121–130 of 217 posts
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Elon and Zuck aren't comparable - other than earning billions from scalable enterprise.
I think capital gains are not really 'earning' something, in the standard English use of the word.
I think it's fair to say earned when it comes to the literal founder.
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And they will ... it's just that they'll provide false numbers to audits, their board will be them and their friends, and they'll keep track of their money as it makes its way into their pockets. I guess we need more blockchain! But what business will have 100% of their relationships, contracts and transactions publicly visible?
Prosecution for factually lying (e.g. "providing false numbers to audits") is much easier than prosecution for intentionally lying (i.e. fraud).
I took the comments to mean they wanted something to stop this from occurring, and I don't think that works well, criminals are going to do what criminals do. You can prosecute afterwards, but you can't easily stop them before they do it, see Theranos, WireCard, Nikola etc etc.
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It's an indictment of EA because many prominent EA people were associated with FTX/Sam. That shows poor judgement and, on some level, EA is about smart people making judgements about long-term good. How can we trust them to make those judgements when they decide to hitch their wagon to FTX?
Prominent investors, politicians, athletes, etc were associated with FTX/Sam. Should we lose faith in Sequoia, etc, etc, etc?
> The amount raised contained numerical references to marijuana and oral sex: $420.69 million raised from 69 investors. An article published by one of FTX’s investors, Sequoia, called that fundraising a “meme round,” referring to the embedded jokes. Is Sequoia going to need to rebrand itself after this? Sure does raise some questions about their judgement and professionalism. Hey Investors, we're raising a round of a…
If they did then their record is looking pretty poor right now.
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How was he not doing EA? He was lying AND donating to causes. I'm very pro-EA but that's a weird claim.
Because EA is about overall impact. (At least that's one strand of thought in EA, for those that lean more towards utilitarianism.) He hurt so many people and caused so much distrust that his overall impact is negative. It is therefore against the principles of EA. That's not the No True Scotsman fallacy.
I don’t believe that, but seems equally valid
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It's an indictment of EA because many prominent EA people were associated with FTX/Sam. That shows poor judgement and, on some level, EA is about smart people making judgements about long-term good. How can we trust them to make those judgements when they decide to hitch their wagon to FTX?
(1) Any theory that encourages people to suspect working directly on important local causes that are meaningful to them, but instead, seek out the highest paying jobs in order to donate to EA causes is just hiding a special kind of ponzi scheme ("get more people in to fund the good work of the current people"). (2) EA creates an excuse to act outrageously evil "for the good of the longterm"
2. Contrary to what you think, there's nothing about effective altruism that requires/wants you to donate to effective altruism organizations. Yes, there are effective altruism funds that effectively collect money and donate them to the most impactful causes, but there are also sites like givewell that tells you which charities are doing the most impactful work. I don't see how the latter is ponzi-like in any way. Even the former isn't really ponzi-like unless there's high administrative overhead (ie. most of the money isn't getting disbursed to charities and is instead spent on admin expenses).
3. This whole comment feels like an attack on a strawman on effective altruism and/or earning to give. The EA people I know of definitely do not give me the impression that they're willing to commit crimes so they can divert more money to EA/charities. I'll admit that I'm not deep into EA, so it's possible that I didn't witness their secret meetings where they they do discuss this. What you're doing feels like attacking utilitarians (eg. Peter Singer or John Stuart Mill) by saying that the logical conclusion to their ideology "creates an excuse to act outrageously evil "for the good of the longterm""
Dump your life savings into a crypto exchange based in the Bahamas, sure. But god forbid you invest $20k in a startup without being an “accredited investor”
> The amount raised contained numerical references to marijuana and oral sex: $420.69 million raised from 69 investors. An article published by one of FTX’s investors, Sequoia, called that fundraising a “meme round,” referring to the embedded jokes. Is Sequoia going to need to rebrand itself after this? Sure does raise some questions about their judgement and professionalism. Hey Investors, we're raising a round of a…
I mean how did dozens of big investment firms put money into this thing without even seeing the balance sheet? Which would have immediately exposed them as fraudulent
Just a general statement on people commenting on this saga: Sam wasn't doing effective altruism. He was lying about doing effective altruism. It's weird to me that people talk about this as an indictment of EA...but this rings similar to me as claiming that this is an indictment of DeFi or cryptocurrency generally. Sam/Caroline weren't doing DeFi, and neither were they really doing anything related to cryptocurrency.…
How was he not doing EA? He was lying AND donating to causes. I'm very pro-EA but that's a weird claim.
Is el Mencho doing EA? He gave some toys and even suggested that they will stop killing priests.
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How was he not doing EA? He was lying AND donating to causes. I'm very pro-EA but that's a weird claim.
Prominent EAers like McAskill have said (before this scandal) that EA is only valid if the money is earned honestly. They say that they never intended EA to be "steal to give".
SBF definitely seems like a sociopath in this model.
BTW: the best criticism I have read on Effective Altruism is: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/criticism-of-criticism...