There's a story people tell about a new employee at a large investment bank. Some time in their first few weeks, they make a mistake that costs the company ten million dollars.
"I'm sorry," says the new hire, "I'll completely understand if you fire me for this."
"Why would I fire you?", their boss replies, "I just spent ten million dollars training you!"
This obviously applies here. Someone who has handled billions of dollars has given evidence of their competence even if it ended in fraud. If you believe they are genuinely aligned with EA (which I do without reservation in Caroline's case), and that the fraud was not intentional on their part (seems very likely), and are unconcerned with reputation and PR (Austin is), then what this looks like is a serious error in judgment, which cost billions of dollars (and jail time) training them. If you oversee them for a short time and their judgment is greatly improved (I'm not sure this amount of evidence should be convincing), then it can be an entirely reasonable decision, picking up a $100 bill off the sidewalk that everyone else sees as tainted.
Common sense is often uncommon, and often nonsensical. Austin may have poor judgment, but this is absolutely not "rank incompetence."
No shit rationalists dismiss animal welfare more. The people who don't, are far more likely to call themselves EAs. Same for global poverty. To a lesser degree, same even for pandemics.
You have egregiously confused correlation for causation. And played into the stereotype that animal activist EA is persistently the sloppiest and most prone to deception for a good cause.
Personally I think Eliezer's position is much more reasonable than Bentham's counterarguments; the things BB dismissed as ridiculous seem obviously plausible, even if they aren't relevant to animal moral patienthood. It may be there are good arguments against it, but they aren't present here, and I would not trust them from any animal activism EA I didn't already know well enough to trust by rationalist standards, because nearly every time I do that, I have more experiences that confirm the stereotype.
Especially since I don't consider being correct on this point urgent by my own moral standards; I will continue eating chicken even if I'm convinced they are capable of having moral relevance.
The 'stylistic choices' were themselves evidence of wrongdoing, and most of their evidence against claims both misstated the claims they claimed to be refuting and provided further (unwitting?) evidence of wrongdoing.
Also, the only known raids on the corporate assets happened post-crash and therefore long post-audit. Under the espoused worldview of the management, everything before that was plausibly 'good for the company'. In that it benefitted the company in raw EV across all possible worlds with no discount rate for higher gains or for massive losses.
And it makes you wonder why companies would go to these known-worse-auditors, especially if they can afford the best auditing like FTX should have been able to, if they don't have something to hide.
Complying with an audit is expensive, and not just in money.
A thorough audit in progress is going to disrupt the workflow of all or most of your company in order to look at their daily operations more closely. This reduces productivity and slows down the ability to change anything, even if nothing improper is happening. It is expensive and disruptive.
A thorough audit is also going to recommend changes. Not just changes required to be technically in compliance, but ones which will make it easier to audit for compliance in the future and ones which remove something that could potentially be mistaken for bad behavior in a dim light. Making those changes is expensive and disruptive.
If you don't need extremely high levels of trust from your customers and partners, choosing to receive a thorough audit means you're paying a bunch of unnecessary costs. Much better to get a more lax audit, which is less disruptive to have ongoing and less disruptive to handle once the results are in. Better still if it also costs less money.
The correct audit is the one that provides your customers and clients - and/or your own management - with exactly as much trust and reassurance as you need them to get and no more. Anything less and you lose business that doesn't trust you; anything more and you're paying a cost for a benefit you don't actually benefit from.
That's literally just the same thing I said with more words. They don't have reasons to think finance is net negative, it just is polluted with money and therefore bad.
Because finance people are bad people and therefore anything associated with them is bad. Or for a slightly larger chain, because money is bad, people who spend their lives seeking money are therefore bad, and anything associated with those people is bad.
Don't overthink this. It doesn't have to make sense, there just have to be a lot of people who think it does.
There's a story people tell about a new employee at a large investment bank. Some time in their first few weeks, they make a mistake that costs the company ten million dollars.
This obviously applies here. Someone who has handled billions of dollars has given evidence of their competence even if it ended in fraud. If you believe they are genuinely aligned with EA (which I do without reservation in Caroline's case), and that the fraud was not intentional on their part (seems very likely), and are unconcerned with reputation and PR (Austin is), then what this looks like is a serious error in judgment, which cost billions of dollars (and jail time) training them. If you oversee them for a short time and their judgment is greatly improved (I'm not sure this amount of evidence should be convincing), then it can be an entirely reasonable decision, picking up a $100 bill off the sidewalk that everyone else sees as tainted.
Common sense is often uncommon, and often nonsensical. Austin may have poor judgment, but this is absolutely not "rank incompetence."
No shit rationalists dismiss animal welfare more. The people who don't, are far more likely to call themselves EAs. Same for global poverty. To a lesser degree, same even for pandemics.
You have egregiously confused correlation for causation. And played into the stereotype that animal activist EA is persistently the sloppiest and most prone to deception for a good cause.
Personally I think Eliezer's position is much more reasonable than Bentham's counterarguments; the things BB dismissed as ridiculous seem obviously plausible, even if they aren't relevant to animal moral patienthood. It may be there are good arguments against it, but they aren't present here, and I would not trust them from any animal activism EA I didn't already know well enough to trust by rationalist standards, because nearly every time I do that, I have more experiences that confirm the stereotype.
Especially since I don't consider being correct on this point urgent by my own moral standards; I will continue eating chicken even if I'm convinced they are capable of having moral relevance.
The 'stylistic choices' were themselves evidence of wrongdoing, and most of their evidence against claims both misstated the claims they claimed to be refuting and provided further (unwitting?) evidence of wrongdoing.
Also, the only known raids on the corporate assets happened post-crash and therefore long post-audit. Under the espoused worldview of the management, everything before that was plausibly 'good for the company'. In that it benefitted the company in raw EV across all possible worlds with no discount rate for higher gains or for massive losses.
That wasn't the question. The question was why any company would go to less-than-maximally-trustworthy auditors.
Complying with an audit is expensive, and not just in money.
A thorough audit in progress is going to disrupt the workflow of all or most of your company in order to look at their daily operations more closely. This reduces productivity and slows down the ability to change anything, even if nothing improper is happening. It is expensive and disruptive.
A thorough audit is also going to recommend changes. Not just changes required to be technically in compliance, but ones which will make it easier to audit for compliance in the future and ones which remove something that could potentially be mistaken for bad behavior in a dim light. Making those changes is expensive and disruptive.
If you don't need extremely high levels of trust from your customers and partners, choosing to receive a thorough audit means you're paying a bunch of unnecessary costs. Much better to get a more lax audit, which is less disruptive to have ongoing and less disruptive to handle once the results are in. Better still if it also costs less money.
The correct audit is the one that provides your customers and clients - and/or your own management - with exactly as much trust and reassurance as you need them to get and no more. Anything less and you lose business that doesn't trust you; anything more and you're paying a cost for a benefit you don't actually benefit from.
Simple: It's another meta thing. Those have a very poor track record and seem to require extraordinary competence to be net-positive.
That's literally just the same thing I said with more words. They don't have reasons to think finance is net negative, it just is polluted with money and therefore bad.
Those two are perfectly good examples. They did. Every successful startup does something approximately that bad, on the way to the top.
Because finance people are bad people and therefore anything associated with them is bad. Or for a slightly larger chain, because money is bad, people who spend their lives seeking money are therefore bad, and anything associated with those people is bad.
Don't overthink this. It doesn't have to make sense, there just have to be a lot of people who think it does.