I agree the primary role of EAs here was as victims, and that presumably only a couple of EAs intentionally conspired with Sam. But I wouldn’t write it off as just social naivete; I think there was also some negligence in how we boosted him, e.g.:
Some EAs knew about his relationship with Caroline, which would undermine the public story about FTX<->Alameda relations, but didn’t disclose this.
Some EAs knew that Sam and FTX weren’t behaving frugally, which would undermine his public image, but also didn’t disclose.
Despite warnings from early-Alameda people, FTX received financial and other support from EAs.
EAs granted money from FTX’s foundation before it had been firewalled in a foundation bank account.
EA leaders invited him to important meetings, IIRC, even once he was under govt investigation.
It might be that naive consequentialist thinking, a strand of EA’s cultural DNA, played a role here, too. In general I think it would be fruitful to think about ways that our ambitions, attitudes, or practices might have made us negligent, not just ways that we might have been too trusting.
Some EAs knew about his relationship with Caroline, which would undermine the public story about FTX<->Alameda relations, but didn’t disclose this.
Some EAs knew that Sam and FTX weren’t behaving frugally, which would undermine his public image, but also didn’t disclose.
FWIW, these examples feel hindsight-bias-y to me. They have the flavour of “we now know this information was significant, so of course at the time people should have known this and done something about it”. If I put myself in the shoes of the “some EAs” in these examples, it’s not clear to me that I would have acted differently and it’s not clear what norm would suggest different action.
Suppose you are a random EA. Maybe you run an EA org. You have met Sam a few times, he seems fine. You hear that he is dating Caroline. You go “oh, that’s disappointing, probably bad for the organization, but I guess we’ll have to see what happens” and get on with your life.
It seems to me that you’re suggesting this was negligent, but I’m not sure what norm we would like to enforce here. Always publish (on the forum?) negative information about people you are at all associated with, even if it seems like it might not matter?
The case doesn’t seem much stronger to me even if you’re, say, on the FTX Foundation board. You hear something that sounds potentially bad, maybe you investigate a little, but it seems that you want a norm that there should be some kind of big public disclosure, and I’m not sure that really is something we could endorse in general.
I think the best thing here would have been for much of the information to be shared casually, without needing to justify itself as important. People gossip about relationships and their terrible bosses all the time I suspect that if that had happened, people would have gathered more clues earlier, enough to make a difference on the margin.
I think it’s worth emphasizing that if “naive consequentialism” just means sometimes thinking the ends justify the means in a particular case, and being wrong about it, then that extends into the history of scandals far far beyond groups that have ever been motivated by explicitly utilitarian technical moral theory.
Oh, I definitely agree that the guilt narrative has some truth to it too, and that the final position must be some mix of the two, with somewhere between a 10⁄90 and 90⁄10 split. But I’d definitely been neglecting the ‘we got used’ narrative, and had assumed others were too (though aprilsun’s comment suggests I might be incorrect about that).
I’d add that for different questions related to the future of EA, the different narratives change their mix. For example, the ‘we got used’ narrative is at its most relevant if asking about ‘all EAs except Sam’. But if asking about whether it is good to grow EA, it is relevant that we may get more Sams. And if asking ‘how much good or bad do people who associate with EA do?’ the ‘guilt’ narrative increases in importance.
I do think it’s an interesting question whether EA is prone to generate Sams at higher than the base rate. I think it’s pretty hard to tell from a single case, though.
As you’ve linked me to this comment elsewhere, I’ll respond.
I’m not sure why EAs who knew about Caroline and Sam dating would have felt the need to ‘disclose’ this? (Unless they already suspected the fraud but I don’t think I’ve seen anyone claim that anyone did?)
Sam and FTX seem about as frugal as I’d expect for an insanely profitable business and an intention to give away the vast majority of tens of billions of dollars, too frugal if anything (although I actually think my disagreeing with you here is a point in favour of your broader argument—the more Sam splurged on luxuries, the less it looks like he was motivated by any kind of altruism)
What financial and other support did FTX receive after the early Alameda split by people who were ‘warned’? (There may well be a substantial amount, I just don’t think I’ve heard of any.) I’ll note, though, that it’s easy to see as ‘warnings’ now what at the time could have just looked like a messy divorce.
