Now: TYPE III AUDIO; Independent study.
Previously: 80,000 Hours (2014-15; 2017-2021) Worked on web development, product management, strategy, internal systems, IT security, etc. Read my CV.
Also: Inbox When Ready; Radio Bostrom; The Valmy; Comment Helper for Google Docs.
I am worried and sad for all involved, but I am especially concerned for the wellbeing and prospects of the ~millions of people—often vulnerable retail investors—who may have taken on too much exposure to crypto in general.
Many people like this must be extremely stressed right now. As with many financial meltdowns, some individuals and families will endure severe hardship, such as the breakdown of relationships, the loss of life savings, even the death of loved ones.
I don’t really follow crypto so I know roughly nothing about the role SBF, FTX and Alameda have played in this ecosystem. My impression is that they’ve been ok/good on at least some dimensions of protecting vulnerable investors. But—let’s see how things look, overall, when the dust settles.
In my view, Bostrom’s email would have been offensive in the 90s and it is offensive now, for good reason.
Agree.
Bostrom’s apology is defensively couched—emphasising the age of the email, what others wrote on the listserv, that it would be best forgotten, that fear that people might smear him. I think that is cowardly and shows a disappointing lack of ownership of his actions.
I think these details are important context. I disagree with the final sentence.
When you are willfully disengaged from the empathy that underlies common decency
I don’t see grounds for describing Bostrom in such harsh terms.
Some context:
Bostrom’s problematic email was written in 1996.
Bostrom claims to have apologised for the email back in 1996, within 24 hours after sending it. If that’s right, then the 2023 message is his second apology.
I am disappointed that the CEA statement does not include these details.
While I appreciate posts like this, which speak about the importance of epistemic integrity, it seems to miss the fact that applauding someone for not lying is great but not if the belief they’re holding is bad.
It is suggestive that you describe the belief as “bad” rather than “wrong”,”incorrect” or “false”.
It’s fine to criticise people for (i) holding beliefs that are wrong, or for (ii) expressing beliefs that are probably best not expressed in a given context (whether they are true or false).
But it’s important to separate, as best we can, claims about (a) whether a particular belief is true from claims about (b) whether holding that belief has good consequences, or (c) correlates with good moral character.
This post would be better if it made this distinction more clearly.
I am grateful to SBF and all the FTX Future Fund team and donors, and especially the people who made the Regrantor Program happen.
I estimate ~70% chance I wouldn’t have begun work on Radio Bostrom or The Derek Parfit Archive if I didn’t know I could probably secure funding from a regrantor with an hour or two of work and 1-3 days of calendar time.
It was also great that when I ran into people I thought would be worth funding, it was super easy to ask them to write a one pager and then share it with regrantors I thought might be keen to recommend a grant. I did this three times over the past couple months and all three were funded within days.
Generally I’m finding the existence of the Regrantor Program incredibly enabling while I’m thinking about small pilot projects I might take a crack at, or bumping into cool people who I might want to help. I hope it continues in some form!
Thank you for posting this.
I roughly share the views you expressed here.
As you intended, the post is a valuable counterbalance to some of the other discussion.
Yep, I would emphasise “most” in my post above.
My guess is that if we talked about specifically who should follow this, we’d end up agreeing that >90% of readers of this thread should largely ignore for now. I vaguely recall that some 5000 people read the forum every week.
I do think that one person from each major EA org should be following along, and providing regular updates to their team for reasons of morale and (e.g.) suggestions on how to approach social media and the enquiries from journalists that we might expect to receive.
I also think that one person (from CEA) should be point person on this and put together a small team to support them, consult stakeholders, etc, if necessary.
FWIW I called around a bit last night and my understanding is that there is a very competent “point person”, and I am satisfied that they and the small group supporting them will help the community navigate this in a good/excellent way over the next days and weeks.
Back to work (nearly) everyone! :)
Andrew Leigh (Australian MP) has a 2021 book called What’s the Worst That Could Happen?.
The book blurb starts as follows:
Did you know that you’re more likely to die from a catastrophe than in a car crash? The odds that a typical US resident will die from a catastrophic event—for example, nuclear war, bioterrorism, or out-of-control artificial intelligence—have been estimated at 1 in 6. That’s fifteen times more likely than a fatal car crash and thirty-one times more likely than being murdered. In What’s the Worst That Could Happen?, Andrew Leigh looks at catastrophic risks and how to mitigate them, arguing provocatively that the rise of populist politics makes catastrophe more likely.
This post is several orders of magnitude more pessimistic than the views of the Samotsvety forecasters (as of 3 October 2022):
It’s also much more pessimistic than other serious commentators I’ve read (though I’m not following closely). See e.g. Trey Howard (also ~3rd October):
If there’s significant risk of this blowback, EA leadership better develop a pro-active plan for dealing with the PR crisis—and quick.
I think it would be prudent for EA leadership to treat this FTX crisis as a potentially serious PR crisis for EA—and not just a massive financial crisis for EA funding.
I’ve been talking to key people a fair bit since yesterday, broadly pushing the line and level of concern that you suggest. My current take is that the “pro-active plan” work is happening quickly and with appropriate investment.
I am grateful to Howie Lempel for taking over as CEO of 80,000 Hours. When you sign up for any CEO role, you sign up for a lot of pain. Howie knows that, but he’s doing it anyway because he knows he’s the best candidate for this important role.
Thank you (again) for this.
I think this message should be emphasized much more in many EA and LT contexts, e.g. introductory materials on effectivealtruism.org and 80000hours.org.
