I think a conclusion that he acted from mixed motives is better supported by the evidence.
I disagree, but it obviously depends what exactly we’re discussing.
Was his judgment for not coming clean when things were only starting to get bad compromised by not wanting to lose his influence, money, and reputation? Probably!
However, do I think he made some of his most consequential decisions to a significant degree because he thought he could get nice things for himself that way? I actually don’t think so!
Making big decisions for reasons other than impact would ruin his score in the game. It looks to me like his primary drive was optimizing his life for impact like a video game, trying to score the most points. Making a big life decision for self-oriented reasons would be forfeiting points he could otherwise have gotten, which would feel deeply unsatisfying for someone who’s always thinking about how to get the highest score.
Also, $16 million is peanuts for someone who’s personally worth $2-10 billion, which SBF probably “”somewhat reasonably”″ thought he was worth when things were going well (or when he optimistically thought he could make them well again soon enough). It’s like what a couple hundred bucks is to someone with a net worth of $80,000 – not that significant! Imagine you’re making decisions for tens of millions every day. I can’t emphasize enough how unimportant it then becomes whether you pay 1 million or 16 million for your parents’ house (which you may or may not also plan to use for yourself or some of your coworkers/flatmates). Just like with offices or the building where he planned to sleep in, the price isn’t the relevant variable (what’s more relevant is, “Does it take up your time or people’s time with high opportunity costs? Is it close to the office where you work? Is it convenient?” Etc.)
I feel like,
if someone displays as much single-minded obsessiveness as SBF,
and his conversations with the people around him tell you he’s hyperfocused on impact (he wasn’t just obsessing about how to grow FTX for money, he was also constantly discussing ideas around grantmaking strategies or paying Trump to not run again for election),
and his close social circle is reinforcing the impact-orientedness,
and there’s a credible ideology behind it which generated many other examples of similarly impact-obsessed people (hopefully the vast majority of them without the recklessness and “no fear of bad consequences” part),
then I’d say the evidence points to being primarily impact-driven pretty much as strongly as it gets. Of course, no one has the motivations of a perfect utilitarian robot, but I think SBF was trying, so it doesn’t seem fair to call it “acted from mixed motives.”
Edit to add: We could discuss whether he was “unusually biased” for someone who’s trying to have a ton of impact – hopefully yes (otherwise EAs don’t stand a chance of getting impact right), but that’s still meaningfully different from “acting from mixed motives.” (Also, I’d say the most severe bias was probably a blindspot around risk taking and risks of things going badly, rather than e.g., being too much into a rich lifestyle or being too much into fame or whatever. FWIW, my best guess is that he also was too much into wanting power/influence; I’m just saying that it doesn’t seem like the primary reason things went so poorly.)
Edit2: Somewhat relevant comment I made a year ago about why I think SBF having dark triad traits is compatible with the above picture.
Also, 16 million is peanuts for someone who’s personally worth 2-10 billion
If you’re going to compare outflows to guess at motivation, I think it’s better to use actual charitable giving numbers as the comparator rather than perceived wealth. Doubtless underinclusive on both numbers, but IIRC the grants through FTXFF were ~$150MM and the outflows to his parents alone were ~$25MM (there was also ~$10MM in cash). That doesn’t suggest the self-serving cashflows were peanuts in either a relative sense or an absolute sense.
If you assumed based on past actions that ~ 90% of the money was going to end up donated to charity, then ~$1B of the loss found by the district court today was attributable to the 10% that wasn’t. Given SBF’s crimes, and the fairly brazen nature of his perjury at trial, I would credit his observed actions over what he said he’d do with all the money in the end.
That’s a good point. If there weren’t a convincing story for why more donations weren’t made or at least set up to be made soon, I’d say your point counts for quite a lot!
However, in this specific case, I feel like there are good reasons why I wouldn’t expect that many donations to be made right away:
FTX did have a hole in the bank! It’s interesting that donations were made at all given that they were strictly speaking insolvent. (Of course, he had to keep up appearances or pay for previously-made commitments, etc., so it’s not too surprising. I’m just saying it probably wouldn’t have been wise even for someone as risk tolerant and unconcerned-by-the-illegality-of-it as SBF to donate much more when there was still a hole in their wallet.) (Edit: Admittedly, this point also cuts against giving money to his parents.)