Admittedly I don’t know much about how these things work, but yet again this looks like hindsight bias to me. Would this have been a priority for you if you had no idea what was coming? If the firewalling was delayed for whatever reason, would you have refused to award grants until it had been? Perhaps. But I don’t think it’s obvious. Also wouldn’t they still be vulnerable to clawbacks in any case?
Again, I just don’t think I know anything about this. In fact I don’t think I knew Sam was under government investigation before November. I’d be curious if you had details to share, especially regarding how serious the allegations were at the time and which meetings he was invited to.
1 - it’s because Sam was publicly claiming that the trading platform and the traders were completely firewalled from one another, and had no special info, as would normally (e.g. in the US) be legally required to make trading fair, but which is impossible if the CEOs are dating
2 - I’m not objecting the spending. It was clear at the time that he was promoting an image of frugality that wasn’t accurate. One example here, but there are many more.
3 - A lot of different Alameda people warned some people at the time of the split. For a variety of reasons, I believe that those who were more involved would have been warned commensurately more than I was (someone who was barely involved).
4 - Perhaps, but it is negligent not to follow this rule, when you’re donating money from an offshore crypto exchange.
5 - I’m just going off recollection, but I believe he was under serious-sounding US govt investigation.
1 - Oh I see. So who knew that Sam and Caroline continued to date while claiming that FTX and Alameda were completely separate?
2 - You link to a video of a non-EA saying that Sam drives a corolla and also has a shot of his very expensive-looking apartment...what about this is misleading or inaccurate? What did you expect the EAs you have in mind to ‘disclose’ - that FTX itself wasn’t frugal? Was anyone claiming it was? Would anyone expect it to have been? Could you share some of your many actual examples?
3 - (I don’t think you’ve addressed anything I said in this section, so perhaps we should just leave it there.)
4 - Perhaps, but as I indicated, it looks like it wouldn’t have made much difference anyway.
5 - (Okay, it looks like we should just leave this one there too.)
Can you confirm which important meetings Sam was invited to while under government investigation then? (The OP seems to be unable to remember when I pressed him on it.)
And I imagine you might have some insight on whether FTX (or Alameda tbf) received financial support from EAs after the acrimonious split? E.g., did you yourself continue to fund FTX/Alameda? (The Semafor article says that you were one of the two initial funders of Alameda but that you only called in the “majority” of your loans.)
I agree the primary role of EAs here was as victims, and that presumably only a couple of EAs intentionally conspired with Sam. But I wouldn’t write it off as just social naivete; I think there was also some negligence in how we boosted him, e.g.:
Some EAs knew about his relationship with Caroline, which would undermine the public story about FTX<->Alameda relations, but didn’t disclose this.
Some EAs knew that Sam and FTX weren’t behaving frugally, which would undermine his public image, but also didn’t disclose.
Despite warnings from early-Alameda people, FTX received financial and other support from EAs.
EAs granted money from FTX’s foundation before it had been firewalled in a foundation bank account.
EA leaders invited him to important meetings, IIRC, even once he was under govt investigation.
It might be that naive consequentialist thinking, a strand of EA’s cultural DNA, played a role here, too. In general I think it would be fruitful to think about ways that our ambitions, attitudes, or practices might have made us negligent, not just ways that we might have been too trusting.
FWIW, these examples feel hindsight-bias-y to me. They have the flavour of “we now know this information was significant, so of course at the time people should have known this and done something about it”. If I put myself in the shoes of the “some EAs” in these examples, it’s not clear to me that I would have acted differently and it’s not clear what norm would suggest different action.
Suppose you are a random EA. Maybe you run an EA org. You have met Sam a few times, he seems fine. You hear that he is dating Caroline. You go “oh, that’s disappointing, probably bad for the organization, but I guess we’ll have to see what happens” and get on with your life.
It seems to me that you’re suggesting this was negligent, but I’m not sure what norm we would like to enforce here. Always publish (on the forum?) negative information about people you are at all associated with, even if it seems like it might not matter?
The case doesn’t seem much stronger to me even if you’re, say, on the FTX Foundation board. You hear something that sounds potentially bad, maybe you investigate a little, but it seems that you want a norm that there should be some kind of big public disclosure, and I’m not sure that really is something we could endorse in general.
I think the best thing here would have been for much of the information to be shared casually, without needing to justify itself as important. People gossip about relationships and their terrible bosses all the time I suspect that if that had happened, people would have gathered more clues earlier, enough to make a difference on the margin.
