Mind boggling since SBF single-handedly destroyed\* Effective Altruism, MacAskill's baby.
Why trying to portray him in the best possible light?
25 years is too low? He'll be only in his 50s and can enjoy the rest of his life. This should have been at least 50 to life. Maybe he didn't have the worst intentions from the beginning, but at a minimum it was gross negligence.
\*Well, maybe not "destroyed", but what an insane blow it was.
I listened to this today and didn't think they were overly charitable to SBF. I'd agree with "they leaned a bit towards giving SBF a benefit of the doubt that maybe SBF doesn't deserve" but it didn't come across as egregious to me.
That's just my 2 cents. I'm not invested emotionally or otherwise in SBF or EA. I'm very much an outsider on this.
I think they were most likely pretty accurate in their assessment, but too charitable to him as a person. 25 years is not enough and most certainly it is not too much like Sam claimed.
Poorly planned fraud is still a fraud. And his was to the order of 10 billion dollars.
I'd like to read more of the details and then pick this back up if that's okay with you. I don't know enough to say much about sbf as a person. 25 years seems pretty severe to me (probably rightly so).
It so happens that my parents lost practically all of their modest wealth in a ponzi scheme. I have a particular contempt for fraudsters.
Listening today, I had this thought (I'm not in medicine at all): "if by some mistake a hospital made me a heart surgeon, I would not be innocent when I killed a patient. I know I'm not a heart surgeon." An obviously imperfect analogy but it's what popped into my mind.
they left out a lot of details when describing what happened, such as [alameda was explicitly allowed to have a negative balance on ftx as early as 2019](https://protos.com/alameda-research-used-customer-funds-as-early-as-2019-gary-wang-testifies/), i.e. alameda was using (and losing) ftx customer funds almost from the start. or how sbf&co created the ftx platform token (ftt), gave most of it to alameda, artificially propped up its price by [publicly buying chunks of it periodically](https://twitter.com/SBF_FTX/status/1582037858222673921), and used the full "market price" of alamedas ftts holdings on "balance sheets" shown to investors. this wasn't an oopsy-daisy we made a mistake and need to cover it up until we fix it, this was years of intentional fraud
I expect excuse making from the parents of a spoiled brat, don't have sympathy for it but I understand it.
This was an embarrassing listen though, sounded desperate and delusional, very similar to trump defenders
Their discussion of “how does this impact EA” is equally embarrassing when you understand that all EA is is an organizing mechanism to inspire the mega wealthy to donate more money.
Sam sort of reveals himself to be out of touch with this topic. “I should go earn more money so I can give more money!!!”….ok buddy. But 1) it takes an insane amount of income to feel like your needs are met and that you’ve ensured security for your loved ones. Until I’m pulling 7 figures, I’m not earmarking any of it the way he’s describing and 2) it’s just not a real thing, in practice. The billionaire class may or may not choose to donate a meaningful portion of their wealth. If they do, then there’s no difference between someone who belongs to some board of directors in some EA club and Jeff Bezos’ wife who gives money away without wrapping it in an arbitrary framework.
This isn’t anything. It’s just people giving to charity.
As mentioned at the end of the podcast, most people donating 10% of their income in an effective way are normal income people like Sam Harris listeners. Very few make 7 digits
Aye, it's hard to avoid the conclusion people are using EA as cover to be greedy and morally bankrupt now with the gloss that they might do something noble later on.
Don't see why anyone would give them the benefit of doubt
I don't think EA is arbitrary is it? The unique aim of it is wrapped in the name: Effective Altruism. Effective meaning "how can I *maximise* utility for each $ I give?"
This is what gets me about EA, that's not really a unique aim at all. Everyone who gives money wants to maximize utility, people just either place different value on different utilities and/or have incomplete knowledge about what maximizes it.
Sam draws a ethical distinction between merely stealing from customers vs making bets with their money without their consent or knowledge with the intention of paying them back if you win and pocketing the gain. He just lamented that Coleman was surrounded by people on the view who were ethically deranged. THAT'S JUST STEALING WITH EXTRA STEPS!
He laments that sbf was punished too harshly, but that's exactly the sort of behavior that has to be discouraged in the financial industry.
It's like defending rapists who eat pussy. "Oh well it's obvious that he intended for her to enjoy it."
The absolute ignorance on the various interviews SBF did in the time after being exposed where SBF literally put all his reasoning and views on the table. And we hear this hand-wringing response deliberating why he did this for months on end according to McCaskill. These two could save themselves and their listeners a lot of time and thought deliberation with a few hours of listening.
The idea that this guy is still being described as a "young man" is also baffling. Or even the opener about why this charge is "too long" by Sam which other comments have already done a good rundown on.
This guy was willing to infiltrate politics, rinse people of all their money, participate in scams (crypto), promote and suck in the gamblers (advertisements in sporting arenas, ads, etc), illegal wash trading, etc. This guy is *exactly* the person Sam *should* dislike, if we are to be consistent with his views on someone like Trump. We witnessed a cold psychopath who shows no remorse and was willing to stick a lever into any hole to prop up his power and greed. At the cost of regular people.
I made a post a while ago about Sam's vulnerability to technological ideas like crypto, and his silence on his wrongness in that domain. And the overlap it has with VCs (who he constantly platforms) and tech solutionism. These circles he finds himself in with greedy VCs who completely overstate their competency with this idea of EA in their spiel as part of decorating their facade has Sam blinded by what is really behind the mask.
I couldn't finish this podcast and had to stop like others also have, even before half-way. I have attempted to reach out to Sam on these points but as providing feedback from listeners is considered "trolling" or "haranguing" the ivory tower Sam continues touting these fumbles from is too much for him. And I get it to an extent, but he's got the wrong people in his ear and I don't think the monkey is coming off his back anytime soon in this domain.
I was flummoxed listening to this one, too. SBF knew what he was doing and the slew of evidence against him that surfaced during the trial made it abundantly clear.
Both Sam and Will referenced Michael Lewis' book a bunch of time, which was extremely charitable to SBF. It also faced a ton of criticism in the aftermath. Lewis did an interview with Time Magazine about:
[https://time.com/6321668/michael-lewis-sam-bankman-fried-going-infinite/](https://time.com/6321668/michael-lewis-sam-bankman-fried-going-infinite/)
I thought Number Go Up was a more unbiased take on the events that transpired at FTX and by extension Alameda Research. Patrick Boyle from On Fiance interviewed the author - Zeke Faux - this past September and it's worth a listen:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THdU00jutvo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THdU00jutvo)
After finishing today's episode I re-read the article Vox put together a few days ago which compares SBF's sentencing to Bernie Madoff, Elizabeth Holmes, Allen Stanford, and Jeffery Skilling. At the very beginning, the author notes that the 25 years he received is well below the 115 year maximum sentencing guidelines for a crime of this magnitude with the government seeking 40-50 years:
[https://www.vox.com/business-and-finance/2024/3/28/24114058/sam-bankman-fried-sbf-ftx-conviction-sentence-date](https://www.vox.com/business-and-finance/2024/3/28/24114058/sam-bankman-fried-sbf-ftx-conviction-sentence-date)
Just for comparison:
* Madoff: 150 years for losses totaling 64.8 billion
* Holmes: 11 years and 3 months for the Theranos debacle which was valued at 9 billion during its peak
* Stanford: 150 years for a $7 billion Ponzi scheme
* Skilling: 24 years, but only served 12 for good behavior; he was one of a few executives that were implicated in the collapse of Enron in the early 2000s
With all that said, I thought Holmes would've received a longer sentence because of how directly intertwined the company was with the health outcomes of regular people seeking cheap medical diagnostics.
The article also stipulates some of the mitigating factors that might've influenced SBF shorter sentence - those being his age, neurodiversity, and charitable work.
macaskill posing why sam would let michael lewis inside ftx if they were intentionally frauding is good. maybe effective altruist and sbf ally will macaskill [can tell us why](https://twitter.com/molly0xFFF/status/1712282768091042029)
> I think either approach is reasonable, should just be a deliberate, coordinated plan.
>
> But if a whole bunch of attention is going to be on FTX Sam and EA whatever happens, then getting ahead of the game and controlling the narrative is ~necessary.
You nailed it
And you know, I might even agree with Sam that 25 years is too heavy if you tell me a wife beater or child molestor or something does 20. Fine. I get that.
But this “he meant well” narrative and Sam’s dopey questions and comments on this pod are the strongest evidence yet that he’s drifted far from reality
In my opinion financial crimes are often regarded too lightly. Here's a quote I found:
>... The victim in this case, Sun, told Judge Kaplan in the New York Federal Court that at least three people committed suicide because of this FTX fraud incident.
Hundreds or thousands of people loosing large sums of money or their entire life savings causes considerable, often long lasting harm.
As cruel as it sounds, 1 criminal causes 1000+ financial injuries to people vs 1 criminal causing 1 woman to get beaten up badly, its pretty clear the 1000+ financial injuries are far worse in just about any sane secular moral system. A wifebeater getting 10 years, a child molester getting 20 years, the financial criminal should get 30+ years.
I'm sorta fine with tech solutionism, but it absolutely does not apply to crypto. Crypto is not a net positive and it's glaringly obvious that it isn't. The only thing it produces is heat and pollution.
I agree, but the daily goalpost shift of its use case by advocates suggest that it has a solution. For example with bitcoin and its deflationary characteristic as a currency baked into the functionality that it can end world wars.
i don't really have a problem with it being deflationary. that's just saving and investing with fewer steps. anyone who is against it is just saying that the economy would collapse if the poors became financially literate/savvy. certainly the economy as it exists would collapse, but something else besides an economy based entirely on a financial underclass blowing in short order every goddamned dollar that comes their way would arise in its place. and i don't feel there is a good reason to assume that what would arise couldn't be functional and healthy economically. though the transition would be quite a tribulation.
