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suy  1yr ago (astralcodexten.substack.com)   Edited 1yr ago   3832 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 can't stop thinking about this whole situation. These are, metaphorically, my people. They are about my age. They share my interests. They hang around similar online communities. Hell, SBF even looks and dresses like me (which is to say, poorly). How did they end up running a multi-billion dollar crypto empire? Was it just luck? Good market timing? Family ties and connections? I would have said that they're just smarter, but I think the events of the last week have shot holes in that hypothesis.

Why can't I get it out of my mind? Is it because I feel some sort of injustice at how the Ivy-league well-connected have life on easy mode? Is it because Caroline reminds me of the type of girl I always imagined I'd end up with but never met? Maybe it's just because there's nothing else going on in the world and this "happening" has expanded to fill my attention span. Hardly an idle moment goes by where I don't see that stupid wood nymph costume flash before my eyes or hear, "enormously valuable existence," "double or nothing coin flips and high leverage," go through my head.

It hasn't interfered with my normal productivity, but I don't think I watched a single minute of football this weekend.

The term "there but for the grace of God go I," comes to mind.

Crypto in particular has made and lost many fortunes and the only common thread I've seen running through it all is appetite for/tolerance of risk.

You almost never see anyone make it big in Crypto using a measured, conservative strategy.

Hell, running an exchange is supposed to BE the only safe moneymaking strategy but we see where that has gotten them.

I think running the exchange was kinda safe (maybe not making them tons of money though).

What wasn’t safe was the Alameda trading firm.

What made it (probably) a crime was plundering the customer deposits of the safe business to prop up the risky trading firm.

That's what I'm saying, though. Companies that are willing to just quietly run a functional exchange are doing pretty well (for now).

But so many in the space have a desire to place bigger and bigger bets rather than accepting consistent returns and tying on the trading firm to the exchange probably seemed like a GREAT idea for a while.

But so many in the space have a desire to place bigger and bigger bets rather than accepting consistent returns and tying on the trading firm to the exchange probably seemed like a GREAT idea for a while.

Indeed and I think this is the real problem for EA. The traditionalist critiques of utilitarianism that rationalists have been dismissing as "uncharitable straw-men" have been revealed as flesh and blood all along.

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