I can’t think of a way to phrase a similar statement that wouldn’t come off as horrendous when read by the public. Even if this is mostly an EA-facing post (and I’m not sure this is true), the public is inevitably going to find it and if it says anything like “fraud may be warranted in some special circumstances”, Rethink Priorities is in big trouble.
If you have a better way of phrasing it that is more accurate and doesn’t come off wrong, I’d be glad to hear it. Otherwise, I think this is a good statement. Most EAs will probably read through the word “unequivocally”, and I would encourage further discussion on the tolerable bounds of behavior in pursuit of EA ideals, but this statement is not the place for that.
I think it’s pretty straightforward. I think some of the other announcements got this right. An alternative would be:
As far as I can tell a substantial fraction of the behavior that was going on at FTX was highly unethical and I condemn it in some of the strongest terms that I can think of. It currently looks like billions of dollars of customer deposits were misappropriated, in direct violation of FTX’s terms of service and public statements by FTX and Sam Bankman Fried. This was a gross violation of trust and looks likely to be a straightforward example of extremely large-scale financial fraud, possibly the biggest case of financial fraud since Enron.
This is a tragedy, and I think FTX has caused great harm for the world. I am saddened to hear about the harm to many of FTX’s depositors, investors and grant-recipients and am worried that I myself have contributed some to this harm by lending FTX indirectly some of my reputation, and I am reflecting deeply on how I should learn from this situation.
Or alternatively just a minimally edited version of the OP’s sentence:
We strongly condemn the misuse of customer funds and trust that occurred at FTX.
What is a statement you’d want instead of that?
I can’t think of a way to phrase a similar statement that wouldn’t come off as horrendous when read by the public. Even if this is mostly an EA-facing post (and I’m not sure this is true), the public is inevitably going to find it and if it says anything like “fraud may be warranted in some special circumstances”, Rethink Priorities is in big trouble.
If you have a better way of phrasing it that is more accurate and doesn’t come off wrong, I’d be glad to hear it. Otherwise, I think this is a good statement. Most EAs will probably read through the word “unequivocally”, and I would encourage further discussion on the tolerable bounds of behavior in pursuit of EA ideals, but this statement is not the place for that.
I think it’s pretty straightforward. I think some of the other announcements got this right. An alternative would be:
Or alternatively just a minimally edited version of the OP’s sentence: