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Comment by jmount | Hacker News Reader

"Use" in this case means theft. It can't be repeated enough, they stole customer funds, and did something with them their self not as an agent for the customer (hesitate to say invested). At best this is like your stock broker cleaning out your account and going to Vegas (and claiming they new how to double "their" stake, and were going to give you 10% returns back).

The whole SBF "effective altruism" is just a variation on solipsism, the belief not being the only one to exist but the only moral actor to exist. That being itself an incredibly selfish or non-altruistic position.

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Altruism being effective seems like a good thing in the abstract, much like being anti-fascist.

If you have a bone to pick with the "effective altruism" movement, it would be better to critique what they actually have done than make philosophical or mind-reading declarations. Many people on HN don't know any more about it than antifa.

I have a bone to pick with the idea that we should break things and then fix the damage we caused in the process by doing altruism.

Even if SBF could have gotten away with it, now I am skeptical that his altruism would have done more positive things than if he had never earned the money to begin with.

So, he was evil and/or a hypocrite and shouldn't have had a lot of money to begin with. Sure, fine. Nobody was questioning that.

I first heard of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy on HN, by the way.

> If you have a bone to pick with the "effective altruism" movement, it would be better to critique what they actually have done

It's in the comment above:

> they stole customer funds

SBF isn't some random crook who happens to be vaguely associated with Effective Altruism; he's a relatively central figure to the movement. Currently, one of the most significant fruits of EA is massive fraud.

"It's in the comment above:"

Your comments here, as well thought out as they may be, are not part of "the comment above".

"they stole customer funds" = FTX stole customer funds.

"SBF isn't some random crook who happens to be vaguely associated with Effective Altruism; he's a relatively central figure to the movement."

If you say so, why should I doubt it? Perhaps everyone associated with the movement is a monster. Let's assume that is the case.

That doesn't defend the pseudo-philosophical/psychological pronouncements on what the essence of the idea is.

With or without your addition it looks to me like an equivocal attack on being effective in doing good, rather than on "Effective Altruism" as a movement.

Psychobabble is not aimed at people who are deeply familiar with the history and the nature of the movement, but at people like me who know nothing much about it.

It's schematically the same as a lot of rhetoric that see-saws on a foundation of equivocation but careless people fall off.

If someone is going to traffic in this nasty, illogical rhetoric, I object to them sliding by doing it in a completely careless and sloppy way.

"Stole" from people who wanted in on an obvious "get rich quick" scheme. I've got zero sympathy for anybody who lost their life savings on crypto. Everybody got what they deserved in this story.

Being uninformed does not mean one deserves crimes committed against them. The fault lies with those doing the stealing, not the victims of theft.

When the victims are greedily persuing impossible gains, it’s hard to consider them truly innocent in the endeavor.

It’s like a con artist taking advantage of folks by convincing them to do a get-rich-quick scheme. It’s hard to not consider everyone as shitty in the scenario.

For years the news (and charlatans) have been bleating about how crypto has gone up and up. Crypto billionaires are a thing. It is not hard to imagine unsophisticated investors throwing money at any vehicle they can to try and not miss out on the opportunity.

That just reinforces my point, since everything you’re describing is just ‘get-rich-quick’.

Very few people thought they were legitimately doing something that created actual value, just getting on the train to getting rich without having to do anything.

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