tripu
boosted
Oh man... just found that the "MASTO 95" theme is the correct way to use this site.
It's easy to see that #SBF was wrong _in hindsight_.
But imagine he had managed to keep the ball rolling a few years/decades, producing billions for good causes in the meantime and promoting #EffectiveAltruism at the higher level. And that #FTX vanished little by little without much attention — yet another #crypto promise failing.
The main “victims” would have been a bunch of wealthy celebrities and investors (and yes, also tens of thousands of small customers; mostly relatively rich human beings living in wealthy countries). I can see how the positive impact could outweigh all those losses.
I'm not saying he did the right thing. (For one, we don't know yet what he did, exactly. Of course, if rumours of funds being siphoned out of #FTX turn out to be true, and SBF and his circle are behind that, the guy is a monster.) I'm just saying we all face analogous (if also much lower-stake) trade-offs routinely, and we make decisions estimating odds and computing expected value (perhaps unconsciously) all the time.
Thank you! I think I mostly agree with you.
Definitely #SBF's behaviour is not condoned by #EffectiveAltruism per se: not all EAs are consequentialists, utilitarians or risk-neutral — and even those who are, probably would have made different decisions, influenced also by common-sense morality and/or by moral uncertainty.
What I find fascinating is that his decision algorithm (or the one I presume he had) seems robust to me, and (perhaps) he failed “only” in weighing the terms of the equation appropriately, or in coming up with good estimates. Or perhaps his math was indeed perfect, and we just happen to live in that one universe where luck played against him!
I'm sure he throw “possible reputational damage to EA” into the equation. Given all we know about him, how could he not?
He was a utilitarian from the cradle, an EA before he was a billionaire, and used to donate a lot of his income. Apparently Alameda Research donated 50% of their profits in the early days, too. After he became so wealthy he donated a lot of money to EA-approved organisations.
That at least seems true. It would be impossible to bribe or deceive so many people and organisations who, by all we know, _did_ receive actual money from him already.
**Is there any tool to visualise (and browse) the tree of replies to a given post?** ie, see at a glance what replied to what, in full — instead of flattening everything out and losing context, as it happens by default in eg #Mastodon.
I think the simplest version of that thought experiment is one where it's a one-off bet (double-or-nothing this universe, once). I guess the math supports saying yes to that, if the odds of winning are > .5, right?
My intuition for the reason to say no to the bet is that there's a qualitative difference between existing and not existing.
If I were offered a .51 chance of transforming this universe into one where The Beatles had recorded 20 more songs, vs one where we had never known 20 songs by them, I would say yes. That works for me regardless of the no. of songs. But when it gets to “twice as many songs” vs “no songs at all” (ie, The Beatles never existed for all practical purposes), something changes, and I would reject the bet.
…I think 🙂
If I want to stop a pickpocket, I could shot them dead. That's hardly justifiable from a consequentialist PoV, because arguably I could as well knock them down, grab them by the arm, shout to get him blocked by other passers-by, call the police, snap a photo of them, etc. Most of us would defend that those other behaviours produce a better state of the world than instantly killing a person who was stealing a handbag.
Also, the issue you mention is not unique to consequentialism.
>_ You can justify any means simply by imagining a sufficiently positive end._
The same happens if you're a deontologist (is your set of rules perfect? can't some of those rules be used to justify monstrous actions?), if your ethics is religion-based (can't the love for God and following His command justify abhorrent decisions?), etc.
There's no way of escaping the fallibility of a moral system, no matter which one you pick.
No apologies needed! 🙂
> _It sounded like you were saying behavior can be justified so long as the ends justify the means._
That's a tautology, isn't it? If you believe the ends justify the means, any behaviour can be justified as long as that's the necessary means for a sufficiently good outcome.
That's what (I think) a consequentialist thinks.
> _The problem with this line of reasoning is that you can justify any means simply by imagining a sufficiently positive end. Offering a veneer of legitimacy to as horrific an act as you want._
Not really. It's not enough to “imagine” a great outcome; that outcome should be feasible, and realistically follow from the behaviour we are trying to justify — and only the least destructive behaviour would be justified.
tripu
boosted
Small #FediTip: if you encounter a message or thread that is in any way useful to you, bookmark it straight away.
Since the fediverse doesn't have full text searches, it will be very difficult to find that particular thing again a few days later. Especially if you cannot remember who posted it or it has no hashtags.
Periodically review your bookmarks to do something with them and you should be set.
tripu
boosted
32 years ago today Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau emailed colleagues outlining a proposal for a hypertext project that they dubbed "World Wide Web".
(v/ @w3c )
#TimBernersLee #RobertCailliau #hypertext #WorldWideWe
"WorldWideWeb: Proposal for a HyperText Project" 👇
I think believing that “the end justifies the means” is a necessary ingredient in all this, yes.
But as I said, you also need a specific end to pursue (in #SBF's case, allegedly, “maximising aggregate/average utility”), and neutrality towards risk (so that you're OK with extremely unlikely odds of hugely positive impact).
I don't think we'd have the #FTX situation without any of those three components in the equation.
The #SBF (#FTX) conundrum might be solvable by throwing these propositions into the mix:
1. He's “earning to give”
1. He's an utilitarian
1. He thinks that “the end justifies the means”
1. He's explicitly risk-neutral
He simply computed the probability of getting away with financial engineering and deception times the potential increase in well-being (by tossing billions at #EffectiveAltruism causes), and that seemed to him higher than the odds of being caught times {investors and customers' funds lost plus the huge reputational damage that would inflict to the #EA cause}.
So he pressed the red button and bet the world. And he lost.
It's not trivial to find the flaw in his reasoning, though.
In your inbox:
> In light of recent events, we think it's an appropriate time to remind you that, unlike our competitors, WE DO KEEP YOUR CRYPTO ASSETS IN CUSTODY. We don't trade with them. We have them. That coin of yours? Right here, see? You can have it back whenever you want. This is for real. We are ranked no. 1 in the industry by such-and-such due to our outstanding transparency. Furthermore, audit blah blah attested that our customers' funds and our operational accounts exist in entirely separate universes. You are safe. Like, TOTALLY SAFE.
http://libgen.gs/ #book #TheGreatestBooks #NoteToSelf
Note to self about #online #diagrams and #charts: excalidraw.com for sleek hand-drawn diagrams (just a few shapes, but great UI) app.diagrams...
I'm looking forward to seeing what you do with the #Mastodon source code!
fwiw, my instance, @QOTO, uses [its own fork](https://git.qoto.org/qoto/qoto), which adds [lots of cool features](https://qoto.org/about/more).
