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Comment by simple-thoughts | Hacker News Reader

Effective altruism weights large amount of utility that are distant from the user higher than non-utilitarian moralities such as familial obligations, purity, or fairness. From an EA perspective, SBF made a morally correct gamble since his intent was to donate all the winnings. The discounted utility of donating the potential winnings of shitcoins outweighed the utility of not doing so. Perhaps it would be wise to reconsider the premises of EA rather than run to its defense as the author has done here.

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> From an EA perspective, SBF made a morally correct gamble since his intent was to donate all the winnings.

No, that's a caricature of EA (edit: AFAICT EA seems to be about working within the system). There are perfectly rational reasons not to break moral standards (such as not gambling with other people's money or lying about safekeeping it): the world becomes a worse and unstable place and becomes far harder to improve when everyone acts like that, when you can't trust other actors; and people will keep score of how you behave.

(In another comment I wrote what may seem to be a contradictory view, but I was considering a completely abstract gamble there, not what SBF actually did.)

> From an EA perspective, SBF made a morally correct gamble since his intent was to donate all the winnings.

EA perspective is not limited to one specific moral foundation (in this case act utilitarianism), it is a general idea that if you are going to be altruistic (for whatever reason), you should rationally focus on how to get best 'benefit to others' for your money. EA is not moral philosophy, it is altruistic strategy. For some, altruism is not even connected to morality.

So the gamble you describe is more argument against act utilitarianism than against EA.

Relevant Scott's comment on the article: https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=6797#comment-1943706

Exactly this. All the debates about whether SBF's EA ties were "authentic" or he strayed over time or whatever are missing the point.

EA is a morally bankrupt, barely coherent, stupid ideology designed to justify pre-hoc teenage technocratic fantasies. In that sense, no matter what SBF believed in his heart of hearts he's a poster child for EA all the way.

I'm seeing so many of these posts and I just don't understand how this perception of EA has formed. What charities are you giving to? EA would say you should give to fight global poverty and improve global health as fighting malaria is more effective than say, giving to a local arts community. What's bankrupt, barely coherent, stupid, and technocratic about that?

> EA would say you should give to fight global poverty and improve global health as fighting malaria is more effective than say, giving to a local arts community

Dozens of ideologies say that. EA doesn't say only that.

A common theme in Charles dickens books is a character that cares so much about people in faraway lands that they completely neglect their family. Today with our understanding of mission colonialism these behaviors appear even worse.

On a personal level, my familial obligations supersede even local art charities and much less distant global health issues. Most EA people have enough instinctive moral behavior to avoid falling into a trap like SBF, but EA taken to its extreme clearly states that distance is not morally relevant.

EA doesn't pan out when you realize crypto is used to buy bad things (drugs, guns, CP) or as a tax avoidance scheme.

I've always maintained my theory that Satoshi was CIA. Crypto is the evil kind of stuff they are good at.

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