When I hear prominent EAs, people that I have often personally discussed the ethics of lying to nazi officials when hiding jews in your closet, or the tradeoffs of cooperating with corrupt government regimes in foreign countries, say that they now suddenly “unequivocally condemn all fraud”, I feel gaslit and confused by what is happening.
These are not sentences that anyone I worked with in EA believed a month ago, and I don’t think that you believe them now.
Hi Oli. I talked to a friend and they pointed out that many people reading your comment may reasonably read you as saying a) there’s a direct quote where RP leadership in the post above “unequivocally condemn all fraud” (including fraud relevant to hiding jews from nazi officials) and b) that you’ve “often personally discussed” ethics with RP leadership.
a) is clearly false, as the post above only refers to condemning “any potential fraud or misuse of customer funds and trust that occurred at FTX,” and does not refer to any broad condemnation for fraud or fraud-like activities relevant to hiding jews from nazis or cooperating with corrupt government regimes. I’m guessing b) is false as well based on my personal understanding of how often you interact with RP leadership.
I can see how this is an honest misunderstanding, however, it’ll be helpful to be very clear that in the statement above, RP leaders gave no literal indication one way or another about their position on e.g. lying to Nazis.
Makes sense! I do think it makes some, though not a huge difference that it’s specifying that it’s just about FTX. I think it’s of course a weaker statement, but I also don’t really think it changes much of the basic argument (and I think it would be quite bad if we changed our ethical standards for behavior this much based on the context in which it was committed, e.g. to think it’s OK for other people to lie to corrupt regimes, but not people at FTX).
I have discussed ethics with people in RP leadership probably a decent amount over the years (few other topics that come up as frequently in EA contexts), so I think b) is accurate, though there are no hard lines here, and I have talked very little to most of the leadership, so still seems good to clarify.
For example I’ve talked a pretty decent amount with Ozzie over the years, including about honesty norms, and he is on the RP board (I think not fully clear whether you should count board members as part of leadership).
and does not refer to any broad condemnation for fraud or fraud-like activities relevant to hiding jews from nazis or cooperating with corrupt government regimes.
I do think FTX is pretty close to the top of the list where I can imagine them having run into having to interface with a bunch of corrupt government regimes. The Bahamian government really did not strike me as a very lawful and non-corrupt institution, and they had international operations in dozens of different countries, often interfacing with areas of legal ambiguity where I expect corruption to come through more strongly than in other areas.
I of course still agree that saying “at FTX” limits the type of fraud that is being condemned to fraud that might have occurred at FTX, but I think we at the moment have such large uncertainty about what actually happened at FTX that I don’t this actually rules out that many types of fraud (I do agree it rules out specifically lying to nazis, since there are no nazi governments during the period where FTX existed, though it might does not rule out lying e.g. to the Chinese government, which indeed might actually be quite likely to have occurred given that they were stationed in Hong Kong and strikes me in many ways as a highly analogous situation).
Also, I just reread my top-level comment. It seems quite clear about the “at FTX” part? Like, there are like 4 paragraphs of examples and argument I give, all of which are pretty obviously set in the context of FTX. I still care about not being misunderstood, but I would currently be surprised if someone actually walked away thinking that the OP, or my comment, was not fully aware that the original statement said “at FTX”.
To readers: Agree with my comment if before reading this exchange, you previously thought RP leadership said literally that they “unequivocally condemn all fraud.”
(Note that you should agree if you knew in context they didn’t mean it completely, but just that you thought this was literally said).
Hi Oli. I talked to a friend and they pointed out that many people reading your comment may reasonably read you as saying a) there’s a direct quote where RP leadership in the post above “unequivocally condemn all fraud” (including fraud relevant to hiding jews from nazi officials) and b) that you’ve “often personally discussed” ethics with RP leadership.
a) is clearly false, as the post above only refers to condemning “any potential fraud or misuse of customer funds and trust that occurred at FTX,” and does not refer to any broad condemnation for fraud or fraud-like activities relevant to hiding jews from nazis or cooperating with corrupt government regimes. I’m guessing b) is false as well based on my personal understanding of how often you interact with RP leadership.
I can see how this is an honest misunderstanding, however, it’ll be helpful to be very clear that in the statement above, RP leaders gave no literal indication one way or another about their position on e.g. lying to Nazis.
Makes sense! I do think it makes some, though not a huge difference that it’s specifying that it’s just about FTX. I think it’s of course a weaker statement, but I also don’t really think it changes much of the basic argument (and I think it would be quite bad if we changed our ethical standards for behavior this much based on the context in which it was committed, e.g. to think it’s OK for other people to lie to corrupt regimes, but not people at FTX).
I have discussed ethics with people in RP leadership probably a decent amount over the years (few other topics that come up as frequently in EA contexts), so I think b) is accurate, though there are no hard lines here, and I have talked very little to most of the leadership, so still seems good to clarify.
For example I’ve talked a pretty decent amount with Ozzie over the years, including about honesty norms, and he is on the RP board (I think not fully clear whether you should count board members as part of leadership).
I do think FTX is pretty close to the top of the list where I can imagine them having run into having to interface with a bunch of corrupt government regimes. The Bahamian government really did not strike me as a very lawful and non-corrupt institution, and they had international operations in dozens of different countries, often interfacing with areas of legal ambiguity where I expect corruption to come through more strongly than in other areas.
I of course still agree that saying “at FTX” limits the type of fraud that is being condemned to fraud that might have occurred at FTX, but I think we at the moment have such large uncertainty about what actually happened at FTX that I don’t this actually rules out that many types of fraud (I do agree it rules out specifically lying to nazis, since there are no nazi governments during the period where FTX existed, though it might does not rule out lying e.g. to the Chinese government, which indeed might actually be quite likely to have occurred given that they were stationed in Hong Kong and strikes me in many ways as a highly analogous situation).
Also, I just reread my top-level comment. It seems quite clear about the “at FTX” part? Like, there are like 4 paragraphs of examples and argument I give, all of which are pretty obviously set in the context of FTX. I still care about not being misunderstood, but I would currently be surprised if someone actually walked away thinking that the OP, or my comment, was not fully aware that the original statement said “at FTX”.
To readers: Agree with my comment if before reading this exchange, you previously thought RP leadership said literally that they “unequivocally condemn all fraud.”
(Note that you should agree if you knew in context they didn’t mean it completely, but just that you thought this was literally said).