throwaway791

Karma: 492

throwaway791 13 Jan 2023 21:18 UTC
11 points
6 ∶ 2
in reply to: Arturo Macias’s comment on: Thread for discussing Bostrom’s email and apology
While I think this post is silly, the extent to which it’s getting downvoted when much worse posts get upvoted regularly on the forum when they are written using ingroup-speak and support ingroup conclusions is really inexcusable. For this reason I’m upvoting it even though I don’t like the post at all.

throwaway791 13 Jan 2023 21:07 UTC
31 points
9 ∶ 2
in reply to: JamesÖz’s comment on: I Support Bostrom
This is a universal argument that can be used to stop literally any action you don’t like, or at least cause people to apologize for any such action, because any nontrivial action taken in the world is going to cause harm to at least some people, and probably many people. For this reason it should be rejected out of hand unless it is supported by context-specific details that make it more compelling in this case than it would be in the abstract.
No such details have been forthcoming from the proponents of this argument, most likely because they don’t actually exist and therefore can’t be supplied on demand.

throwaway791 13 Jan 2023 21:05 UTC
12 points
8 ∶ 9
in reply to: Jason’s comment on: I Support Bostrom
Can you point to any specific physical harm that was caused by Bostrom’s comments that goes beyond “some people were upset”?

throwaway791 13 Jan 2023 21:03 UTC
17 points
17 ∶ 10
in reply to: Rockwell’s comment on: I am tired.
I consistently express views that are outside the social norm, but I don’t share your fear.
What you’re missing here is the concept of heresy.
Plenty of views that are outside the social norm are not considered heretical. For instance, if you don’t like a movie that most people like or vice versa, that view is going to be outside the social norm but not in a way that means people who express it are punished for their opinions.
The problem is that some true things are considered heretical, and therefore you must be cautious in how much you reveal of what you really believe, even in private as such private communications can end up being publicized in a way that’s out of your control.
That aside, words and the concepts they perpetuate have consequences. Those consequences can range from hurt feelings to genocidal ideologies taking root.
Yes, I’m sure Catholics in 16th century Spain also believed that “words and the concepts they perpetuate have consequences”, for example such as God deciding to punish your civilization by causing crop harvests to fail three years in a row because you were insufficiently pious and didn’t suppress opponents of Catholicism sufficiently strongly.
You can always tell stories about how people expressing views you don’t like will have bad consequences. Most of these stories are utter hogwash and are nothing more than exercises in self-delusion. Please keep the past record of such storytelling in mind when you make claims of alleged harm supported only by poor evidence and implicit intuitions you’re unable to share with others.
If you’re spending a great deal of time watching what you say and experiencing uncertainty regarding how others will respond, maybe you’re experiencing a calibration issue.
I know exactly how others will respond. My uncertainty is about what I have said where and when will suddenly become the subject of attention by people who wish to attack me. There’s no calibration issue if you’re afraid to declare you’re an atheist in 16th century Spain, just a well-calibrated recognition that doing this will be very bad for you.

throwaway791 13 Jan 2023 14:27 UTC
2 points
3 ∶ 4
in reply to: amos amos’s comment on: I am tired.
Thanks for your invaluable contribution in pointing this out :)

throwaway791 13 Jan 2023 14:14 UTC
3 points
9 ∶ 11
on: CEA statement on Nick Bostrom’s email
You should make public the details of your early involvement with Alameda and stop trying to cancel other people until you’ve addressed your own past mistakes and wrongdoings.

