aprilsun

Karma: 19

aprilsun 4 Oct 2023 13:39 UTC
−14 points
1 ∶ 9
in reply to: RyanCarey’s comment on: “Going Infinite”—New book on FTX/SBF released today + my TL;DR
“We know they stole it” does indeed seem overconfident at this point (and seem to be part of a pattern).
If you didn’t know about the earning to give intro, fair enough.

aprilsun 4 Oct 2023 11:56 UTC
−48 points
1 ∶ 12
in reply to: RyanCarey’s comment on: “Going Infinite”—New book on FTX/SBF released today + my TL;DR
Ryan, you continue to make IMO very overconfident criticisms of others relating to FTX, and I think someone should finally draw public attention to the fact that you^[1] were actually^[2] the person who introduced SBF to earning to give.
I’m not quite sure how this all fits together, but I would guess that these two things are not unrelated. And even that you were probably aware of this, given how in your last post you referenced SBF’s/”Hutch’s” comments on stealing on your Felicifia website (before you pitched earning to give to him, incidentally)?
1. ^
  My aim here is not to criticise you for this. Utilitarians were promoting earning to give at least as far back as 2006, Sam was exposed to utilitarianism a lot growing up and in any case, I don’t share your apparent urge to place a lot of blame at the feet of any person or idea that played a causal role in this chain of events. My aim is to take some of the wind out of your sails—I’m tired of you casting stones. If the motivation comes from psychological projection or deflection, I think it’s important for others to know that.
2. ^
  Michael Lewis tells us that William MacAskill reached out to SBF in SBF’s junior year / “fall of 2012” i.e. September to December. You explained earning to give to SBF in July 2012.

aprilsun 4 Oct 2023 10:43 UTC
−21 points
0 ∶ 8
on: “Going Infinite”—New book on FTX/SBF released today + my TL;DR
I think this is the first description of the book I’ve seen that hasn’t attacked the author.
The author. You know, one of if not the world’s greatest financial journalists who happens to have also interviewed SBF over 100 times—before, during and after the collapse—and who said a few months back,
I wanted to be a fly on the wall and he said yes. And to this day he’s never limited my access.
I’d be curious to know if anyone here has significantly updated their view of what happened in light of this book. If there’s anyone who hasn’t suffered from confirmation bias, I think/hope there’s a good chance they can be found in this community.

aprilsun 30 Sep 2023 18:19 UTC
15 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Why I’m still going out to bat for the EA movement post FTX
I’m not going to outline it here since I imagine the audience for this are already familiar—if someone has a good summary, please drop it in the comments.
I quite liked this summary from New York Magazine earlier today but YMMV:
Since November 11, 2022, the day that Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto exchange FTX collapsed and his hedge fund Alameda Research collapsed and his personal $26 billion turned out to have been vaporous, the twitchy 31-year-old, maybe-genius, maybe-scammer failed to raise $8 billion to save the company, gave a lot of weird interviews denying he did anything intentionally wrong, tried to blame his ex, was charged with eight counts of fraud and conspiracy, spent a week in a Bahamian jail, had enough of that, got extradited to the U.S., pleaded not guilty in New York, moved in with his parents in California on a $250 million bond, got accused of witness tampering, talked with Michael Lewis, got yelled at by a judge for violating bail terms to watch the Super Bowl, witnessed his former executives flip on him, started a Substack, got hit with four more charges, gave interviews to the rest of the journalists he hadn’t already gotten around to, successfully got a charge on illegal campaign contributions dropped on a technicality, got charged with another count of bribing Chinese officials, had a few charges separated to a different criminal suit, leaked his ex’s diary, got incarcerated again on the grounds that he “attempted to tamper with two witnesses,” complained about not getting his food or medicine while in jail (fair), complained about not having enough computer time in jail (ehhhhh), and got personally sued about three dozen times in the federal courts.
At last, his trial starts on Tuesday, October 3, 2023. It is expected to last about six weeks. He is being judged here on seven charges concerning financial fraud. He faces more than 100 years in jail.

