a. Sequoia led FTX round B in Jul 2021 and had notably more time to notice any irregularities than grant recipients.
b. I would expect the funds to have much better expertise in something like “evaluating the financial health of a company”.
Also it seem you are somewhat shifting the goalposts: Zoe’s paragraph with “On Halloween this past year, I was hanging out with a few EAs.” It is reasonable to assume the reader will interpret it as hanging out with basically random/typical EAs, and the argument should hold for these people. Your argument would work better if she was hanging out with “EAs working at FTX” or “EAs advising SBF” who could have probably done better than funds on evaluating stuff like how the specific people work.
The EA project is clearly not promised on the idea that it should, for example, “figure out stuff like stock price better than legacy institutions”. Quite the contrary—the claim is while humanity actually invests decent amount of competent effort in stock, in comparison, it neglects problems like poverty or xrisk.
It seems like we’re talking past each other here, in part because as you note we’re referring to different EA subpopulations:
Elite EAs who mentored SBF & incubated FTX
Random/typical EAs who Cremer would hang out with at parties
EA grant recipients
I don’t really know who knew what when; most of my critical feeling is directed at folks in category (1). Out of everyone we’ve mentioned here (EA or not), they had the most exposure to and knowledge about (or at least opportunity to learn about) SBF & FTX’s operations.
I think we should expect elite EAs to have done better than Sequoia et al. at noticing red flags (e.g. the reports of SBF being shitty at Alameda in 2017; e.g. no ring-fence around money earmarked for the Future Fund) and acting on what they noticed.
a.
Sequoia led FTX round B in Jul 2021 and had notably more time to notice any irregularities than grant recipients.
b.
I would expect the funds to have much better expertise in something like “evaluating the financial health of a company”.
Also it seem you are somewhat shifting the goalposts: Zoe’s paragraph with “On Halloween this past year, I was hanging out with a few EAs.” It is reasonable to assume the reader will interpret it as hanging out with basically random/typical EAs, and the argument should hold for these people. Your argument would work better if she was hanging out with “EAs working at FTX” or “EAs advising SBF” who could have probably done better than funds on evaluating stuff like how the specific people work.
The EA project is clearly not promised on the idea that it should, for example, “figure out stuff like stock price better than legacy institutions”. Quite the contrary—the claim is while humanity actually invests decent amount of competent effort in stock, in comparison, it neglects problems like poverty or xrisk.
It seems like we’re talking past each other here, in part because as you note we’re referring to different EA subpopulations:
Elite EAs who mentored SBF & incubated FTX
Random/typical EAs who Cremer would hang out with at parties
EA grant recipients
I don’t really know who knew what when; most of my critical feeling is directed at folks in category (1). Out of everyone we’ve mentioned here (EA or not), they had the most exposure to and knowledge about (or at least opportunity to learn about) SBF & FTX’s operations.
I think we should expect elite EAs to have done better than Sequoia et al. at noticing red flags (e.g. the reports of SBF being shitty at Alameda in 2017; e.g. no ring-fence around money earmarked for the Future Fund) and acting on what they noticed.