Strategy analyst at Innosight in Boston.
I graduated from Dartmouth College last year with a B.A. in philosophy and have been interested in EA for about 4 years. I currently work for a long-term strategy consultancy. I also have been serving on the Board of Directors of Positive Tracks, a national social change nonprofit, for five years. Within EA, I’m particularly interested in ethical theory and animal welfare.
I disagree that I argue against a strawman. The media’s coverage of Bankman-Fried frequently implies that he used consequentialism to justify his actions. This, in turn, implies that consequentialism endorses fraud so long as you give away your money. Like I said, the arguments in the post are not revolutionary, but I do think they are important.
You give no evidence for your claim that hardcore utilitarians commit 1⁄10 of the “greatest frauds”. I struggle to even engage with this claim because it seems so speculative. But I will say that I agree that utilitarianism has been (incorrectly) used to justify harm. As I stated:
Part of my motivation for making this post was helping consequentialists think about our actions—specifically those around the idea of earning to give. In other words, the post is intended to clarify some “ethical guardrails” within a consequentialist framework.