Or people that are unethical use charities as a front to do illegal things without remorse

Anyone talking about how ethical they are and will be with their money is immediately moved to the top of the “sus” list.

They may do unethical or immoral things but generally they don’t do illegal things. If they do, they’re targets for prosecution.

We’ve got this imperfect system of laws which we use to govern the way we live. Its flawed but it isn’t a free for all either.

it's extremely rare for crimes >$10M to be punished in excess of profit.

Using client funds to go double or nothing is ethical in utilianism.

When the ends justify the means, anything goes.

Very few utilitarians or affective altruists (including me) consider that ethical.

> To maximize your expected value, you must aim for it and then march blindly forth, acting as if the fabulously lucky SBF of the future can reach into the other, parallel, universes and compensate the failson SBFs for their losses. It sounds crazy, or perhaps even selfish—but it’s not. It’s math. It follows from the principle of risk-neutrality. [0]

I think he figured in a million realities, the expected value is net very large. He just happens to live in a reality where it collapsed, but how much of his wealth is due to these games? I don't know if the probabilistic method is common among EA. For instance, if you gave me a chance to bet my entire net worth on a 51% odds game, sure the expected return is positive and if i had a million realities and netted everything out, I should take the bet. But most people would see that as insane

https://web.archive.org/web/20221027181046/https://www.sequo...

Taking a risk-neutral approach to altruism isn't the problem, it's the misusing customer funds.

Seems like they should at least consider Kelly Criterion

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30265797

Affective altruism is quite a different thing, practically opposite of effective altruism. ;-)

Downsides of dictation!

Although this is a common criticism of utilitarianism in the Bentham traditition, it is not in fact how utilitarian ethics work as a whole. For example John Stuart Mill would say that whether or not an act in a specific case is ethical can be decided by whether or not it is in violation of a general rule, and whether or not the consequences of the general rule are positive or not. Taking clients funds and using them to go double or nothing would clearly lead to lack of trustworthiness and the consequences of this would be clearly negative in general so this is very clearly unethical according to Mill.[1]

[1] https://www.britannica.com/topic/utilitarianism-philosophy

It's easy to be altruistic when it's not your money!

Yes. As a judge once said in a sentencing decision involving a crook with a history of philanthropy.

Like any politician railing about higher taxes and "eating the rich" - it's always never about their own money!

That's quite a stretch to compare, as taxes are derived from rules for the economy that everyone collectively votes on. Everyone benefits from collective projects run by the government to some degree, and a tiered tax system also counteracts the snowballing effect of how it becomes easier to make money the more you accumulate.

Here, we have a guy who is taking money for a specific purpose under circumstances that he completely lied about. And he used that money to attempt to enrich his company at catastrophic risk to the customers.

Giving away other people’s money is both effective and altruistic, it seems to me.

I suppose it's easier to justify this to yourself when you know most of the people whose money you're gambling with are also driven by the same greed.

The cryptocurrency bubble was very transparently built on delusion and avarice, and everyone involved knew it. There are very few truly innocent victims here.

Greater fool theory

> There are very few truly innocent victims here.

Are you suggesting FTX customers deserved this?

Eventually, you run out of other people's money.

Not before giving away hundreds of millions of dollars

This is crazy. He was donating to politicians with customer funds too? $40m worth and was planning up to $1b.

"SBF was planning to spend up to one billion dollars to help influence 2024 presidential election campaigns. His real plan is to bankroll the candidate running against former president Donald Trump. In 2020, SBF donated $5.2 million to the Joe Biden presidential campaign.

According to Open Secrets, a platform following the money in politics, SBF is the sixth largest political contributor. The platform reports that he has made a total contribution of $39.8 million for the 2021-2022 cycle."

this doesn't get talked about much.

There should be a tracker for companies that come out of nowhere and buy themselves into the top 10 of any major politician contributors list. So much money, so fast, should be a red flag for astute investors.

It's also a red flag about the savviness of the donors, since the races we're talking about here are extremely overcapitalized. SBF had a good shot at buying influence at the House level, but even in most Senate races the campaigns are probably already at a point of diminishing returns on dollars raised without any of this guy's goofy crypto money. Not that the campaigns won't assiduously take his calls! They'll take the money! Even the Biden campaign, which does not in the final analysis give even 1/15th of a fuck about an additional 5MM, will have someone set up some phone calls to get that money.

Almost always, the louder people are about the good they do, the worse they really are.

Whenever a person in their mental framework have a very high moral goal, it is easy for them to justify to themselves, less-moral actions. Almost impossible for it to not happen.

He "plans to".