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Sam Bankman-Fried and the geometry of conscience

scottaaronson.blog

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Re: Sam Bankman-Fried and the geometry of conscience

#71

Post by williamcotton »

whoooooo123 wrote: post #64
Reason077 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the allegations of criminal activity are true, he will very likely end up in prison. Obviously it will take time for investigations to gather evidence, prosecutors to file charges, etc. These are still very recent events. Just be patient!

I'm so lost. I'd never heard of this guy or FTX until a couple of days ago. Can someone give me a link to the best and (this is important) most succinct summary of what the hell happened here? Why did all this money vanish, and what crimes did SBF commit?

You’re asking a mob with torches and pitchforks for calm-headed appraisal?

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried and the geometry of conscience

#72

Post by baxtr »

whoooooo123 wrote: post #59
baxtr wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You see, one of the most important "rules" of good content marketing is being controversial. No-one like to talk about stuff that is average. Average is boring. Same here on HN btw. Who cares about another take how evil Sam is. It obviously pays off for Steve, at least in the short run. He is on the front-page of HN and has gained a couple of subscribers.

That's Scott. Steve's dead.

True!

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried and the geometry of conscience

#73

Post by pjc50 »

arcticbull wrote: post #10
oldgradstudent wrote: post #2

> In the course of 2-3 days last week, SBF’s estimated net worth went from ~$15 billion to a negative number, possibly the fastest evaporation of such a vast personal fortune in all human history. No. His net worth was never $15B. His net worth might have been negative - less than that homeless living in a tent under the bridge. He was a fraud, a con man. There's no reason to assume his entire Effective Altruism inte…

> ... possibly the fastest evaporation of such a vast personal fortune in all human history. That title would probably go to Zucc after the most recent set of earnings. But the previous title holder was none other than Mr. Cyber Hornets himself, the man who just about popped the Dot Com bubble - Michael Saylor. Saylor lost $6B in a single day (and $10B in 2 weeks) after reporting that his firm had cooked the books in…

Oh my god, I was around for the dotcom collapse and hadn't realised that Saylor was there and in the crypto scam ecosystem.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried and the geometry of conscience

#74

Post by ZeroGravitas »

ETH_start wrote: post #67
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #31

> 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 seems a bit of a leap to me. It's a bit like saying a King or Queen is morally ahead of you. You're taking a point of concentrated wealth in a system designed to create that concentration and comparing…

>>You're taking a point of concentrated wealth in a system designed to create that concentration and comparing it to 1 individual and using that to support the system. I wasn't able to follow. Could you rephrase or elaborate on the last part?

Effective Altruism asks "what's the most I can do?" and come up with the answer, "become a king and give my(!) money I earn(!) to effective charities".

That only makes sense if your starting place in the system makes becoming a king possible.

Meanwhile, if they asked "what's the most we can do?" then the answer is unlikely to involve kings and more likely involves changing the system that gives them the opportunity to be kings.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried and the geometry of conscience

#75

Post by pjc50 »

whoooooo123 wrote: post #64
Reason077 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the allegations of criminal activity are true, he will very likely end up in prison. Obviously it will take time for investigations to gather evidence, prosecutors to file charges, etc. These are still very recent events. Just be patient!

I'm so lost. I'd never heard of this guy or FTX until a couple of days ago. Can someone give me a link to the best and (this is important) most succinct summary of what the hell happened here? Why did all this money vanish, and what crimes did SBF commit?

1) FTX had a token they issued, but were booking this as an "asset". This is like issuing yourself an "IOU 1 billion" note and claiming you're a billionaire.

2) To obfuscate this slightly, they lent "$10bn" of tokens to Alameda Research, which was a "hedge fund" run by his girlfriend on the exchange

3) Alameda made huge trading losses, as often happens to novice traders. A Nick Leeson event.

4) Changpeng Zhao of Binance noticed there was a problem: https://fortune.com/2022/11/07/crypto-billionaires-cz-binanc...

5) This triggered a "bank run" on FTX

6) FTX are now insolvent: https://twitter.com/SBF_FTX/status/1591089317300293636

7) That was the last we heard from SBF. There are now reports that the exchange has been "hacked" and coins stolen. It is not yet clear by whom, or where SBF is.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried and the geometry of conscience

#76

Post by williamcotton »

bmitc wrote: post #3
oldgradstudent wrote: post #2

> In the course of 2-3 days last week, SBF’s estimated net worth went from ~$15 billion to a negative number, possibly the fastest evaporation of such a vast personal fortune in all human history. No. His net worth was never $15B. His net worth might have been negative - less than that homeless living in a tent under the bridge. He was a fraud, a con man. There's no reason to assume his entire Effective Altruism inte…

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.

