The Sam Bankman-Fried empire crumbled. What happened? (part one)

Re:The Sam Bankman-Fried empire crumbled. What happened? (pa... by ahepp on Thursday November 10, 2022 @02:03PM (#33551418)

Isn't this a fundamental problem with consequentialism? If you can convince yourself of a serious enough consequence, you can do whatever you want. Steal, hurt, kill. As long as your actions lead to a .000001% chance of preventing Skynet from taking over in the year 50000 AD, any means justify those ends.

How is that something that can be seriously engaged with? Other than trying to talk some sense into these people about limiting their EA calculations to a reasonably observable time-space continuum?

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Re:The Sam Bankman-Fried empire crumbled. What happened? (pa... by xyzwave on Thursday November 10, 2022 @04:31PM (#33553699)

I always felt the problem with consequentialism is that outcomes are uncertain, whereas actions are not. Therefore you are not guaranteed that an immoral action (means) will result in a beneficial outcome (end).

For instance, you push someone in front of a trolley to save 5 lives, but the trolley isn’t stopped and you end up with 6 dead.

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Re:The Sam Bankman-Fried empire crumbled. What happened? (pa... by yw3410 on Thursday November 10, 2022 @07:38PM (#33555872)

That's essentially Kant's argument as to why you should have universal morals (see the classic not lying to an axe murderer).

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