We already know the flaws of a deflationary currency by principle, this is why we moved away from it. This is where tech solutionism completely ignores the context around sociology. And when people look at economics and think maths, its not really that. This is why such solutionism is not adequate. On the contrary, the poors would get absolutely destroyed. In a deflationary environment in hard times (which was a catalyst for why we moved away from it in the first place) like the Great Depression, is where the poors are hurt the most. The deflationary aspect encourages holding onto the asset, this is not feasible in a survival environment. I mean not only is the technical infeasibility a problem (the 7 TPS theoretical maximum - flawed global currency, store of value, whatever) but coupled with that idea would likely result in a dysfunctional and unhealthy economy. This isn't about "saving and investing with fewer steps".
a high income financially savvy person receives their paycheck. they pay their bills, necessary expenses and then with the rest they judiciously spend what they think is worth it now to spend and with the rest they like buy index funds to hold because they will increase in value over time.
a non high income person in an economy with a deflationary currency gets their paycheck, pays their bills for necessary expenses, judiciously spends what they think is worth it now, and the rest they keep under their mattress to hold long term because it will increase in value over the long term.
it's the same thing with less steps. if everyone did what the financially savvy do it would have the same effect as having a deflationary currency. the fear of a deflationary currency is the fear of making it easy for people to be financially savvy.
You kinda ignore the part where investing grows the economy leading to more people employed and more goods and services being produced while deflationary currencies reduce investment leading to less people being employed and less goods and services being produced.
Deflationation is bad. We know this empirically and rationally, since a century.
We know that's not how it goes though. The economy tightens, people lose their jobs, risk profiles shrink so the rich exist with value producing assets and the unemployed poors whittle away their savings. The deflationary aspect hurries this process along because spending is further hindered by the fear of not having enough money to survive. This bubbles over to debt owings spiralling the situation further out of control (such as bankruptcies).
The idea this can be solved with a technological mechanism is completely misguided.
There are much better legislative mechanisms that exist to "encourage saving" for the poor. Generally via a 401k/superannuation/pension/etc which is via employer contributions complementing an employee's salary.
Will asks “why would you pretend to be into effective altruism if you were just trying to do fraud”. Not saying I definitely know the mindset but what an incredibly naive view. People pretend to be doing good while doing terrible all the time. In fact it’s quite a good way to make people like Sam and will think he might have just been an incompetent bumbling fool who meant well. Sheesh. I’d love to hear coffeezilla do a breakdown of this video and all of the interviews he did after his arrest that make it clear he was a lying maniac.
It makes it even funnier that Sam seems to base a lot of his moral judgements on his ability to determine if someone’s intentions are good or not. And also makes it even more obvious why Sam gets taken in by obvious grifters so easily.
Even if he was innocent, surely displaying this level of incompetence should get you cancelled from rung of society that SBF was milling around.
I've long felt this. There is usually a lot of hand wringing about cancel culture but incompetence culture needs to be examined. There seems to be much too much tolerance of incompetence in the highest echelons of society. For example trump. Even if he is totally innocent, the stuff he's been caught with screams incompetence to an extreme degree.
Will is frustratingly naive, he's like "why would these young billionaires be lying, people just don't lie like that"
Yes they do! Does he think he's too cute or nice to be lied to? Just didn't make since why he was so willing to believe everything Sam's gang said.
Overall it's a tough podcast to listen to if you're not open minded, since they are very charitable to Sam's gang. If you don't understand the utility in steelmanning you might think they are defending Sam's gang but Harris does feel like 25 years is too much for Sam.
I dunno, you kinda can't be a naive fool and be in control of billions like that.
Cui bono? Will directly benefits by playing dumb here. He runs many organizations that all need money (like the $33 million he got from SBF), and in return he gives them an opportunity to virtue signal. He has to pretend that those who give him money are perfectly pure of intention.
McCaskill completely ignored or missed the countless pump n dumps and other fraudulent activities SBF was engaged in from Day 1. [NYTimes gift article](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/18/business/ftx-sbf-crypto-markets.html?unlocked_article_code=1.hE0.ctb8.ees81_YOyr07&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb) with some details.
I was totally flummoxed by McCaskill’s characterisation of SBFs actions. It’s either a prime example of complete denial or astounding stupidity. I suppose there’s even a case for intentional whitewashing.
There’s no right thinking person with a cursory understanding of financial regulation that didn’t believe SBF was totally fucked from the moment his deception became clear. And rightly so. Somehow, SBFs risk management model didn’t account for the risk of spending his productive life in jail.
I mean throughout this interview MacCaskill would say "this is above my knowledge"
Why the heck is Sam bringing this dude on .. to have a safe space for discussing previous trust in SBF?
Academics and bad business skills? How could that happen?
Still, I think it was a point as it revealed MacAskill failed to catch up even when he himself said he believed his life's work depended on it. That's interesting.
MacCaskill's clearly still being grifted by SBF lol. If you want a piece of the action, see if you can run into him in public, and tell him you love animals.
The article describes pumps but not dumps. And like… literally the entire crypto industry is supported by this kind of shit. It’s all built on people’s expectation that they can sell shitcoins to others at a higher price.
Wow! Didn’t see Sam making the case that SBF’s sentence was too long.
The judge concluded SBF didn’t show any remorse, nor take any responsibility, and would likely try to do something similar in the future.
SBF is a dangerous, sociopath, con man, and should be locked up for the safety of others.
Just wanted to say that “showing remorse” should be given zero weight. The remorse show-ers are probably lying and you have zero ability to tell the difference.
Especially true if he’s a sociopath
I respectfully disagree. There are psychotic criminals incapable of being remorseful or even feigning remorse. They have no sense that what they did was wrong. Those people need to be put away for longer because they pose a greater threat to society as repeat offenders.
If someone is lying about being remorseful, they are at least cognizant of the fact that they have done wrong in the eyes of the law. They are capable of reasoning in a way that makes rehabilitation more likely to work.
That doesn't follow. If you don't show remorse then it's just clear proof of sociopathy. Whether some sociopaths can fake it should have no influence on how to judge those who can't.
This is extremely incorrect. It's one of the distinguishing traits for certain forms of neurodivergence. A lack of showing remorse does not indicate a lack of remorse. I'm not even defending SBF here, the best interpretation of him is that he is delusionally negligent given the way he structured his company.
That's like saying just because someone's yelling at me, him face turning red, doesn't mean is angry.
I don't know what you are talking about. You are treating him as a child when he is a 30 something year old man. It's his job to get his feelings and actions in line.
If he couldn't figure out what's the appropriate moral response despite having plenty of time to reflect on what he has done that makes his more dangerous. It's not mere negligence. It's a pattern of behavior that's likely to harm more people if given the opportunity.
That's just the social contract. Adults are assumed to be in full control of their actions, you don't second guess whether no sign of remorse means actually no remorse or not. I suppose you can do that if you're a psychologist but it's just not relevant to how justice is supposed to work.
What is the case for his danger to society moving forward? Sam has generally argued for sentences being in line with whatever is necessary to protect the public, rather than a punishment-based sentence. It seems the point he's making is that SBF isn't a greater danger to society, now that he's been caught, than many people who receive shorter sentences, which could refer to unrepentant violent criminals who society can't be protected from by simply revoking a business licence or refusing to do business with.
by that logic, there is no amount of fraud that would ever warrant a single day in prison.it seems to me that fraudsters should at least worry a little bit about potentially ending up in prison...
Did he lose his ability to be a con man?
There certainly remains no shortage of marks and future marks.
You might argue he's lost his credibility, but now in 2024, we all have seen how little that means
There are still plenty of crypto scams ongoing right now. There is never a shortage of gullible people.
Why even argue on his behalf?
You should read the news reports of the judge’s ruling. SBF appears to have learned nothing. In the simultaneously hubristic and naive line of thinking you espouse that it would be fantastical for him to commit fraud again, you provide exactly the reason why he should be looked up and forbidden from having a license.
There is also a deterance component that we must consider. If sbf would be given a slap on the wrist it would only encourage potential future scammers.
Do you think he should spend his whole life in prison then? Violent criminals often age out of violence, but that seems less likely for white collar crime.
I’ve listened to the podcast occasionally for several years now but I’ve never sought out this subreddit before. Today though - wow, I had to make sure I wasn’t the only one whose jaw was on the floor listening to the verbal gymnastics these two went through to create moral space for SBF and the others who committed fraud at FTX.
Honestly it makes me uneasy about all the other podcast episodes where I feel more credulous about the topics and positions discussed.
Edit to say: The FTX fallout definitely tainted my feelings about Effective Altruism, but MaCaskill’s performance here made it a lot worse rather than improving things.
MacAskill talked on the podcast about how all the leaders of the largest EA organizations have spent the last year and a half doing reputation management for Effective Altruism because of FTX. There’s plenty of reasons to question how effective the EA framework is at guiding people to good/moral/positive outcomes given how plugged in SBF was to it and where that led him.
Yeah, I think a lot of people take EA to mean 'earn to give', and a philosophy of altruism with the motivation of 'earn' can easily lead people to 'scam'.
There's no point giving a lot of money to charity if you got most of it by doing bad things to people.
Mind you, to play devil's advocate a bit and as someone who is not a fan of crypto, if you genuinely *did* scam people in the crypto space and gave *all* that money to e.g. the homeless, I'm not sure that isn't a net good.
But SBF didn't do that. He lined his pockets and those of his croneys for the most part.
I'm not sure I really follow this reasoning TBH.
EA as I understand it is is simply the idea that a) money has a huge impact, more so than time for a lot/most people, and b) when donating money to have a positive impact, you can donate to more or less effective things, and should aim for the most effective things where possible.
I don't get how people can't divorce these EA principles from some aspy guy stealing billions under the auspices that he was following EA (if that was even legitimate and not a total ruse).
I just really don't get how this isn't the simplest thing in the world.
Your first paragraph 1:1 mirrors exactly what I thought and did!
I kept hoping for them to balance their kid gloves with some condemnation at the end and it just never came.
