I’m not sure I understand why you think this requires a response. I don’t think the texts here were shady or wrong at all. Musk was clearly looking for people to buy Twitter with him, and Will happened to be a mutual contact. Trying to put them in touch seems pretty reasonable to me.
This may not be what you’re intending (and is pretty understandable), but I want to be pretty careful about generalising from what’s going on now, to assuming that anything involved with SBF or FTX is shady until proven otherwise.
I think seeing it as “just putting two people in touch” is narrow. It’s about judgement on whether to get involved in highly controversial commercial deal which was expected to significantly influence discourse norms, and therefore polarisation, in years to come. As far as I can tell, EA overall and Will specifically do not have skills / knowhow in this domain.
Introducing Elon to Sam is not just like making a casual introduction; if everything SBF was doing was based on EA, then this feels like EA wading in on the future of Twitter via the influence of SBFs money.
Introducing Elon to Holden because he wanted to learn more about charity evaluation? Absolutely—that’s EA’s bread and butter and where we have skills and credibility. But on this commercial deal and subsequent running of Twitter? Not within anyone’s toolbox from what I can tell.
I’d like to know the thinking behind this move by Will and anyone else involved. For my part, I think this was unwise, should have had more consultation around it.
I would consider disavowing the community if people start to get more involved in: 1) big potentially world-changing decisions which—to me—it looks like they don’t have the wider knowledge or skillset to take on well, or 2) incredibly controversial projects like the Twitter acquisition, and doing so through covert back-channels with limited consultation.
Strong upvote. It’s definitely more than “just putting two people in touch.” Will and SBF have known each other for 9 years, and Will has been quite instrumental in SBF’s career trajectory—first introducing him to the principles of effective altruism, then motivating SBF to ‘earn to give.’ I imagine many of their conversations have centred around making effective career/donation/spending decisions.
It seems likely that SBF talked to Will about his intention to buy Twitter/get involved in the Twitter deal, at the very least asking Will to make the introduction between him (SBF) and Elon Musk. At the time, it seemed like SBF wanted to give most of his money to effective charities/longtermist causes, so it could be argued that, by using up to 15 billion to buy Twitter, that money would be money that otherwise would have gone to effective charities/longtermist causes. Given the controversy surrounding the Twitter deal, Elon Musk, and the intersection with politics, it also strikes me as a pretty big decision for SBF to be involved with. Musk had publicly talked about, among other things, letting Donald Trump back on Twitter and being a ‘free speech absolutist.’ These are values that I, as a self-identified EA, don’t share, and I would be extremely concerned if (in a world where the FTX scandal didn’t happen), the biggest funder to the EA movement had become involved in the shitshow that has been Twitter since Musk acquired it. (It seems like the only reason this didn’t happen was because SBF set off Elon Musk’s “bullshit meter,” but I digress.)
It’s hard to say how big of a role Will played here—it’s possible that SBF had narrowed in on buying Twitter and couldn’t be convinced to spend the money on other things (eg. effective charities), or that Will thought buying Twitter was actually a good use of money and was thus happy to make the introduction, or maybe that he didn’t view his role here as a big deal (maybe SBF could have asked someone else to introduce him to Musk if Will declined). Will hasn’t commented on this so we don’t know. The only reason the text messages between Will and Elon Musk became public was because Twitter filed a lawsuit against Musk.
As the commenter above said, I would consider disavowing the community if leaders start to get involved in big, potentially world-changing decisions/incredibly controversial projects with little consultation with the wider community.
Attempting to frame this as MacAskill simply putting them in touch is fairly astonishing. From the texts alone:
MacAskill laid out monetary amounts for the offers of Bankman-Fried’s investment in Twitter.
He’s worth $24B, and his early employees (with shared values) bump that to $30B. I asked about how much he could in principle contribute and he said: “~$1-3b would be easy ~3-8b I could do ~$8-15b is maybe possible but would require financing.
Then, when Musk explicitly asked if he would vouch for Sam Bankman-Fried. MacAskill vouched for him enthusiastically, linking explicitly to SBF’s dedication to longtermism.
You vouch for him?
Very much so! Very dedicated to making the long-term future of humanity go well.
I do not understand how this can be characterised as just putting them in touch.
I do not understand how this can be characterised as just putting them in touch.
You’re definitely right that it can’t. I imagine that many people (myself included) didn’t see these particular parts of the text message conversations.
FWIW, I think the talk about money was presumably just Will taking Sam’s word for it when he shouldn’t have, so there’s a sense in which the messages you’re quoting illustrate one mistake and not two.
That said, it’s a big one, if you vouch someone and then this happens (what we’ve seen over the past couple of weeks).
Hi, thank you for bringing this up, I didn’t want to generalise that everything with FTX is shady, however, It appears that media and people outside of EA might get that impression anyway based on media featuring Will’s name rather prominently next to SBF’s etc. General public will not know the minute details and there’s a risk of association rising, that EA’s are a part of (crypto) billionaires club, which has a lot of bad publicity already. Leaving this uncommented exposes EA to further allegiations of being a Silicon Valley cult etc. etc.
Also, I agree with the questions raised in the comments I bring up and link in my post: perhaps dealing with Elon Musk and SBF should have been handled other way, scrutinized more, maybe the rationale behind it should have been made public etc.
Moreover, Musk’s Twitter buyout and his actions at Twitter also received a lot of criticism—so there’s this side of the story as well. Perhaps this is even more damning: it is reasonable to assume that Will didn’t know about inner workings of FTX, however there were publicly known red flags about Musk’s intentions with Twitter (loosening moderation etc.) and trying to help him with that is a bad look.
