Mr. MacAskill was one of five people from the charitable vehicle known as the FTX Future Fund who jointly announced their resignation on Thursday. In their statement, they said that “it looks likely that there are many committed grants that the Future Fund will be unable to honor.”
What was MacAskill's position at the fund? Isn't that odd, reporting a resignation without saying what the job was? Reading the article, seeing him referred to as "the philosopher," followed by the reference to M.I.T., I assumed he was an M.I.T. professor. I thought only his "ideas" were implicated, but he had a position. What position? That's a very strange way to report this news!
Grant recipients worked on topics including pandemic preparedness and artificial intelligence safety....
That does not sound like the highest level of altruism.
In a few short years, effective altruism went from a somewhat obscure corner of charity favored by philosophy students and social workers to a leading approach to philanthropy for an increasingly powerful cohort of millennial and Gen-Z givers, including Silicon Valley programmers and hedge fund analysts.
So many red flags.
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Never put a leftist in charge of doing anything involving money. They'll either screw it up or steal it.
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The Democrat-Ukraine-FTX money laundering circle jerk is the kind of story that would have won the Pulitzer Prize for the Washington Post back when either of them meant something.
Now it’ll just be a Twitter footnote at best.
1:27 AM · Nov 14, 2022
So the FTX revenue stream has dried up. Many streams still flowing and the river still running.
This altruism is virtue-signalling.
I was always taught (and I believe it) to be charitable in private.
I don't need nor want pats on the back for doing good deeds.
I do them and move on.
They could have made their billions and given it away in private.
I will leave out my thoughts on fraud and Ukraine laundering cash back to the democrat party for another time...
Another rube self-identifies.
If someone says they are doing something for other people and not out of their own self interest I immediately assume they are lying.
I am almost never wrong.
And not only are they dishonest, the people who claim altruism usually end up being the most evil shitty people in the world.
"Historically, the community focused on low-cost medical interventions, such as insecticide-treated bed nets to prevent mosquitoes from giving people malaria." That sounds - like a good idea.
Tl;dr: I wish I were not so easily manipulated, but I don’t plan to change.
At least the list in the article sounded like things that might be worth doing. It did not list climate change, perhaps because of Bjorn Lomborg and co., who have pretty conclusively demonstrated that even if everything is true, spending money on fixing it doesn't help much. Copenhagen Consensus hasn't met since 2012 AFAIK, unfortunately. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_Consensus These are exactly the kind of issues they try to work out: Bang for the buck. But it's too politicized to get much done.
For sure. Effective altruism started with something that's been a focus of poverty reduction for decades -- good evaluation and evidence of what works.
However they quickly grew bored with such mundanities. That's when they -- led by the "philosophy" of MacAskill and Toby Ord, shifted to "longtermist". This is the idea that anything you can do, however small, to reduce the chances of the extinction of humanity in the coming decades/centuries is worth far more than merely saving or improving lives now, because of the trillions who would be lost in the future.
So then you get to fantasize about extinction events -- Skynet AI terminators sent from the future, Armageddon (the movie), alien invasion, whatever -- and feel good about yourself for a billion dollar grant to software engineers or rocket builders. Superior, actually, to mere normals trying to make the world better today, who are wasting their time with low expected returns.
It's worse than a sociopath, who just wouldn't care about today or the long term.
Oh and another favorite -- the best thing you can do for the world is get super rich then give some of it away.
The FTX guy not much different than Hunter.
Their Greed has got so large that they now relying on the unreliable.
We always tolerated them making money on the sly. But they aren’t sly about it and have sold us out for more than a few dollars more.
@Joe Smith "They could have made their billions and given it away in private." I think Bill Gates was the one who pointed out that people who give away billions in private, generally don't do any good. You and I can do good on a reasonably small scale, in private, and it's wonderful. But if someone has a billion dollars to give away, it is reasonable to wonder if there's some major bottleneck problem that humanity has, that could be solved if there were someone working on it seriously.
Elon Musk does that too; he has many times explained the rationale behind his choices of projects. You may or may not agree with his conclusions, of course.
Democracy dies through recycling American capital in darkness. Demos-cracy dies at The Twilight Fringe. Wicked. Let us bray.
The Major League Umpires union debuted their first advertisements on shirts last year. It was these fuck sticks. All unions suck.
