This link’s hypothesis is about people just trying to fit in―but SBF seemed not to try to fit in to his peer group! He engaged in a series of reckless and fraudulent behaviors that none of his peers seemed to want.
(Author of the post) My model is that Sam had some initial tendencies for reckless behavior and bullet-biting, and those were then greatly exacerbated via evaporative cooling dynamics at FTX.
It sounds like SBF drove away everyone who couldn’t stand his methods until only people who tolerated him were left. That’s a pretty different way of making an organization go insane.
Relatedly, this kind of evaporative cooling is exactly the dynamic I was trying to point to in my post. Quotes:
People who don’t want to live up to the demanding standard leave, which causes evaporative cooling and this raises the standards for the people who remain. Frequently this also causes the group to lose critical mass.
[...]
My current best model of what happened at an individual psychological level was many people being attracted to FTX/Alameda because of the potential resources, then many rounds of evaporative cooling as anyone who was not extremely hardcore according to the group standard was kicked out, with there being a constant sense of insecurity for everyone involved that came from the frequent purges of people who seemed to not be on board with the group standard.
Sorry if I sounded redundant. I’d always thought of “evaporative cooling of group beliefs” like “we start with a group with similar values/goals/beliefs; the least extreme members gradually get disengaged and leave; which cascades into a more extreme average that leads to others leaving”―very analogous to evaporation. I might’ve misunderstood, but SBF seemed to break the analogy by consistently being the most extreme, and actively and personally pushing others away (if, at times, accidentally). Edit: So… arguably one can still apply the evaporative cooling concept to FTX, but I don’t see it as an explanation of SBF himself.
(Author of the post) My model is that Sam had some initial tendencies for reckless behavior and bullet-biting, and those were then greatly exacerbated via evaporative cooling dynamics at FTX.
Relatedly, this kind of evaporative cooling is exactly the dynamic I was trying to point to in my post. Quotes:
Sorry if I sounded redundant. I’d always thought of “evaporative cooling of group beliefs” like “we start with a group with similar values/goals/beliefs; the least extreme members gradually get disengaged and leave; which cascades into a more extreme average that leads to others leaving”―very analogous to evaporation. I might’ve misunderstood, but SBF seemed to break the analogy by consistently being the most extreme, and actively and personally pushing others away (if, at times, accidentally). Edit: So… arguably one can still apply the evaporative cooling concept to FTX, but I don’t see it as an explanation of SBF himself.
What do you mean by “(Author of the post)”
I am the author of the linked post that DPiepgrass was commenting on: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HCAyiuZe9wz8tG6EF/my-tentative-best-guess-on-how-eas-and-rationalists
He meant that he wrote the linked post on hypotheses for how EAs and rationalists sometimes go crazy.