Longtermist grantmaking (which SBF thought was most impactful, I believe) already started to feel a bit crowded once FTX Future Fund came in, so it’s not actually that easy (or sensible) to deploy $100s of millions on short notice in that cause area.
The FTX Future Fund was still relatively new; it makes sense to scale up giving as you learn things and do various types of preparatory work for your grantmaking/”active grantmaking.”
“Donating now vs later” isn’t actually the most obvious of EA strategy questions, esp. if you think you’re greatly beating the market on investment returns, which he had been doing at least in his own mind.
SBF’s entire philosophy was about massive wins and game-changing ambitious stuff, so he probably thought of the donations he had already made or was making at the time as not that significant compared to what he was gonna do later, and probably had tentative ideas for long-term plans like “amass enough money to buy a chip company and then use that as leverage to get more AI safety work done at labs,” or something super ambitious like that, for which it felt worthwhile to keep investing in the growth of his FTX empire.
Lastly, and somewhat related to the previous bullet point of weird super-ambitious ideas, he did discuss the paying Trump thing and, at least according to Michael Lewis’s sources, he was entertaining the thought (though probably not super seriously because this was when they had a massive hole in the bank?) of paying a sum for it that would have been a lot bigger than the $150 million in charitable contributions you mentioned. (But sure, you can say that, since nothing happened there, it was only talk. We don’t know, but I find it plausible that he’d have liked the thought of being the guy who prevented Trump from running!)
Edit: If someone says “giving 10 million to his parents (and a house, but we’re not sure if the house had other uses) shows he must have had mixed motives,” I’d be like: Okay, yeah, it does look like this isn’t what a utilitarian robot would’ve gone for, but when I hear “mixed motives,” I think of something like 50-50 or at least 40-self-oriented, 60-altruism, whereas giving money to get your parents to retire early could also be compatible with something like 10-90 (or even 5-95), “focus on impact for the big decisions, but do something nice for your parents once you’ve made it big.”
I disagree, but it obviously depends what exactly we’re discussing.
Was his judgment for not coming clean when things were only starting to get bad compromised by not wanting to lose his influence, money, and reputation? Probably!
However, do I think he made some of his most consequential decisions to a significant degree because he thought he could get nice things for himself that way? I actually don’t think so!
Making big decisions for reasons other than impact would ruin his score in the game. It looks to me like his primary drive was optimizing his life for impact like a video game, trying to score the most points. Making a big life decision for self-oriented reasons would be forfeiting points he could otherwise have gotten, which would feel deeply unsatisfying for someone who’s always thinking about how to get the highest score.
Also, $16 million is peanuts for someone who’s personally worth $2-10 billion, which SBF probably “”somewhat reasonably”″ thought he was worth when things were going well (or when he optimistically thought he could make them well again soon enough). It’s like what a couple hundred bucks is to someone with a net worth of $80,000 – not that significant! Imagine you’re making decisions for tens of millions every day. I can’t emphasize enough how unimportant it then becomes whether you pay 1 million or 16 million for your parents’ house (which you may or may not also plan to use for yourself or some of your coworkers/flatmates). Just like with offices or the building where he planned to sleep in, the price isn’t the relevant variable (what’s more relevant is, “Does it take up your time or people’s time with high opportunity costs? Is it close to the office where you work? Is it convenient?” Etc.)
I feel like,
if someone displays as much single-minded obsessiveness as SBF,
and his conversations with the people around him tell you he’s hyperfocused on impact (he wasn’t just obsessing about how to grow FTX for money, he was also constantly discussing ideas around grantmaking strategies or paying Trump to not run again for election),
and his close social circle is reinforcing the impact-orientedness,
and there’s a credible ideology behind it which generated many other examples of similarly impact-obsessed people (hopefully the vast majority of them without the recklessness and “no fear of bad consequences” part),
then I’d say the evidence points to being primarily impact-driven pretty much as strongly as it gets. Of course, no one has the motivations of a perfect utilitarian robot, but I think SBF was trying, so it doesn’t seem fair to call it “acted from mixed motives.”
