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suy  1yr ago (astralcodexten.substack.com)   Edited 1yr ago   3856 thread views

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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I think you kinda underestimate how easy is to manipulate a grown adult outside of their area of expertise.

Completely agree. I've devoted my previous posts to try to get people to doubt things they assume as 100% certain, and the end result is that no one wants to do that.

It seems pretty clear to me that even the most rational and intelligent people on the planet will believe whatever they want to believe as long as it feels good.

I think the point there was not that no one wants to do that, but no one wants to assign a profound importance to banalities.

Are you 100% certain it was a banality?

I'm 98.45730468302835030019% certain.

Good. So you accept it's possible there's importance in the nuance.

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