throwaway791 13 Jan 2023 14:07 UTC
40 points
14 ∶ 9
in reply to: JamesÖz’s comment on: I Support Bostrom
Don’t frame the apology at the beginning as almost purely instrumental i.e. not like “I will get smeared soon, so I want to get ahead of the game”. This makes everything come across as less genuine.
What other reason is there to apologize?
This framing was obviously a bad idea instrumentally, but the fact that Bostrom chose this framing sends some signal that he has some standards of integrity that he’s not willing to compromise for instrumental goals. I have previously criticized other thought leaders in EA for not having any such standards, and the fact that Bostrom does seem to have them is encouraging.
And some other points that Habiba mentioned in her post e.g. “I am deeply uncomfortable with a discussion of race and intelligence failing to acknowledge the historical context of the ideas’ origin and the harm they can and have caused.”
Is she also deeply uncomfortable with a discussion of, say, French people that fails to acknowledge the historical context of their origin and the harm they can and have caused? I’m guessing not.
Again, from a power-seeking perspective her point is correct, but I’m sure that’s not the sense in which she meant it.
In my opinion it just highlights some basic misunderstandings about communication and our society today, which (I think) was proven by the fairly widespread negative backlash to this incident.
It’s him maximizing some combination of honesty and instrumental value because he’s not willing to completely lie about his views in order to improve his public image. That’s a good trait and one you should be encouraging, not criticizing. EA has enough problems with people lying and deceiving to try to accumulate more power, more resources, and more influence. We don’t need any more of this behavior.

throwaway791 13 Jan 2023 13:59 UTC
15 points
21 ∶ 21
on: I am tired.
I’m tired, too. I’m tired of constantly having to watch what I say or don’t say because of the fear that some mob will descend on me and try to ruin my life as they are now trying to do to Nick Bostrom. Perhaps someone in your situation can find it in themselves to have sympathy for people in my position and not just people in yours.

throwaway791 23 Dec 2022 0:34 UTC
4 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: Habryka’s comment on: I’m less approving of the EA community now than before the FTX collapse
https://twitter.com/bax1337/status/1590916763549503488

throwaway791 19 Dec 2022 4:30 UTC
45 points
16 ∶ 2
in reply to: sphor’s comment on: I’m less approving of the EA community now than before the FTX collapse
Notice that, as usual, these allegations are considered privately and nobody from CEA responds to requests for comments, even after FTX goes bankrupt.
People should be demanding from all EA organizations to make their internal deliberations on this subject public. What allegations did they consider in 2018? Why did they decide that they were ultimately not serious enough to warrant action?
The tolerance this community has shown for the silence of EA organizations in light of what has happened is astonishing to me. I think it’s partly that they simply don’t know the extent of the connection between early Alameda and central EA infrastructure, but that can’t be the whole story. There’s some slim chance that some of this will come out in court if the discovery process ever extends that far, but it seems much less likely at this point than I would like.
What links here?
- throwaway791's comment on CEA statement on Nick Bostrom’s email by Shakeel Hashim (13 Jan 2023 14:14 UTC; 3 points)

throwaway791 19 Dec 2022 4:08 UTC
35 points
13 ∶ 1
in reply to: Lukas_Gloor’s comment on: I’m less approving of the EA community now than before the FTX collapse
All you’re saying, as far as I can see, is that the available evidence is consistent with MacAskill simply having made mistakes, having bad judgment, not making deductions that he reasonably should have made, et cetera. I agree with that, which is why I noted in my original comment that
If you have a highly favorable view of MacAskill, the above is probably insufficient to update you to an extent that you would agree with me about his character.
I just don’t understand why people have the prior that obviously MacAskill should be a nice person who always acts in good faith. The circumstantial evidence I’ve outlined is insufficient to overcome such a strong prior, and you can always explain it away by attributing any number of honest mistakes and oversights to MacAskill.
In addition, I don’t think the way you’re casting the issue is appropriate. I think MacAskill didn’t spend his days thinking about how SBF was a horrible person who EA nevertheless needed because of the resources at his disposal, and I don’t believe he knew about the fraud. I think only some of his deception is conscious and deliberate. I suspect his failures in many cases looked more like “choosing not to know” or “choosing not to focus on” certain things, but I also don’t think these choices were entirely innocuous as you’re making them sound. Often when you choose not to know something it’s because of self-serving or otherwise immoral reasons.
I don’t believe for a second that he pushed SBF’s frugal image because he wasn’t careful with the information he conveys. I think this was a fully deliberate decision on his part and you attempting to make it look otherwise requires stories which are, on their face, much less plausible than that.
As for other issues I raised, I believe that some of it was not deliberate on his part. For instance, I don’t think MacAskill concocted a conscious scheme to try to kill Guzey’s post. He simply felt personally attacked by the hostility in the review and those emotions got him to conceal the fact that Guzey’s private draft had been leaked against what should have been his better judgment. Still, what people do in such situations is often informative about how they generally act when under pressure, and MacAskill seems to have fared quite badly in this particular test.
There were likely also plenty of things about FTX and SBF that he “chose not to know”. These would be odd observations that he might have made that he never followed up on, for instance. He may or may not have contemplated the possibility that FTX was engaged in some serious wrongdoing; I’m honestly quite uncertain about this. Either way, I believe he didn’t have any proof and all the evidence he had access to would have been circumstantial.

