Copying over some comments I made on Twitter, in response to someone suggesting that Sam now appears to be “a sociopath who never gave a toss about EA or its ideals”:
He does seem pretty sociopathic, but it’s still unclear to me whether he really cared about EA.
I think it’s totally possible that he genuinely wanted to improve the world by funding EA causes, and is also a narcissistic liar who is unwilling to place limits on his own behavior.
As Jess Riedel pointed out to me, it looks like Bill Gates ruthlessly exploited his monopoly in the 90s, and also genuinely tried to do good with his money in the 2000s. Trying to cause good things to happen is totally compatible with also doing bad things.
I think it’s important for us to keep this possibility in mind. Otherwise I think we’re more likely to fail to question and put limits on our own behavior, since we’re confident our intentions are good.
Yeah, “is a sociopath” is such a deceptively binary way to state it. He seems to be on that spectrum to a certain degree—likely aggravated by stress and psychopharmacology. I’m skeptical of the easy-out narrative to dismissively pathologize here; I also think that in doing so we lose the chance to more critically examine that spectrum as it relates to EAs at large
Copying over some comments I made on Twitter, in response to someone suggesting that Sam now appears to be “a sociopath who never gave a toss about EA or its ideals”:
Yeah, “is a sociopath” is such a deceptively binary way to state it. He seems to be on that spectrum to a certain degree—likely aggravated by stress and psychopharmacology. I’m skeptical of the easy-out narrative to dismissively pathologize here; I also think that in doing so we lose the chance to more critically examine that spectrum as it relates to EAs at large