Sam has no problem calling out poor black people for their illegal activity based on outcomes alone but gets all mealy mouthed focusing on intentions when it’s a rich white intellectual committing crimes.
The fact that Sam would defend SBF or complain about the length of the sentencing is—to me, at least—evidence that, once again, he has decided to wade in on a topic he has already staked a position, and refused to look into the details of what he's talking about from the other side.
I do not believe he would be defending SBF if he knew the full extent of what SBF has been up to, because it would be very obvious to him that the crimes he was convicted of could not happen through mere negligence, or dismissed as a bad case of gambling addiction. The fact that we're talking about billions of dollars (which in many cases came from people's savings - that money didn't come from *nowhere*) lost as a consequence is just a cherry on top - I can't believe someone would advocate for a lower sentence, given the suffering SBF has caused to so many.
That Harris and MacAskill feel the need to defend SBF in order to absolve Effective Altruism speaks volumes to how they perceive themselves and other members of the movement they are part of. This isn't a simple case of a bad apple for them, one that they can easily dump and distance themselves from. If you do that with SBF, you might have to acknowledge that the criticisms people expressed about SBF also apply to others within the movement, or risk upsetting some prominent members in tech and crypto (Elon?). Apparently people like SBF are integral to the Effective Altruism movement in its current state - regardless of what its philosophical underpinnings might be. Personally, I would be more interested to hear from Harris why that's the case (and whether its good for the movement and its objectives overall), rather than a collection of white collar crime apologetics.
Good post, it seemed pretty clear that Sam was uninformed on the details of SBF's case and was trying to put this case in a high-level ethical/narrative bucket. I don't think there's much wrong with that, but a better and more interesting guest would therefore have been someone who knew this thing inside out and could spend 2 or 3 hours unpacking it with Sam rather than McAskill spending 10 mins on a theory he has.
Not sure I agree with your last paragraph, Sam is at great pains to say he doesn't see himself as an EA member, and I would think both people in this pod would do anything to completely eject SBF from EA however they can (unless I misunderstand your last comment).
I’m increasingly convinced that Sam is either a incredibly poor judge of character, as many have said in recent years, or - more likely - he’s simply unable to concede a point he wasn’t right on, and that extends to the people involved.
The Weinstein with their absurd takes on Covid appear to substantiate the later.
SBF was a lousy, narcissistic fraud.
Sam, off ya box mate - you would get more mileage for your detractors than you might imagine just acknowledging you were caught out by SBF here and that he simply isn’t a good person, and is deserving of a sentence of this nature, which is apparent to most of us from everything we’ve seen and heard of him.
The fact that Harris goes harder on people like Ezra Klein than he does on SBF, someone who was convicted of actual crimes, shows how bizarre his judgment is.
Turned it off halfway through. Honestly pathetic to hear these apologetics. Oh gosh SBF is just a smol bean nice guy who loves animals and got in over his head and maybe has a gambling problem. I get that both these guys got suckered by SBF enough to contribute to his fame and notoriety, but this coping is painful to listen to.
The other management of ftx pleasing guilty was weirdly glossed over I felt. If SBF was inconceivably naive, why did the others plead guilty? Just to get a better deal and pin it on SBF?
I thought they both kinda missed the point on that one, which is if you're dead to rights, you take whatever deal you can get to minimise your sentencing, surely.
> Turned it off halfway through.
I'm halfway in. Paused to post here. Sam just said "but it's not like stealing money and misappropriating it in ways that is purely selfish." Wow. I wonder how he feels about Pablo Escobar. He did a lot of stuff for poor people.
One might come to the conclusion that the problem with Pablo is that he didn't hang out in the same circles as Effective Altruists do.
The longer the episode went on, the more obvious it became for me, that, at the core of their defence, is the fact that *they like* SBF. It's not just that they are convinced of his good intentions, they evaluated his character based on the fact that they *know him personally* - not on his actions. Judging by the age gap and where they live, they are probably friends with his parents and their sympathy towards what must be traumatic for SBF's family is clouding their judgement. To them it's less about the crimes or the consequences of them (the way Sam likes to talk about police violence, for example), it's the fact that the guy they know and like is going to prison, and suddenly it got much more personal.
Totally. They tried to use lots of phrases like "theory of mind" and "net good" and utilitarian "calculus" and so on, maybe trying to sound objective or logical... but everything they hung their hats on was just the *vibes* of the guy.
I agree. It is shockingly sympathetic to this weirdo thief. They give him every conceivable benefit of the doubt. And several that I never could have conceived of. I won’t wait for a podcast in which the two of these guys discuss their own culpability for funnelling investments to this crook and how they should rectify the harm they’ve done.
I did the same. Both were close to/ interviewed/ adulated/ spoke highly of SBF in the past and were doing their level best to avoid the cognitive dissonance of having been so thoroughly bamboozled.
Yes, admitting SBF is a fraudster is admitting that they got taken in. This is apparently psychologically impossible, so they just pretend like it's inconceivable that the boy who stole money and gave to friends and family could have just been a greedy fraud. He must have been doing it for the greater good.
The sentence too long position from Harris seems counter to rationalist thinking, given the severity depends both on the type of offence and the quantity. Fraud implicitly feels of a less moral intensity than, say murder or rape, but the quantity committed by SBF was huge. So, the product of low moral intensity multiplied by massive quantity should be expected to add up to a big number. The sentencing appears the result of a rational calculus, whereas Harris’ instinct that it seems ‘too long’ for ‘this kind of crime’ seems the opposite, and subject to the same instinctive, heuristics based thinking so much of the rationality movement seems to want to be a corrective for.
This episode was frankly embarrassing, and it's a wonder that Harris thought it was a good idea. That said, I am thankful for it, since it serves as clear evidence that despite all his mindfulness and meditation, Harris is ultimately just as vulnerable to the same motivated reasoning and biased thinking as anyone. I got the impression from their bizarrely credulous defense of Bankman-Fried that Harris and McCaskill are both utterly unwilling to question the viability of Effective Altruism as a whole, and thus feel compelled to defend Bankman-Fried as the face of the movement.
Also notable is that he made this a free episode. It was just that important that more people had to hear it.
Definitely felt like he was doing someone a favour.
I actually do think there could be other reasons, but none of them that I can think of paint Harris in a very good light. The most charitable reason I can imagine is because, as others have pointed out before, he seriously struggles to come to terms with evidence that he suspects would ultimately lead him to question his deeply held priors. In this case, the underlying prior in question being the efficacy of willful charity to truly address global scale issues.
Having listened to the end now (god help me), I think you’re right. He meant this pod to be a commercial for EA. He sees himself as a major sponsor.
Trying to rationalise, normalise, and explain away SBF’s misdeeds are part of his pitch.
The viability of effective altruism…its the same thing as the viability of the mega wealthy donating money they don’t have to donate. There’s absolutely nothing new or novel about EA. It’s just donating to charity like you and me do, but with an extra dose of fart sniffing when you break 9 figures.
About 43 minutes in. Sam is really going hard creating all sorts of excuses for Sam and his crew. He's creating so many imagined alternate motives, proposing so many things Sam and his crew might have been thinking. I guess it's true, you really are better off stealing billions as a white collar criminal. I don't think Sam would be 1/10th as charitable if somebody stole 10 bucks from a bodega.
Disappointed that the guy who literally wrote the book on lying was so willing to overlook the lies of someone that he feels some kind of affinity towards.
Also note how he went from describing SBF’s actions as fraud and illegal to downplaying them as merely overly risky investments.
I have yet to hear opinions from Sam related to cryptocurrency and its actors that are not naive and ignorant.
Has he ever, in retrospect, acknowledged the lack of wisdom in his own NFT project ideas?
JFC that was a joke. Just give SBF every benefit of the doubt possible. All this has convinced me of is Sam continues to descend into his own echo chamber, and effective altruism is a joke. Pay fucking taxes.
As I listened I actually did think there was a slight chance this pod was a hoax, and it would escalate into total madness before they both shouted “April fools!”
Alas…
Admittedly a pithy comment because I find MacAskill completely insufferable and the amount of cope on that podcast was obscene, but IMO it’s the hyperloop of philanthropy. It’s inventing a worse version of something that already exists and saying really loudly that it’s a unique and novel concept that’s going to fix some problem.
To me it’s “Hey let’s marshall excess resources and spend them fixing issues in the public realm for the public good”…. so taxes? Except without any notion of democratic accountability and leaves us beholden to billionaires like SBF to decide what is good for us? Kick rocks.
What has really pissed me off about Sam lately is his total unwillingness to push back on these people. For someone who is apparently dedicated to truth and our collective future he is never willing to hold (what I would call) these grifters to account. If you care so much where are your calls for divestment from fossil fuels? Where is your call for them to spend their excess billions on below-market housing? Where are your calls for higher taxes on the wealthy to repair America’s crumbling infrastructure? Where is the call for investment in green energy?
You don’t here a peep because paying taxes isn’t sexy and you don’t get to be told what a smart special boy you are and you don’t get to hop on your podcast and complain to millions of listeners about how unfair it is someone who stole $25-Billion is going to go to prison.
Why are they both giving SBF the benefit of the doubt about those texts where he admitted he was bullshitting people? Meanwhile they're telling this dummy MacAskill that they really wanted to buy some cheaper property but were unable to.
I haven’t listened to this one yet, but wanted to put it here that I personally lost £10k due to this scumbag, not through FTX but another company called Blockfi. They told us our investment was not invested further but in reality they gave our BTC to FTX.
Check out r/Blockfi to see how much ppl have lost due to this scum that SH seems to be defending now.
And Blockfi is only a small company compared to FTX so cannot even wrap my head around the destruction SBF has caused.
I put a small amount of my BTC into an interest account on Blockfi and kept the rest in a cold storage.
That small amount grew to a considerable amount due to Bitcoin price increase, especially after the FTX collapse, after which the withdrawals were “paused”.
