They don't. Everyone in EA (AFAICT) has been pretty clear about this. Lying and undermining trust and institutions does tremendous lasting harm.
I am also tired of "people are very concerned about X and think that it's important, so they're basically a cult".
Literally anyone from the outside would easily be convinced they were pretty much your standard apocalyptic sex cult, just from accurately describing it.
I don't really care if people on EA forums don't all agree with SBF, but his type of thinking is standard if you use utilitarianism to make decisions in the real world, and it leads to some pretty horrific stuff. Consequentialism / utilitarianism are widely accepted in EA, and if you take that to the extreme, it can justify things like this.
But the fact that a few extremists would take an idea way beyond any measure of reason is a human effect, not an EA effect.
I can't think of any good ideas that haven't been distorted by a few. That's no reason to abandon them.
My personal opinion is that EA is mostly worthless navel gazing, but that doesn't mean that we should dismiss it over the SBFs.
The existence of extremists implies the existence of moderates. What are they? When their moral code says "Fraud, in this particular circumstances, is good", are they the ones that can't shake off the vice of honesty?
Or are they the ones who use motivated reasoning to bring their moral philosophy to conformance with their instinctual moral feelings?
https://time.com/6262810/sam-bankman-fried-effective-altruis...
Edit for reply:
> around October/November 2022
i.e. after the run and it's clear he's going to be arrested... Usual EA bullshit.
> Institutionally, EA was defending SBF up until he was arrested,
Nope, here's why & evidence
> i.e. after the run and it's clear he's going to be arrested... Usual EA bullshit.
Nice moving goal posts :)
Clearly this is a false assumption. He was not stealing from rich people (as if stealing from reach people is a justifiable EA practice), and was not spending the majority of the stolen money on worthy causes (worthy by EA standards). He was buying property for himself and his circle, signing deals with stadiums, covering Alameda Research losses, etc. Even for a deluded man like SBF, don't think it's possible to interpret that as an improvement of the world's conditions.
I am not familiar with all of the intimate details, I did not think that the scam was targeted at "rich people" but rather advertised generally and preyed upon get-rich-quick crypto attitudes. Am I mistaken?
Are you sure? My gut says that he mostly damaged not-rich people. I don't know too much about the specific case, but I know enough about the general crypto space to have an opinion, although not sure how to provide data to support it. You don't provide data either, though.
If you own a car and/or a home - are you rich? Is it acceptable to steal your $1K investment and spend it on pseudo-EA causes? An argument so ethically bankrupt, I can't believe people even type it on a public forum.
My point is that I suspect that SBF stole mostly from non-rich people, which is also NOT ok.
Edit: for context this was a large aggregator for “effective charities” with other billionaires and if you sorted by max he was on top for the years I did data analysis
He was pretty open even before the collapse about how he decided to get as rich as possible, as fast as possible, at all costs, as long as (in his own moral calculus) the net benefits were positive.
EAs are arguably a 'cult' obsessed with AI risk, which they mostly believe will end the world in the next few years. So to them, that pretty much justifies anything that could help mitigate that risk. He would see it as immoral not to become a criminal in order to fund AI risk research.
Personally, I think these AI risk concerns are legitimate, but I don't agree with these methods.