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One curious thing I noticed about SBF on the Tyler Cowen podcast is that he had a very odd idea about the St. Petersburg Paradox. At the time, I found myself very much unable to steel man this.
I'll just interject here that to me, this sounds completely insane. For those less familiar with decision theory, this not an abstruse philosophical question - it's simply a mathematical fact with probability approaching 1 (specifically, 0.49^n for large n), SBF will destroy the world.
At the time I found this odd. Does SBF not understand Kelly betting? This twitter thread, unearthed from 2 years ago, suggests maybe he doesn't?
https://twitter.com/breakingthemark/status/1591114381508558849
I don't see how he, or Caroline, or the rest of his folks got to where they did without understanding kelly. Pretty sure you don't get to be a junior trader at Jane St. without understanding it.
My best attempt at a steelman is that because he's altruistic, the linear regime of his utility function goes a lot further than for Jeff Bezos or someone else with an expensive car collection. As in, imagine each individual has a sequence of things they can get with diminishing marginal utility - $u_0 > u_1 > ... > u_n > ...$, $u_n \rightarrow 0$ and each thing has unit cost. A greedy gambler has sublinear utility since they first buy u_0, then u_1, etc. By definition, $\sum_{i=0}^N u_i < N u_0$.
But since SBF is buying stuff for everyone, he gets $N u_0$.
Then again, this is still clearly wrong - eventually he runs out of people who don't have $u_0$, and he needs to start buying $u_1$. His utility is still diminishing.
Is there some esoteric branch of decision theory that I'm unfamiliar with - perhaps some strange many worlds interpretation - which suggests this isn't crazy? Is he just an innumerate fraud who truly believes in EA, but didn't understand the math?
I would love any insights the community can share.
I should read usernames more often. I responded to this before reading the username. Leaving it up, but user is perma banned. Do not create usernames like "bigdickpepe1488". They violate our discussion terms. The "bigdickpepe" is poor taste. But the "1488" thing as nazi thing is not ok. I've copied the whole original item because it was creating some good discussion, and this way it will be preserved if they delete their account. Nothing about their actual participation was bad, so I'm fine with them coming back under a different username.I messed up, didn't realize users can change their display name, so a ban is not necessary. Please change the display name.
Is being a nazi banned? Are you not allowed to advocate for the 14 words and Hitlerist National Socialism? If the answer is no to both cases, is it banned to identify your ideological bent in your username?
It seems like a fair request. He was not banned per say. He was given the option of returning under a different username. The vast majority of communities would not do this.
I agree that if this was to be enforced, this is the most light handed and respectful way of doing so. But that's not the topic of my contention. Which pertains to the impetus of the request, especially in light of the moderator comment accompanying it:
Why would it not be OK for a person to tag themselves as being a believer in a continued existence of white people and future for their children who also likes Adolf Hitler and David Lane?
The mod position here is, in my view, just nonsensical. You can be a nazi and argue for the destruction of European jewry, just don't wear the armband when talking about cryptocurrency? Not because nazis are banned... Just because... We don't like people labeling themselves... Even though that's what people have been doing for years...
My point here, if no other, would be that this is an inequal application of the ruleset. You can carry banners, like people have done, you can have your pet issues and mini crusades, like people do, but if your banner is a Swaztika, and if your pet issue is the jews, the mods take extra notice. Compared to topics like, for example, AI, which suffer from all the same issues, there is no similar action.
So, my question following that would be: Why? Why the disparate application of rules? The mods will say something along the lines of 'too much heat' or something else. And my question would be, for who? Who can't handle WotanWolf1488 talking about the housing crisis in Belgium? Who are these users perusing this webspace that need to be protected from '1488'?
In all honesty I don't think they exist. It's just mod bias. They have an aesthetic preference for American 1990's era decorum. There's no justification for it other than that.
You have some grounds on principle but there also should be some level "obnoxiously poor taste" filter. This is a forum that values the ability for diverse perspectives to come forward productively and attempts to not censor for viewpoint, it is not an absolutist free speech platform. There are probably effortful and yet still glaringly pro nazi usernames that I would be very willing to defend. BigDickPepe1488 is not that username. It is a name that can only be constructed to be maximally obnoxious to some group of people, and the standard here is no more obnoxious than necessary. Being maximally obnoxious to people does not add to the ability for diverse perspectives to come together productively.
I don't disagree, I just don't like people maintaining the pretense of objectivity when it comes to rules and mods when that is simply not the case. And the case is instead that we are collectively adhering to some boomer social justice aesthetics that demonize a 100-year-old political figure ahead of everything else because we've seen a lot about that guy on TV.
It just seems so absurd in relation to how much people like chastising 'conservatism' for being 'progressive-liberalism just 10 years out of date' when the majority of people seem content to play by the exact same 'conservative' ruleset when they are in power.
The Motte, AKA Conservareddit. 10 years out of date.
This seems like quite a thing to draw out of not wanting our standards for discourse to include blatant and known trolling names. Objective isn't the right word for what the moderation of this place is going for, which is consistently content neutral but tone policing. No one accidentally names themselves "BigDickPepe1488", I'd go even further than the moderators here in saying that the "BigDickPepe" portion itself ought to be disallowed but I have idiosyncratic feelings about the range of usernames that make me cringe which include many of the ones at use here.
No, actually I think we have pretty good reasons to dislike that political figure. Feel free to make an effort post if you think our opinions on him are wrong and blue pilled. But that's not even what is at issue here, we have rules about being unnecessarily obnoxious that such a name trivially violates, if it helps to appeal to equal treatment something like KillAllChristians would also deserve to be moderated.
I must have missed it 10 years ago when Hitler references were really big with the red tribe and blue tribe was barely censoring them.
It's not.
That's not the case. From Amadan:
Mods are not content neutral.
And we have a pretty good reason to dislike Genghis Khan, that doesn't mean we place him as a central figure for our moral compass. Nor do we constantly fret about potential Mongol hordes when someone erects a gigantic statue of the guy in Mongolia. In fact, most users have pretty good reasons to dislike what they dislike. But that's not the point. The point is that some likes and dislikes are more equal than others because of mod subjectivity.
You don't actually have specific rules on this, as the mods have said. What you feel deserves to be moderated has no relevance to anything since you are not a mod and the mods apply their rules subjectively. And though I am sure the mods would step in for something obvious like that, it's not the point. The point was that when there is ambiguity, the rulings are not consistent.
You are missing the point. The reason why so many lament 'conservatism' and label it as being '10 years out of date liberals' is not primarily because of the content of their beliefs. It's because of where these beliefs come from. It's because of the 'conservatives' complete lack of contextual awareness and understanding. These 'conservatives' don't know where their views come from or why. They don't see themselves as the end result of the culture wars of the generations that came before. They instead see themselves as being stalwarts in an ongoing battle that they are genuinely fighting to win. Instead of recognizing that all of their firmly held beliefs are just the undertow of those who are actually in charge. And that their 'conservative' inheritance is just the white flag of their predecessors.
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