(crossposted from LW) -- I think the [fact that SBF is a vegan and also the way he lives is very strong evidence for the narrative being true. It’s the kind of thing many people will dismiss because it’s in the “personal life choice” category and perhaps sounds judgy, but the proper Bayesian update here is significant.
Also worth noting here is that, as expected, EA’s have in general condemned this idea and SBF has gone against the standard wisdom of EA in doing this. I feel like EA’s principles were broken, not followed, even though I agree SBF was almost certainly a committed effective altruist. The update, for me, is not “EA as an ideology is rotten when taken very seriously” but rather “EA’s are, despite our commitments to ethical behaviour, perhaps no more trustworthy with power than anyone else.”
This has caused me to pretty sharply reduce my probability of EA politicians being a good idea, but hasn’t caused a significant update against the core principles of EA.
“EA’s are, despite our commitments to ethical behaviour, perhaps no more trustworthy with power than anyone else.”
I wonder if “perhaps no more trustworthy with power than anyone else” goes a little too far. I think the EA community made mistakes that facilitated FTX misbehavior, but that is only one small group of people. Many EAs have substantial power in the world and have continued to be largely trustworthy (and thus less newsworthy!), and I think we have evidence like our stronger-than-average explicit commitments to use power for good and the critical reflection happening in the community right now suggests we are probably doing better than average—even though, as you rightly point out, we’re far from perfect.
Fair point. I think, in a knee-jerk reaction, I adjusted too far here. At the very least, it seems that EA’s are at least somewhat more likely to do good with power if they have that aim rather than people who just want power for power’s sake. It’s still an adjustment downwards on my part for the EV of EA politicians, but not to 0 compared to the median candidate of said candidate’s political party.
In Bayesian terms the update should be in the direction of EAs being less trustworthy than the average person, if you agree that the average CEO of a firm like FTX wouldn’t have done what SBF did.
I’ll be honest, I’ve been putting judgement based on his (apparent) lifestyle on hold, as I’ve seen some anecdotes/memes floating around twitter suggesting that he may not have been honest about his veganism/other lifestyle choices. I don’t know enough about that situation to distinguish the actual truth of the matter, so it’s possible I’ve been subject to misinformation there (also I scrolled past it quickly on Twitter and it’s possible it was some meta-ironic meme or something). If there is (legitimate) evidence he was actually faking it, that would make me update strongly in the other direction, of course.
If there is solid evidence that he was lying about being vegan, I’ll change my position completely. That’d be a much worse sign than just not being vegan in the first place. (But as you say, [the fact that some people on twitter hinted at] isn’t convincing.)
I dug up that conversation, and the point you’re referring to is presumably here. The story he tells is: he’s trying but failing to be a vegatarian, gets asked by another vegetarian in a social setting whether he is one, says he is, and then never eats meat ever again.
I know I’m contradicting what I just said since it is technically a lie, but honesty this doesn’t seem like a big deal to me. ImE you can genuinely lie “without wanting to” in social situations. Someone asks you a question, and some unconscious process in your brain produces an answer within a second before “you” really get to have a say on it. This happened to me several times. And I can understand why it happened here since he was trying to be a vegetarian.
Thanks for giving the details, I couldn’t quite remember the full story and should’ve looked it up and quoted directly. I don’t quite know what to make of him doing this—on the one hand, a small lie about being vegetarian doesn’t seem particularly pernicious or noteworthy, especially given he went vegetarian after lying about it. On the other hand, it does at least strike me as somewhat odd to do this if he had just eaten a cheeseburger a few hours earlier. It does update me ever-so-slightly towards thinking that he’s liable to lie if it makes him look good—it might not just be a ‘lie without intending to’ situation.
It’s lowered my confidence. Though it could have various mundane explanations, the simplest one being that it was taken before he became a vegan, and if so I feel bad about speculating.
I don’t think I would update at all based just on those memes—particularly as my understanding is that he lived in group houses! (I know a lot of other EAs are vegan, but not everyone is)
It’s not a meme, it’s actually a screenshot from a video. It seems more likely to me, though, that he is vegan and they were just using a fridge that other people use as well, because if he weren’t vegan and this is his fridge, they probably would just have removed the eggs.
I would call the way it has been posted on Twitter a meme, and the main point was on how much to update not on the format (meme or video) this information was presented in! For which I think we are in agreement
(crossposted from LW) -- I think the [fact that SBF is a vegan and also the way he lives is very strong evidence for the narrative being true. It’s the kind of thing many people will dismiss because it’s in the “personal life choice” category and perhaps sounds judgy, but the proper Bayesian update here is significant.
