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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.
They are effective alright, and that's the problem.
There's a tremendous amount of really wild commentary of this story emerging on Twitter (1; 2; 3 etc). I expect most of the dirt currently descending on Sam and his roommates to be revealed as nonsense and flake off, but on the other hand, the worst parts never to surface. (After all, the guy who could stun Matt Levine with his savage cynicism, and invent this Madoff-tier bullshit, is bound to have more hidden depths).
Emad's speculation is probably in the former class, but directionally might be in the latter:
I agree with this bottom line. Red flags should have been enough: from Singer's flirtation with infanticide, to weird sex stuff in group houses and cult patterns around MIRI/CFAR, to the Bostromian Vulnerable World, to hushed discussions of «pivotal act outside the Overton Window» and collapsing alternative chip supply chains to ease «global governance», to the general «policy wonk» regulatory hard-on, – those people are not good no matter how they present themselves in affiliated outlets and what nice words they say. This is how evil looks historically. Not generic cruelty, callousness, petty narcissism and even psychopathy we are used to, not mere weakness of will or intellect, but well-functioning people with actually hazardous moral convictions.
Sam is a consistent effective altruist, deserving of his poster boy status, just like his go-gooder advisor William MacAskill (and like another bean counter from philosophy, Toby Ord) is a poster boy for Utilitarian Intellectuals; and I do hope this causes people to downgrade their faith in that community in general.
Despite what Joshua Achiam says and you do too, the issue is exactly that they are rather effective, while their means and goals are suspect – they are displaying generic instrumental power-seeking behavior, and the nihilistic absence of scruples, typical of people with messiah delusions, like Bolsheviks. The effect of Bankman's stunt doesn't end with burning crypto ecosystem after directly financing EAs and some Dems. Consider that HackerNews sheep, representative of the gainfully employed mid-career SV techie Outer Party zeitgeist, are bleating the expected lines:
This is in line with weapons race against (speculative) China AGI threat, and leads us straight into the Singleton's maw. Buh-but it'll be a good Singleton, amirite comrade? Maybe, comrade, sit tight and watch. In its embryonic stage it's nothing more than a larva…
I have one additional thing to say. People like @TheDag and many others seem to be under the impression that EA is a vague grey tribe moral movement that supports every tenet of the essentially Yudkowskian and Extropianist LessWrong thought. This is not so. They have arrived at a coherent and convenient philosophy with peculiar alien priorities, allegedly through shutting up and calculating. E.g. MacAskill is very cold towards cryonics and focuses on perpetuating replicator dynamics, just on a cosmic scale, but without regard for individual kin lines (because utility is utility). And his advisee Bankman-Fried has the following to say:
Benthamism is incompatible with my Russian Cosmist moral imperatives. I trust Mark Zuckerberg or Peter Thiel a million times more than I trust those people. And speaking of Thiel, he has just recently delivered an excellent and very brave, if rambling, speech:
Amen to that. @TheDag, do not ask for Messiah. You'll get a false one.
reported for being a quality contribution.
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