Conmen (and women; looking you at, Elizabeth Holmes) have an astounding ability to convince others to ignore the lesson learned in childhood, that if it seems too good to be true it's not true, and believe in magic instead.
On a daily basis they achieve a car salesman's highest aspiration: the "seven-car weekend."
I salute them.
Bankman-Fried was a major Democratic party donor.
a fool and his money......
What did those five people know and when did they know it?
a fool and his money......
We should put Fetterman in charge of that
A very smart person once told me:
Charities start as a cause
Them become a business
And finally end up as a racket
My life experience tells me this is too often true.
Reminds me of a conversation I had with a woman attorney 20+ years ago. My assertion was that if you want to eliminate things like racism, you appeal to people logically, i.e., to allow people to reach their own conclusion that it is in their own self-interest to reject prejudice, and to deal with people as individuals.
She sniffed and said "I think people can just choose be nice to each other". I wasn't familiar with the term "virtue signaling" back then, but she was the Queen of it.
Does anyone REALLY BELIEVE the now missing money is in the hands of Arnold Horshack and his butter-faced girlfriend? Come on.
Daniel12 said...
So then you get to fantasize about extinction events -- Skynet AI terminators sent from the future, Armageddon (the movie), alien invasion, whatever -
Not 'whatever', Climate Change.
It's important to remember that FTX and the Ukrainian money laundering scheme is all Donald Trump's fault or we might lose sight of the current narrative.
The party that just maintained power in a horseshit economy and rising crime, laundered huge amounts of money through a war zone and a fake altruistic crypto currency exchange to fund ballot harvesting and ballot curing efforts.
Brilliant move by Donald Trump.
Don't worry. We're gonna be just fine...as soon as we can finish off Donald Trump and his supporters. Focus people!!!
Seemed the good will was to obtain political influence. Sam was the second highest donor to Democrats behind George Soros. I would think altruism would be helping the welfare of others, not playing politics.
Does resigning after the prime financial backer declares bankruptcy a sign of moral fortitude?
So how much did you lose in FTX? Me neither.
So now the Centralized exchanges in the Crypto space are being forced to show their reserves.
And shockingly there is currently a massive liquidation event going on right now.
Crypto.com was apparently shopping "proof of Reserves" to other exchanges.
Another exchange had 20 percent of it's "reserves" listed as Shiba Inu which is a meme coin.
Apparently a lot of the reserves were in wrapped bitcoin and wrapped Eth which is normally OK but now there is an issue.
Ethereum and Bitcoin tokens in their generated state are on chains that are slow and expensive to use. So there is a protocol where the original token is "Wrapped" in a contract and a Wrapped Eth/Bitcoin is created on a chain that runs an EVM clone or Ethereum Virtual Machine clone that is run through a centralized server to make it faster.
The reason it is an issue is because someone has absconded with a bunch of the original ETH/Bitcoin from the wrapped contracts and that WEth and WBTC is now going to zero. I heard you could get wrapped Eth for 1000$ on a couple chains which is obviously a problem. Of course there really isn't any way to actually get away with the Eth and BTC so they will get tracked down after a merry chase.
I have been telling people the Eth/EVM chain is doomed because it has too much technical debt and is fundamentally flawed. It is a pile of patches and it will just never be secure. Solana is in a similar situation. The chin has been abandoned by most of it's users and their NFT creators are moving to Cardano now.
Bitcoin is down but it is holding it's position as the reserve currency.
As always being right about things evokes hatred.
If anyone is interested the fundamentally sound decentralized chains are still working and completely untouched by all of this. But values are way down. This is a massive buying opportunity for people who are interested but I would make sure I knew what I was doing.
Leland said...
Seemed the good will was to obtain political influence. Sam was the second highest donor to Democrats behind George Soros. I would think altruism would be helping the welfare of others, not playing politics.
If you haven't noticed the people that vote for and support democrats think they are on a holy crusade.
That is why they think cheating in elections is ok.
Daniel12 said...
For sure. Effective altruism started with something that's been a focus of poverty reduction for decades -- good evaluation and evidence of what works.
However they quickly grew bored with such mundanities. That's when they -- led by the "philosophy" of MacAskill and Toby Ord, shifted to "longtermist". This is the idea that anything you can do, however small, to reduce the chances of the extinction of humanity in the coming decades/centuries is worth far more than merely saving or improving lives now, because of the trillions who would be lost in the future.