I think it’s worth emphasizing that if “naive consequentialism” just means sometimes thinking the ends justify the means in a particular case, and being wrong about it, then that extends into the history of scandals far far beyond groups that have ever been motivated by explicitly utilitarian technical moral theory.
Oh, I definitely agree that the guilt narrative has some truth to it too, and that the final position must be some mix of the two, with somewhere between a 10⁄90 and 90⁄10 split. But I’d definitely been neglecting the ‘we got used’ narrative, and had assumed others were too (though aprilsun’s comment suggests I might be incorrect about that).
I’d add that for different questions related to the future of EA, the different narratives change their mix. For example, the ‘we got used’ narrative is at its most relevant if asking about ‘all EAs except Sam’. But if asking about whether it is good to grow EA, it is relevant that we may get more Sams. And if asking ‘how much good or bad do people who associate with EA do?’ the ‘guilt’ narrative increases in importance.
I do think it’s an interesting question whether EA is prone to generate Sams at higher than the base rate. I think it’s pretty hard to tell from a single case, though.
As you’ve linked me to this comment elsewhere, I’ll respond.
I’m not sure why EAs who knew about Caroline and Sam dating would have felt the need to ‘disclose’ this? (Unless they already suspected the fraud but I don’t think I’ve seen anyone claim that anyone did?)
Sam and FTX seem about as frugal as I’d expect for an insanely profitable business and an intention to give away the vast majority of tens of billions of dollars, too frugal if anything (although I actually think my disagreeing with you here is a point in favour of your broader argument—the more Sam splurged on luxuries, the less it looks like he was motivated by any kind of altruism)
What financial and other support did FTX receive after the early Alameda split by people who were ‘warned’? (There may well be a substantial amount, I just don’t think I’ve heard of any.) I’ll note, though, that it’s easy to see as ‘warnings’ now what at the time could have just looked like a messy divorce.
Admittedly I don’t know much about how these things work, but yet again this looks like hindsight bias to me. Would this have been a priority for you if you had no idea what was coming? If the firewalling was delayed for whatever reason, would you have refused to award grants until it had been? Perhaps. But I don’t think it’s obvious. Also wouldn’t they still be vulnerable to clawbacks in any case?
Again, I just don’t think I know anything about this. In fact I don’t think I knew Sam was under government investigation before November. I’d be curious if you had details to share, especially regarding how serious the allegations were at the time and which meetings he was invited to.
1 - it’s because Sam was publicly claiming that the trading platform and the traders were completely firewalled from one another, and had no special info, as would normally (e.g. in the US) be legally required to make trading fair, but which is impossible if the CEOs are dating
2 - I’m not objecting the spending. It was clear at the time that he was promoting an image of frugality that wasn’t accurate. One example here, but there are many more.
3 - A lot of different Alameda people warned some people at the time of the split. For a variety of reasons, I believe that those who were more involved would have been warned commensurately more than I was (someone who was barely involved).
4 - Perhaps, but it is negligent not to follow this rule, when you’re donating money from an offshore crypto exchange.
5 - I’m just going off recollection, but I believe he was under serious-sounding US govt investigation.
1 - Oh I see. So who knew that Sam and Caroline continued to date while claiming that FTX and Alameda were completely separate?
2 - You link to a video of a non-EA saying that Sam drives a corolla and also has a shot of his very expensive-looking apartment...what about this is misleading or inaccurate? What did you expect the EAs you have in mind to ‘disclose’ - that FTX itself wasn’t frugal? Was anyone claiming it was? Would anyone expect it to have been? Could you share some of your many actual examples?
3 - (I don’t think you’ve addressed anything I said in this section, so perhaps we should just leave it there.)
4 - Perhaps, but as I indicated, it looks like it wouldn’t have made much difference anyway.
5 - (Okay, it looks like we should just leave this one there too.)
I think this is a very good summary.
Oh, interesting, thanks!
Can you confirm which important meetings Sam was invited to while under government investigation then? (The OP seems to be unable to remember when I pressed him on it.)
And I imagine you might have some insight on whether FTX (or Alameda tbf) received financial support from EAs after the acrimonious split? E.g., did you yourself continue to fund FTX/Alameda? (The Semafor article says that you were one of the two initial funders of Alameda but that you only called in the “majority” of your loans.)