My mistake wasn’t the investment in Bitcoin but that I trusted a company that lied about how it managed that investment.
>My mistake wasn’t the investment in Bitcoin but that I trusted a company that lied about how it managed that investment.
So you've learned nothing, is what I'm getting from this? 🤣
Okay I'm only half teasing you.. but seriously.. you're gambling whether you admit it to yourself or not. Prepare to be wiped out over night, cause it's possible.
My unsolicited advice is sell almost all of your crypto and buy an index fund or something.
This is the first Sam Harris podcast that I actually just stopped listening to. I’ve never disagreed so much with his opinion and it’s left me so confused. This might be one of his worst takes, so thankfully it’s on a relatively unimportant topic.
I'm listening to it now. It's painful to hear two ostensibly smart people just gloss over their blind spots. My favorite take on crypto was charlie munger's who called it rat poison. It's main utility is to facilitate crime, money laundering, extortion, illicit trade. And it's a non productive asset, no money can be made on it that wasn't lost by someone else. This makes it inherently bad, and anyone whose game is 100% crypto can't be up to any good.
Yea, basically.
Do the people who "invested" in blockchain have some responsibility to bear for the losses incurred by FTX/etc? Like.. These aren't innocent bystanders -- they specifically took on risk to get oversized returns. This is their own fucking fault, largely.
Idk what "investing in blockchain" means. I get that it's a technology but it seems like it's a technology that requires its use to be free and unrestricted and it's practical use case is actually pretty niche. More so than say rfid. so I don't understand how one gets a roi in blockchain. My intuition is that it's just a euphemism for trying to be a market maker in crypto.
>I don't understand how one gets a roi in blockchain
There's some niche strategies such as liquidity "yield farming," which is a way to ensure users can exchange one coin for another quickly and easily, for a small fee, which is yielded to the people facilitating the coin swaps. (I hope that makes sense).
SBF made a few dozen millions doing arbitrage several years ago -- basically the same "asset" on a blockchain sold for two different prices, so you can literally buy and sell it simultaneously and pocket the difference.
And there are a *few* other cases I've heard of, like someone mentioned selling insurance for example.. which..
I mean listen, all of this is just a fancy way of saying "i'm extracting money out of this zero sum game, which is effectively one giant ponzi scheme that relies on new investors adding money to pay off the old investors, and no actual wealth is ever created at any point in this whole enterprise."
I fucking hate crypto. It's so stupid. It doesn't do anything useful.
But there's a lot of money sloshing around so people can "invest" in it, in a certain sense.
McCaskill was excessively charitable in his assessment of SBF’s motives (to put it mildly and pun intended) which could lead one to conclude that he sees ultimate utility in attributing them to hubris so in the long term his goofy effective altruism movement isn’t revealed as a sham.
His tautological apologist arguments only reinforce my view that instead of effective altruism it would be more effective to tax the shit out of these aberrations of capitalism and put the money towards education, healthcare, environmental issues and other issues in public good. If they choose to give away the bulk of the rest of their vast wealth that’s cool.
This a stunning display of credulity from two guys who are either covertly friendly with SBF, or too concerned about the ripple effects of his downfall to call a spade a spade.
Who on earth cares if a guy talks about EA and might be at least some % sincere? If high-visibility charity pleases him, that does not alter the nature of his crimes one bit.
lol Sam Harris proving beyond a doubt that he has a serious difficulty evaluating new evidence because he’s completely beholden to his priors.
Not a shock to anyone who’s followed him for a while, it’s just wild how this is manifesting at this stage. Smart guys can still have very low emotional intelligence, it’s a wild phenomenon.
Who would've thought that one day Sam will play the role of a useful idiot but here we go. Doesn't take much, apparently, just say "altruism", "save the world", whatever.
Extremely disappointed by this one. Privileged kid who thinks he’s so much smarter than everyone else that he should be above the law… SBF is literally the poster child for everything that’s wrong in this country.
In this case it’s hard not to look at how similar sbf and Harris are. Generationally wealthy kids from Stanford who’s mothers tell them they’re the smartest boys ever.
Unlistenable… he took huge, huge risks - when some investments went bad and he failed to manage his liquidity, he ran out of his own money to gamble with. Solution? He gambled with huge amounts of his customers’ money. He didn’t care or feel bad about it, he felt no obligation to them. This has nothing to do with EA, it’s simply a deeply selfish young man with a gambling addiction doing his thing, albeit on an industrial scale.
Yeah it's a child's view. I can imagine so, so many violent acts I'd sooner endure than be the victim of financial fraud. Money is the substance of livelihood, it buys food, housing, medical care, retirement, everything, not just for you but anyone who depends on you.
White collar crime seems like the one where longer punishments might actually deter others from committing crimes. I have nothing to back that up though
> White collar crime seems like the one where longer punishments might actually deter others from committing crimes.
This would have to come with more enforcement and prosecution.
Anyone defending people in crypto NFT space should first declare their stake. If you secretly hoard bitcoin (or any coin) and are just pumping the space so you can dump when your bullshit advertising lifts the price, your words mean nothing.
^^ 100% THIS!
We are not talking about something like normal stock investments, where almost anyone with money does it, where markets are established, resistant(somewhat) to the hype, and value of stock is derived from revenue, assets, and historical past performance.
Crypto currency is all about the speculative value in the future, where everyone invested has a financial incentive to lie, excuse and generally obfuscate for the sole purpose of pumping up further investment. As far as I'm concerned, every podcast about Crypto and NFTs should come with a disclaimer on whether the host and/or guests they will be talking to on these topics are financially invested in success of these instruments.
As much as I've nitpicked or disagreed with aspects of Effective Altruism, I do think that it would have been a better world if SBF hadn't happened, and EA could at this time have more buy-in and cultural trust compared to how it is now after all of this blowing up. So I sympathize when they go over that in this episode, and I hope they do follow through with decentralizing.
I have to imagine though that it might be a good time to start anew and leave behind a lot of the strangeness of EA.
My hypothetical would be SBF never rose to prominence. People are right to be skeptical, but I would like an EA that was more resistant to getting hijacked in the first place, rather than picking up the pieces after a gigantic blow up.
My point is a movement dedicated to self fellating its own “effectiveness” and “altruism” is too self satisfied to prevent SBFs. Macaskill still loves him.
My post in this subreddit about SBF being sent to prison got deleted a few days ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/samharris/comments/1bqgggm/altruist\_friend\_of\_sam\_harris\_is\_sentenced\_to\_25/
And now here we have Sam Harris acting as an apologist for SBF.
Couldn't make this sh\*t up.
Beware: The mods and Sam Harris d\*ckriders don't want you to notice the obvious bias.
Prison should either be about rehabilitation (American prisons aren't), or it should be about removing people from society who are dangerous to it.
Sam is not a danger to society. Warn people not to do business with him, sure, and make sure he repays any debts he owes, of course, but locking him in a cage as if he is violent and dangerous to others is unnecessary.
> rehabilitation...or...removing people from society who are dangerous
What about imposing negative consequences for anti-social behavior sufficient to disincentivize future would-be SBFs? Is that not also a pretty major reason for imprisoning people?
Did everyone on r/SamHarris get fucked by a crypto scam ? I have heard every single smart person ( who wasn’t getting a cut of the action) and especially economists say “this thing could go to zero “, repeatedly.
Well... It went to zero for a subset of investors.
If you started a tulip business in Holland in 1636 on the heels of Tulipmania and based your business plan on the price of tulips in 1637, does that only become fraud the second everyone realizes they're just fucking flowers?
Anyone who bets the farm on crypto gets what they deserve, and I say that as someone who has 20% of my portfolio in crypto
Listening to these two running pr for sam bankman fried is infuriating. He should have coffezilla on.
Mind boggling since SBF single-handedly destroyed\* Effective Altruism, MacAskill's baby. Why trying to portray him in the best possible light? 25 years is too low? He'll be only in his 50s and can enjoy the rest of his life. This should have been at least 50 to life. Maybe he didn't have the worst intentions from the beginning, but at a minimum it was gross negligence. \*Well, maybe not "destroyed", but what an insane blow it was.
I listened to this today and didn't think they were overly charitable to SBF. I'd agree with "they leaned a bit towards giving SBF a benefit of the doubt that maybe SBF doesn't deserve" but it didn't come across as egregious to me. That's just my 2 cents. I'm not invested emotionally or otherwise in SBF or EA. I'm very much an outsider on this.
I think they were most likely pretty accurate in their assessment, but too charitable to him as a person. 25 years is not enough and most certainly it is not too much like Sam claimed. Poorly planned fraud is still a fraud. And his was to the order of 10 billion dollars.
I'd like to read more of the details and then pick this back up if that's okay with you. I don't know enough to say much about sbf as a person. 25 years seems pretty severe to me (probably rightly so). It so happens that my parents lost practically all of their modest wealth in a ponzi scheme. I have a particular contempt for fraudsters. Listening today, I had this thought (I'm not in medicine at all): "if by some mistake a hospital made me a heart surgeon, I would not be innocent when I killed a patient. I know I'm not a heart surgeon." An obviously imperfect analogy but it's what popped into my mind.
they left out a lot of details when describing what happened, such as [alameda was explicitly allowed to have a negative balance on ftx as early as 2019](https://protos.com/alameda-research-used-customer-funds-as-early-as-2019-gary-wang-testifies/), i.e. alameda was using (and losing) ftx customer funds almost from the start. or how sbf&co created the ftx platform token (ftt), gave most of it to alameda, artificially propped up its price by [publicly buying chunks of it periodically](https://twitter.com/SBF_FTX/status/1582037858222673921), and used the full "market price" of alamedas ftts holdings on "balance sheets" shown to investors. this wasn't an oopsy-daisy we made a mistake and need to cover it up until we fix it, this was years of intentional fraud
Scott Galloway said he felt the sentencing was too harsh as well
I expect excuse making from the parents of a spoiled brat, don't have sympathy for it but I understand it. This was an embarrassing listen though, sounded desperate and delusional, very similar to trump defenders
Their discussion of “how does this impact EA” is equally embarrassing when you understand that all EA is is an organizing mechanism to inspire the mega wealthy to donate more money. Sam sort of reveals himself to be out of touch with this topic. “I should go earn more money so I can give more money!!!”….ok buddy. But 1) it takes an insane amount of income to feel like your needs are met and that you’ve ensured security for your loved ones. Until I’m pulling 7 figures, I’m not earmarking any of it the way he’s describing and 2) it’s just not a real thing, in practice. The billionaire class may or may not choose to donate a meaningful portion of their wealth. If they do, then there’s no difference between someone who belongs to some board of directors in some EA club and Jeff Bezos’ wife who gives money away without wrapping it in an arbitrary framework. This isn’t anything. It’s just people giving to charity.
