Before FTX collapsed, the company was aggressively marketing crypto, a highly speculative and volatile asset class, to unsophisticated retail investors. IMO this should have been a red flag, because it’s a harmful career in the form of “Marketing and R&D for compulsive behaviours such as [...] gambling” from this list: https://80000hours.org/2015/08/what-are-the-10-most-harmful-jobs/ . This should have made the EA community apply more scrutiny towards SBF and FTX and avoid making him the public face of the movement as much as he was.
Is it fair to say that EA made him the public face of the movement, or did he make himself the face of the movement?
I know of some instances of him being promoted by EA related organizations (such as 80k), and most likely there are a bunch of cases that I don’t know about.
My impression thus far has been that he mostly ended up a public EA figure, because he was famous for non EA-related reasons and being a famous person he identified publicly and frequently as an effective altruist. This is based on only cursory information, so please correct me if that impression is wrong.
IMO the big mistakes before the collapse were 1) making SBF an EA poster child and 2) not giving enough weight to the possibility of a massive drawdown or complete collapse in FTX’s valuation.*
In each case, I think the magnitude of the mistake was dramatically increased by the fact that some parts of EA leadership apparently reasons to think SBF was/could be shady well prior to the FTX collapse. (Though to be clear, it does not seem reasonable to think that those leaders should have foreseen the extent of the fraud that appears to have taken place). I also believe EA’s previous experience with Ben Delo (who also became a crypto billionaire through running an offshore exchange before having legal troubles) should have given the community/leadership pause before putting SBF on a pedestal and assuming FTX funding would be in place.
After the collapse, I’d guess the lack of communication around FTX from EA leaders/orgs will probably turn out to be a mistake (though I’m less sure about this as I’m not privy to info about e.g. legal liability).
*The drawdown/collapse scenarios weren’t completely ignored, but my sense is that very little weight was put on them. See for example Will MacAskill’s 6300 word piece on “EA and the current funding situation” from May 2022. Will only mentions downside volatility twice, very much in passing: “bear in mind the difficulty of valuing crypto assets, and their volatility” and “total potential funding could still decrease by a lot, especially if FTX crashes.” Even at the time, there were comments from the community about paying more attention to the inherent volatility of FTX.
Could you clarify what was done to “make SBF an EA poster child”/ “putting SBF on a pedestal”? I think I know some things you’re referring to (e.g. he was on an 80 K podcast) but I’m not sure I can generate the entire list of things you are pointing to, and I would find it helpful to have more examples.
Sure! Here’s a comment I wrote in response to a similar question in March. I don’t think it is exhaustive, but should be fairly illustrative.
Some specific examples of EA leaders putting SBF on a pedestal that I found with a bit of brief digging:
At the time FTX blew up, SBF was featured on 80k’s homepage. Also, if you clicked “start here” on that homepage (the first link aside from a subscription form) you were brought to an article that featured SBF as one of three individual profiles.
Both of these mentions linked to a more in depth profile of SBF that had been created in 2014 and regularly updated, and clearly “puts him on a pedestal” (“This approach — where he donates a significant proportion of his income to organisations aiming to make the world a better place as effectively as possible — is allowing Sam to have a pretty staggering impact.”)
When Will wrote about how the EA Funding situation had changed, he praised SBF not just for his donations but also his personal virtue “I think the fact that Sam Bankman-Fried is a vegan and drives a Corolla is awesome, and totally the right call.”
In Will’s appearance on the 80k podcast, he uses SBF as the exemplar of earning to give, and says convincing SBF to pursue ETG was “really the important impact.” He also uses SBF to illustrate “fat tails” of impact. On another 80k podcast, 80k staff talks about SBF to illustrate the impact of their 1:1 team.
In a talk at EAG London 2021, Ben Todd argues “that the recent success of Sam Bankman-Fried is an additional reason to aim high.” (Ben also mentions SBF in a variety of posts discussing EA’s funding levels, but that seems to me like an unavoidable part of discussing that issue and less like putting him on a pedestal.)
