Cullen_OKeefe

• Cullen_OKeefe 25 Nov 2022 6:04 UTC

  2 points

  1 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Linch’s comment on: The biggest red flag about SBF

  How clear is it that stablecoins have value other than by enabling speculative transactions on blockchains? My main model of stablecoins, borrowing from Matt Levine, is that if you do a lot of stuff on-chain, it is also useful to have an on-chain way to transact in fiat.

  I could definitely think of many situations in which stablecoins would be useful, but on priors I would guess they’re fairly small compared to uses facilitating speculation.

• Cullen_OKeefe 18 Nov 2022 19:18 UTC

  98 points

  27 ∶ 1

  on: Does Sam make me want to re­nounce the ac­tions of the EA com­mu­nity? No. Does your re­ac­tion? Ab­solutely.

  A bunch of things that all seem true to me:

  1. Some number of people in EA community could have done things that were positive in expectation that would have mitigated much of the downside to EA from FTX.

  2. A bunch of people are overreacting to this situation and making it seem much more damning to EA than I think it is. Some of those people are acting in bad faith.

  3. It is very possible that as a community we overreact to this situation and adopt bad norms, institutions, or practices that are negative EV going forward.

• Cullen_OKeefe 15 Nov 2022 7:15 UTC

  5 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Dancer’s comment on: CEA/​EV + OP + RP should en­gage an in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tor to de­ter­mine whether key figures in EA knew about the (likely) fraud at FTX

  Thanks for flagging this!

• Cullen_OKeefe 15 Nov 2022 7:14 UTC

  17 points

  4 ∶ 1

  in reply to: Paul_Christiano’s comment on: NY Times on the FTX im­plo­sion’s im­pact on EA

  I think the point of most non-profit boards is to ensure that donor funds are used effectively to advance the organization’s charitable mission. If that’s the case, then having donor representation on the board seems appropriate.

  I don’t see how this follows.

  It is indeed very normal to have one or more donors on the board of a nonprofit. But FTX the for-profit organization did in fact have different interests than the FTX Foundation. For example, it was in the FTX Foundation’s interest to not make promises to grantees that it could not honor. It was also in the Foundation’s broader interest to safeguard the reputation of the broader EA community. Both of these interests were in fact jeopardized by FTX’s actions. It’s reasonable to argue whether an average nonprofit board, exercising average levels of diligence, would have pushed back more on FTX. Maybe not. But that there was a conflict is clear ex post, and I think it’s very plausible that having the FTXF Board have one or more fiduciaries that were not simultaneously beholden to FTX would have caused the org to be a lot more cautious in a variety of ways. At least, that’s the normal corporate governance theory.

• Cullen_OKeefe 13 Nov 2022 22:29 UTC

  41 points

  10 ∶ 2

  on: CEA/​EV + OP + RP should en­gage an in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tor to de­ter­mine whether key figures in EA knew about the (likely) fraud at FTX

  Another structural question that will need answering at some point: Did anybody outside of FTX consider it okay that all of the directors at the FTX Foundation were senior FTX employees? Why were there no independent (of FTX) directors there?

• Cullen_OKeefe 12 Nov 2022 19:54 UTC

  78 points

  35 ∶ 1

  in reply to: Cullen_OKeefe’s comment on: A per­sonal state­ment on FTX

  Relatedly, I think a focus on ends-justify-the-means reasoning is potentially misguided because it seems super clear in this case that, even if we put zero intrinsic value on integrity, honesty, not doing fraud, etc., some of the decisions made here were pretty clearly very negative expected-value. We should expect the upsides from acquiring resources by fraud (again, if that is what happened) to be systematically worth much less than reputational and trustworthiness damage our community will receive by virtue of motivating, endorsing, or benefitting from that behavior.

• Cullen_OKeefe 12 Nov 2022 18:12 UTC

  175 points

  72 ∶ 1

  on: A per­sonal state­ment on FTX

  My naive moral psychology guess—which may very well be falsified by subsequent revelations, as many of my views have this week—is that we probably won’t ever find an “ends justify the means” smoking gun (eg, an internal memo from SBF saying that we need to fraudulently move funds from account A to B so we can give more to EA). More likely, systemic weaknesses in FTX’s compliance and risk management practices failed to prevent aggressive risk-taking and unethical profit-seeking and self-preserving business decisions that were motivated by some complicated but unstated mix of misguided pseduo-altruism, self-preservation instincts, hubris, and perceived business/​shareholder demands.

  I say this because we can and should be denouncing ends justify the means reasoning of this type, but I suspect very rarely in the heat of a perceived crisis will many people actually invoke it. I think we will prevent more catastrophes of this nature in the future by focusing more on on integrity as a personal virtue and the need for systemic compliance and risk-management tools within EA broadly and highly impactful/​prominent EA orgs, especially those whose altruistic motives will be systematically in tension with perceived business demands.