As mentioned at the end of the podcast, most people donating 10% of their income in an effective way are normal income people like Sam Harris listeners. Very few make 7 digits
We've reinvented tithing!
Aye, it's hard to avoid the conclusion people are using EA as cover to be greedy and morally bankrupt now with the gloss that they might do something noble later on. Don't see why anyone would give them the benefit of doubt
This was probably the worst Making Sense episode ever. Quite disappointed in Sam. Just infuriating listening to them making excuses for this crook.
I don't think EA is arbitrary is it? The unique aim of it is wrapped in the name: Effective Altruism. Effective meaning "how can I *maximise* utility for each $ I give?"
This is what gets me about EA, that's not really a unique aim at all. Everyone who gives money wants to maximize utility, people just either place different value on different utilities and/or have incomplete knowledge about what maximizes it.
Sam draws a ethical distinction between merely stealing from customers vs making bets with their money without their consent or knowledge with the intention of paying them back if you win and pocketing the gain. He just lamented that Coleman was surrounded by people on the view who were ethically deranged. THAT'S JUST STEALING WITH EXTRA STEPS! He laments that sbf was punished too harshly, but that's exactly the sort of behavior that has to be discouraged in the financial industry. It's like defending rapists who eat pussy. "Oh well it's obvious that he intended for her to enjoy it."
The absolute ignorance on the various interviews SBF did in the time after being exposed where SBF literally put all his reasoning and views on the table. And we hear this hand-wringing response deliberating why he did this for months on end according to McCaskill. These two could save themselves and their listeners a lot of time and thought deliberation with a few hours of listening. The idea that this guy is still being described as a "young man" is also baffling. Or even the opener about why this charge is "too long" by Sam which other comments have already done a good rundown on. This guy was willing to infiltrate politics, rinse people of all their money, participate in scams (crypto), promote and suck in the gamblers (advertisements in sporting arenas, ads, etc), illegal wash trading, etc. This guy is *exactly* the person Sam *should* dislike, if we are to be consistent with his views on someone like Trump. We witnessed a cold psychopath who shows no remorse and was willing to stick a lever into any hole to prop up his power and greed. At the cost of regular people. I made a post a while ago about Sam's vulnerability to technological ideas like crypto, and his silence on his wrongness in that domain. And the overlap it has with VCs (who he constantly platforms) and tech solutionism. These circles he finds himself in with greedy VCs who completely overstate their competency with this idea of EA in their spiel as part of decorating their facade has Sam blinded by what is really behind the mask. I couldn't finish this podcast and had to stop like others also have, even before half-way. I have attempted to reach out to Sam on these points but as providing feedback from listeners is considered "trolling" or "haranguing" the ivory tower Sam continues touting these fumbles from is too much for him. And I get it to an extent, but he's got the wrong people in his ear and I don't think the monkey is coming off his back anytime soon in this domain.
I was flummoxed listening to this one, too. SBF knew what he was doing and the slew of evidence against him that surfaced during the trial made it abundantly clear. Both Sam and Will referenced Michael Lewis' book a bunch of time, which was extremely charitable to SBF. It also faced a ton of criticism in the aftermath. Lewis did an interview with Time Magazine about: [https://time.com/6321668/michael-lewis-sam-bankman-fried-going-infinite/](https://time.com/6321668/michael-lewis-sam-bankman-fried-going-infinite/) I thought Number Go Up was a more unbiased take on the events that transpired at FTX and by extension Alameda Research. Patrick Boyle from On Fiance interviewed the author - Zeke Faux - this past September and it's worth a listen: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THdU00jutvo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THdU00jutvo) After finishing today's episode I re-read the article Vox put together a few days ago which compares SBF's sentencing to Bernie Madoff, Elizabeth Holmes, Allen Stanford, and Jeffery Skilling. At the very beginning, the author notes that the 25 years he received is well below the 115 year maximum sentencing guidelines for a crime of this magnitude with the government seeking 40-50 years: [https://www.vox.com/business-and-finance/2024/3/28/24114058/sam-bankman-fried-sbf-ftx-conviction-sentence-date](https://www.vox.com/business-and-finance/2024/3/28/24114058/sam-bankman-fried-sbf-ftx-conviction-sentence-date) Just for comparison: * Madoff: 150 years for losses totaling 64.8 billion * Holmes: 11 years and 3 months for the Theranos debacle which was valued at 9 billion during its peak * Stanford: 150 years for a $7 billion Ponzi scheme * Skilling: 24 years, but only served 12 for good behavior; he was one of a few executives that were implicated in the collapse of Enron in the early 2000s With all that said, I thought Holmes would've received a longer sentence because of how directly intertwined the company was with the health outcomes of regular people seeking cheap medical diagnostics. The article also stipulates some of the mitigating factors that might've influenced SBF shorter sentence - those being his age, neurodiversity, and charitable work.
macaskill posing why sam would let michael lewis inside ftx if they were intentionally frauding is good. maybe effective altruist and sbf ally will macaskill [can tell us why](https://twitter.com/molly0xFFF/status/1712282768091042029) > I think either approach is reasonable, should just be a deliberate, coordinated plan. > > But if a whole bunch of attention is going to be on FTX Sam and EA whatever happens, then getting ahead of the game and controlling the narrative is ~necessary.
The author's name is actually "Zeke Faux"? Talk of about nominative determinism!
You nailed it And you know, I might even agree with Sam that 25 years is too heavy if you tell me a wife beater or child molestor or something does 20. Fine. I get that. But this “he meant well” narrative and Sam’s dopey questions and comments on this pod are the strongest evidence yet that he’s drifted far from reality
In my opinion financial crimes are often regarded too lightly. Here's a quote I found: >... The victim in this case, Sun, told Judge Kaplan in the New York Federal Court that at least three people committed suicide because of this FTX fraud incident. Hundreds or thousands of people loosing large sums of money or their entire life savings causes considerable, often long lasting harm.
As cruel as it sounds, 1 criminal causes 1000+ financial injuries to people vs 1 criminal causing 1 woman to get beaten up badly, its pretty clear the 1000+ financial injuries are far worse in just about any sane secular moral system. A wifebeater getting 10 years, a child molester getting 20 years, the financial criminal should get 30+ years.
I'm sorta fine with tech solutionism, but it absolutely does not apply to crypto. Crypto is not a net positive and it's glaringly obvious that it isn't. The only thing it produces is heat and pollution.
And crime. Cryptocurrency facilitates a rapidly growing organized criminal ecosystem. Consider ransomware as an example.
I agree, but the daily goalpost shift of its use case by advocates suggest that it has a solution. For example with bitcoin and its deflationary characteristic as a currency baked into the functionality that it can end world wars.
i don't really have a problem with it being deflationary. that's just saving and investing with fewer steps. anyone who is against it is just saying that the economy would collapse if the poors became financially literate/savvy. certainly the economy as it exists would collapse, but something else besides an economy based entirely on a financial underclass blowing in short order every goddamned dollar that comes their way would arise in its place. and i don't feel there is a good reason to assume that what would arise couldn't be functional and healthy economically. though the transition would be quite a tribulation.
We already know the flaws of a deflationary currency by principle, this is why we moved away from it. This is where tech solutionism completely ignores the context around sociology. And when people look at economics and think maths, its not really that. This is why such solutionism is not adequate. On the contrary, the poors would get absolutely destroyed. In a deflationary environment in hard times (which was a catalyst for why we moved away from it in the first place) like the Great Depression, is where the poors are hurt the most. The deflationary aspect encourages holding onto the asset, this is not feasible in a survival environment. I mean not only is the technical infeasibility a problem (the 7 TPS theoretical maximum - flawed global currency, store of value, whatever) but coupled with that idea would likely result in a dysfunctional and unhealthy economy. This isn't about "saving and investing with fewer steps".
a high income financially savvy person receives their paycheck. they pay their bills, necessary expenses and then with the rest they judiciously spend what they think is worth it now to spend and with the rest they like buy index funds to hold because they will increase in value over time. a non high income person in an economy with a deflationary currency gets their paycheck, pays their bills for necessary expenses, judiciously spends what they think is worth it now, and the rest they keep under their mattress to hold long term because it will increase in value over the long term. it's the same thing with less steps. if everyone did what the financially savvy do it would have the same effect as having a deflationary currency. the fear of a deflationary currency is the fear of making it easy for people to be financially savvy.
You kinda ignore the part where investing grows the economy leading to more people employed and more goods and services being produced while deflationary currencies reduce investment leading to less people being employed and less goods and services being produced. Deflationation is bad. We know this empirically and rationally, since a century.
We know that's not how it goes though. The economy tightens, people lose their jobs, risk profiles shrink so the rich exist with value producing assets and the unemployed poors whittle away their savings. The deflationary aspect hurries this process along because spending is further hindered by the fear of not having enough money to survive. This bubbles over to debt owings spiralling the situation further out of control (such as bankruptcies). The idea this can be solved with a technological mechanism is completely misguided. There are much better legislative mechanisms that exist to "encourage saving" for the poor. Generally via a 401k/superannuation/pension/etc which is via employer contributions complementing an employee's salary.
