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Maybe there's something deeply wrong with the core philosophy of crypto? FTX is EA's one big scandal - but FTX was a crypto company, and while the rest of EA is not obviously fraudulent, the rest of crypto is covered in frauds! Crypto scams are prevalent, exchanges collapsing and coins rugpulling are a constant - the most popular exchange, Binance, was generally regarded as shadier than FTX and continues to operate with, iirc, unclear legal status. Most of crypto's popularity and price come from people seeing the coin go up and wanting to get rich, and making up weird sounding 'decentralization' reasons for why it's making them rich. It makes much more sense to blame crypto for FTX than EA.
To be clear, this doesn't prove crypto is bad - it's clearly significantly populated with scammers and groundless speculators, but that doesn't mean the original ideals or ethereum or w/e aren't useful anyway. And in a broader sense - again, frauds happen everywhere, much of accounting and finance exists as regulations to prevent fraud that would otherwise be ever-present, crypto's lack of that is just revealing why they were necessary in the first place, "crypto speedrunning the financial system".
"EA has both fraudsters and people willing to go along with them in it" isn't surprising, it's expected. "Being willing to do morally gray / black things is associated with success in crypto" also isn't surprising, it's expected. EA doesn't need to have any causal impact on the fraud for it to happen.
And - say one believes that HFT is just a legal way of taking other peoples' money via financial alchemy. Is what sam did really worse than that? Are SBF's ethics materially worse than those of a fast food company or 'actively managed fund' CEO, or are they just less well regulated?
To be clear - I'm not arguing sam isn't bad, and I'm not arguing EA is based, just that people who otherwise dislike EA (which I may also for very different reasons!) are using this to prove EA BAD in the same way that, like, iraq or epstein proves (from different angles) LIBS ARE MORALLY BANKRUPT, despite it not really connecting to their initial reasons for disliking it.
FTX is EA's only big anything, because nothing else EA has done has captured mainstream attention like FTX has.
My sense is that EA does not lack for scandals (CFAR and MIRI are basically walking scandals), they're just not big enough to be interesting, and it feels kind of unsportsmanlike to publicize them, because they're basically all about maladjusted misfits hurting themselves and one another.
Can you clarify what you mean here? I thought MIRI just wrote not very exciting math papers and CFAR is just another self help seminars for $5000 program.
Check this shit out (hat tip @DaseindustriesLtd). I don't know the objective truth behind the accusations, but there's more than enough grist for CFAR/MIRI to get absolutely dragged by the mainstream press if they had anywhere near the public prominence or power that FTX had.
Actual specifics I've identified in this story:
A mentally ill person who did psychadelics thinks MIRI is like Leverage and currently has assorted vague mental illness symptoms similar to the typical tiktok "I'm mentally ill" influencer.
Said mentally ill person attributes their mental problems to MIRI. "I had paranoid fantasies about a MIRI executive assassinating me...."
Multiple people at CFAR had mental health issues. One person took a seminar then did some crimes.
The word "corruption" is used with no specifics.
"I had disagreements...and there was quite a lot of effort to convince me of their position..." :O
Some anti-CFAR protesters were unruly and local cops in a rural area got really excited about trying out their SWAT gear: https://sfist.com/2019/11/19/four-people-in-guy-fawkes-masks-scare-sonoma-retreat/
"I was certainly socially discouraged from revealing things that would harm the “brand” of MIRI and CFAR, by executive people." :O
Leverage leverage leverage, it was like leverage. Did you hear leverage was bad? I want some of the attention that leverage girl got.
The allegations against Leverage are equally non-specific and mostly come down to "I didn't get the social status I was seeking."
https://medium.com/@zoecurzi/my-experience-with-leverage-research-17e96a8e540b
I do agree that some of these folks would be better off attending church than CFAR.
I've got to agree with @VelveteenAmbush.
Not sure how you are reading this stuff. All the discussion about social/mental engineering, and especially the Roko's basilisk 'we might destroy the world by talking about AI or writing a blog-post' stuff is just insane. Really blows me away how awful and evil these people seem.
I agree that CFAR/MIRI are weird and perhaps hold beliefs that differ from yours. But that's true of many folks. Did you know Muslims believe a powerful being is going to torture me (or perhaps a simulated me?) forever after I die because I do gay sex and didn't visit Mecca?
Yes I know Muslims believe weird and irrational things, so I don’t put much if any weight behind their thoughts and generally don’t care for their beliefs.
I used to think MIRI/CFAR and other associated groups had decent ideas - now I’m updating to put them in line with groups like Muslims. I don’t understand your point?
What I was originally responding to:
I do not generally characterize "believes things different from me" as a scandal. I guess you disagree?
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