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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.
Maybe I haven't followed the story closely enough, but wasn't Sam more getting high on his own supply than betraying his principles? It seems to me more like Sam was doing exactly what Utilitarianism/EA would teach, that it either agreed with his genetic/existing temperament or penetrated his soul so thoroughly that he did what he was taught to do.
-- Utilitarianism teaches risk neutrality. A 51% chance of 100 is better than a 100% chance of 50. Sam took massive risks, they failed, but that doesn't mean they didn't align with EA principles.
-- Utilitarianism teaches that everything is permitted, provided it is justified by numbers that increase overall utility (risk weighted!) then there is no prohibition on lying to your partners and customers. If (and there's no reason to think anything else) Sam thought the whole thing would work out just fine for everyone, then it was within EA principles to lie to others about where their money was going. After all they'd get their money back and then some!
-- EA (especially associated ex-risk theorists) teaches that making money is to be done so that you can give it away, earning to give is lauded. One doesn't make money to build a long lasting company, one makes money as fast as one can so that one can support AI alignment research to the greatest amount possible. Sam wasn't trying to build Goldman Sachs or JP Morgan, what would be the point? 100 years from now we'll be paperclips if he doesn't give enough money to Yud, and we'll have fully automated luxury gay space communism if he does.
-- EA does not value ownership rights; if your money could do more good somewhere else it would be positive for it to be taken from you and directed somewhere else.
It seems to me that, if we're going to drag EA into this, we're seeing exactly what it teaches in action, not a betrayal of its principles because they were insufficiently inculcated.
Yeah, some commentary around this whole fiasco did remind me of the question posed about would it be okay to rob banks if you donated all the money to good causes (those being defined as EA causes)?
I think in this instance we can see that bank robbing was considered okay. There are people arguing that grants made from Bankman-Fried's stolen money should not be revoked, or the organisations expected to pay them back, since the money was and is going to good causes. All the good would be lost if the money has to be paid back.
That's "the end justifies the means" and uh, no.
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