aprilsun 30 Sep 2023 11:19 UTC
39 points
9 ∶ 5
on: The Lighthaven Campus is open for bookings
This looks amazing!!
Honest question though (sorry): Do people think there’s a moral difference between Lightcone’s campus (“house party venue...crossed with Disneyland”) and EVF’s abbey (“castle”)?
There are obviously multiple reasons why the EVF purchase looks worse at first glance:
- Large English venues generally look more extravagant
- EVF is—for better or worse—closely associated with ideas like frugality, charity, sacrifice, etc., while Lightcone explicitly owns their engagement in “the capitalist enterprise” for the greater good
- Lightcone spoke about the campus prominently even before it was open for bookings, with their preferred framing and explanation, before critics had the opportunity to do it for them
- EVF was already in some people’s bad books
Many EAs also made the meta objection that bad optics should have been reason enough not to do it. But this was partly self-fulfilling the more loudly and hyperbolically the objection was voiced, and hopefully we can all agree that the extent to which optics should guide our decisions is at least a hotly contested topic in EA (rather than a scandalous signal of incompetence when an org leans one way rather than the other).
So I’m curious if community opinion is generally that the EVF purchase was “bad” and the Lightcone purchase was “good”?
If so, and if the explanation is that third wave EA is too large for majority opinion to be that much more nuanced than the public’s, I want to double-check that orgs are very aware of this now so that they can factor it in to future decisions.
And if people think that the EVF purchase was bad for another reason, I think that would also be helpful to know.^[1]
1. ^
  Sorry if I’ve missed something obvious and important here! This is all just one person’s impression of how two similar initiatives played out and it’s very plausible to me that I’ve missed a key part of the picture.

aprilsun 15 Sep 2023 12:22 UTC
−6 points
0 ∶ 2
on: Thoughts on EA, post-FTX
The EA network. Many have been friends and colleagues for a decade or more. This adversity won’t tear the social graph apart.
Adversity from outside, no. Adversity from inside on the other hand...

aprilsun 14 Sep 2023 0:45 UTC
11 points
4 ∶ 3
in reply to: RyanCarey’s comment on: Thoughts on EA, post-FTX
1 - Oh I see. So who knew that Sam and Caroline continued to date while claiming that FTX and Alameda were completely separate?

2 - You link to a video of a non-EA saying that Sam drives a corolla and also has a shot of his very expensive-looking apartment...what about this is misleading or inaccurate? What did you expect the EAs you have in mind to ‘disclose’ - that FTX itself wasn’t frugal? Was anyone claiming it was? Would anyone expect it to have been? Could you share some of your many actual examples?

3 - (I don’t think you’ve addressed anything I said in this section, so perhaps we should just leave it there.)

4 - Perhaps, but as I indicated, it looks like it wouldn’t have made much difference anyway.

5 - (Okay, it looks like we should just leave this one there too.)

aprilsun 14 Sep 2023 0:18 UTC
−9 points
1 ∶ 1
in reply to: LukeDing’s comment on: Thoughts on EA, post-FTX
Oh, interesting, thanks!

Can you confirm which important meetings Sam was invited to while under government investigation then? (The OP seems to be unable to remember when I pressed him on it.)

And I imagine you might have some insight on whether FTX (or Alameda tbf) received financial support from EAs after the acrimonious split? E.g., did you yourself continue to fund FTX/Alameda? (The Semafor article says that you were one of the two initial funders of Alameda but that you only called in the “majority” of your loans.)

