Great post and glad to see contrarian takes. (That’s true as a general matter but I also happen to agree with this one :P)
Couple quick thoughts:
1. Loyalty is important not just as a personal virtue but for efforts at collective action because it convinces people to engage in long term altruistic thinking. Hahrie Han has done some important empirical work showing that people are motivated to help when they have a sense of a shared past, shared future. Sudden ruptures in social relationships are very destructive for fostering that culture.
2. Good decision-making generally does not involve dramatic changes to our beliefs. This is one of the less-known aspects of Tetlock’s research on super predictors. They very rarely make large updates but are rather making small updates based on continuous data; they don’t overcorrect when the mob moves. It seems likely to me that this is an example where we can try to put Tetlock’s research to effect. I don’t see the sort of dramatic evidence I would need to change my mind about SBF (though I also probably did not view him as highly as many others; my prior was that Sam was a very smart guy who was well intentioned but going in the wrong direction in life.)
3. Good decision-making requires avoiding the Fundamental Attribution Error. I imagine most people are aware of the FAE on this forum. But I blogged about systemic forces that seem more important to me, in the collapse of FTX, than any of Sam’s personal misdeeds.
Great post and glad to see contrarian takes. (That’s true as a general matter but I also happen to agree with this one :P)
Couple quick thoughts:
1. Loyalty is important not just as a personal virtue but for efforts at collective action because it convinces people to engage in long term altruistic thinking. Hahrie Han has done some important empirical work showing that people are motivated to help when they have a sense of a shared past, shared future. Sudden ruptures in social relationships are very destructive for fostering that culture.
2. Good decision-making generally does not involve dramatic changes to our beliefs. This is one of the less-known aspects of Tetlock’s research on super predictors. They very rarely make large updates but are rather making small updates based on continuous data; they don’t overcorrect when the mob moves. It seems likely to me that this is an example where we can try to put Tetlock’s research to effect. I don’t see the sort of dramatic evidence I would need to change my mind about SBF (though I also probably did not view him as highly as many others; my prior was that Sam was a very smart guy who was well intentioned but going in the wrong direction in life.)
3. Good decision-making requires avoiding the Fundamental Attribution Error. I imagine most people are aware of the FAE on this forum. But I blogged about systemic forces that seem more important to me, in the collapse of FTX, than any of Sam’s personal misdeeds.