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Does the Sam Bankman-Fried transformation into Bankrupt Fraud tell us something about the failures of effective altruism?
I saw Bankman mentioned on themotte a number of times over the past two years. I’m pretty sure he was mentioned over on SSC, too. After Scott, he was the person who immediately came to mind when I thought of figures associated with EA. Many normies and finance types will only think of Bankman when EA is brought up. (I refuse to use the “SBF” acronym because it was consciously chosen as imitation of HSBC and other institutions, and despite his name the man is not a bank.)
I think the EA’s failure to have any effective impact on Bankman’s moral calculus is its complete absence of emotional salience. Traditional moral systems usually try to maximize moral salience. (Stoicism was short-lived and immersed in a Hellenistic culture that emphasized honor through salient stories, and while “mindfulness” is emotional neutral, traditional Buddhism emphasizes benevolence through stories.)
Consider Christianity. Its stories are designed for emotional salience, using novelty/paradox/shock in key moments to illustrate the moral point. Mankind’s Hero was born in a manger to a lowly family, faced persecution from the very people who claimed moral superiority, took on followers who were poor and irrelevant, and died the death of a painful criminal for the purpose of saving all of humanity. The paradoxes and surprises are meant to enhance the emotional experience, and thus the effect, of the moral point. Within the Gospel narrative, we have parables, also emphasizing salience. You have the wealthy and high status patrician who looks down on his lower class sinful neighbor, and the latter is announced as just and not the former. We have metaphors involving specks in the eye, wheat cultivation, farm animals, and storing grain, all of which would be immediately understood by the target audience. The parable form itself can be construed as the most expedient way of expressing a moral point to the largest possible audience.
While Effective Altruism may be logically sound, in the sense that the optimal actions are clearly delineated and argued, it may also not be very effective in obtaining an end result. There is an ocean of difference between a logical assessment of morality and the effectively-felt transformation of an individual into a moral actor who follows the moral commandments. To walk over this ocean of difference or to part its waters requires a moral system (if not a religion, close to it) that is focused on making morality felt. Otherwise, as in the case of Bankman-Fried, our passions and our greeds prevent us from following through on what we ought. This conflict over Ought and Will is, of course, explored throughout the New Testament, with the inability to perfectly follow moral commandments (the law) being solved in the Person of Christ, who makes morality possible to follow through his being born (a human) and through his friendship (fellowship), which effects the salience necessary to turn the follower moral.
I don't know if it tells us anything new, but I do think that it seems to confirm/reinforce many long-standing critiques of the EA movement, and utilitarianism in general.
That is that even before before menu-gate and the sex scandals, the EA movement always seemed to be more concerned with helping silicon valley rationalists feel good about themselves, painting, slacktivists as the real heroes than it was about doing the most good with the time/money allotted. As other users have observed Bankman-Fried being revealed as a dishonest grifter doesn't actually violate any EA principals, if anything the grift was baked in from the start.
As for the rest of the post about stories, that deserves an effort post in itself.
I don't know enough to know if he was a grifter, or at least started out as one. What this whole mess has done is to reinforce my prejudices around:
Fortunes that are electronic in nature, not hard money. Be that stock shares, valuations of how much your company is worth, crypto or the like. One day this guy was worth billions (allegedly), the very next day that has all gone "poof" and nobody knows where. I don't think Bezos, Musk, etc. are really billionaires as it's all based on notional worth. Yeah, Amazon is valued at X whatever, but as everyone admits, try selling those shares and the price will plummet so the X whatever becomes Y, and then Z.
Crypto in general. It's all fairy gold that turns to leaves in the morning. Now it looks like a lot of people sank real money into this guy's playset bank/trading firm, which he then used to try and shore up the holes in the dike, and it's all gone missing and nobody knows where but you ain't getting your life savings back ever, dude.
EA in general, but I've bitched and moaned about them several times over several years before. Short version: when you think you are smarter than everyone else who tried doing charity over the course of human history and this time you are going to do it right, then that old saw about pride going before a fall applies. And now you've had your name blackened by association with this débacle.
The whole rationalist/rationalist-adjacent community setup, where Bankman-Fried and his friends/colleagues/employees arose or were associated with. They were very young, they considered themselves very smart, and hot diggity if you don't want to sound like a cult, then maybe you shouldn't be doing shit that can be mistaken for a cult. Too much money, too much intellectual vanity, and belief in the new bright shiny stuff like crypto because it was so modern and involved computers and high-level maths, not enough experience or old dumb dinosaurs on board to go "wait a minute now, what are we doing again?" so when it all started to go down the plughole, he panicked, did dumb shit to try and cover it, didn't tell anyone, and seems to have hoped that magically someone would pull a rabbit out of the hat to save the whole edifice. (Whoever this Chinese guy is, he seems to have played the whole game perfectly to take out a competitor). Naturally, because they all thought they were Really Smart, they acted like gamblers throwing good money after bad just like ordinary swindlers and embezzlers: if I move the money from this account to that account to cover the hole, I'll make it all back and can replace the missing funds before anyone knows. No, they couldn't.
Holy crap, guys, I do mean it about the cult stuff. Or a Ponzi scheme. This wasn't a house of cards, this was an entire real estate development project of cards.
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