throwaway791 18 Dec 2022 21:39 UTC
39 points
19 ∶ 5
in reply to: throwaway791’s comment on: I’m less approving of the EA community now than before the FTX collapse
This comment exactly proves the point I’m talking about: it gets upvoted because it’s an abstract comment that doesn’t blame anyone in particular of anything. My comments that are critical of or adversarial towards specific people perform significantly worse, and plenty of my comments have fluctuated between having −10 karma to +10 or +20 karma.
I’m reasonably confident this is happening because people in EA hate conflict in general. I’m sorry to say that genuine criticism has to involve conflict of some kind. I understand people in EA are not used to this and prefer to shut their ears while accusing their counterparty of being “insufficienty truth-seeking” or “acting in bad faith” whenever they make use of adversarial discourse, and indeed this is exactly what happened to Guzey’s post from 2018.
I wish EA could move past these dysfunctional social norms, but I’m not getting my hopes up.

throwaway791 18 Dec 2022 18:37 UTC
−12 points
1 ∶ 2
in reply to: Jeff Kaufman 🔸’s comment on: I’m less approving of the EA community now than before the FTX collapse
That, and there was later a separate set of news articles around “FTX’s balance sheet”, on November 12th through 15th.
That balance sheet (if it can be called that) is also not FTX’s balance sheet by your standards; it’s a balance sheet of all FTX-related entities (including Alameda).
I don’t think it’s insignificant: the main interpretation I saw of the November 2nd news was that this was bad news about Alameda, not FTX. Which is pretty reasonable: at the time the true extent of their interconnection was not public.
This is true but I don’t see how it matters in the context we’re talking about here.

throwaway791 18 Dec 2022 17:59 UTC
−1 points
1 ∶ 8
in reply to: Jeff Kaufman 🔸’s comment on: I’m less approving of the EA community now than before the FTX collapse
There was pretty much no distinction between FTX and Alameda’s assets and liabilities by this point. It doesn’t matter what you want to call it, but it’s true Coindesk initially reported this document as “Alameda’s balance sheet”.
I find it very strange that you thought this insignificant detail is worth commenting on and ignored everything else in the comment.

throwaway791 18 Dec 2022 3:23 UTC
3 points
2 ∶ 0
in reply to: sphor’s comment on: I’m less approving of the EA community now than before the FTX collapse
It was a sign that FTX was in deep trouble, but at this time it was not yet clear whether there had actually been fraud or not.
That the problem was a solvency problem and not a liquidity problem was revealed, I think, by the following sources of evidence (among others):
- Binance refusing to go through with the deal after only cursory DD
- On-chain data showing only on the order of $1B of assets owned by FTX against estimated liabilities on the order of $10B
- The leaked FTX balance sheet, which is what started the whole mess
The on-chain estimates turned out to be more or less accurate: FTX also held some illiquid venture investments but these were not sufficient to change the order of magnitude of the assets at their disposal.
Probably until around Nov 9 it remained plausible that FTX was in trouble as a result of some kind of asset mismatch between the two sides of its balance sheet, which would be more of a liquidity problem and something that a Binance bailout could have solved. However, around Nov 9 the evidence was just overwhelming that around $10B of customer assets were missing, and such a gap was impossible to explain by anything other than FTX having used customer deposits for their own purposes.