Edit to add: We could discuss whether he was “unusually biased” for someone who’s trying to have a ton of impact – hopefully yes (otherwise EAs don’t stand a chance of getting impact right), but that’s still meaningfully different from “acting from mixed motives.” (Also, I’d say the most severe bias was probably a blindspot around risk taking and risks of things going badly, rather than e.g., being too much into a rich lifestyle or being too much into fame or whatever. FWIW, my best guess is that he also was too much into wanting power/influence; I’m just saying that it doesn’t seem like the primary reason things went so poorly.)
Edit2: Somewhat relevant comment I made a year ago about why I think SBF having dark triad traits is compatible with the above picture.
If you’re going to compare outflows to guess at motivation, I think it’s better to use actual charitable giving numbers as the comparator rather than perceived wealth. Doubtless underinclusive on both numbers, but IIRC the grants through FTXFF were ~$150MM and the outflows to his parents alone were ~$25MM (there was also ~$10MM in cash). That doesn’t suggest the self-serving cashflows were peanuts in either a relative sense or an absolute sense.
If you assumed based on past actions that ~ 90% of the money was going to end up donated to charity, then ~$1B of the loss found by the district court today was attributable to the 10% that wasn’t. Given SBF’s crimes, and the fairly brazen nature of his perjury at trial, I would credit his observed actions over what he said he’d do with all the money in the end.
That’s a good point. If there weren’t a convincing story for why more donations weren’t made or at least set up to be made soon, I’d say your point counts for quite a lot!
However, in this specific case, I feel like there are good reasons why I wouldn’t expect that many donations to be made right away:
FTX did have a hole in the bank! It’s interesting that donations were made at all given that they were strictly speaking insolvent. (Of course, he had to keep up appearances or pay for previously-made commitments, etc., so it’s not too surprising. I’m just saying it probably wouldn’t have been wise even for someone as risk tolerant and unconcerned-by-the-illegality-of-it as SBF to donate much more when there was still a hole in their wallet.) (Edit: Admittedly, this point also cuts against giving money to his parents.)
Longtermist grantmaking (which SBF thought was most impactful, I believe) already started to feel a bit crowded once FTX Future Fund came in, so it’s not actually that easy (or sensible) to deploy $100s of millions on short notice in that cause area.
The FTX Future Fund was still relatively new; it makes sense to scale up giving as you learn things and do various types of preparatory work for your grantmaking/”active grantmaking.”
“Donating now vs later” isn’t actually the most obvious of EA strategy questions, esp. if you think you’re greatly beating the market on investment returns, which he had been doing at least in his own mind.
SBF’s entire philosophy was about massive wins and game-changing ambitious stuff, so he probably thought of the donations he had already made or was making at the time as not that significant compared to what he was gonna do later, and probably had tentative ideas for long-term plans like “amass enough money to buy a chip company and then use that as leverage to get more AI safety work done at labs,” or something super ambitious like that, for which it felt worthwhile to keep investing in the growth of his FTX empire.
Lastly, and somewhat related to the previous bullet point of weird super-ambitious ideas, he did discuss the paying Trump thing and, at least according to Michael Lewis’s sources, he was entertaining the thought (though probably not super seriously because this was when they had a massive hole in the bank?) of paying a sum for it that would have been a lot bigger than the $150 million in charitable contributions you mentioned. (But sure, you can say that, since nothing happened there, it was only talk. We don’t know, but I find it plausible that he’d have liked the thought of being the guy who prevented Trump from running!)
Edit: If someone says “giving 10 million to his parents (and a house, but we’re not sure if the house had other uses) shows he must have had mixed motives,” I’d be like: Okay, yeah, it does look like this isn’t what a utilitarian robot would’ve gone for, but when I hear “mixed motives,” I think of something like 50-50 or at least 40-self-oriented, 60-altruism, whereas giving money to get your parents to retire early could also be compatible with something like 10-90 (or even 5-95), “focus on impact for the big decisions, but do something nice for your parents once you’ve made it big.”