As your paper points out: longtermist axiology probably changes the ranking between x-risk and catastrophic risk interventions in some cases. But there’s lots of convergence, and in practice your ranked list of interventions won’t change much (even if the diff between them does… after you adjust for cluelessness, Pascal’s mugging, etc).
Some worry that if you’re a fan of longtermist axiology then this approach to comms is disingenous. I strongly disagree: it’s normal to start your comms by finding common ground, and elaborate on your full reasoning later on.
Andrew Leigh MP seems to agree. Here’s the blurb from his recent book, “What’s The Worst That Could Happen?”:
Did you know that you’re more likely to die from a catastrophe than in a car crash? The odds that a typical US resident will die from a catastrophic event—for example, nuclear war, bioterrorism, or out-of-control artificial intelligence—have been estimated at 1 in 6. That’s fifteen times more likely than a fatal car crash and thirty-one times more likely than being murdered. In What’s the Worst That Could Happen?, Andrew Leigh looks at catastrophic risks and how to mitigate them, arguing provocatively that the rise of populist politics makes catastrophe more likely.
Fantastic news about Shakeel. I am very happy to hear that someone is having a crack at the role you described (comms for EA in general, especially the accurate communication of EA ideas outside of EA).
The application form is short and includes the following questions:
What are the most important technical projects the UK government needs to do within the next few months to advance AI safety?
What do you want to be doing to drive those projects forward?
Some notable discussions involving key figures:
In the original emails and the latest apology, he has done less to distance himself from racism than to endorse it.
In what ways do you think the 2023 message endorses racism? Is there a particular quote or feature of it that stands out to you?
The apology contains an emphatic condemnation of the use of a racist slur:
I completely repudiate this disgusting email from 26 years ago. It does not accurately represent my views, then or now. The invocation of a racial slur was repulsive. I immediately apologized for writing it at the time, within 24 hours; and I apologize again unreservedly today. I recoil when I read it and reject it utterly.
The 1996 email was part of a discussion of offensive communication styles. It included a heavily contested and controversial claim about group intelligence, which I will not repeat here. [1] Claims like these have been made by racist groups in the past, and an interest in such claims correlates with racist views. But there is not a strict correlation here: expressing or studying such claims does not entail you have racist values or motivations.
In general I see genetic disparity as one of the biggest underlying causes of inequality and injustice. I’ve no informed views or particular interests in averages between groups of different skin colour. But I do feel terrible for people who find themselves born with a difficult hand in the genetic lottery (e.g. a tendency to severe depression or dementia). And so I endorse research on genetic causes of chronic disadvantage, with the hope that we can improve things.
[1] This comment by Geoffrey Miller provides a bit more context on why Bostrom may have chosen this particular example.
Tyler: thanks for the post.
A couple questions I’d love to hear your thoughts on:
Would it be right to say that >90% of the legal risk to public figures and institutions was incurred prior to the FTX blow-up on November 8?
Do you expect that >30% of prominent EA figures will end up involved in the litigation process, regardless of what they post after November 8?
Do you expect that Effective Ventures (formerly: CEA) will end up involved in the litigation process, regardless of what they post after November 8?
On the face of it, Rees has indeed been neglected in introductory materials on this topic. Any idea why?
Some questions to which I suspect key figures in Effective Altruism and Progress Studies would give different answers:
a. How much of a problem is it to have a mainstream culture that is afraid of technology, or that underrates its promise?
b. How does the rate of economic growth in the West affect the probability of political catastrophe, e.g. WWIII?
c. How fragile are Enlightenment norms of open, truth-seeking debate? (E.g. Deutsch thinks something like the Enlightenment “tried to happen” several times, and that these norms may be more fragile than we think.)
d. To what extent is existential risk something that should be quietly managed by technocrats vs a popular issue that politicians should be talking about?
e. The relative priority of catastrophic and existential risk reduction, and the level of convergence between these goals.
f. The tractability of reducing existential risk.
g. What is most needed: more innovation, or more theory/plans/coordination?
h. What does ideal and actual human rationality look like? E.g. Bayesian, ecological, individual, social.
i. How to act when faced with small probabilities of extremely good or extremely bad outcomes.
j. How well can we predict the future? Is it reasonable to make probability estimates about technological innovation? (I can’t quickly find the strongest “you can’t put probabilities” argument, but here’s Anders Sandberg sub-Youtubing Deutsch)
k. Credence in moral realism.
I think most people reading this thread should totally ignore this story for at least 2 weeks. Meantime: get back to work.
For >90% of readers, I suspect:
It’s not action relevant right now.
It’s very distracting.
It would be better to just read a sober update on the situation in a couple of weeks from now, after dust has settled.
I think this is true even of most people who have a bunch of crypto and/or are FTX customers, but that’s more debatable and depends on exposure.
These are the standard problems with following almost any BREAKING NEWS story (e.g. an election night, a stock market event, an ongoing tragedy).
Agree, but still find it hard to stop watching? You are glued to your screen and this is unhelpful. This is an opportunity to practice the skill of ignoring stuff that isn’t action-relevant, and allocating your attention effectively.
Not actively trading crypto or related assets? Just ignore this story for a while, and get back to work.
Added 2022-11-09 2200 GMT:
If I had a good friend who has a lot of crypto and who may be concerned about losing more than they can afford to lose, I would call them.
Given what I’m seeing online, the situation looks grim for people with big exposure to crypto in general, and those with deposits at FTX in particular.
(To repeat what I said in other comments on this post: I don’t follow crypto closely. My takes are not investment advice.)