I think the quotes from Sam’s blog are very interesting and are pretty strong evidence for the view that Sam’s thinking and actions were directly influenced by some EA ideas.
I think the thinking around EA leadership is way too premature and presumptive. There are many years (like a decade?) of EA leadership generally being actually good people and not liars. There are also explicit calls in “official” EA sources that specifically say that the ends do not justify the means in practice, honesty and integrity are important EA values, and pluralism and moral humility are important (which leads to not doing things that would transgress other reasonable moral views).
Most of the relevant documentation is linked in Will’s post.
Edit: After reading the full blog post, the quote is actually Sam presenting the argument that one can calculate which cause is highest priority, the rest be damned.
He goes on to say in the very next paragraph:
This line of thinking is implicitly assuming that the impacts of causes add together rather than multiply, and I think that’s probably not a very good model.
He concludes the post by stating that the multiplicative model, which he thinks is more likely, indicates that both reducing x-risk and improving the future are important.
None of this proves anything. But it’s significantly changed my prior, and I now think it’s likely that the EA movement should heavily invest in multiple causes, not just one.
There’s another post on that same page where he denotes his donations for 2016 and they include donations to x-risk and meta EA orgs, as well as donations to global health and animal welfare orgs.
So nevermind, I don’t think those blog posts are positive evidence for Sam being influenced by EA ideas to think that present people don’t matter or that fraud is justified.
I think the quotes from Sam’s blog are very interesting
and are pretty strong evidence for the view that Sam’s thinking and actions were directly influenced by some EA ideas.I think the thinking around EA leadership is way too premature and presumptive. There are many years (like a decade?) of EA leadership generally being actually good people and not liars. There are also explicit calls in “official” EA sources that specifically say that the ends do not justify the means in practice, honesty and integrity are important EA values, and pluralism and moral humility are important (which leads to not doing things that would transgress other reasonable moral views).
Most of the relevant documentation is linked in Will’s post.
Edit: After reading the full blog post, the quote is actually Sam presenting the argument that one can calculate which cause is highest priority, the rest be damned.
He goes on to say in the very next paragraph:
He concludes the post by stating that the multiplicative model, which he thinks is more likely, indicates that both reducing x-risk and improving the future are important.
There’s another post on that same page where he denotes his donations for 2016 and they include donations to x-risk and meta EA orgs, as well as donations to global health and animal welfare orgs.
So nevermind, I don’t think those blog posts are positive evidence for Sam being influenced by EA ideas to think that present people don’t matter or that fraud is justified.