All you’re saying, as far as I can see, is that the available evidence is consistent with MacAskill simply having made mistakes, having bad judgment, not making deductions that he reasonably should have made, et cetera. I agree with that, which is why I noted in my original comment that
If you have a highly favorable view of MacAskill, the above is probably insufficient to update you to an extent that you would agree with me about his character.
I just don’t understand why people have the prior that obviously MacAskill should be a nice person who always acts in good faith. The circumstantial evidence I’ve outlined is insufficient to overcome such a strong prior, and you can always explain it away by attributing any number of honest mistakes and oversights to MacAskill.
In addition, I don’t think the way you’re casting the issue is appropriate. I think MacAskill didn’t spend his days thinking about how SBF was a horrible person who EA nevertheless needed because of the resources at his disposal, and I don’t believe he knew about the fraud. I think only some of his deception is conscious and deliberate. I suspect his failures in many cases looked more like “choosing not to know” or “choosing not to focus on” certain things, but I also don’t think these choices were entirely innocuous as you’re making them sound. Often when you choose not to know something it’s because of self-serving or otherwise immoral reasons.
I don’t believe for a second that he pushed SBF’s frugal image because he wasn’t careful with the information he conveys. I think this was a fully deliberate decision on his part and you attempting to make it look otherwise requires stories which are, on their face, much less plausible than that.
As for other issues I raised, I believe that some of it was not deliberate on his part. For instance, I don’t think MacAskill concocted a conscious scheme to try to kill Guzey’s post. He simply felt personally attacked by the hostility in the review and those emotions got him to conceal the fact that Guzey’s private draft had been leaked against what should have been his better judgment. Still, what people do in such situations is often informative about how they generally act when under pressure, and MacAskill seems to have fared quite badly in this particular test.
There were likely also plenty of things about FTX and SBF that he “chose not to know”. These would be odd observations that he might have made that he never followed up on, for instance. He may or may not have contemplated the possibility that FTX was engaged in some serious wrongdoing; I’m honestly quite uncertain about this. Either way, I believe he didn’t have any proof and all the evidence he had access to would have been circumstantial.
I agree with almost everything you say here (still have my doubts about the frugality thing).
but I also don’t think these choices were entirely innocuous as you’re making them sound.
I didn’t mean to imply that all these things were innocuous. “Choosing not to look carefully” isn’t innocuous – but most of Germany did it in WW2. I think there’s an important distinction between “dark agency” (what Sam had) vs. a more passive “lack of high integrity,” which is how I’d describe the patterns you’re describing in your last comment here. I feel like “lack of high integrity” is a good phrasing. You may say it’s a euphemism, but I think it’s important to highlight that “high integrity” is difficult to cultivate and therefore rare. Also, I think people often develop high integrity after they fuck something up and are given a second chance. (I think this becomes less likely if they make mistakes later in life – but you never know and maybe some people can turn their mental habits at age 30+!)
In any case, I agree that both things (“dark agency” and “lack of high integrity”) are bad. I’d even claim that people tend to overrate the importance of whether bad things are done with fully-conscious bad intent/bad faith vs. (partly) unconscious hidden motives and self-deception. Still, I feel like it’s useful to be precise in what we’re accusing someone of, because the stuff that isn’t fully conscious seems quite common and isn’t always “irredeemable.” I would strongly vote against people who don’t have high integrity to have leadership positions, but I don’t think it warrants much more drastic steps like “I wouldn’t work with a person who is like that.” In fact, I could very much see myself from age 21-25 making mistakes very similar to Will’s if I had been in his situation, and I certainly don’t think my past self was a terrible person. (And I’m kicking myself for not having become more worried about FTX and about the implications of a potential collapse of FTX for EA after I pointed out to others how it seems very suspicious that Sam was defending the cryptocurrency tether. It’s long been a pet peeve of mine that tether seems like a potentially big fraud and people in crypto are totally insane to tolerate it!) I don’t know what your exact view is on these distinctions. I could image that you’re mostly upset about this particular issue because of the important position of responsibility that Will is in. And that makes perfect sense to me – we should hold leaders to especially high standards! So, maybe we don’t disagree too much. I think some of your phrasings in earlier comments, or maybe just the strongly condemnatory attitude, conveyed to me that you might be accusing will of “dark agency” and I thought that was unwarranted.