I’m not sure I understand why you think this requires a response. I don’t think the texts here were shady or wrong at all. Musk was clearly looking for people to buy Twitter with him, and Will happened to be a mutual contact. Trying to put them in touch seems pretty reasonable to me.
This may not be what you’re intending (and is pretty understandable), but I want to be pretty careful about generalising from what’s going on now, to assuming that anything involved with SBF or FTX is shady until proven otherwise.
I think seeing it as “just putting two people in touch” is narrow. It’s about judgement on whether to get involved in highly controversial commercial deal which was expected to significantly influence discourse norms, and therefore polarisation, in years to come. As far as I can tell, EA overall and Will specifically do not have skills / knowhow in this domain.
Introducing Elon to Sam is not just like making a casual introduction; if everything SBF was doing was based on EA, then this feels like EA wading in on the future of Twitter via the influence of SBFs money.
Introducing Elon to Holden because he wanted to learn more about charity evaluation? Absolutely—that’s EA’s bread and butter and where we have skills and credibility. But on this commercial deal and subsequent running of Twitter? Not within anyone’s toolbox from what I can tell.
I’d like to know the thinking behind this move by Will and anyone else involved. For my part, I think this was unwise, should have had more consultation around it.
I would consider disavowing the community if people start to get more involved in: 1) big potentially world-changing decisions which—to me—it looks like they don’t have the wider knowledge or skillset to take on well, or 2) incredibly controversial projects like the Twitter acquisition, and doing so through covert back-channels with limited consultation.
Strong upvote. It’s definitely more than “just putting two people in touch.” Will and SBF have known each other for 9 years, and Will has been quite instrumental in SBF’s career trajectory—first introducing him to the principles of effective altruism, then motivating SBF to ‘earn to give.’ I imagine many of their conversations have centred around making effective career/donation/spending decisions.
It seems likely that SBF talked to Will about his intention to buy Twitter/get involved in the Twitter deal, at the very least asking Will to make the introduction between him (SBF) and Elon Musk. At the time, it seemed like SBF wanted to give most of his money to effective charities/longtermist causes, so it could be argued that, by using up to 15 billion to buy Twitter, that money would be money that otherwise would have gone to effective charities/longtermist causes. Given the controversy surrounding the Twitter deal, Elon Musk, and the intersection with politics, it also strikes me as a pretty big decision for SBF to be involved with. Musk had publicly talked about, among other things, letting Donald Trump back on Twitter and being a ‘free speech absolutist.’ These are values that I, as a self-identified EA, don’t share, and I would be extremely concerned if (in a world where the FTX scandal didn’t happen), the biggest funder to the EA movement had become involved in the shitshow that has been Twitter since Musk acquired it. (It seems like the only reason this didn’t happen was because SBF set off Elon Musk’s “bullshit meter,” but I digress.)
It’s hard to say how big of a role Will played here—it’s possible that SBF had narrowed in on buying Twitter and couldn’t be convinced to spend the money on other things (eg. effective charities), or that Will thought buying Twitter was actually a good use of money and was thus happy to make the introduction, or maybe that he didn’t view his role here as a big deal (maybe SBF could have asked someone else to introduce him to Musk if Will declined). Will hasn’t commented on this so we don’t know. The only reason the text messages between Will and Elon Musk became public was because Twitter filed a lawsuit against Musk.
As the commenter above said, I would consider disavowing the community if leaders start to get involved in big, potentially world-changing decisions/incredibly controversial projects with little consultation with the wider community.
Attempting to frame this as MacAskill simply putting them in touch is fairly astonishing. From the texts alone:
MacAskill laid out monetary amounts for the offers of Bankman-Fried’s investment in Twitter.
Then, when Musk explicitly asked if he would vouch for Sam Bankman-Fried. MacAskill vouched for him enthusiastically, linking explicitly to SBF’s dedication to longtermism.
I do not understand how this can be characterised as just putting them in touch.
You’re definitely right that it can’t. I imagine that many people (myself included) didn’t see these particular parts of the text message conversations.
FWIW, I think the talk about money was presumably just Will taking Sam’s word for it when he shouldn’t have, so there’s a sense in which the messages you’re quoting illustrate one mistake and not two.
That said, it’s a big one, if you vouch someone and then this happens (what we’ve seen over the past couple of weeks).
Fwiw I would still be interested in a response from Will, but I dont think he should feel obliged to give one.
Hi, thank you for bringing this up, I didn’t want to generalise that everything with FTX is shady, however, It appears that media and people outside of EA might get that impression anyway based on media featuring Will’s name rather prominently next to SBF’s etc. General public will not know the minute details and there’s a risk of association rising, that EA’s are a part of (crypto) billionaires club, which has a lot of bad publicity already. Leaving this uncommented exposes EA to further allegiations of being a Silicon Valley cult etc. etc.
Also, I agree with the questions raised in the comments I bring up and link in my post: perhaps dealing with Elon Musk and SBF should have been handled other way, scrutinized more, maybe the rationale behind it should have been made public etc.
Moreover, Musk’s Twitter buyout and his actions at Twitter also received a lot of criticism—so there’s this side of the story as well. Perhaps this is even more damning: it is reasonable to assume that Will didn’t know about inner workings of FTX, however there were publicly known red flags about Musk’s intentions with Twitter (loosening moderation etc.) and trying to help him with that is a bad look.