriate sexual behavior occurred around the height of the #MeToo movement doesn’t make me think EA leaders had less of a reason to worry about the reputational risks of promoting him.
Hm I wouldn’t have thought of your second paragraph. I’m not sure I agree that was an intention, but interesting.
IDK, CEA did do an investigation in 2019 into CEA/Alameda relations, according to the news article, so I’m not sure (yet!) they behaved unreasonably here given the nature of the complaints made. (I’m also not sure they behaved reasonably). Somebody tried a bit to actually figure things out at least. And I prefer that than just saying “Hey, SBF, check out these rumors. Rather than try to figure out which side is right, we will do some sort of average thing where we take your money and help you out in some ways but not others, and possibly leave a lot of value on the table or keep a lot of risk, not sure which, but oh well”. That doesn’t seem like the optimal outcome for either possible situation.
I’m reminded of split and commit. If I see something that looks like a 10-ft alligator on my property, but it might also be a log, is it an optimal strategy to continue the yardwork anyway but give it a wide berth? Or am I going to investigate further to see whether it is an alligator (and if so call animal control and have it removed) or if it is a log (and if so I can mow my grass right up to the base, even take a rest on it if I want). It’s not a perfect analogy but you get the idea. [1]
Anyway, it looks possible that people thought about this to the extent it seemed reasonable at the time, given the scale of the complaints made (which the article admits never implied anything like what happened or even implied fraud for sure—perhaps lazy accounting that they’d hopefully grow out of as they professionalized, yes). They came to the wrong conclusions, but I might be okay with this tbh. (but we’ll see how reasonable the conclusion was)
Were the claims about inappropriate sexual relationships either by the women themselves, or at least about nonconsensual relationships? Without commenting on how appropriate the relationships were otherwise, I’m not in favor of consensual relationships (consensual meaning, the women themselves would say they were consensual) being branded part of lumped in with episodes of harassment and the #metoo movement. You can’t really create a #metoo moment for someone else.
[Edit: Maybe if I try to make the analogy better, maybe 2019 CEA investigated to the extent they could (I very much doubt they were allowed to feel the actual shape of the alligator/see many of Alameda’s internal documents) and (reasonably?) decided that SBF was not either an alligator or a log, but an alligator statue (that people keep complaining is an alligator), or a dead alligator (that people were right to complain about before but it looks like things have changed), or a crippled alligator you aren’t worried about, or an otherwise-chill alligator protecting it’s babies which you don’t want to move. IDK. But then in 2022 we all learned that this was wrong too, and he was actually a frickin T-Rex pretending (excellently) to be an [alligator statue etc]. Because actually the fiasco that ended up happening was way out of scale with what even the complainants said, and the Time piece notes that in multiple places. Nobody expected a sneaky T-Rex!]
I agree with what others have said re: pedestal, so am not going to produce more quotes or anecdotes. I stand by the claim, though.
I think people may have been inclined to put SBF on a pedestal because earning to give was the main thing people criticized about early EA. People were otherwise pretty supportive of early EA ideas; I mean, it’s hard not to support finding more cost-effective global health charities. When SBF emerged, I think this was a bit of a “see, we told you so” moment for EAs who had been around for a long time, especially because SBF had explicitly chosen to earn to give because of EA. So it wasn’t just: “look this guy is earning to give and has billions of dollars!” The subtext was also: “EA is really onto something with its thinking and advice.” He became a poster boy for the idea that we can actually intellectualize our way to making the world better (so fuck the haters).
I think a more plausible defense of senior EAs is not that this pedestal thing didn’t happen, but that (as @Stefan_Schubert suggests) it may not have made that much of a difference. EAs might well have rallied around SBF even if senior people hadn’t promoted him. And this is definitely possible, but I wonder if things would’ve played out pretty differently if senior EAs had been like “look, we’ll take your money, and we’ll recommend some great people to work for you, but we don’t want to personally serve on the board of FTX Foundation/vouch for you/have you on our podcast, etc because we have heard rumors about X, Y, and Z, and think they pose reputational risks to EA.”
Lastly: it looks like the three former Alameda employees accused SBF of having “inappropriate sexual relationships with subordinates” around the beginning of the #MeToo movement. Alameda launched in the fall of 2017 and the confrontation with Sam occurred in April of 2018. The NYT published its article about Harvey Weinstein on October 5th, 2017, and dozens of men were accused of harassment between then and February 2018. The fact that SBF’s alleged inappropriate sexual behavior occurred around the height of the #MeToo movement doesn’t make me think EA leaders had less of a reason to worry about the reputational risks of promoting him.
Hm I wouldn’t have thought of your second paragraph. I’m not sure I agree that was an intention, but interesting.
IDK, CEA did do an investigation in 2019 into CEA/Alameda relations, according to the news article, so I’m not sure (yet!) they behaved unreasonably here given the nature of the complaints made. (I’m also not sure they behaved reasonably). Somebody tried a bit to actually figure things out at least. And I prefer that than just saying “Hey, SBF, check out these rumors. Rather than try to figure out which side is right, we will do some sort of average thing where we take your money and help you out in some ways but not others, and possibly leave a lot of value on the table or keep a lot of risk, not sure which, but oh well”. That doesn’t seem like the optimal outcome for either possible situation.
I’m reminded of split and commit. If I see something that looks like a 10-ft alligator on my property, but it might also be a log, is it an optimal strategy to continue the yardwork anyway but give it a wide berth? Or am I going to investigate further to see whether it is an alligator (and if so call animal control and have it removed) or if it is a log (and if so I can mow my grass right up to the base, even take a rest on it if I want). It’s not a perfect analogy but you get the idea. [1]
Anyway, it looks possible that people thought about this to the extent it seemed reasonable at the time, given the scale of the complaints made (which the article admits never implied anything like what happened or even implied fraud for sure—perhaps lazy accounting that they’d hopefully grow out of as they professionalized, yes). They came to the wrong conclusions, but I might be okay with this tbh. (but we’ll see how reasonable the conclusion was)
Were the claims about inappropriate sexual relationships either by the women themselves, or at least about nonconsensual relationships? Without commenting on how appropriate the relationships were otherwise, I’m not in favor of consensual relationships (consensual meaning, the women themselves would say they were consensual) being
branded part oflumped in with episodes of harassment and the #metoo movement. You can’t really create a #metoo moment for someone else.[Edit: Maybe if I try to make the analogy better, maybe 2019 CEA investigated to the extent they could (I very much doubt they were allowed to feel the actual shape of the alligator/see many of Alameda’s internal documents) and (reasonably?) decided that SBF was not either an alligator or a log, but an alligator statue (that people keep complaining is an alligator), or a dead alligator (that people were right to complain about before but it looks like things have changed), or a crippled alligator you aren’t worried about, or an otherwise-chill alligator protecting it’s babies which you don’t want to move. IDK. But then in 2022 we all learned that this was wrong too, and he was actually a frickin T-Rex pretending (excellently) to be an [alligator statue etc]. Because actually the fiasco that ended up happening was way out of scale with what even the complainants said, and the Time piece notes that in multiple places. Nobody expected a sneaky T-Rex!]