Do you feel morally superior to Effective Altruists?

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried and the geometry of conscience

#77

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

pjc50 wrote: post #62
sschueller wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone remember Marc Rich? "Clinton's critics alleged that Rich's pardon had been bought, as Denise Rich had given more than $1 million[36] to Clinton's political party (the Democratic Party), including more than $100,000 to the Senate campaign of the president's wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and $450,000 to the Clinton Library foundation during Clinton's time in office.[31]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_R…

Is there a Presidential pardon that wasn't abusive of the system? From Nixon to Iran-Contra to war crimes in Afghanistan?

Lots. The abusive ones get the press but there's a lot more than just never get attention. Obama issued a ton of clemency and pardons, a large portion of which were non violent drug sentences.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried and the geometry of conscience

#78

Post by oldgradstudent »

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #24
Gatsky wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well he was into EA when he was a nobody at University… I doubt that it was all for show. Generally, in public downfalls like this, people over ascribe the causes to moral turpitude. There aren’t enough details here to say either way yet. There is a good book about this sort of thing Mistakes were made (but not by me). [1] I think the blog post is very good, providing a unique perspective, and wonderfully written. [1…

No, EA's cultish aspects played a huge role in this. SBF got his start in crypto doing arbitrage with Japan, because setting up a trading account in Japan was hard. He got someone to do it through the EA community. Most of the people who are in positions of power in his companies came from the EA community. And no joke a bunch of them are all in romantic relationships with each other too. You've got the CEO of his tr…

To be in a cult you only need to spew their Shibboleth, you don't need to actually believe it.

Seems that he always benefited from membership in the cult.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried and the geometry of conscience

#79

Post by chaosbolt »

pjc50 wrote: post #57
chaosbolt wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't go to prison when you are the 2nd biggest donor to the current president's campaign. Mark Karpales didn't go to prison for Mt Gox, he spent some months in jail because they were afraid he might leave Japan + Japan isn't like the west he prpbably doesn't have connections there, then left and worked for different financial companies and then started another company assessing risk or something. Alex Mashinsky…

> yeah you have to turn off your pattern recognition or else be called a bad name I don't see what's wrong with having "crypto=fraud" pattern recognition? (Especially "staking"/"yield farming"! Anyone offering risk free high return is being dishonest about one of those two aspects) Another good piece of pattern recognition: is this being run from a financial secrecy or tax evasion jurisdiction? (In this case, the Bah…

Well you didn't understand what I was implying: Enron's Skilling is in prison, Theranos' Holmes is being sentenced to prison, Do Kwon of Terra is a fugitive, the Bitconnect guy is a fugitive. The only guy from 2008 to go to prison was Kareem Serageldin, an Egyptian.

Celsius' Mashinsky, MtGox's Karpales didn't go to prison, and I bet Bankman-Fried won't either. Epstein has been investigated by the FBI for 20 years before going to prison and during the Deutsche Bank - Epstein trial a pizza delivery guy rang the door of the son of the judge overseeing the trial, and shot him dead after he opened the door.

Is you don't see a pattern between the two paragraphs then what do you want me to tell you, just stick to the news.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried and the geometry of conscience

#80

Post by kalimanzaro »

bmitc wrote: post #3
oldgradstudent wrote: post #2

> In the course of 2-3 days last week, SBF’s estimated net worth went from ~$15 billion to a negative number, possibly the fastest evaporation of such a vast personal fortune in all human history. No. His net worth was never $15B. His net worth might have been negative - less than that homeless living in a tent under the bridge. He was a fraud, a con man. There's no reason to assume his entire Effective Altruism inte…

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.

There's another crypto figurehead who is prominently in the EA tribe: Vitalik Buterin.

I would characterise both as elite but not upper class (as in, regularly going to old money dinner/rave parties).

I don't know which of the two is more "Effectively Altruistic".. lol.

Nevertheless, I find the anti-parallels with Buterin .. charming. Vitalik is clearly less anti-intellectual, less ambitious (more Ravenclaw than Slytherin), and thus less offensive to the gods.

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