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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

#21

Post by JumpCrisscross »

openquery wrote: post #11

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…

> don't understand the point of this piece

>> What, then, to make of Situational Awareness’s plunge? ...Mr Aschenbrenner was hardly alone in such bets; over 80% of fund managers responding to Bank of America’s latest monthly survey named “long global semiconductors” as the most crowded trade. The big worry is that this trade’s whiplash-inducing reversal will have set other investment firms teetering, too.

If Citadel hadn't stepped in, Situational Awareness may have had to fire sell tens of billions of dollars of assets. Assets others have leveraged positions in. That, in turn, could have triggered margin calls and a potential credit or even bank crisis.

Re: Investors in Situational Awareness deserved to lose their shirts

#22

Post by pingou »

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…

"Giving What We Can" pledge is to give 10% of your income to charity.

Re: Investors in Situational Awareness deserved to lose their shirts

#23

Post by [deleted] »

openquery wrote: post #11

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…

[deleted]

Re: Investors in Situational Awareness deserved to lose their shirts

#24

Post by JumpCrisscross »

mholm wrote: post #5

> He reported returns of 439% for the first half of 2026 > which posted a loss of 67% in July So it's still up 44% this year? The article notes this, but seems unnecessarily adversarial against an investor who is still wildly successful.

> it's still up 44% this year?

Devil is in the details of what Citadel paid for its positions, whether there are any performance tails/clawbacks, how and when the GP charges fees, et cetera.

Aschenbrenner is almost certainly up. I'd be surprised if his median LP is breaking even.

Re: Investors in Situational Awareness deserved to lose their shirts

#25

Post by ElProlactin »

mmoustafa wrote: post #16
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.

But there was no "close call". His fund was not systemically important. It was mostly public equity investments in some of the largest names in the market that were highly leveraged.

Re: Investors in Situational Awareness deserved to lose their shirts

#26

Post by JumpCrisscross »

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.

> why does involvement with EA imply being ethically challenged?

Because almost everyone prominent in the movement has had some combination of lack of judgment and morals. There various terms for rationally pursuing philanthropy; associating with effective altruism involves embracing its ideas, people and culture.

Re: Investors in Situational Awareness deserved to lose their shirts

#27

Post by jandrese »

skavi wrote: post #15
jandrese wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

One has to only look at the actual participants to find ample examples:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQZWMmINqxo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S54GrXDjokg

https://www.thephilosopher1923.org/post/a-mirror-for-tech-br...

https://www.persuasion.community/p/the-problem-with-effectiv...

Re: Investors in Situational Awareness deserved to lose their shirts

#28

Post by kgwgk »

openquery wrote: post #11

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…

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

The piece is published in a weekly magazine. It may include some interesting things that nobody knew one week ago.

Re: Investors in Situational Awareness deserved to lose their shirts

#29

Post by platinumrad »

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…

I have a lot of problems with Aschenbrenner and the "Rationalist" community as a whole, but this is not a factually correct characterization of Effective Altruism.
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