aprilsun 13 Sep 2023 18:05 UTC
7 points
2 ∶ 5
in reply to: RyanCarey’s comment on: Thoughts on EA, post-FTX
As you’ve linked me to this comment elsewhere, I’ll respond.
- I’m not sure why EAs who knew about Caroline and Sam dating would have felt the need to ‘disclose’ this? (Unless they already suspected the fraud but I don’t think I’ve seen anyone claim that anyone did?)
- Sam and FTX seem about as frugal as I’d expect for an insanely profitable business and an intention to give away the vast majority of tens of billions of dollars, too frugal if anything (although I actually think my disagreeing with you here is a point in favour of your broader argument—the more Sam splurged on luxuries, the less it looks like he was motivated by any kind of altruism)
- What financial and other support did FTX receive after the early Alameda split by people who were ‘warned’? (There may well be a substantial amount, I just don’t think I’ve heard of any.) I’ll note, though, that it’s easy to see as ‘warnings’ now what at the time could have just looked like a messy divorce.
- Admittedly I don’t know much about how these things work, but yet again this looks like hindsight bias to me. Would this have been a priority for you if you had no idea what was coming? If the firewalling was delayed for whatever reason, would you have refused to award grants until it had been? Perhaps. But I don’t think it’s obvious. Also wouldn’t they still be vulnerable to clawbacks in any case?
- Again, I just don’t think I know anything about this. In fact I don’t think I knew Sam was under government investigation before November. I’d be curious if you had details to share, especially regarding how serious the allegations were at the time and which meetings he was invited to.

aprilsun 13 Sep 2023 17:28 UTC
7 points
2 ∶ 1
in reply to: RyanCarey’s comment on: Thoughts on EA, post-FTX
Interesting. I think I know EA as well as you do and know many EAs who know EA as well as you do and as I said, you’re the person most committed to this narrative that I could think of even before you made this post (no doubt there are others more pessimistic I haven’t come across, but I’d be very surprised if it was 25%+). I also can’t think of any who have left, but perhaps our respective circles are relevantly skewed in some way (and I’m very curious about who has!).
Point taken, though, that many of us have ‘conflicts of interest,’ if by that you mean ‘it would be better for us if EA were completely innocent and thriving’ (although as others have pointed out, we are an unusually guilt-prone community).

aprilsun 13 Sep 2023 11:22 UTC
−7 points
1 ∶ 1
in reply to: Ebenezer Dukakis’s comment on: Thoughts on EA, post-FTX
The “SBF was psychopathic” point is interesting.
Less of a “point,” more of a “claim without any accompanying arguments/evidence presented.”

aprilsun 13 Sep 2023 11:17 UTC
5 points
1 ∶ 3
in reply to: Manuel Del Río Rodríguez’s comment on: Thoughts on EA, post-FTX
We aren’t just talking about SBF, as the whole affair included other insiders who were arguably as ‘true believers’ in EA as it is reasonable to expect (like Caroline Ellison)
Are there actually any other examples beyond SBF and his on-and-off romantic partner? I’d be a lot more concerned if there were several EAs independently plotting fraud who then joined forces, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

aprilsun 13 Sep 2023 11:09 UTC
8 points
1 ∶ 2
in reply to: Michael_PJ’s comment on: Thoughts on EA, post-FTX
Anecdotally, among the EAs I’ve spoken to IRL about all this and among the non-EAs I’ve spoken to about it, ‘EA got used’ is by far the more common narrative. I think the mood on this forum is quite different and I thought of the OP as the EA most committed to this ‘it’s all EA’s fault’ narrative even before he made this post. So I worry that his post paints a very skewed picture (also obviously because of the research others have mentioned in the comments).

aprilsun 7 Sep 2023 9:27 UTC
−30 points
5 ∶ 6
in reply to: aprilsun’s comment on: Sharing Information About Nonlinear
And fwiw, Kat, I haven’t read the post. I read the beginning and end, which I hope has given me enough context to understand what kind of post it is. I intend not to read the whole post until your response is ready.

aprilsun 7 Sep 2023 8:57 UTC
7 points
8 ∶ 21
in reply to: Habryka’s comment on: Sharing Information About Nonlinear
I don’t understand how people would be at greater risk of retaliation if the post was delayed by a week?
I also want to make sure people realise that there’s a huge difference between “I will stalk you / call your family / get you fired” and “I will sue you” in terms of what counts as threats/intimidation/retaliation [edit: e.g. if Alice had threatened to sue Nonlinear that wouldn’t be considered retaliation, whereas threatening to call their family would be worrying], so I don’t think Emerson’s email is a particularly strong confirmation that the “large and substantial threat of retaliation” is real.
If Ben is worried about losing 40 hours of productive time by responding to Nonlinear’s evidence in private, he doesn’t have to. He could just allow them to put together their side of the story, ready for publishing when he publishes his own post. Similarly, if he’s worried about them manipulating him with their charisma, he could just agree to delay and then stop reading/responding to their messages. This way readers can still read both sides of the story at once, rather than read the most juicy side, tell all their friends the latest gossip, and carry on with their lives as the post drops off the frontpage.