• Cullen_OKeefe 12 Nov 2022 17:59 UTC

  30 points

  9 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Tyrone-Jay Barugh’s comment on: CEA/​EV + OP + RP should en­gage an in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tor to de­ter­mine whether key figures in EA knew about the (likely) fraud at FTX

  It’s definitely true that there are more philosophical questions that a lawyerly investigation wouldn’t be well-positioned to answer. But it seems likely that there were plenty of legal and financial risk-management mistakes that EA orgs made in the pst year that an independent investigator or other outside risk management consultant would be well-positioned to opine on.

• Cullen_OKeefe 12 Nov 2022 6:59 UTC

  12 points

  6 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Cullen_OKeefe’s comment on: FTX will likely go bankrupt. What we know and some fore­casts on what will hap­pen next

  Obviously I was too optimistic here :-(

• Cullen_OKeefe 8 Nov 2022 20:28 UTC

  7 points

  1 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Noep’s comment on: FTX will likely go bankrupt. What we know and some fore­casts on what will hap­pen next

  I agree we have no idea what the terms of the deal are, which is why I don’t think we can say what the total effects on SBF’s assets are other than by informed guessing.

• Cullen_OKeefe 8 Nov 2022 19:49 UTC

  8 points

  7 ∶ 1

  in reply to: Lukas_Gloor’s comment on: FTX will likely go bankrupt. What we know and some fore­casts on what will hap­pen next

  Illiquidity is not the same thing as insolvency.

• Cullen_OKeefe 8 Nov 2022 19:40 UTC

  21 points

  3 ∶ 5

  on: FTX will likely go bankrupt. What we know and some fore­casts on what will hap­pen next

  I’m confused why you say

  This means SBF has lost control of around ~50% of his resources. It will have damaged the value of FTX US and Alameda as well.

  Two things have happened:

  1. The value of FTX appears to have gone down (a lot).

  2. Some part of FTX is potentially being sold to Binance.

  (1) causes Sam to lose control of a lot of his resources, because those resources have essentially evaporated with the value of FTX. But conditional on (1) happening, doesn’t (2) just mean that whatever value SBF retains after (1) is converted from equity in (the relevant part of) FTX to cash? “Losing control” implies something bad has happened in addition to the loss of value of FTX. I’m not sure what else that is.

• Cullen_OKeefe 2 Nov 2022 19:34 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: WilliamKiely’s comment on: Make a $50 dona­tion into $100 (6x)

  Appreciate you bumping :-)

• Cullen_OKeefe 1 Nov 2022 5:55 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: ThomasW’s comment on: Every.org Dona­tion Match­ing for Monthly Donations

  It’s up now :-)

• Cullen_OKeefe 31 Oct 2022 5:31 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: drwahl’s comment on: Every.org Dona­tion Match­ing for Monthly Donations

  Yeah, people should probably do right on Nov. 1 if they want to get the match.

• Cullen_OKeefe 31 Oct 2022 0:53 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: ThomasW’s comment on: Every.org Dona­tion Match­ing for Monthly Donations

  I’m guessing because it hasn’t started yet.

Every.org Dona­tion Match­ing for Monthly Donations

• Cullen_OKeefe 19 Oct 2022 7:19 UTC

  2 points

  on: Cul­len_OKeefe’s Shortform

  Interesting excerpt from a book I’m reading:

  Somewhat incongruously, at the same time that private standardization was both promoting economic globalization and becoming more global, social activists concerned with the impact of globalization on the environment, on workers, and on human rights began to look to ISO’s experience with management system standards as a model of how to prevent a globalization-led race to the bottom. For the activists, ISO 9000 provided a governance model for organizations concerned with social and environmental sustainability, one that actually promised their continuous improvement across the global economy. The relevant feature of the model had also helped make ISO 9000 certification such a successful business: as part of the “continuous improve-ment” that the standards demanded, ISO 9000-certified companies were expected increasingly to buy their supplies from companies that also had quality management systems in place. Adherence to this principle helped the standard spread.37 British historian Deborah Cadbury points to a precedent for this hoped-for contagious spread of higher standards in the unusual success of nineteenth-century British and American Quaker manufacturers. They followed the highest social standards of the day in their own firms, demanded similar standards of their distributors and global suppliers, and were held accountable by an active popular press eager to point out any hypocrisy on the part of these “austere men of God” who influenced “the course of the Industrial Revolution and the [pre-Thatcher-era] commercial world.”

  JoAnne Yates & Craig N. Murphy, Engineering Rules: Global Standard Setting since 1880 (2019) (citing Deborah Cadbury, Chocolate Wars: The 150-Year Rivalry between the World’s Greatest Chocolate Makers at xii (2010)).

[Question] Track­ing Com­pute Stocks and Flows: Case Stud­ies?

• Cullen_OKeefe 2 Oct 2022 16:47 UTC

  19 points

  9 ∶ 0

  on: Why does AGI oc­cur al­most nowhere, not even just as a re­mark for eco­nomic/​poli­ti­cal mod­els?

  I do think it’d be interesting to have an AGI-pilled economist talk to one of the economists that do GWP forecasting to see if they can find cruxes.