Good post. There’s a lot of psych research on ‘person perception’, ‘trait attribution’, and moral psychology. A key takeaway is that people intuitively care a lot about intent, and make strong distinctions between willful harming-of-others, and accidental harming-of-others.
We also, arguably, have a set of ‘psychopath-detection’ adaptations for identifying, managing, and ostracizing those who habitually and recklessly impose harm on others.
But none of that really helps clarify the SBF situation very much, as you point out.
I think a key thing is often overlooked in EA commentary on the SBF/EA situation: wealth, power, fame, and influence can corrupt people, very quickly, beyond all recognition. We tend to over-estimate continuity of personal identity and stability of traits in cases where people’s circumstances change dramatically.
SBF with a net worth under $100k versus SBF with a net worth of over $20bn might have been very different people with different values, priorities, moral guardrails, self-deceptions, and biases.
There are many, many examples of young people achieving sudden wealth and fame, and turning into much worse people who are barely recognizable to former friends and family members—especially if they surround themselves with fawning entourages who encourage short-term hedonism and impulsive risk-taking over long-term altruism and wise caution. They often turn from great people with great talents into narcissistic malefactors who think they’re exempt from ordinary moral norms (and legal constraints).
Whenever an EA-affiliated person achieves that kind of sudden wealth and fame, we should be especially careful to deploy our social defense mechanisms, with the expectation that they’re much more likely to become malefactors than we ever expected.
Good post. There’s a lot of psych research on ‘person perception’, ‘trait attribution’, and moral psychology. A key takeaway is that people intuitively care a lot about intent, and make strong distinctions between willful harming-of-others, and accidental harming-of-others.
We also, arguably, have a set of ‘psychopath-detection’ adaptations for identifying, managing, and ostracizing those who habitually and recklessly impose harm on others.
But none of that really helps clarify the SBF situation very much, as you point out.
I think a key thing is often overlooked in EA commentary on the SBF/EA situation: wealth, power, fame, and influence can corrupt people, very quickly, beyond all recognition. We tend to over-estimate continuity of personal identity and stability of traits in cases where people’s circumstances change dramatically.
SBF with a net worth under $100k versus SBF with a net worth of over $20bn might have been very different people with different values, priorities, moral guardrails, self-deceptions, and biases.
There are many, many examples of young people achieving sudden wealth and fame, and turning into much worse people who are barely recognizable to former friends and family members—especially if they surround themselves with fawning entourages who encourage short-term hedonism and impulsive risk-taking over long-term altruism and wise caution. They often turn from great people with great talents into narcissistic malefactors who think they’re exempt from ordinary moral norms (and legal constraints).
Whenever an EA-affiliated person achieves that kind of sudden wealth and fame, we should be especially careful to deploy our social defense mechanisms, with the expectation that they’re much more likely to become malefactors than we ever expected.