In Sam Bankman-Fried’s case, he seems to have let it be a justification for the huge risks and likely criminal actions he took.
There's no amount of money that will satisfy someone like that, even if his EA statements were heartfelt. Why would he give a billion dollars to charities, when he could risk it, flip it into $20B, and give it to charity? Why would he give $20B to charity when he could risk it, and flip it into $150B? etc...
But that would be the rational thing to do...
$1B less donated to charity is only roughly 1/20 as bad as $20B donated to charity is good, because there are also other people donating large amounts. In other words it's not at all like betting everything and ending up homeless if you lose the bet. At $20B vs $150B the catastrophe of losing $20B starts to become more significant, but I would absolutely still take that bet.
*Aside: obviously it was tone-deaf for me to reply to that quoted sentence out of the context in this case of the money being stolen
Good luck finding that limit though, especially when the market seems undefeatable.
To me it sounds like a way to justify making more money at all costs under the guise of a moral high ground. It'd feel more honest to do it without the cosplay around it and the "I donate better than you" holier than thou-ness.
I think it's more of a reactionary outburst from people who became wealthy enough to wonder about the purpose of their life and want to detach themselves from the late stage capitalist brand they get as cushy first world living while still reaping all the benefits.
I'm afraid if there were many good hearted people in that movement this single event will also discredit the rest. But maybe it was all a cult, who knows.
In this guy's case it sounds like a handy way to minimize whatever sentence he gets over this because he can argue "he did it out of pure intentions to help the world", which basically counts as insurance / marketing expenses for the scam.
Setting aside the case of this crypto conman, is being holier-than-though the valid criticism it feels like - or is that just my instinct to protect my ego, when the guy sitting next to me and earning the same salary donates 100x more much to charity than I do?
dont get fooled by people who think they can put good-ness into a box labelled "giving", I dont believe its that simple.
like the covid vaccines weren't possible because charity, but because science, the two are in no way equivalent. and there is evidence (not proof) from the last 150 years that capitalism enables science at a much higher multiple than charitable giving.
I would characterise both as elite but not upper class (as in, regularly going to old money dinner/rave parties).
I don't know which of the two is more "Effectively Altruistic".. lol.
Nevertheless, I find the anti-parallels with Buterin .. charming. Vitalik is clearly less anti-intellectual, less ambitious (more Ravenclaw than Slytherin), and thus less offensive to the gods.
(Although I’m not sure exactly what you mean by wealthy vs rich)
But I agree, my distinction between wealthy and rich is pretty sloppy.
Generally, in public downfalls like this, people over ascribe the causes to moral turpitude. There aren’t enough details here to say either way yet. There is a good book about this sort of thing Mistakes were made (but not by me). [1]
I think the blog post is very good, providing a unique perspective, and wonderfully written.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Mistakes-Were-Made-But-Not/dp/1491514...
SBF got his start in crypto doing arbitrage with Japan, because setting up a trading account in Japan was hard. He got someone to do it through the EA community.
Most of the people who are in positions of power in his companies came from the EA community. And no joke a bunch of them are all in romantic relationships with each other too. You've got the CEO of his trading firm, who SBF dated, posting on tumblr about how poly relationships should be a vicious power struggle to get to the top.
I think you're way underestimating just how weird and cultish this whole clique is, and how moral criticism is actually valid here as the ideology is in a central role. These people cast themselves as noble heros making the world better in the net, when in reality they're total nepotistic weirdos.
Seems that he always benefited from membership in the cult.
From what it seems, SBF is a pathological liar. He tried to lie at the last minute, assuring everything was fine and that others were to blame. After the last minute, he kept saying that if you filter out the mandatory "sorry" messages. It's not just Apollo 11 gone wrong, it was NOT Apollo from the start.
Maybe EA is a bit too far stretched, maybe it just attracts the wrong kind of individuals.
That title would probably go to Zucc after the most recent set of earnings. But the previous title holder was none other than Mr. Cyber Hornets himself, the man who just about popped the Dot Com bubble - Michael Saylor.
Saylor lost $6B in a single day (and $10B in 2 weeks) after reporting that his firm had cooked the books in 2000 and his 1999 profit was actually a loss. This was the largest single-day decline in history at the time. [1]
He was fined $8.2M banned from running a public company (just kidding, of course). [2] You'll never imagine what line of work he got into next.
[edit] $6B in 2000 dollars is ~$10.38B in 2022 dollars, and similarly the $10B over 2 weeks would be ~17.31B adjusting for inflation. So it looks like Mr Cyber Hornets still gets to slide in at number two.
[1] https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2000/03/michael-saylor.h...
No.
His net worth was never $15B. His net worth might have been negative - less than that homeless living in a tent under the bridge.
He was a fraud, a con man.
There's no reason to assume his entire Effective Altruism interest was authentic. It could easily been a way of connecting to important people like Tony Blair and Bill Clinton.