I think you are correct that, as a practical matter, there is a difference between FTX grant money that has already been spent and grant money that is unspent. Unspent money should be returned. It would be asking too much for grant recipients to also return money already spent. That would be ideal but it is unrealistic.
3c. Janitors? Please. That is a false equivalency equating grant recipients with janitors. Grant recipients didn’t scrub any toilets or empty any trash cans at FTX. Instead, grant recipients were given a gift of money from FTX. This is another example of misdirection and searching around for a rationalization to keep the tainted grant money, it is an unseemly form of what-aboutism. “But, what about the janitors?” Let the janitors figure out what they want to do. What are the grant recipients going to do?
As for the celebrity endorsers, of course they should return all the money they were paid. They affirmatively helped lure more depositors into the scheme. But again, that’s a separate issue from the EA grant recipients.
3e. Is someone seriously arguing that because the amount of FTX grants was ‘only’ $140 million the money should not be returned because it’s only a fraction of the stolen $8 billion? That is an unworthy and unseemly argument. “Hey, I’m only going to keep a portion of the stolen money, so it’s okay.” If that argument is indeed advanced then the moral compass has been tossed overboard and the ship is being intentionally run onto the reef.
You are correct that there have been expressions of sympathy for the ripped-off FTX investors. I overstated the lack of empathy expressed by the forum.
What appears absent, however, is anyone saying, “I received a grant from FTX and I am returning the money.” So verbal expressions of empathy exist, but actions appear lacking.
Raising the issue of where does one abstractly draw the line between clean money and dirty money—this is the kind of misdirection and casting around for rationalizations to keep the grant money that raise eyebrows to non-EA people like me who read this forum. Wherever that line is drawn in the abstract, FTX’s criminal fraud crossed it and FTX’s money is dirty, tainted proceeds of theft. Saying, “what about fossil fuels?” does not change FTX’s criminal fraud. That’s the concrete issue at hand.
Nice try at implying that grant recipients are equal victims to FTX’s depositors. Grant recipients are not victims at all. Grant recipients received gifts of money from FTX. Money they now know was stolen.
Many of the grant recipients appear to be making a lack-of-knowledge argument to justify their keeping the money. They didn’t know it was stolen when they received it, so now they want to feel justified retaining it.
At the same time they don’t want the cognitive dissonance of recognizing that by keeping the grant money they just gave up their pretense of EA ideals. So they search around for rationalizations, and this lack of knowledge argument is one.
It’s not persuasive. Say you are walking down the street and you see person A rob person B at gunpoint. You then ask person A for money and he tosses you B’s wallet. Hopefully everyone would agree you should give the wallet back to B.
Now imagine you are walking down the street and A runs around the corner. You ask him for money and he tosses you a wallet and runs off. Two seconds later a crowd of people, including B, come around the corner. They explain that A robbed B of his wallet 30 seconds ago, and that you are holding the wallet. Do you start arguing that you too are the victim because when A gave you the wallet you didn’t know it was stolen? Well you know now and you should return it to B. Or, if you decide to keep the wallet, you should not pretend you are doing so out of anything other than pure self-interest.