I also would feel more convinced if they stated in the complaint something like the following, “When other employees raised concerns that turning off risk controls for Alameda would be unfair and fraudulent, Bankman-Fried responded, ‘I don’t care if it’s dishonest. We need to make money.’ ”
Sure, I agree that things would be even more apparent if SBF were on the record explicitly condoning fraud. But that’s easily avoidable, so any bad actor who isn’t stupid will find workarounds to communicating in such a self-incriminating way. (From what we’re hearing, there may have been self-deleting chats and emoji reactions instead of diligent record-keeping.) It’s common for liars to leave themselves plausible deniability wherever possible. That’s why a shred of plausible deniability should be worth near to nothing when contrasted with a large amount of circumstantial incriminating evidence. I take moral offense at your slowness to update here: it seems that bad actors have it easy when people on the sidelines predominantly reason the way you do. We should invest at least as much effort steelmanning the case that someone is guilty than that they’re innocent. If they’re guilty, their potential/alleged victims usually vastly outnumber them.
I get the point that ideal justice includes steelmanning the case that someone is innocent or was acting with negligence rather than fraud/malice. So if you’re playing the role of a defender in the legal system, that’s okay! But it should be flagged as such. If we’re approaching this from the perspective of “what’s likely to be the case?” then my worry is that you’re systemically underestimating the probability of fraud/malice if you wait for explicit confessions/smoking guns with the person’s fingerprints. It’s somewhat rare for bad actors to leave these things laying around. Also, and perhaps more importantly, it’s very rare that innocent people maneuver themselves in situations where they face really severe criminal charges and potentially a lifetime in jail. This holds even more so if the person in question seems really smart and competent whenever it isn’t in their advantage to play dumb.
Sure, I agree that things would be even more apparent if SBF were on the record explicitly condoning fraud. But that’s easily avoidable, so any bad actor who isn’t stupid will find workarounds to communicating in such a self-incriminating way. (From what we’re hearing, there may have been self-deleting chats and emoji reactions instead of diligent record-keeping.) It’s common for liars to leave themselves plausible deniability wherever possible. That’s why a shred of plausible deniability should be worth near to nothing when contrasted with a large amount of circumstantial incriminating evidence. I take moral offense at your slowness to update here: it seems that bad actors have it easy when people on the sidelines predominantly reason the way you do. We should invest at least as much effort steelmanning the case that someone is guilty than that they’re innocent. If they’re guilty, their potential/alleged victims usually vastly outnumber them.
I get the point that ideal justice includes steelmanning the case that someone is innocent or was acting with negligence rather than fraud/malice. So if you’re playing the role of a defender in the legal system, that’s okay! But it should be flagged as such. If we’re approaching this from the perspective of “what’s likely to be the case?” then my worry is that you’re systemically underestimating the probability of fraud/malice if you wait for explicit confessions/smoking guns with the person’s fingerprints. It’s somewhat rare for bad actors to leave these things laying around. Also, and perhaps more importantly, it’s very rare that innocent people maneuver themselves in situations where they face really severe criminal charges and potentially a lifetime in jail. This holds even more so if the person in question seems really smart and competent whenever it isn’t in their advantage to play dumb.