Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity —Hanlon’s razor
Why? Hanlon’s razor is an overused and rarely argued for article of faith in the EA / rationalist sphere, which sounds wise, but could easily be wrong.
Moreover, it’s best used as a heuristic, and should be defeasible by moderate evidence.
Mistake theory is not inherently superior to conflict theory; it’s an empirical claim.
Maybe Hanlon’s razor is a piece of ‘reversable advice’, which is useful only if you are already inclined to see malice everywhere. But if you wield it, you’ll misattribute some actions to stupidity when they were actually malicious, because malicious actions can often be explained by incompetence. In fact, they’re designed to look that way, because people don’t like providing inconvertible evidence that they are untrustworthy. So you’ll be taken advantage of.
The more powerful someone is, the more dangerous it is to mistake their malice for incompetence.
Why do I believe this “bad judgement” thesis? Well, it’s what Sam claims. [...] I’m biased towards trusting people at their word; and furthermore, SBF was a personal hero of mine. [...] I choose to believe this.
Sam’s claims are a very small piece of evidence, since I’d expect to see him claim innocence and defend himself regardless of whether he is malicious or incompetent.
I find these points credulous, and they seem to be the foundation on which you are arguing that FTX was innocent of malice.
I think that unless we update, EA’s culture of trust—that it doesn’t even occur to us to imagine a traitor in our midst—will lead us to pal up with criminal ultra-rich people again and again. (This might not be the first time—with 50% confidence I think the criminality of former EA darling Ben Delo was malicious rather than a mistake.)
Why? Hanlon’s razor is an overused and rarely argued for article of faith in the EA / rationalist sphere, which sounds wise, but could easily be wrong.
Moreover, it’s best used as a heuristic, and should be defeasible by moderate evidence.
Mistake theory is not inherently superior to conflict theory; it’s an empirical claim.
Maybe Hanlon’s razor is a piece of ‘reversable advice’, which is useful only if you are already inclined to see malice everywhere. But if you wield it, you’ll misattribute some actions to stupidity when they were actually malicious, because malicious actions can often be explained by incompetence. In fact, they’re designed to look that way, because people don’t like providing inconvertible evidence that they are untrustworthy. So you’ll be taken advantage of.
The more powerful someone is, the more dangerous it is to mistake their malice for incompetence.
Sam’s claims are a very small piece of evidence, since I’d expect to see him claim innocence and defend himself regardless of whether he is malicious or incompetent.
I find these points credulous, and they seem to be the foundation on which you are arguing that FTX was innocent of malice.
I think that unless we update, EA’s culture of trust—that it doesn’t even occur to us to imagine a traitor in our midst—will lead us to pal up with criminal ultra-rich people again and again. (This might not be the first time—with 50% confidence I think the criminality of former EA darling Ben Delo was malicious rather than a mistake.)
To contextualize the final point I made, it seems that in fact there is a lot of criminality among the ultra rich. https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/d8nW46LrTkCWdjiYd/rates-of-criminality-amongst-giving-pledge-signatories (No comment on how malicious it is)