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Investors in Situational Awareness deserved to lose their shirts

economist.com

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Re: Investors in Situational Awareness deserved to lose their shirts

#11

Post by openquery »

I don't understand the point of this piece. There is nothing breaking or remotely interesting which we didn't already know.

Mind you I don't particularly care about Aschenbrenner or his fund but it feels to me like typical journalists reporting on hindsight without any sort of skin in the game. "Hhm, how could you be so dumb so as to trust your money to a 22 year old".

Peter Thiel did the same with Zuck and like him or hate him he did pretty well.

If you want to show how smart you are hash your predictions, post them publicly with a commitment to reveal by a certain date and then show the world how this was so obvious in hindsight.

Re: Investors in Situational Awareness deserved to lose their shirts

#12

Post by jandrese »

simianwords wrote: post #4
glitchc wrote: post #3

Read the bio. Found it (emphasis mine): > While at Columbia, he co-founded the university's effective altruism (EA) chapter.[5] Just another smart, yet ethically challenged, individual. Nothing to see here.

How is he ethically challenged? This looks like an accusation that doesn't have merit

Effective Altruism is one of those things that sounds smart on the surface, but in practice is a yellow flag. The fact that he started the club is a red flag.

In short, Effective Altruism says you don't engage in charity until you have sufficient means to actually make a difference. Basically, you leverage capitalism to accumulate enough wealth to actually be able to solve a big problem, then you go all in on solving that problem. Sounds great right?

In the real world these people never accumulate enough wealth to actually start solving problems. Even when they become billionaires. In practice it is a convenient excuse to act like the most depraved capitalist while still pretending to sit on the high horse and talk down to people who simply try to help with the means available to them.

Re: Investors in Situational Awareness deserved to lose their shirts

#13

Post by skavi »

glitchc wrote: post #3

Read the bio. Found it (emphasis mine): > While at Columbia, he co-founded the university's effective altruism (EA) chapter.[5] Just another smart, yet ethically challenged, individual. Nothing to see here.

why does involvement with EA imply being ethically challenged? i’m personally not involved, but on its face it seems better than not doing any kind of charitable work.

Re: Investors in Situational Awareness deserved to lose their shirts

#14

Post by ElProlactin »

> Good for Mr Aschenbrenner for chancing his arm. The mystery is what on earth his investors were thinking. Perhaps they weren’t. In which case, that would be more worrying than anything about Situational Awareness’s humbling.

The Economist should change its name to The Populist with this type of screed.

Here's the reality:

1. Lots of money is invested willy-nilly for all sorts of reasons (or no reason at all) in all sorts of dubious and poorly-managed vehicles.

2. Except for the profile of the fund manager and that this was AI, this failure wasn't all that special. The seed capital for the fund is reported to have been around $225 million and it was highly leveraged on top of significant gains so there's a whole class of LPs who probably aren't even going to lose anything on this. It's the people who put capital in more recently who are going to lose.

3. The people who will lose money investing in this fund are the type of people who have a full wardrobe. It's going to be a very long time before they "lose their shirts".

Re: Investors in Situational Awareness deserved to lose their shirts

#15

Post by skavi »

jandrese wrote: post #12
simianwords wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is he ethically challenged? This looks like an accusation that doesn't have merit

Effective Altruism is one of those things that sounds smart on the surface, but in practice is a yellow flag. The fact that he started the club is a red flag. In short, Effective Altruism says you don't engage in charity until you have sufficient means to actually make a difference. Basically, you leverage capitalism to accumulate enough wealth to actually be able to solve a big problem, then you go all in on solving…

can you support those claims?

Re: Investors in Situational Awareness deserved to lose their shirts

#16

Post by mmoustafa »

ElProlactin wrote: post #14

> Good for Mr Aschenbrenner for chancing his arm. The mystery is what on earth his investors were thinking. Perhaps they weren’t. In which case, that would be more worrying than anything about Situational Awareness’s humbling. The Economist should change its name to The Populist with this type of screed. Here's the reality: 1. Lots of money is invested willy-nilly for all sorts of reasons (or no reason at all) in all…

It is just the most visible “close call”. Most of the time we don’t hear about these incidents until they blow up, that is if we hear at all.

Re: Investors in Situational Awareness deserved to lose their shirts

#19

Post by kimixa »

like_any_other wrote: post #9
glitchc wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As per the article, he formed a trading company without any background in investing, and once his investments tanked, he sold the stocks for pennies on the dollar to a financial firm, leaving investors holding the bag while pocketing trading fees associated with a $45B USD portfolio.

How is effective altruism related? I skimmed their wiki page [1], but didn't find anything endorsing such actions. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_altruism

No, but to most people the only exposure they've had to the term "Effective Altruism" (if they've even heard of the it) is morality-washing personal greed that never quite seems to get past the "accumulation" or "self-serving boondoggle" stages.

As a brand it's tainted. You might argue unfairly, but that's never mattered in "public brand perception" before.

Re: Investors in Situational Awareness deserved to lose their shirts

#20

Post by [deleted] »

skavi wrote: post #13
glitchc wrote: post #3

Read the bio. Found it (emphasis mine): > While at Columbia, he co-founded the university's effective altruism (EA) chapter.[5] Just another smart, yet ethically challenged, individual. Nothing to see here.

why does involvement with EA imply being ethically challenged? i’m personally not involved, but on its face it seems better than not doing any kind of charitable work.

[deleted]
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