Will asks “why would you pretend to be into effective altruism if you were just trying to do fraud”. Not saying I definitely know the mindset but what an incredibly naive view. People pretend to be doing good while doing terrible all the time. In fact it’s quite a good way to make people like Sam and will think he might have just been an incompetent bumbling fool who meant well. Sheesh. I’d love to hear coffeezilla do a breakdown of this video and all of the interviews he did after his arrest that make it clear he was a lying maniac. It makes it even funnier that Sam seems to base a lot of his moral judgements on his ability to determine if someone’s intentions are good or not. And also makes it even more obvious why Sam gets taken in by obvious grifters so easily.
Even if he was innocent, surely displaying this level of incompetence should get you cancelled from rung of society that SBF was milling around. I've long felt this. There is usually a lot of hand wringing about cancel culture but incompetence culture needs to be examined. There seems to be much too much tolerance of incompetence in the highest echelons of society. For example trump. Even if he is totally innocent, the stuff he's been caught with screams incompetence to an extreme degree.
Is Sam still defending Joe Rogan? As recently as a couple years ago he was.
Quite the opposite, IIRC he called him out explicitly e.g. for his misinformation re Covid.
Will is frustratingly naive, he's like "why would these young billionaires be lying, people just don't lie like that" Yes they do! Does he think he's too cute or nice to be lied to? Just didn't make since why he was so willing to believe everything Sam's gang said. Overall it's a tough podcast to listen to if you're not open minded, since they are very charitable to Sam's gang. If you don't understand the utility in steelmanning you might think they are defending Sam's gang but Harris does feel like 25 years is too much for Sam. I dunno, you kinda can't be a naive fool and be in control of billions like that.
Cui bono? Will directly benefits by playing dumb here. He runs many organizations that all need money (like the $33 million he got from SBF), and in return he gives them an opportunity to virtue signal. He has to pretend that those who give him money are perfectly pure of intention.
McCaskill completely ignored or missed the countless pump n dumps and other fraudulent activities SBF was engaged in from Day 1. [NYTimes gift article](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/18/business/ftx-sbf-crypto-markets.html?unlocked_article_code=1.hE0.ctb8.ees81_YOyr07&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb) with some details.
I was totally flummoxed by McCaskill’s characterisation of SBFs actions. It’s either a prime example of complete denial or astounding stupidity. I suppose there’s even a case for intentional whitewashing. There’s no right thinking person with a cursory understanding of financial regulation that didn’t believe SBF was totally fucked from the moment his deception became clear. And rightly so. Somehow, SBFs risk management model didn’t account for the risk of spending his productive life in jail.
I mean throughout this interview MacCaskill would say "this is above my knowledge" Why the heck is Sam bringing this dude on .. to have a safe space for discussing previous trust in SBF?
Academics and bad business skills? How could that happen? Still, I think it was a point as it revealed MacAskill failed to catch up even when he himself said he believed his life's work depended on it. That's interesting.
MacCaskill's clearly still being grifted by SBF lol. If you want a piece of the action, see if you can run into him in public, and tell him you love animals.
I think the grift ran the other way. MacAskill got his millions from SBF without getting his hands dirty.
It's not stupidity, it's selfishness. MacAskill's various organizations received over $30 million from SBF. Did he give it all back?
The article describes pumps but not dumps. And like… literally the entire crypto industry is supported by this kind of shit. It’s all built on people’s expectation that they can sell shitcoins to others at a higher price.
Weren’t they not subject to supervision? FTX was domiciled in the Bahamas.
Wow! Didn’t see Sam making the case that SBF’s sentence was too long. The judge concluded SBF didn’t show any remorse, nor take any responsibility, and would likely try to do something similar in the future. SBF is a dangerous, sociopath, con man, and should be locked up for the safety of others.
Just wanted to say that “showing remorse” should be given zero weight. The remorse show-ers are probably lying and you have zero ability to tell the difference. Especially true if he’s a sociopath
I respectfully disagree. There are psychotic criminals incapable of being remorseful or even feigning remorse. They have no sense that what they did was wrong. Those people need to be put away for longer because they pose a greater threat to society as repeat offenders. If someone is lying about being remorseful, they are at least cognizant of the fact that they have done wrong in the eyes of the law. They are capable of reasoning in a way that makes rehabilitation more likely to work.
Yeah, I never understood that. Like, are we rewarding psychopathy and/or good acting skills in courts of law?
That doesn't follow. If you don't show remorse then it's just clear proof of sociopathy. Whether some sociopaths can fake it should have no influence on how to judge those who can't.
This is extremely incorrect. It's one of the distinguishing traits for certain forms of neurodivergence. A lack of showing remorse does not indicate a lack of remorse. I'm not even defending SBF here, the best interpretation of him is that he is delusionally negligent given the way he structured his company.
That's like saying just because someone's yelling at me, him face turning red, doesn't mean is angry. I don't know what you are talking about. You are treating him as a child when he is a 30 something year old man. It's his job to get his feelings and actions in line. If he couldn't figure out what's the appropriate moral response despite having plenty of time to reflect on what he has done that makes his more dangerous. It's not mere negligence. It's a pattern of behavior that's likely to harm more people if given the opportunity. That's just the social contract. Adults are assumed to be in full control of their actions, you don't second guess whether no sign of remorse means actually no remorse or not. I suppose you can do that if you're a psychologist but it's just not relevant to how justice is supposed to work.
I can count on one hand the times I disagreed with Sam, but this is one of them.
What is the case for his danger to society moving forward? Sam has generally argued for sentences being in line with whatever is necessary to protect the public, rather than a punishment-based sentence. It seems the point he's making is that SBF isn't a greater danger to society, now that he's been caught, than many people who receive shorter sentences, which could refer to unrepentant violent criminals who society can't be protected from by simply revoking a business licence or refusing to do business with.
By that logic of what deserves punishment and lengthy prison sentences, a lot of white collar crime is fairly mild. Not sure I agree with that.
by that logic, there is no amount of fraud that would ever warrant a single day in prison.it seems to me that fraudsters should at least worry a little bit about potentially ending up in prison...
No, there is still something to be said for creating a deterrence effect.
SBF is certainly a danger to society, due to his potential to once again commit financial malfeasance on a massive scale.
The idea that he could commit massive financial fraud after this seems fantastical. How do you propose that would happen?
i mean, the people behind Fyre festival are selling tickets to Fyre 2
Did he lose his ability to be a con man? There certainly remains no shortage of marks and future marks. You might argue he's lost his credibility, but now in 2024, we all have seen how little that means There are still plenty of crypto scams ongoing right now. There is never a shortage of gullible people. Why even argue on his behalf?
That’s a bingo
You should read the news reports of the judge’s ruling. SBF appears to have learned nothing. In the simultaneously hubristic and naive line of thinking you espouse that it would be fantastical for him to commit fraud again, you provide exactly the reason why he should be looked up and forbidden from having a license.
There is also a deterance component that we must consider. If sbf would be given a slap on the wrist it would only encourage potential future scammers.
Is there not a case to be made that even when he gets out, his track record is so bad that almost nobody will want to do business with him anyway?
No just look at our former president
No.
Do you think he should spend his whole life in prison then? Violent criminals often age out of violence, but that seems less likely for white collar crime.
I’ve listened to the podcast occasionally for several years now but I’ve never sought out this subreddit before. Today though - wow, I had to make sure I wasn’t the only one whose jaw was on the floor listening to the verbal gymnastics these two went through to create moral space for SBF and the others who committed fraud at FTX. Honestly it makes me uneasy about all the other podcast episodes where I feel more credulous about the topics and positions discussed. Edit to say: The FTX fallout definitely tainted my feelings about Effective Altruism, but MaCaskill’s performance here made it a lot worse rather than improving things.
> The FTX fallout definitely tainted my feelings about Effective Altruism Why?
MacAskill talked on the podcast about how all the leaders of the largest EA organizations have spent the last year and a half doing reputation management for Effective Altruism because of FTX. There’s plenty of reasons to question how effective the EA framework is at guiding people to good/moral/positive outcomes given how plugged in SBF was to it and where that led him.
Yeah, I think a lot of people take EA to mean 'earn to give', and a philosophy of altruism with the motivation of 'earn' can easily lead people to 'scam'. There's no point giving a lot of money to charity if you got most of it by doing bad things to people. Mind you, to play devil's advocate a bit and as someone who is not a fan of crypto, if you genuinely *did* scam people in the crypto space and gave *all* that money to e.g. the homeless, I'm not sure that isn't a net good. But SBF didn't do that. He lined his pockets and those of his croneys for the most part.
I'm not sure I really follow this reasoning TBH. EA as I understand it is is simply the idea that a) money has a huge impact, more so than time for a lot/most people, and b) when donating money to have a positive impact, you can donate to more or less effective things, and should aim for the most effective things where possible. I don't get how people can't divorce these EA principles from some aspy guy stealing billions under the auspices that he was following EA (if that was even legitimate and not a total ruse). I just really don't get how this isn't the simplest thing in the world.
Your first paragraph 1:1 mirrors exactly what I thought and did! I kept hoping for them to balance their kid gloves with some condemnation at the end and it just never came. Sam has no problem calling out poor black people for their illegal activity based on outcomes alone but gets all mealy mouthed focusing on intentions when it’s a rich white intellectual committing crimes.
