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Sam Bankman-Fried and the geometry of conscience

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Re: Sam Bankman-Fried and the geometry of conscience

#91

Post by zajio1am »

simple-thoughts wrote: post #20

Effective 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…

> From an EA perspective, SBF made a morally correct gamble since his intent was to donate all the winnings.

EA perspective is not limited to one specific moral foundation (in this case act utilitarianism), it is a general idea that if you are going to be altruistic (for whatever reason), you should rationally focus on how to get best 'benefit to others' for your money. EA is not moral philosophy, it is altruistic strategy. For some, altruism is not even connected to morality.

So the gamble you describe is more argument against act utilitarianism than against EA.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried and the geometry of conscience

#92

Post by htk »

What a fascinating highbrow example of how demagogy fuels fanaticism. The author is so enamored with the Effective Altruism discourse that he goes to great lengths to justify the current scenario SBF is in.

And ironically he mentions interest in "saving the world from fascism", but can't notice himself being manipulated in the same manner employed by fascist leaders.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried and the geometry of conscience

#93

Post by versteegen »

simple-thoughts wrote: post #20

Effective 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…

> From an EA perspective, SBF made a morally correct gamble since his intent was to donate all the winnings.

No, that's a caricature of EA (edit: AFAICT EA seems to be about working within the system). There are perfectly rational reasons not to break moral standards (such as not gambling with other people's money or lying about safekeeping it): the world becomes a worse and unstable place and becomes far harder to improve when everyone acts like that, when you can't trust other actors; and people will keep score of how you behave.

(In another comment I wrote what may seem to be a contradictory view, but I was considering a completely abstract gamble there, not what SBF actually did.)

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried and the geometry of conscience

#94

Post by zajio1am »

npinsker wrote: post #12

One of the worst posts I've ever read from Scott, this reads as shockingly tone-deaf and blithely optimistic. He totally ignores the actual events that transpired and instead focuses on Sam's purported ideals, probably because Scott Aaronson feels a lot of kinship with him as a fellow nerd and therefore can't seem to believe anything other than "he just made a mistake somewhere". I don't want to pass judgment on Sam,…

> He totally ignores the actual events that transpired and instead focuses on Sam's purported ideals,

This argument about tone-deafness is kind of collectivist rally against individual conversation. There is no need for everyone to focus on the same thing. One could even argue that overly focusing on the actual events is less productive (as for actual events there will be official investigation that should lead to more solid results).

> but Aaronson seems to be taking an extremely strong stance in support of Sam by saying "the worst thing he did is he incorrectly weighted money"

That just seems like misreading of the post, Scott explicitly wrote: "If SBF indeed gambled away his customers’ deposits and lied about it, then I condemn for it utterly".

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried and the geometry of conscience

#95

Post by MrMan »

michaelt wrote: post #87
MrMan wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

most of the good done in the world thee days is paradoxically perhaps achieved through commerce, not charity per se. and even charities are mostly effective in the sense that they get money flowing into the economy, where people can trade value for value and attend to their material needs, etc etc. most charity is not as effective as simply achieving some equity in income distribution, or barring that just overall hi…

Doesn't that imply an EA enthusiast earning to give at a wall street hedge fund is doubly good, because they're charitably giving mosquito nets to developing nations while engaging in commerce and making money flow around the economy?

I think charitable giving has mostly secondary or tertiary benefits and those are mostly "trickle down" or just velocity of money effects. it gets some hoarded wealth into circulation which was a big issue the last 20 years with lower rates and quantitative easing etc, creating so much hoarded cash (look at corporate cash balances and hedge fund / VC / PE assets the last 10 years as a clue)

like the covid vaccines weren't possible because charity, but because science, the two are in no way equivalent. and there is evidence (not proof) from the last 150 years that capitalism enables science at a much higher multiple than charitable giving.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried and the geometry of conscience

#96

Post by guilhas »

chaosbolt wrote: post #21
xiphias2 wrote: post #8

There's a guy in the clear stealing billions of dollars and nothing happens. People go to prison for stealing a car, this is literally 1000000 times bigger and he's not even arrested. He belongs to prison for a life time. All the other talk about crypto / regulation is just hiding how corrupt the system is for not arresting this guy instantly.

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…

Maybe the victims can get some millions from Alex Jones

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried and the geometry of conscience

#97

Post by etcet »

morelisp wrote: post #43
simple-thoughts wrote: post #20

Effective 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.

I'm seeing so many of these posts and I just don't understand how this perception of EA has formed. What charities are you giving to? EA would say you should give to fight global poverty and improve global health as fighting malaria is more effective than say, giving to a local arts community. What's bankrupt, barely coherent, stupid, and technocratic about that?

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried and the geometry of conscience

#98

Post by bmitc »

williamcotton wrote: post #76
bmitc wrote: post #3

Earlier 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.

Do you feel morally superior to Effective Altruists?

No.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried and the geometry of conscience

#99

Post by tsimionescu »

versteegen wrote: post #83
tsimionescu wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easy to see that this logic leads to a Zeno's paradox where you can never donate anything because it would cut into potential future profits that you could donate in the future. Since it leads to contradiction, it is obviously wrong in some of its assumptions.

No, because you are talking about compounding returns (which I was not), but improving people's lives today gives far greater long-term benefits than investing the money at reasonable return and donating more in the future, for well-known reasons.

In your post above, you justified not giving 1B to charity because it could be bet until it raised to 150B. But there is no reason why, by the same logic, you couldn't justify playing that 150B to raise it to any number rather than giving it away to charity today.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried and the geometry of conscience

#100

Post by zajio1am »

zajio1am wrote: post #91
simple-thoughts wrote: post #20

Effective 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…

> From an EA perspective, SBF made a morally correct gamble since his intent was to donate all the winnings. EA perspective is not limited to one specific moral foundation (in this case act utilitarianism), it is a general idea that if you are going to be altruistic (for whatever reason), you should rationally focus on how to get best 'benefit to others' for your money. EA is not moral philosophy, it is altruistic st…

Relevant Scott's comment on the article: https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=6797#comment-1943706
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