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Scott Alexander on Sam Bankman-Fried, FTX and Effective Altruism

astralcodexten.substack.com

I made this a top level post because I think people here might want to discuss it but you can remove it if it doesn't meet your standards.

Edit: removed my opinion of Scott from the body

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It's nice to see #5: various examples of EA-adjacent figures arguing that shady dealings aren't justifiable for effectiveness. A common thread in responses (such as the whole "Chernobyl" thread on the frontpage" has been that sort of suspicion of EA. They're utilitarians, which means they must be able to justify anything, and SBF is proof of what we all suspected was going on. No. This isn't Nam, this is bowling, there are rules. Thinking that EA cause area so-and-so is underserved is not license to steal/deceive/etc., and I'll be glad to have these statements the next time someone asserts that it is.

To be fair, the LessWrong, reddit, and tumblr ratspheres have also had lengthy periods at-best debating and at-worst lauding "dark arts" of rationality. On the other hand, as far as I know none of this group fell on the 'pro'-Dark Arts side.