you’re right I should have emphasised that better
I’m not sure what petersburgged means but I think you mean he started out pure then gradually gave himself more justification for increasingly bad actions as time went on, in which case I agree that early on he was definitly ea (I remember he went vegan the day after a friend showed him it doesn’t align with his (sbfs) values) so he was clearly commited to moral action at some point but I would say the sbf that commited the fraud etc was a distinct sam from the one that was ea
escapealert
Karma: 67
Buying your way out of personal ethics
escapealert’s Quick takes
I feel firmly that a big mistake is people not standing on the EA label, I saw a lot of friends stop calling themselves EA after the SBF/FTX scandal but I think instead explaining it is a much better approach
(1) EA is about giving your money away to help as many people as possible
(2) SBF lied and commited fraud
(3) SBF didn’t practice EA
(4) SBF wasn’t EA he was just saying he was
it’s kind of like if someone says they’re vegan whilst eating meat, you should point out the persons being dishonest in their labelling and doesn’t represent veganism
I think it’s possibly donating food directly to homeless people might be a viable way to save a life (I’ve not done any fact checking or math so keep that in mind) I was recently speaking to a homeless person and the topic of starvation came up and he alleged that “homeless people don’t die from starvation but a lack of food kills them” basically saying that secondary effects lead to the death such as using more drugs when food is scare, likely having bad immune system due to low quality food/not enough calories—basically not enough food doesn’t kill them but it starts a downward spiral that does—I’m not saying this is a perfect cause but given how much of a bias people have to seeing the people they help and given that most people are becoming cashless i.e homeless people have less money, buying homeless people a bit of food as a habit when you see them might lead to a (higher than expected) number of lives saved in a way most people could probably be convinced of (outside of EA spaces even convincing someone to give is difficult) it also bypasses the “homeless people will just spend it on drugs” issue people often cite as why they don’t give money to the homeless
I think suicide prevention might be an underrated cause (need to firmly fact check before my confidence in this is high)
(1) if you delay someone from commiting suicide for just 30 minutes they will almost always change their mind
(2) suicidal people usually spend years inbetween attempts
(3) after someone “fails” a suicide attempt via changing their mind they usually feel a lot better emotionally (excluding failed attempts, only failure via changing your mind)
a charity in the UK places 1 hour of phone time is £44, if we assume 10% of people who call the suicide hotline are both (a) going to commit suicide (b) do not because of that call (which would take around 30 minutes) we can assume every 5 hours results in one suicidal person not killing themselves and feeling relief for either months or years—this would put the price of possibly stopping someone from killing themselves at £220 (though it doesn’t mean you would save an entire lifespan) suicide is also somewhat unique in that not only does it lead to mourning a loved one but often leads to self blame and all types of emotional problems in the loved ones.