I mostly agree that people seem to have overreacted and castigated themselves about SBF-FTX, but also feel the right amount of reaction should be non-trivial. We aren’t just talking about SBF, as the whole affair included other insiders who were arguably as ‘true believers’ in EA as it is reasonable to expect (like Caroline Ellison) and SBF-FTX becoming poster-children of the movement at a very high level. But I think you are mostly right: one can’t expect omniscience and a level of character-detection amongst EAs when among the fooled were much more cynical, savvy and skeptic professionals in finance.
For what it’s worth, I feel some EA values might have fueled some of Sam’s bad praxis, but weren’t the first mover. From what I’ve read, he absorbed (naive?) utilitarianism and a high-risks stake from the home. As for the counterfactual of him having ending up where he has without any involvement with EA… I just don’t know. the story that is usually told is that his intent was working in charity NGOs before Will McAskill steered him towards an ‘earning to give’ path. Perhaps he would have gone into finance anyway after some time. It’s very difficult to gauge intentions and mental states- I have never been a fan of Sam’s (I discovered his existence, along with that of EA after and because of the FTX affair), but I can still assume that, if it comes to ‘intent’, his thoughts were probably more in a naive utilitarian, ‘rules are for the sheep, I am smart enough to take dangerous bets and do some amoral stuff towards creating the greater good’ frame than ‘let me get rich by a massive scam and fleece the suckers’. Power and vanity would probably reinforce these as well.
We aren’t just talking about SBF, as the whole affair included other insiders who were arguably as ‘true believers’ in EA as it is reasonable to expect (like Caroline Ellison)
Are there actually any other examples beyond SBF and his on-and-off romantic partner? I’d be a lot more concerned if there were several EAs independently plotting fraud who then joined forces, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.
Nishad Singh pleaded guilty to several counts of conspiracy charges early this year.
Nishad Singh, the former director of engineering at FTX, pleaded guilty to six conspiracy charges, including conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to violate federal campaign finances laws.
Singh is the third top executive and close confidante of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried to plead guilty and cooperate with prosecutors. Gary Wang, co-founder of FTX, and Caroline Ellison, the former head of FTX’s sister hedge fund Alameda Research, both pleaded guilty last year and are cooperating against Bankman-Fried.
Edit: Nishad knew by mid-2022 that Alameda was using FTX customer funds:
“I am unbelievably sorry for my role in all of this,” Singh said, adding that he knew by mid-2022 that Bankman-Fried’s hedge fund, Alameda Research, was borrowing FTX customer funds, and customers were not aware. Singh said that he would forfeit proceeds from the scheme. (Reuters)
I think that it has been said that among the leadership, Nishad Singh was pretty close to EA too. Further down the line, it is commonly said that Alameda especially attracted a lot of EA people as it was part of its appeal from the beginning. Needless to say, though, these people would have been completely in the dark about what was happening until they were told, in the very end.
I mostly agree that people seem to have overreacted and castigated themselves about SBF-FTX, but also feel the right amount of reaction should be non-trivial. We aren’t just talking about SBF, as the whole affair included other insiders who were arguably as ‘true believers’ in EA as it is reasonable to expect (like Caroline Ellison) and SBF-FTX becoming poster-children of the movement at a very high level. But I think you are mostly right: one can’t expect omniscience and a level of character-detection amongst EAs when among the fooled were much more cynical, savvy and skeptic professionals in finance.
For what it’s worth, I feel some EA values might have fueled some of Sam’s bad praxis, but weren’t the first mover. From what I’ve read, he absorbed (naive?) utilitarianism and a high-risks stake from the home. As for the counterfactual of him having ending up where he has without any involvement with EA… I just don’t know. the story that is usually told is that his intent was working in charity NGOs before Will McAskill steered him towards an ‘earning to give’ path. Perhaps he would have gone into finance anyway after some time. It’s very difficult to gauge intentions and mental states- I have never been a fan of Sam’s (I discovered his existence, along with that of EA after and because of the FTX affair), but I can still assume that, if it comes to ‘intent’, his thoughts were probably more in a naive utilitarian, ‘rules are for the sheep, I am smart enough to take dangerous bets and do some amoral stuff towards creating the greater good’ frame than ‘let me get rich by a massive scam and fleece the suckers’. Power and vanity would probably reinforce these as well.
Are there actually any other examples beyond SBF and his on-and-off romantic partner? I’d be a lot more concerned if there were several EAs independently plotting fraud who then joined forces, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.
Nishad Singh pleaded guilty to several counts of conspiracy charges early this year.
Source
Nishad is reported to have been very into EA.
Edit: Nishad knew by mid-2022 that Alameda was using FTX customer funds:
I think that it has been said that among the leadership, Nishad Singh was pretty close to EA too. Further down the line, it is commonly said that Alameda especially attracted a lot of EA people as it was part of its appeal from the beginning. Needless to say, though, these people would have been completely in the dark about what was happening until they were told, in the very end.