I did think Harris could have been slightly more aggressive in his questioning (as in, some level above zero). E.g., why would MacAskill even suggest that SBF might have have been altruistic in his motivations, even though we now know about the profligate and indulgent lifestyle that SBF led? MacAskill had to have known about that behavior at the time (why didn't it make him suspicious?).
And why was MacAskill trying to ingratiate himself with Elon Musk so that SBF could put several billion dollars (not even his in the first place) towards buying Twitter? Contributing towards Musk's purchase of Twitter was the best EA use of several billion dollars? That was going to save more lives than any other philanthropic opportunity? Based on what analysis?
After listening, here are my thoughts on the podcast (times refer roughly to youtube timestamps):[1]
Recap[2]
Personal Thoughts
So there's not an actual deep-dive into what happened with SBF and FTX, and how much Will or figures in EA actually knew. Perhaps the podcast was trying to cover too much ground in 80 minutes, or perhaps Sam didn't want to come off as too hostile of a host? I feel like both a talking about the whole thing at an oddly abstract level, and not referencing the evidence that's come out in court.
While I also agree with both that EA principles are still good, and that most EAs are doing good in the world, there's clearly a connection between EA - or at least a bastardised, naïvely maximalist view of it - and SBF. The prosecution and the judge seemed to take the view that SBF was a high risk of doing the same or a similar thing again in the future, and that he has not shown remorse. This makes sense if Sam was acting in the way he did because he thought he was doing the right thing, and the fact that it was an attitude rather than a 'rational calculation' doesn't make it less driven by ideas.
So I think that's where I've ended up on this (I'm not an expert on financials, or what precise laws FTX broke, and how their attempted scheme operated or how often they were brazenly lying for. Feels like those with an outside view are pretty damn negative on SBF). I think trying to fix the name 'EA' or 'not EA' to what SBF and the FTX team believed is pretty unhelpful. I think Ellison and SBF had a very naïve, maximalist view of the world and their actions. They believed they had special ability and knowledge to act in the world, and to break existing rules and norms in order to make the world better if they saw it, even if this incurred high risks, if their expectation was that it would work out in EV terms. An additional error here, and perhaps where the 'Hubris' theory does play in, is that there was no error mechanism to correct these beliefs. Even after the whole collapse, and a 25-year sentence, it still seems to me that SBF thinks he made the 'right' call and got unlucky.
My takeaway is that this cluster of beliefs[5] is dangerous and the EA community should develop an immune system to reject these ideas. Ryan Carey refers to this as 'risky beneficentrism', and I think part of 'Third-Wave' EA should be about rejecting this cluster of ideas, making this publicly known, and disassociating EA from the individuals, leaders, or organisations who still hold on to it in the aftermath of this entire debacle.
For clarity Sam refers to Sam Harris, and SBF refers to Sam Bankman-Fried
Not necessarily in order, I've tried to group similar points together
I think this makes some sense if you view EA as a set of ideas/principles, less so if you view EA as a set of people and organisations
During this section especially I kinda wanted to shout at my podcast when Will asked rhetorically "was he lying to me that whole time?" the answer is yes Will, it seems like they were. The code snippets from Nishad Singh and Gary Wang that the prosecution shared are pretty damning, for example.
See the following link in the text to Ryan Carey's post. But I think the main dangerous ideas to my mind are:
1) Naïve consequentialism
2) The ability and desire to rapidly change the world
3) A rejection of existing norms and common-sense morality
4) No uncertainty about whether the values above or the empirical consequences of the actions
5) Most importantly, no feedback or error correction mechanism for any of the above.
Thanks for this summary. I listened to this yesterday & browsed through the SH subreddit discussion, and I'm surprised that this hasn't received much discussion on here. Perhaps the EA community is talked out about this subject, which, fair enough. But as far as I can tell, it's one of Will's first at-length public remarks on SBF, so it feels discussion-worthy to me.
I agree that the discussion was oddly vague given all the actual evidence we have. I don't feel like going into much detail but a few things I noticed:
Thanks for the summary. One nitpick:
To be fair to Will, he does acknowledge that Nishad's insurance fund code "seems like really quite clear fraud", if comparatively minor.
As for the other code snippets in your link -- the "backdoor" -- Nishad and Gary said the intention was to support Alameda's role as a backstop liquidity provider (which FTX was heavily dependent on in its early days to function):