prime example of someone paying dues to his extended network by nudging the narrative of a fellow networker/his parents to a somewhat less damaging vector. next: alan dershowitz. disgusting
Sam Bankman-Fried and the geometry of conscience
41–50 of 111 posts
Re: Sam Bankman-Fried and the geometry of conscience
#42As someone with negative self-esteem and a whole list of psychological issues, I don't understand how people can have so much little self-respect to the point of ~simping~ for those "generous billionaires" and actually believing their good intentions even after they've stolen billions of dollars. Cynicism is not that common sense, it seems. Anyway, what a weird, weird post. (and what's with the random insertion about…
Libertarians. Whom are curiously overrepresented among the tech douchebag crowd.
It's almost as if spending your entire day in an air-conditioned spaceship looking building hunched over a monitor warps your view on society...
Re: Sam Bankman-Fried and the geometry of conscience
#43Effective altruism weights large amount of utility that are distant from the user higher than non-utilitarian moralities such as familial obligations, purity, or fairness. From an EA perspective, SBF made a morally correct gamble since his intent was to donate all the winnings. The discounted utility of donating the potential winnings of shitcoins outweighed the utility of not doing so. Perhaps it would be wise to re…
Exactly this. All the debates about whether SBF's EA ties were "authentic" or he strayed over time or whatever are missing the point.
EA is a morally bankrupt, barely coherent, stupid ideology designed to justify pre-hoc teenage technocratic fantasies. In that sense, no matter what SBF believed in his heart of hearts he's a poster child for EA all the way.
Re: Sam Bankman-Fried and the geometry of conscience
#44> I’ve never met SBF, although he was a physics undergraduate at MIT while I taught CS there.
> And a traditional investor who made billions on successful gambles, or arbitrage, or creating liquidity, then gave virtually all of it away to effective charities, would seem, on net, way ahead of most of us morally.
> On reflection, maybe I’d just try to convince SBF to weight money logarithmically when calculating expected utility (as in the Kelly criterion), to forsake the linear weighting that SBF explicitly advocated and that he seems to have put into practice in his crypto ventures
Christ.
The rivalry is over. Caltech wins.
Re: Sam Bankman-Fried and the geometry of conscience
#45I can't understand the American obsession with, let's call it ethnicity.
Author says he will be held accountable, as he is white and Jewish and nerdy. Like... What???
Re: Sam Bankman-Fried and the geometry of conscience
#46Effective altruism weights large amount of utility that are distant from the user higher than non-utilitarian moralities such as familial obligations, purity, or fairness. From an EA perspective, SBF made a morally correct gamble since his intent was to donate all the winnings. The discounted utility of donating the potential winnings of shitcoins outweighed the utility of not doing so. Perhaps it would be wise to re…
EA doesn't pan out when you realize crypto is used to buy bad things (drugs, guns, CP) or as a tax avoidance scheme.
I've always maintained my theory that Satoshi was CIA. Crypto is the evil kind of stuff they are good at.
Re: Sam Bankman-Fried and the geometry of conscience
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Effective altruism seems to be a sort of cult that’s way for elites (that is, the upper class) to both make themselves feel better and to give them yet another vector of superiority over people. In Sam Bankman-Fried’s case, he seems to have let it be a justification for the huge risks and likely criminal actions he took.
SBF literally said he would wager the world for another world with 51% odds. There's no amount of money that will satisfy someone like that, even if his EA statements were heartfelt. Why would he give a billion dollars to charities, when he could risk it, flip it into $20B, and give it to charity? Why would he give $20B to charity when he could risk it, and flip it into $150B? etc...
That, I think, is the basis of the advice from Aaronson. There should be some natural rational limit to the tendency because of exactly the types of events that just happened.
Good luck finding that limit though, especially when the market seems undefeatable.
Re: Sam Bankman-Fried and the geometry of conscience
#48I can't understand the American obsession with, let's call it ethnicity. Author says he will be held accountable, as he is white and Jewish and nerdy. Like... What???
He's misdirecting. He will be not be "held accountable", he may be asked difficult but fair questions about his close association to organizations also associated with SBF, via money and ideology, not via ethnicity or (traditional) religious creed. But it's more sympathetic to people only half paying attention when framed his way.
Re: Sam Bankman-Fried and the geometry of conscience
#49> And a traditional investor who made billions on successful gambles, or arbitrage, or creating liquidity, then gave virtually all of it away to effective charities, would seem, on net, way ahead of most of us morally.
This is madness. Morality is not a game with points.
Re: Sam Bankman-Fried and the geometry of conscience
#50> To my mind, though, it’s important not to minimize the gravity of the fateful decision by conflating it with everything that preceded it. I confess to taking this sort of conflation extremely personally. For eight years now, the rap against me, advanced by thousands (!) on social media, has been: sure, while by all accounts Aaronson is kind and respectful to women, he seems like exactly the sort of nerdy guy who, s…
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/01/the-blo... (Paywall avoidance: https://archive.ph/MdZa2 )
But what does it have to do with, or how does it relate to, the SBF fraud?