The history of corporate scandals is littered with quasi-messianic figures, and Sam-Bankman Fried (often denoted by the initialism SBF) is simply the latest in the long line of financiers so drunk on their egos and self-perceived intelligence to be blind to the portents of their inevitable downfall. Sam is unique in that his grandiosity stems not purely from unrestrained greed and narcissism—although there is plenty of that—but his philosophical north star of Effective Altruism, an extreme form of Benthamite utilitarianism which espouses the belief that we should extend our ethical locus of concern to all possible sentient beings that may exist in the future. The philosophy attempts to derive, from first principles, an ethical calculus by which we should optimize our actions according to some suppositional fitness function that maximizes the scope and happiness of all future minds. Its adherents believe themselves as ordained prophets sent by the future to guide the progress of humanity according to their oracular pronouncements. The Effective Altruism philosophy is, in one word: insane. It is a philosophy of unbounded narcissism wrapped in a bizarre, autistically hyperrational framework concerning human existence that gives rise to hubris of cosmic proportions. And, of course, this plays out exactly like in Greek tragedy, as acolytes like SBF fancy themselves as agents of the future supposedly single-handedly able to steer humanity’s path through the future Great Filters of existential risk, all while his Bahamanian bucket shop couldn’t do effective risk management of their dog-themed money. His company’s downfall may have arisen from liquidity problems of the Ponzi finance operations they were running and the hilariously lax governance they were allowed to get away with, but the root problem of this business lies in the folly of one man. #arguments #arguments_against #effective_altruism #toread

Buterin’s essays have slightly less redigested LessWrong these days — the people who worry that an artificial intelligence will turn into Roko’s Basilisk, so you should give them money — so that’s good. His pet cranks are no longer embarrassing mathematical cranks who think they can simulate a quantum computer on a classical computer fast enough to hack bitcoin mining. Buterin’s pet cranks are now social cranks — e.g., Glen Weyl, with his Radical Markets theory, which is more or less Georgism with a concussion. Everything is a land tax, you set the price of your house, and anyone who’s rich enough can buy your house out from under you at any time, whether you like it or not! Everyone wants that, right? Weyl and Buterin’s latest hit is their Soulbound Tokens essay. Being weird ancaps, they don’t trust governments to do identity — so you’ll have your social credit score tracked on a blockchain. It’s an implementation of the “Fifteen Million Merits” episode of Black Mirror — except they think this is a desirable state of being, and not a horrifying dystopia. They also crib from Vitalik’s Dark Enlightenment friend Balaji Srinivasan on “cancel culture.” [SSRN, PDF] Weyl and Buterin’s stuff is crank economics and crank social theories straight from the Californian Ideology, with little to no reference to anything actual people think or want. The best source for the current thinking of the Silicon Valley rich ancap cluster on “decentralised governance” is Balaji Srinivasan’s recent book on the subject: The Network State (US, UK). It’s bloody awful, and you need a decoder ring to understand the buzzwords and euphemisms. Fortunately, I wrote about Balaji’s ineffable genius previously, and I helped Elizabeth Sandifer write Neoreaction a Basilisk (the decoder ring), so I can save you the effort on this one: what if seasteading on the blockchain also we’re all neoreactionaries and race-and-IQ theorists, and we want our blockchain seasteads to have Kings. Here’s Vitalik’s review. He describes Balaji’s loud and explicit reactionary politics as any variety whatsoever of “liberal.” This is not a writer who knows what words mean. [vitalik.ca] They’re mapping out tech dystopias and thinking they’re architecting heaven. They are not. #effective_altruism #arguments_against #arguments #toread

“Another side to Mr. Bankman-Fried emerged as his firm grew. He was brusque and insulting with overseas regulators and others, said people involved in the meetings. He demonstrated a cocksure style in negotiations to buy struggling crypto companies. He courted U.S. politicians and regulators, and seemed to egg on their scrutiny of his rivals.” — EA was condoning this behavior. it isn’t just the illegal stuff. this is immoral too. the talks of being the first trillionaire doesn’t help #arguments #effective_altruism #arguments_against #politics #toread

#effective_altruism #yale_thing #Yale #courses #online_courses #pub