One theory for why FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried avoids making a case for the use-value of cryptocurrencies is that he actually doesn’t believe there is one. But why would a paper billionaire even publicly flirt with the idea of calling his business a Ponzi, even if he secretly believes it to be true? Part of Bankman-Fried’s brand is that he is an “effective altruist,” a branch of utilitarian philosophy in which categorical moral claims are applied to everything except for systems of political economy. In short, it’s an easy way to rationalize making a lot of money in a scammy fashion and then giving it all away to charity, as Bankman-Fried has said he plans to do.
Even if this is the case, it would be a ludicrously cynical bet, and an ethically misguided one, too. Had an entrepreneur taken a similar approach during the thrift crisis, they would have been lining their pockets with dollars that, deployed honestly, could have built homes in which families could live. In the case of crypto, it’s waste all the way down: as Bankman-Fried surely knows, crypto mining is a filthy business, generating millions of tons of CO2 emissions in the United States alone every year.
I don’t know if you noticed but I personally replied to your current short form asking if this community is willing to debate the founding principles of EA by confirming I’m willing to debate. You also asked where to look for critical discussion of these ideas but didn’t specify which ideas. You can find them by browsing through the ‘criticism of effective altruism’ tag. If you want to identify criticism of a specific idea, search with the keywords, in quotations, “criticism of effective altruism” and also whatever subject you want to see critical discussion of.
Anyway, I commented 4 days ago and you posted this yesterday, which means you must have seen a notification from me but posted this link anyway. I tend to be more sympathetic to users like yourself than most others in EA. I’d be more sympathetic to you right now if you didn’t seem to be bull-headed and uncaring about a receptive response like you requested after I offered a dialogue.
“Respect the honour of billionaire philanthropists for the sake of their philanthropy and loyalty to the EA brand no matter what else they do” isn’t a principle of EA. It never has been. It never will be. It’s not an idea in EA only because there are a couple billionaire philanthropists associated with EA.
The criticisms of Peter Thiel, Elon Musk and Sam Bankman-Fried, and their respective philanthropic efforts in relation to EA, have been criticized better in articles other than the ones you’ve shared on the EA Forum. They’ve been addressed. Even some criticisms that have spread misinformation about EA or have been written without much respect for the facts.
There are probably individuals who’ve hated EA and created an account on this forum only to criticize it who received a better reception than you. That would be because they at least would conduct themselves in a principled way. I’m going to send this same comment to you as a private message to ensure there is no doubt you’ll have noticed it. I don’t want to write one comment that’s overly long but I will post another comment as a reply to this one with some facts you would apparently either would like or now need to know.
Here are the facts nobody else has bothered telling you and you apparently haven’t bothered to check yourself, or even ask about.
1. “Honor not only the philanthropy but the personality and other activities of billionaire philanthropists because they are loyal to the EA brand” is no principle of EA.
It never has been. It never will be. It’s not even an idea in EA. Some individual participants in may behave like that’s the case but that’s not representative of any part of EA. Even the biggest funders of EA you’ve not mentioned yet on the EA Forum yet have for years received major criticism for their other philanthropic efforts, or their adverse consequences, especially political donations most in EA have disagreed with.
2. Sam Bankman-Fried has already received criticism from within EA and decent criticisms from outside EA have been appreciated too.
That includes the role of both the crypto industry and his recent contributions to various political campaigns. I won’t link to any particular criticism here on the EA Forum because there are several. You can find them by using the keywords “crypto”, “FTX”, “Sam Bankman-Fried”, or “political” in a single search.
3. Peter Thiel only ever donated to one organization associated with one cause in EA. He stopped because the growing consensus on the impact of AI on the future completely contradicted Thiel’s perspective.
Peter Thiel only ever donated to the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI). He hasn’t donated to MIRI since 2014. Most of those donations occurred before EA had even begun as a movement or AI safety/alignment was as strongly associated with EA. He has never donated to any other charity at any time that has ever received widespread endorsement from any section of EA.
That was also during a time when MIRI wasn’t as explicit about the kind of perspective on AI capabilities development they’ve continued to have until the present. MIRI was one of the main organizations behind a major international campaign to raise awareness of and build the AI safety/alignment ecosystem in 2014.
Thiel’s outlook is that advanced AI doesn’t pose a risk of some existential threat but that advancing AI will be a boon for humankind. He considered it harmful to stymie AI development and concluded EA was full of wrong-headed, pessimistic luddites. Because of all of that he disengaged with EA on his own terms.
4. Peter Thiel has never associated himself with EA in any other way since 2014.
He spoke at one EA conference in 2014. He didn’t want to . Some of his other philanthropic efforts, like for life extension or breakthrough science, are of interest to a minority of participants in EA. Yet the amount of donations or other support those causes receive through EA are negligible compared to the support other causes in EA receive. Almost none of those other organizations Thiel has ever donated to has ever tried to voluntarily affiliate or associate themselves with EA in any way.
Any connection between Thiel and EA ended well before there was a hint of his endorsement of Donald Trump as the Republican nominee for President in 2016, or Thiel’s turn toward any of his more controversial political activities of the last few years.
As to Elon Musk, I’ve recognized it’s worth me writing a top-level post evaluating his relationship with EA and how it relates to his other philanthropic efforts during the last several years. Yet it’s for a lot of other reasons other than the one in this article you’ve previously cited. That’s an example of what I meant in my previous comment above about others outside of EA, and many inside of EA, being able to make better criticisms of that kind than the ones you care or know about.