All those examples come from the period after concerns about SBF had been raised to EA leaders. Prior to that, there are plenty more examples especially for 80k (e.g. SBF was on the 80k homepage from late 2014 to late 2017.)
As far as I can tell, EA leaders started promoting SBF in 2014 or so, seeing him as a great example of altruistic career choice in general, and of ETG (a counterintuitive model of altruistic career choice that originated in EA) specifically. Then leaders kept promoting SBF despite the warnings they got from Alameda co-founders, and continued to do so until FTX blew up.
Another data point that speaks to SBF being on a pedestal was the individual who at EAG London 2022 (without consent of the conference organizers)distributed hundreds of stickers depicting Sam on a bean bag with the text “what would SBF do?” Whether this individual was themselves putting SBF on a pedestal or was making a joke about the extent SBF was already being put on a pedestal, I think this anecdote illustrates how Sam was often portrayed.
80% of people thought there were clear mistakes in regard to FTX. Could people say what those were?
Before FTX collapsed, the company was aggressively marketing crypto, a highly speculative and volatile asset class, to unsophisticated retail investors. IMO this should have been a red flag, because it’s a harmful career in the form of “Marketing and R&D for compulsive behaviours such as [...] gambling” from this list: https://80000hours.org/2015/08/what-are-the-10-most-harmful-jobs/ . This should have made the EA community apply more scrutiny towards SBF and FTX and avoid making him the public face of the movement as much as he was.
Is it fair to say that EA made him the public face of the movement, or did he make himself the face of the movement?
I know of some instances of him being promoted by EA related organizations (such as 80k), and most likely there are a bunch of cases that I don’t know about.
My impression thus far has been that he mostly ended up a public EA figure, because he was famous for non EA-related reasons and being a famous person he identified publicly and frequently as an effective altruist. This is based on only cursory information, so please correct me if that impression is wrong.
IMO the big mistakes before the collapse were 1) making SBF an EA poster child and 2) not giving enough weight to the possibility of a massive drawdown or complete collapse in FTX’s valuation.*
In each case, I think the magnitude of the mistake was dramatically increased by the fact that some parts of EA leadership apparently reasons to think SBF was/could be shady well prior to the FTX collapse. (Though to be clear, it does not seem reasonable to think that those leaders should have foreseen the extent of the fraud that appears to have taken place). I also believe EA’s previous experience with Ben Delo (who also became a crypto billionaire through running an offshore exchange before having legal troubles) should have given the community/leadership pause before putting SBF on a pedestal and assuming FTX funding would be in place.
After the collapse, I’d guess the lack of communication around FTX from EA leaders/orgs will probably turn out to be a mistake (though I’m less sure about this as I’m not privy to info about e.g. legal liability).
*The drawdown/collapse scenarios weren’t completely ignored, but my sense is that very little weight was put on them. See for example Will MacAskill’s 6300 word piece on “EA and the current funding situation” from May 2022. Will only mentions downside volatility twice, very much in passing: “bear in mind the difficulty of valuing crypto assets, and their volatility” and “total potential funding could still decrease by a lot, especially if FTX crashes.” Even at the time, there were comments from the community about paying more attention to the inherent volatility of FTX.
Could you clarify what was done to “make SBF an EA poster child”/ “putting SBF on a pedestal”? I think I know some things you’re referring to (e.g. he was on an 80 K podcast) but I’m not sure I can generate the entire list of things you are pointing to, and I would find it helpful to have more examples.
Sure! Here’s a comment I wrote in response to a similar question in March. I don’t think it is exhaustive, but should be fairly illustrative.
Another data point that speaks to SBF being on a pedestal was the individual who at EAG London 2022 (without consent of the conference organizers)distributed hundreds of stickers depicting Sam on a bean bag with the text “what would SBF do?” Whether this individual was themselves putting SBF on a pedestal or was making a joke about the extent SBF was already being put on a pedestal, I think this anecdote illustrates how Sam was often portrayed.
Awesome, thanks!