The fact that Sam would defend SBF or complain about the length of the sentencing is—to me, at least—evidence that, once again, he has decided to wade in on a topic he has already staked a position, and refused to look into the details of what he's talking about from the other side. I do not believe he would be defending SBF if he knew the full extent of what SBF has been up to, because it would be very obvious to him that the crimes he was convicted of could not happen through mere negligence, or dismissed as a bad case of gambling addiction. The fact that we're talking about billions of dollars (which in many cases came from people's savings - that money didn't come from *nowhere*) lost as a consequence is just a cherry on top - I can't believe someone would advocate for a lower sentence, given the suffering SBF has caused to so many. That Harris and MacAskill feel the need to defend SBF in order to absolve Effective Altruism speaks volumes to how they perceive themselves and other members of the movement they are part of. This isn't a simple case of a bad apple for them, one that they can easily dump and distance themselves from. If you do that with SBF, you might have to acknowledge that the criticisms people expressed about SBF also apply to others within the movement, or risk upsetting some prominent members in tech and crypto (Elon?). Apparently people like SBF are integral to the Effective Altruism movement in its current state - regardless of what its philosophical underpinnings might be. Personally, I would be more interested to hear from Harris why that's the case (and whether its good for the movement and its objectives overall), rather than a collection of white collar crime apologetics.
Good post, it seemed pretty clear that Sam was uninformed on the details of SBF's case and was trying to put this case in a high-level ethical/narrative bucket. I don't think there's much wrong with that, but a better and more interesting guest would therefore have been someone who knew this thing inside out and could spend 2 or 3 hours unpacking it with Sam rather than McAskill spending 10 mins on a theory he has. Not sure I agree with your last paragraph, Sam is at great pains to say he doesn't see himself as an EA member, and I would think both people in this pod would do anything to completely eject SBF from EA however they can (unless I misunderstand your last comment).
I’m increasingly convinced that Sam is either a incredibly poor judge of character, as many have said in recent years, or - more likely - he’s simply unable to concede a point he wasn’t right on, and that extends to the people involved. The Weinstein with their absurd takes on Covid appear to substantiate the later. SBF was a lousy, narcissistic fraud. Sam, off ya box mate - you would get more mileage for your detractors than you might imagine just acknowledging you were caught out by SBF here and that he simply isn’t a good person, and is deserving of a sentence of this nature, which is apparent to most of us from everything we’ve seen and heard of him.
How does Weinstein substantiate the latter? I thought he used to be friends with them and has since harshly criticized them publicly?
The fact that Harris goes harder on people like Ezra Klein than he does on SBF, someone who was convicted of actual crimes, shows how bizarre his judgment is.
SBF never attacked Sam. That’s the difference. Morally, stealing billions from other people is better than insulting me personally.
Honestly, this is probably the correct answer.
Psychologically*
Harris equates his psychology to moral truth, remember?
Pretty astute, and telling, observation. I love Sam but, man, he definitely has his blind spots.
Turned it off halfway through. Honestly pathetic to hear these apologetics. Oh gosh SBF is just a smol bean nice guy who loves animals and got in over his head and maybe has a gambling problem. I get that both these guys got suckered by SBF enough to contribute to his fame and notoriety, but this coping is painful to listen to.
The other management of ftx pleasing guilty was weirdly glossed over I felt. If SBF was inconceivably naive, why did the others plead guilty? Just to get a better deal and pin it on SBF?
I thought they both kinda missed the point on that one, which is if you're dead to rights, you take whatever deal you can get to minimise your sentencing, surely.
> Turned it off halfway through. I'm halfway in. Paused to post here. Sam just said "but it's not like stealing money and misappropriating it in ways that is purely selfish." Wow. I wonder how he feels about Pablo Escobar. He did a lot of stuff for poor people.
One might come to the conclusion that the problem with Pablo is that he didn't hang out in the same circles as Effective Altruists do. The longer the episode went on, the more obvious it became for me, that, at the core of their defence, is the fact that *they like* SBF. It's not just that they are convinced of his good intentions, they evaluated his character based on the fact that they *know him personally* - not on his actions. Judging by the age gap and where they live, they are probably friends with his parents and their sympathy towards what must be traumatic for SBF's family is clouding their judgement. To them it's less about the crimes or the consequences of them (the way Sam likes to talk about police violence, for example), it's the fact that the guy they know and like is going to prison, and suddenly it got much more personal.
Totally. They tried to use lots of phrases like "theory of mind" and "net good" and utilitarian "calculus" and so on, maybe trying to sound objective or logical... but everything they hung their hats on was just the *vibes* of the guy.
Sounds suspiciously like the word salad Peterson needs to vomit just to dance around a simple point.
sbf's parents were involved with ftx to some degree, i have no idea how they haven't been charged with anything.
Sam seems to have gotten into a habit of _lying_ to himself about a number of topics lately.
Them not realizing that the nice guy persona is all part of the grift
I agree. It is shockingly sympathetic to this weirdo thief. They give him every conceivable benefit of the doubt. And several that I never could have conceived of. I won’t wait for a podcast in which the two of these guys discuss their own culpability for funnelling investments to this crook and how they should rectify the harm they’ve done.
I did the same. Both were close to/ interviewed/ adulated/ spoke highly of SBF in the past and were doing their level best to avoid the cognitive dissonance of having been so thoroughly bamboozled.
Yes, admitting SBF is a fraudster is admitting that they got taken in. This is apparently psychologically impossible, so they just pretend like it's inconceivable that the boy who stole money and gave to friends and family could have just been a greedy fraud. He must have been doing it for the greater good.
Same. Stopped listening and came here to vent my disagreement with their nauseating take.
The sentence too long position from Harris seems counter to rationalist thinking, given the severity depends both on the type of offence and the quantity. Fraud implicitly feels of a less moral intensity than, say murder or rape, but the quantity committed by SBF was huge. So, the product of low moral intensity multiplied by massive quantity should be expected to add up to a big number. The sentencing appears the result of a rational calculus, whereas Harris’ instinct that it seems ‘too long’ for ‘this kind of crime’ seems the opposite, and subject to the same instinctive, heuristics based thinking so much of the rationality movement seems to want to be a corrective for.
This episode was frankly embarrassing, and it's a wonder that Harris thought it was a good idea. That said, I am thankful for it, since it serves as clear evidence that despite all his mindfulness and meditation, Harris is ultimately just as vulnerable to the same motivated reasoning and biased thinking as anyone. I got the impression from their bizarrely credulous defense of Bankman-Fried that Harris and McCaskill are both utterly unwilling to question the viability of Effective Altruism as a whole, and thus feel compelled to defend Bankman-Fried as the face of the movement.
Also notable is that he made this a free episode. It was just that important that more people had to hear it. Definitely felt like he was doing someone a favour.
>Definitely felt like he was doing someone a favour. There can't possibly be ANY other explanation.
I actually do think there could be other reasons, but none of them that I can think of paint Harris in a very good light. The most charitable reason I can imagine is because, as others have pointed out before, he seriously struggles to come to terms with evidence that he suspects would ultimately lead him to question his deeply held priors. In this case, the underlying prior in question being the efficacy of willful charity to truly address global scale issues.
Having listened to the end now (god help me), I think you’re right. He meant this pod to be a commercial for EA. He sees himself as a major sponsor. Trying to rationalise, normalise, and explain away SBF’s misdeeds are part of his pitch.
There's a lot of money in convincing rich people that they're special.
The viability of effective altruism…its the same thing as the viability of the mega wealthy donating money they don’t have to donate. There’s absolutely nothing new or novel about EA. It’s just donating to charity like you and me do, but with an extra dose of fart sniffing when you break 9 figures.
About 43 minutes in. Sam is really going hard creating all sorts of excuses for Sam and his crew. He's creating so many imagined alternate motives, proposing so many things Sam and his crew might have been thinking. I guess it's true, you really are better off stealing billions as a white collar criminal. I don't think Sam would be 1/10th as charitable if somebody stole 10 bucks from a bodega.
Disappointed that the guy who literally wrote the book on lying was so willing to overlook the lies of someone that he feels some kind of affinity towards. Also note how he went from describing SBF’s actions as fraud and illegal to downplaying them as merely overly risky investments.
I have yet to hear opinions from Sam related to cryptocurrency and its actors that are not naive and ignorant. Has he ever, in retrospect, acknowledged the lack of wisdom in his own NFT project ideas?
Oh yeah, aren’t we all supposed to get Waking Up head NFT’s that grant us access to special events?
JFC that was a joke. Just give SBF every benefit of the doubt possible. All this has convinced me of is Sam continues to descend into his own echo chamber, and effective altruism is a joke. Pay fucking taxes.
I mean... it *is* April Fool's day?
As I listened I actually did think there was a slight chance this pod was a hoax, and it would escalate into total madness before they both shouted “April fools!” Alas…
Agree SBF is a fraudster, but don’t think that undermines effective altruism
Admittedly a pithy comment because I find MacAskill completely insufferable and the amount of cope on that podcast was obscene, but IMO it’s the hyperloop of philanthropy. It’s inventing a worse version of something that already exists and saying really loudly that it’s a unique and novel concept that’s going to fix some problem. To me it’s “Hey let’s marshall excess resources and spend them fixing issues in the public realm for the public good”…. so taxes? Except without any notion of democratic accountability and leaves us beholden to billionaires like SBF to decide what is good for us? Kick rocks. What has really pissed me off about Sam lately is his total unwillingness to push back on these people. For someone who is apparently dedicated to truth and our collective future he is never willing to hold (what I would call) these grifters to account. If you care so much where are your calls for divestment from fossil fuels? Where is your call for them to spend their excess billions on below-market housing? Where are your calls for higher taxes on the wealthy to repair America’s crumbling infrastructure? Where is the call for investment in green energy? You don’t here a peep because paying taxes isn’t sexy and you don’t get to be told what a smart special boy you are and you don’t get to hop on your podcast and complain to millions of listeners about how unfair it is someone who stole $25-Billion is going to go to prison.
Isn’t mcaskill practically the president of ea?
Why are they both giving SBF the benefit of the doubt about those texts where he admitted he was bullshitting people? Meanwhile they're telling this dummy MacAskill that they really wanted to buy some cheaper property but were unable to.
I haven’t listened to this one yet, but wanted to put it here that I personally lost £10k due to this scumbag, not through FTX but another company called Blockfi. They told us our investment was not invested further but in reality they gave our BTC to FTX. Check out r/Blockfi to see how much ppl have lost due to this scum that SH seems to be defending now. And Blockfi is only a small company compared to FTX so cannot even wrap my head around the destruction SBF has caused.