All you’re saying, as far as I can see, is that the available evidence is consistent with MacAskill simply having made mistakes, having bad judgment, not making deductions that he reasonably should have made, et cetera. I agree with that, which is why I noted in my original comment that
I just don’t understand why people have the prior that obviously MacAskill should be a nice person who always acts in good faith. The circumstantial evidence I’ve outlined is insufficient to overcome such a strong prior, and you can always explain it away by attributing any number of honest mistakes and oversights to MacAskill.
In addition, I don’t think the way you’re casting the issue is appropriate. I think MacAskill didn’t spend his days thinking about how SBF was a horrible person who EA nevertheless needed because of the resources at his disposal, and I don’t believe he knew about the fraud. I think only some of his deception is conscious and deliberate. I suspect his failures in many cases looked more like “choosing not to know” or “choosing not to focus on” certain things, but I also don’t think these choices were entirely innocuous as you’re making them sound. Often when you choose not to know something it’s because of self-serving or otherwise immoral reasons.
I don’t believe for a second that he pushed SBF’s frugal image because he wasn’t careful with the information he conveys. I think this was a fully deliberate decision on his part and you attempting to make it look otherwise requires stories which are, on their face, much less plausible than that.
As for other issues I raised, I believe that some of it was not deliberate on his part. For instance, I don’t think MacAskill concocted a conscious scheme to try to kill Guzey’s post. He simply felt personally attacked by the hostility in the review and those emotions got him to conceal the fact that Guzey’s private draft had been leaked against what should have been his better judgment. Still, what people do in such situations is often informative about how they generally act when under pressure, and MacAskill seems to have fared quite badly in this particular test.
There were likely also plenty of things about FTX and SBF that he “chose not to know”. These would be odd observations that he might have made that he never followed up on, for instance. He may or may not have contemplated the possibility that FTX was engaged in some serious wrongdoing; I’m honestly quite uncertain about this. Either way, I believe he didn’t have any proof and all the evidence he had access to would have been circumstantial.
I agree with almost everything you say here (still have my doubts about the frugality thing).
I didn’t mean to imply that all these things were innocuous. “Choosing not to look carefully” isn’t innocuous – but most of Germany did it in WW2. I think there’s an important distinction between “dark agency” (what Sam had) vs. a more passive “lack of high integrity,” which is how I’d describe the patterns you’re describing in your last comment here. I feel like “lack of high integrity” is a good phrasing. You may say it’s a euphemism, but I think it’s important to highlight that “high integrity” is difficult to cultivate and therefore rare. Also, I think people often develop high integrity after they fuck something up and are given a second chance. (I think this becomes less likely if they make mistakes later in life – but you never know and maybe some people can turn their mental habits at age 30+!)
In any case, I agree that both things (“dark agency” and “lack of high integrity”) are bad. I’d even claim that people tend to overrate the importance of whether bad things are done with fully-conscious bad intent/bad faith vs. (partly) unconscious hidden motives and self-deception. Still, I feel like it’s useful to be precise in what we’re accusing someone of, because the stuff that isn’t fully conscious seems quite common and isn’t always “irredeemable.” I would strongly vote against people who don’t have high integrity to have leadership positions, but I don’t think it warrants much more drastic steps like “I wouldn’t work with a person who is like that.” In fact, I could very much see myself from age 21-25 making mistakes very similar to Will’s if I had been in his situation, and I certainly don’t think my past self was a terrible person. (And I’m kicking myself for not having become more worried about FTX and about the implications of a potential collapse of FTX for EA after I pointed out to others how it seems very suspicious that Sam was defending the cryptocurrency tether. It’s long been a pet peeve of mine that tether seems like a potentially big fraud and people in crypto are totally insane to tolerate it!) I don’t know what your exact view is on these distinctions. I could image that you’re mostly upset about this particular issue because of the important position of responsibility that Will is in. And that makes perfect sense to me – we should hold leaders to especially high standards! So, maybe we don’t disagree too much. I think some of your phrasings in earlier comments, or maybe just the strongly condemnatory attitude, conveyed to me that you might be accusing will of “dark agency” and I thought that was unwarranted.