I want to see more retrospectives on the FTX incident so I really appreciate you taking the time to write this.
I like all your categories of things that we wish we had said more. Also, I basically disagree that:
We should not beat ourselves up for not knowing about the fraud or extent of the lies,
To use your metaphor, lets imagine that 90% of all priests are moral and do what it says on the tin, and 10% of all priests are evil and they pretend to be moral priests while also preying on children. Do you think that when the moral priests find out that 10% of their brethren are evil, they should not worry about it? I think that if they are members of a larger church that includes some of these evil priests, then they should help figure out what changes to their church would help reduce the number of evil priests in the church as a high priority.
Likewise, I believe it is a high priority for EA to figure out how we can be confident that the next billionaire we create isn’t SBF part deux. Does anyone claim that FTX wouldn’t happen in today’s EA?
If so, I’d love to interview you on the podcast series I just started with @Elizabeth. (I personally believe we are not ready for another FTX, but perhaps in a year we could be.)
Oh, I think you would be super worried about it! But not “beat ourselves up” in the sense of feeling like “I really should have known”. In contrast to the part I think we really should have known, which was that the odds of success were not 100% and that trying to figure out a reasonable estimate for the odds of success and the implications of failure would have been a valuable exercise that did not require a ton of foresight.
Bit of a nit, but “we created” is stronger phrasing than I would use. But maybe I would agree with something like “how can we be confident that the next billionaire we embrace isn’t committing fraud”. Certainly I expect there will be more vigilance the next time around and a lot of skepticism.
I want to see more retrospectives on the FTX incident so I really appreciate you taking the time to write this.
I like all your categories of things that we wish we had said more. Also, I basically disagree that:
To use your metaphor, lets imagine that 90% of all priests are moral and do what it says on the tin, and 10% of all priests are evil and they pretend to be moral priests while also preying on children. Do you think that when the moral priests find out that 10% of their brethren are evil, they should not worry about it? I think that if they are members of a larger church that includes some of these evil priests, then they should help figure out what changes to their church would help reduce the number of evil priests in the church as a high priority.
Likewise, I believe it is a high priority for EA to figure out how we can be confident that the next billionaire we create isn’t SBF part deux. Does anyone claim that FTX wouldn’t happen in today’s EA?
If so, I’d love to interview you on the podcast series I just started with @Elizabeth. (I personally believe we are not ready for another FTX, but perhaps in a year we could be.)
Oh, I think you would be super worried about it! But not “beat ourselves up” in the sense of feeling like “I really should have known”. In contrast to the part I think we really should have known, which was that the odds of success were not 100% and that trying to figure out a reasonable estimate for the odds of success and the implications of failure would have been a valuable exercise that did not require a ton of foresight.
Bit of a nit, but “we created” is stronger phrasing than I would use. But maybe I would agree with something like “how can we be confident that the next billionaire we embrace isn’t committing fraud”. Certainly I expect there will be more vigilance the next time around and a lot of skepticism.