Also worth noting here is that, as expected, EA’s have in general condemned this idea and SBF has gone against the standard wisdom of EA in doing this. I feel like EA’s principles were broken, not followed, even though I agree SBF was almost certainly a committed effective altruist. The update, for me, is not “EA as an ideology is rotten when taken very seriously” but rather “EA’s are, despite our commitments to ethical behaviour, perhaps no more trustworthy with power than anyone else.”
This has caused me to pretty sharply reduce my probability of EA politicians being a good idea, but hasn’t caused a significant update against the core principles of EA.
I wonder if “perhaps no more trustworthy with power than anyone else” goes a little too far. I think the EA community made mistakes that facilitated FTX misbehavior, but that is only one small group of people. Many EAs have substantial power in the world and have continued to be largely trustworthy (and thus less newsworthy!), and I think we have evidence like our stronger-than-average explicit commitments to use power for good and the critical reflection happening in the community right now suggests we are probably doing better than average—even though, as you rightly point out, we’re far from perfect.
Fair point. I think, in a knee-jerk reaction, I adjusted too far here. At the very least, it seems that EA’s are at least somewhat more likely to do good with power if they have that aim rather than people who just want power for power’s sake. It’s still an adjustment downwards on my part for the EV of EA politicians, but not to 0 compared to the median candidate of said candidate’s political party.
In Bayesian terms the update should be in the direction of EAs being less trustworthy than the average person, if you agree that the average CEO of a firm like FTX wouldn’t have done what SBF did.
I’ll be honest, I’ve been putting judgement based on his (apparent) lifestyle on hold, as I’ve seen some anecdotes/memes floating around twitter suggesting that he may not have been honest about his veganism/other lifestyle choices. I don’t know enough about that situation to distinguish the actual truth of the matter, so it’s possible I’ve been subject to misinformation there (also I scrolled past it quickly on Twitter and it’s possible it was some meta-ironic meme or something). If there is (legitimate) evidence he was actually faking it, that would make me update strongly in the other direction, of course.
If there is solid evidence that he was lying about being vegan, I’ll change my position completely. That’d be a much worse sign than just not being vegan in the first place. (But as you say, [the fact that some people on twitter hinted at] isn’t convincing.)
It’s possibly worth noting that in his conversation with Tyler Cowen he did mention that he had previously lied (briefly) about being vegetarian.
I dug up that conversation, and the point you’re referring to is presumably here. The story he tells is: he’s trying but failing to be a vegatarian, gets asked by another vegetarian in a social setting whether he is one, says he is, and then never eats meat ever again.
I know I’m contradicting what I just said since it is technically a lie, but honesty this doesn’t seem like a big deal to me. ImE you can genuinely lie “without wanting to” in social situations. Someone asks you a question, and some unconscious process in your brain produces an answer within a second before “you” really get to have a say on it. This happened to me several times. And I can understand why it happened here since he was trying to be a vegetarian.
Thanks for giving the details, I couldn’t quite remember the full story and should’ve looked it up and quoted directly. I don’t quite know what to make of him doing this—on the one hand, a small lie about being vegetarian doesn’t seem particularly pernicious or noteworthy, especially given he went vegetarian after lying about it. On the other hand, it does at least strike me as somewhat odd to do this if he had just eaten a cheeseburger a few hours earlier. It does update me ever-so-slightly towards thinking that he’s liable to lie if it makes him look good—it might not just be a ‘lie without intending to’ situation.
+1 to this, can attest I’ve done the same, and immediately regretted it lol
Curious what you think about screenshots like this one, which I’ve now seen in a few different places.
It’s lowered my confidence. Though it could have various mundane explanations, the simplest one being that it was taken before he became a vegan, and if so I feel bad about speculating.
I don’t think I would update at all based just on those memes—particularly as my understanding is that he lived in group houses! (I know a lot of other EAs are vegan, but not everyone is)
It’s not a meme, it’s actually a screenshot from a video. It seems more likely to me, though, that he is vegan and they were just using a fridge that other people use as well, because if he weren’t vegan and this is his fridge, they probably would just have removed the eggs.
I would call the way it has been posted on Twitter a meme, and the main point was on how much to update not on the format (meme or video) this information was presented in! For which I think we are in agreement
this seems probable to me, thanks for sharing a good-faith explanation
Yeah, that would be another mundane explanation!