throwaway791 18 Dec 2022 3:06 UTC
2 points
1 ∶ 3
in reply to: sphor’s comment on: I’m less approving of the EA community now than before the FTX collapse
North Dimension is an example of what I mean. In general, the way FTX & Alameda Research structured their business affairs was extremely messy, and we’ve found out more about this since the Chapter 11 filing by FTX and affiliated entities. I think MacAskill was in a position to know about some of this and chose not to say anything. At the very least he would have known which entities are used to disburse funding to grantees, and he may also have known more about the informal way in which FTX conducted business dealings in general.
I also believe people over at CEA may have known this, because to my knowledge the Future Fund was partnering with CEA to process grants at some point. Integrating their infrastructure would have required CEA to have some exposure to exactly how FTX handles payments. The fact that nobody has thought it important to clarify this situation following the revelations that e.g.
- FTX employees asked for their salary through Slack messages
- at some point FTX customers had to wire money to Alameda’s bank accounts to deposit money at FTX
is quite strange to me.
By itself this is not a red flag; I think someone elsewhere in the comments called it a “yellow flag”. It has to be seen in the context of the other observations I mentioned to be worthwhile.

throwaway791 17 Dec 2022 23:59 UTC
26 points
14 ∶ 4
in reply to: Will Bradshaw’s comment on: I’m less approving of the EA community now than before the FTX collapse
I could start going through your comments and responding line by line, but given how low my credence is that you’re actually truth-seeking here, it doesn’t seem like a good use of my time.
This is a typical way in which people in EA shut down discussions of subjects they don’t like, especially when they involve members of the outgroup. You simply accuse the person disagreeing with you of being insufficiently truth-seeking (whatever that means).
I’ve told you what I think most likely happened, and you’ve offered no counterargument other than “I see no evidence of anyone trying to kill Guzey’s post”, even though what happened is obviously evidence (in the Bayesian sense) for MacAskill attempting to do exactly that. It’s not like MacAskill could have prevented the publication of the post on the forum. What he had the power to do was influence the reception of the post, and I believe his response did influence the reception in a negative direction.
Guzey’s post indeed “died” and some of his substantive criticisms of the book were not addressed at all. I think most of this was due to natural dynamics on the forum that were beyond MacAskill’s control, but he certainly tried to accelerate this process and (I believe) succeeded in doing so. Whether that means he tried to kill the post or not is up to your judgment.

throwaway791 17 Dec 2022 20:03 UTC
117 points
44 ∶ 3
in reply to: DMMF’s comment on: I’m less approving of the EA community now than before the FTX collapse
While I agree with the substance of this comment to a great extent, I want to note that EA also has a problem of being much more willing to tolerate abstract criticism than concrete criticism.
If I singled out a specific person in EA and accused them of significant conflicts of interest or of being too unqualified and inexperienced to work on whatever they are currently working on, the reaction in the forum would be much more negative than it was to this comment.
If you really believe the issues raised in the comment are important, take it seriously when people raise these concerns in concrete cases.

throwaway791 17 Dec 2022 19:46 UTC
7 points
3 ∶ 3
in reply to: Nathan Young’s comment on: I’m less approving of the EA community now than before the FTX collapse
I don’t think you would have been obliged to spot it, but someone should have. Obviously the people who were in a prime position to spot this were the people over at the Future Fund, and if I recall correctly Nick Beckstead posted a comment on the forum saying that Future Fund grants would be disbursed through a variety of legal entities.
I haven’t seen confirmation of this, but I would guess they knew the list of entities they used most frequently for this purpose, and North Dimension seems to have been one of them. Explaining why a defunct phone store was being used to disburse payments to grantees seems like it should have been a reasonably high priority.

throwaway791 17 Dec 2022 19:42 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Persona14246’s comment on: I’m less approving of the EA community now than before the FTX collapse
I agree. Binance walking out of the deal after cursory DD also gave plenty of information about how bad the situation at FTX was at the time.