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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

#31

Post by ZeroGravitas »

> 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 it to 1 individual and using that to support the system.

I can see why that works if you think you are likely part of the concentrated wealth, but it seems like it would fall apart under the level of scrutiny that effective altruists alledgedly put in.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried and the geometry of conscience

#33

Post by synu »

braingenious wrote: post #25

I cannot imagine writing something this embarrassing and deeming it worthy of public consumption. There is a very, very weird phenomenon of people that consider themselves to be very clever inexplicably carrying water for others that also consider themselves to be very clever, regardless of the material conditions or facts at hand. It’s like Scott Aaronson is applying to be in a club that Mr Fried is the bouncer for.…

The best way to drive social media engagement as a “thought leader” is pick a slightly contrarian viewpoint and then just keep doubling down forever, no matter what. People will flock to you who want external validation of whatever they wish was true, and you can build a quite successful brand.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried and the geometry of conscience

#34

Post by tsimionescu »

versteegen wrote: post #22
googlryas wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SBF literally said he would wager the world for another world with 51% odds. There's no amount of money that will satisfy someone like that, even if his EA statements were heartfelt. Why would he give a billion dollars to charities, when he could risk it, flip it into $20B, and give it to charity? Why would he give $20B to charity when he could risk it, and flip it into $150B? etc...

> Why would he give a billion dollars to charities, when he could risk it, flip it into $20B, and give it to charity? Why would he give $20B to charity when he could risk it, and flip it into $150B? etc... But that would be the rational thing to do... $1B less donated to charity is only roughly 1/20 as bad as $20B donated to charity is good, because there are also other people donating large amounts. In other words i…

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.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried and the geometry of conscience

#35

Post by jansan »

> 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.

May I just mention the "philantropist" Bernie Madoff here?

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried and the geometry of conscience

#36

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

jansan wrote: post #35

> 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. May I just mention the "philantropist" Bernie Madoff here?

It amazes me that otherwise smart people take this argument so seriously.

If I'm a dirty doctor selling fentanyl to addicts, but I donate 50% of my income to Narcotics Anonymous, am I moral?

Like a child can understand this doesn't make any sense, but people turn themselves into intellectual pretzels to rationalize this as virtue.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried and the geometry of conscience

#37

Post by drowsspa »

As someone with negative self-esteem and a whole list of psychological issues, I don't understand how people can have so much little self-respect to the point of ~simping~ for those "generous billionaires" and actually believing their good intentions even after they've stolen billions of dollars.

Cynicism is not that common sense, it seems.

Anyway, what a weird, weird post. (and what's with the random insertion about harassment?)

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried and the geometry of conscience

#38

Post by sschueller »

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…

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_Rich

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried and the geometry of conscience

#39

Post by baxtr »

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,…

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.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried and the geometry of conscience

#40

Post by Gatsky »

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…

My comment was about how there is often more to the story than a simple bad guy narrative when someone acts in reprehensible ways. You seem to be saying the same thing, so I agree with the sentiment. As to the role that EA played in it, I don’t know enough to say, and you don’t provide any sources. My point was that I don’t think he was pretending to be an EAist.
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