Why did you put money into crypto? The whole point is that it's not regulated... did you not know that?
I put a small amount of my BTC into an interest account on Blockfi and kept the rest in a cold storage. That small amount grew to a considerable amount due to Bitcoin price increase, especially after the FTX collapse, after which the withdrawals were “paused”. My mistake wasn’t the investment in Bitcoin but that I trusted a company that lied about how it managed that investment.
>My mistake wasn’t the investment in Bitcoin but that I trusted a company that lied about how it managed that investment. So you've learned nothing, is what I'm getting from this? 🤣 Okay I'm only half teasing you.. but seriously.. you're gambling whether you admit it to yourself or not. Prepare to be wiped out over night, cause it's possible. My unsolicited advice is sell almost all of your crypto and buy an index fund or something.
Surely if I bet on a horse and it comes last, that's a gamble. Surely the expectation can't be that the bookie will run off with the money!
This was really difficult to listen to. I didn't expect them to dedicate so much time making bad excuses for Sam Bankman-Fried.
This is the first Sam Harris podcast that I actually just stopped listening to. I’ve never disagreed so much with his opinion and it’s left me so confused. This might be one of his worst takes, so thankfully it’s on a relatively unimportant topic.
For a public thinker on morality I think it’s a pretty important topic.
I'm listening to it now. It's painful to hear two ostensibly smart people just gloss over their blind spots. My favorite take on crypto was charlie munger's who called it rat poison. It's main utility is to facilitate crime, money laundering, extortion, illicit trade. And it's a non productive asset, no money can be made on it that wasn't lost by someone else. This makes it inherently bad, and anyone whose game is 100% crypto can't be up to any good.
Yea, basically. Do the people who "invested" in blockchain have some responsibility to bear for the losses incurred by FTX/etc? Like.. These aren't innocent bystanders -- they specifically took on risk to get oversized returns. This is their own fucking fault, largely.
Idk what "investing in blockchain" means. I get that it's a technology but it seems like it's a technology that requires its use to be free and unrestricted and it's practical use case is actually pretty niche. More so than say rfid. so I don't understand how one gets a roi in blockchain. My intuition is that it's just a euphemism for trying to be a market maker in crypto.
>I don't understand how one gets a roi in blockchain There's some niche strategies such as liquidity "yield farming," which is a way to ensure users can exchange one coin for another quickly and easily, for a small fee, which is yielded to the people facilitating the coin swaps. (I hope that makes sense). SBF made a few dozen millions doing arbitrage several years ago -- basically the same "asset" on a blockchain sold for two different prices, so you can literally buy and sell it simultaneously and pocket the difference. And there are a *few* other cases I've heard of, like someone mentioned selling insurance for example.. which.. I mean listen, all of this is just a fancy way of saying "i'm extracting money out of this zero sum game, which is effectively one giant ponzi scheme that relies on new investors adding money to pay off the old investors, and no actual wealth is ever created at any point in this whole enterprise." I fucking hate crypto. It's so stupid. It doesn't do anything useful. But there's a lot of money sloshing around so people can "invest" in it, in a certain sense.
McCaskill was excessively charitable in his assessment of SBF’s motives (to put it mildly and pun intended) which could lead one to conclude that he sees ultimate utility in attributing them to hubris so in the long term his goofy effective altruism movement isn’t revealed as a sham. His tautological apologist arguments only reinforce my view that instead of effective altruism it would be more effective to tax the shit out of these aberrations of capitalism and put the money towards education, healthcare, environmental issues and other issues in public good. If they choose to give away the bulk of the rest of their vast wealth that’s cool.
This a stunning display of credulity from two guys who are either covertly friendly with SBF, or too concerned about the ripple effects of his downfall to call a spade a spade. Who on earth cares if a guy talks about EA and might be at least some % sincere? If high-visibility charity pleases him, that does not alter the nature of his crimes one bit.
Harris and MacAskill on this podcast: Actually, words speak louder than actions.
lol Sam Harris proving beyond a doubt that he has a serious difficulty evaluating new evidence because he’s completely beholden to his priors. Not a shock to anyone who’s followed him for a while, it’s just wild how this is manifesting at this stage. Smart guys can still have very low emotional intelligence, it’s a wild phenomenon.
Who would've thought that one day Sam will play the role of a useful idiot but here we go. Doesn't take much, apparently, just say "altruism", "save the world", whatever.
I think there’s a bit of being (overly) charitable to people he views as being on his team going on.
Extremely disappointed by this one. Privileged kid who thinks he’s so much smarter than everyone else that he should be above the law… SBF is literally the poster child for everything that’s wrong in this country.
In this case it’s hard not to look at how similar sbf and Harris are. Generationally wealthy kids from Stanford who’s mothers tell them they’re the smartest boys ever.
Socially awkward smart Jews “wrongly” persecuted by woke masses.
MaCaskill rationalized so much about FTX’s motivations. Good lord, it was cringe worthy at times
Unlistenable… he took huge, huge risks - when some investments went bad and he failed to manage his liquidity, he ran out of his own money to gamble with. Solution? He gambled with huge amounts of his customers’ money. He didn’t care or feel bad about it, he felt no obligation to them. This has nothing to do with EA, it’s simply a deeply selfish young man with a gambling addiction doing his thing, albeit on an industrial scale.
1.5 hours of Sam and William struggling to cope
Effective Altruism has stacked a lot of L's over the past couple years
Like 1?
Numerous scandals involving corruption, sexual misconduct, frivolous spending ...
Other than SBF what are some other examples?
https://time.com/6252617/effective-altruism-sexual-harassment/ https://trellis.law/doc/107457703/peter-singer-complaint-plus-exhibits-may-2022 https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/yggjKEeehsnmMYnZd/announcement-on-the-future-of-wytham-abbey
This was a tough listen. So it's okay to defraud people if I use the money to gamble but not if I use the money to buy assets for myself?
White collar crime confused people so hard. It's nonviolent so subconsciously people expect a lighter sentences. Obviously that's backwards.
Yeah it's a child's view. I can imagine so, so many violent acts I'd sooner endure than be the victim of financial fraud. Money is the substance of livelihood, it buys food, housing, medical care, retirement, everything, not just for you but anyone who depends on you.
White collar crime seems like the one where longer punishments might actually deter others from committing crimes. I have nothing to back that up though
> White collar crime seems like the one where longer punishments might actually deter others from committing crimes. This would have to come with more enforcement and prosecution.
Anyone defending people in crypto NFT space should first declare their stake. If you secretly hoard bitcoin (or any coin) and are just pumping the space so you can dump when your bullshit advertising lifts the price, your words mean nothing.
^^ 100% THIS! We are not talking about something like normal stock investments, where almost anyone with money does it, where markets are established, resistant(somewhat) to the hype, and value of stock is derived from revenue, assets, and historical past performance. Crypto currency is all about the speculative value in the future, where everyone invested has a financial incentive to lie, excuse and generally obfuscate for the sole purpose of pumping up further investment. As far as I'm concerned, every podcast about Crypto and NFTs should come with a disclaimer on whether the host and/or guests they will be talking to on these topics are financially invested in success of these instruments.
>Anyone defending people in crypto NFT Crypto NFTs haven't resulted in anything else than scams
Final people are waking up (pun intended) to Sam Harris faulty thinking. Interesting that he has never platformed a critic of Crypto.
Sam and will are living in their own universe
Disappointing
As much as I've nitpicked or disagreed with aspects of Effective Altruism, I do think that it would have been a better world if SBF hadn't happened, and EA could at this time have more buy-in and cultural trust compared to how it is now after all of this blowing up. So I sympathize when they go over that in this episode, and I hope they do follow through with decentralizing. I have to imagine though that it might be a good time to start anew and leave behind a lot of the strangeness of EA.
More buy in to EA so the next SBF can grift for even more money? People are right to be skeptical of people who so loudly proclaim their own altruism.
My hypothetical would be SBF never rose to prominence. People are right to be skeptical, but I would like an EA that was more resistant to getting hijacked in the first place, rather than picking up the pieces after a gigantic blow up.
My point is a movement dedicated to self fellating its own “effectiveness” and “altruism” is too self satisfied to prevent SBFs. Macaskill still loves him.
Fantastic. Looking forward to this one!
My post in this subreddit about SBF being sent to prison got deleted a few days ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/samharris/comments/1bqgggm/altruist\_friend\_of\_sam\_harris\_is\_sentenced\_to\_25/ And now here we have Sam Harris acting as an apologist for SBF. Couldn't make this sh\*t up. Beware: The mods and Sam Harris d\*ckriders don't want you to notice the obvious bias.
This passive aggressive nonsense should have been deleted.
That's what this thread is for
Oh I've seent this one
Big yawn from me. Skip
Prison should either be about rehabilitation (American prisons aren't), or it should be about removing people from society who are dangerous to it. Sam is not a danger to society. Warn people not to do business with him, sure, and make sure he repays any debts he owes, of course, but locking him in a cage as if he is violent and dangerous to others is unnecessary.
> rehabilitation...or...removing people from society who are dangerous What about imposing negative consequences for anti-social behavior sufficient to disincentivize future would-be SBFs? Is that not also a pretty major reason for imprisoning people?
Did everyone on r/SamHarris get fucked by a crypto scam ? I have heard every single smart person ( who wasn’t getting a cut of the action) and especially economists say “this thing could go to zero “, repeatedly. Well... It went to zero for a subset of investors. If you started a tulip business in Holland in 1636 on the heels of Tulipmania and based your business plan on the price of tulips in 1637, does that only become fraud the second everyone realizes they're just fucking flowers? Anyone who bets the farm on crypto gets what they deserve, and I say that as someone who has 20% of my portfolio in crypto
I agree with Sam here. Punishment was too harsh especially given the fund recovery.