aprilsun 7 Sep 2023 8:37 UTC
−24 points
19 ∶ 42
in reply to: Kat Woods’s comment on: Sharing Information About Nonlinear
What has happened to this forum? A member of our community is dealing with one of the worst things that’s ever happened to her and is literally begging for simply the opportunity to share her side of the story and she’s getting downvoted?
I’m not trying to defend Kat. In fact, I think we generally don’t have that great an opinion of each other—I really have no vested interest in protecting her reputation. But at least let her defend herself.

aprilsun 7 Sep 2023 8:21 UTC
11 points
12 ∶ 19
in reply to: spencerg’s comment on: Sharing Information About Nonlinear
Could this be an instance of the rationalist tendency to “decouple”?
From one perspective, Ben is simply “Sharing information about nonlinear.” What’s wrong with providing additional information? It’s even caveated with a description of one’s epistemic status and instruction on how to update accordingly! Why don’t we all have such a “low bar for publicly sharing critical info about folks in the EA/x-risk/rationalist/etc ecosystem”?
From another perspective, Ben has chosen to “search for negative information about the Nonlinear cofounders” and then—without inviting or even permitting the accused party to share their side of the story in advance—share it in a public space full of agents whose tendency to gossip is far stronger than their tendency to update in an appropriately Bayesian manner (i.e. human beings).
I suspect Ben does in fact have some understanding of the political dimension of his decision to share this post, but I think his behaviour is more understandable when you consider that he’s embedded in a culture that encourages people to ignore the political consequences of what they say.

aprilsun 27 Aug 2023 20:15 UTC
33 points
9 ∶ 4
on: Eliezer Yudkowsky Is Frequently, Confidently, Egregiously Wrong
I thought the final three paragraphs were the best part of this post and I wish you had led with them!
“Consider two types of thinkers...I think that ‘hero worship’ is often a problem in this community because people—including myself—have mistaken innovators for systematizers...Sounds plausible, right? Let’s take Eliezer as an example (sorry, Eliezer!)...”
This practice of “This generally pretty great person/org in our community [probably] has a FLAW!!” *upvote upvote upvote upvote* doesn’t seem very healthy to me^[1], whereas “Here’s a mistake I think I’ve made and I think lots of us are making” (and sharing the post in advance with anyone identifiable singled out for criticism) seems very helpful :)
1. ^
  Although if Eliezer is as condescending as you make out, part of me thinks it’s fair play to be somewhat ridiculing in response. Still, an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind, ya know.

aprilsun 12 Aug 2023 12:55 UTC
1 point
3 ∶ 0
in reply to: Linch’s comment on: How do Rationalists’ and EAs’ beliefs differ?
These are excellent, cheers!
Although I would have said “less prestige-seeking; more prestige-conscious” (as in, they talk about it a lot, but tend to be quite scrupulous about not seeking it for themselves and are sceptical of its usefulness)

aprilsun 12 Aug 2023 12:47 UTC
2 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: Abby Hoskin’s comment on: How do Rationalists’ and EAs’ beliefs differ?
I’ve become much more familiar with EA, historically I’ve consider the two communities to be similarly rational and I thought the two were generally a lot more similar in their beliefs than I do now.
So when I learn of a difference of opinion, I update my outside view and the extent to which I consider people the relevant experts. E.g., when I learn that Eliezer thinks pigs aren’t morally relevant because they’re not self-aware, I lose a bit of confidence in my belief that pigs are morally relevant and I become a bit less trustful that any alignment ‘solutions’ coming from the rationalist community would capture the bulk of what I care about.