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suy  2yr ago (astralcodexten.substack.com)   Edited 2yr ago   4227 thread views

Scott Alexander on Sam Bankman-Fried, FTX and Effective Altruism

astralcodexten.substack.com

I made this a top level post because I think people here might want to discuss it but you can remove it if it doesn't meet your standards.

Edit: removed my opinion of Scott from the body

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Can we consider the possibility that all of this was vaporware?

  1. Most people don't know what FTX is

  2. Most people have no idea who SBF is

  3. Most people have never heard of EA

Scott Alexander seems to be devastated by something most people didn't even know was a thing, much less an important thing.

It doesn't matter that you personally don't know what is is. What matters is what the money guys care about. All the FTX money is gone. All these bloated charities are going to have to make cuts.

Not only charities. There are aftershocks through all crypto-system, and a lot of people that aren't affected directly are re-evaluating their stance towards crypto, which may lead to affecting even more people (imagine a major bank planning to invest in crypto - but then deciding to stay away - that'd probably lead to some reallocation of resources, somebody not getting a promotion, somebody fired maybe...)

Examples: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-14/ftx-fiasco-sparks-billions-of-dollars-of-outflows-from-exchanges https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-15/ftx-latest-regulators-discuss-questioning-bankman-fried-in-us

It's way beyond just FTX customers and EA charities.

Yes, but this is perfectly consistent with FTX being a Ponzi scheme all along. It was never an important thing for humanity, some people were just duped into believing it was.

Depends on what you mean by vaporware.

If you're saying you and I, personally, should not give a shit about what happens to Silicon Valley venture capitalists--you're probably right. I'm nowhere near the area, didn't donate to or invest in anyone involved, have no personal connections, etc. This isn't some sort of 2008 collapse that will ever affect me personally. I posit that the same applies to 95+ percent of the commentators writing dramatic articles about What This Means For Rationalists and posting them here and elsewhere.

If you think Scott is wrong to be so devastated...I can't sign on to that. Seems to me his social and professional circles mean neither 1, 2, nor 3 apply. Insofar as I'm generally interested in reading what Scott has to say, I can feel sympathy, even though I can't empathize.

Yes, but this is what happens when you are conned. You feel betrayed for trusting someone or something only to realize that your bullshit detector isn't as good as you thought it was. The cognitive dissonance when you are forced to change paradigms is a personal struggle, but not something that changes the world in any way, only your perception of the world.

The goodness in the world isn't going to diminish because effective altruism turned out to be bullshit, only Scott's belief in the goodness in the world.

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