So then you get to fantasize about extinction events -- Skynet AI terminators sent from the future, Armageddon (the movie), alien invasion, whatever -- and feel good about yourself for a billion dollar grant to software engineers or rocket builders. Superior, actually, to mere normals trying to make the world better today, who are wasting their time with low expected returns.
It's worse than a sociopath, who just wouldn't care about today or the long term.
You just describe the Climate Change Cult perfectly.
You have no self awareness.
the Ukrainian money laundering scheme is all Donald Trump's fault
Laundering American capital, to abort Ukrainians, reap "benefits" here and there, and buyback votes in the US of A. The very redistributive change scheme that Trump called to audit, and was rewarded with Pinocchios, nationwide insurrections, and multitrimesters of special commissions and impeachments.
Young Sam Bankman-Fried has at least one friend. It was reported there are ongoing negotiations with Hillary's camp as to young Sam's availability to resurrect the defunct Clinton Foundation. His skill set appears to match their needs. If Sam gets community service, it's win win.
Effective altruism is effective for donors.
The most effective altruism is to invent a widget or build a business that solves a problem so well people want to pay for it.
Effective altruism in the form of charity betrays a lack of imagination.
I wonder if the scam was something that he got caught up in or whether he himself was the scam.....There was a kind of purity to Bernie Madoff in his aims, in his goals, in his personality. Bernie Madoff and all his works were never anything but a fraud and Bernie Madoff knew it....Bankman-Fried sounds like he might have been a true believer both in the value of his product and in his own moral value. He really comes across as sincere, benign, and a little awkward. He's much more convincing than Bernie Madoff or even Elizabeth Holmes.
Next year the MLB umps should have "SPY" on their uniforms. Public Service Announcement.
Bankman-Fried gave about $40M to the Dems for the midterms, second only to Soros. He was also promising $100M up to $$1B for 2024. $1B to $10B investor money has disappeared.
Since this whole fiasco involves Democrats expect the MSM to quickly sweep this under the rug.
This is one of the biggest scandals of the last ten years.
It is getting noticed, but I will bet that it will not be investigated in any serious way, nor will anyone of note face any serious consequences.
All because the people involved are liberals.
FTX was promoted on the World Economic Forum's website, but it has now been removed.
Does anybody really believe altruistic Arnold Horshack came up with and built the FTX con all by himself???
Wilbur said...
Reminds me of a conversation I had with a woman attorney 20+ years ago. My assertion was that if you want to eliminate things like racism, you appeal to people logically, i.e., to allow people to reach their own conclusion that it is in their own self-interest to reject prejudice, and to deal with people as individuals.
She sniffed and said "I think people can just choose be nice to each other". I wasn't familiar with the term "virtue signaling" back then, but she was the Queen of it.
People like her have redefined "choose."
Choose to these fascist shitheads is now defined as:
"To squirm under my righteous boot."
"Effective Altruism," as a slogan caused investors and customers to part forever with $10 Billion worth of their wealth. I call that pretty effective. As for altruism, I suppose a case can be made that separating fools from their money itself serves some higher purpose in the Great Chain of Being. No doubt Professor Macaskill resigned to spend more time working out the logos of that proposition.
Jupiter said:
So how much did you lose in FTX? Me neither.
You might have lost money even if you didn't directly invest in FTX. I didn't have any connection to Lehman Brothers back in 2008 either, but it definitely affected me.
"Canadian teachers could have a $95 million hole in their pensions due to the FTX crypto implosion"
a brilliant young billionaire with a heart of gold, ....hard and yellow
Tyler Cowen at the blog "Marginal Revolution" has been sniveling the last couple of days about how people are too quick to describe Effective Altruism as Effective Grifterism given the sudden collapse of FTX and the realization that Bankman-Fried was a thief of astounding scale.
He did a redux of an interview with Bankman-Fried he conducted in March of this year, but with a curious omission in the blog post- he didn't link to the original Marginal Revolution blog post. I wondered why, so I searched it out- the original title was "My Conversation With The Excellent Sam Bankman-Fried".
I wonder how many of his friends Cowen recommended invest with that scammer?
It is fucking hilarious to read you this morning, Daniel12yearsold. Now do climate change you dumb fuck.
William,
Bankman-Fried knew exactly what he was doing, just like Madoff.
Blogger MountainMan said...
Bankman-Fried gave about $40M to the Dems for the midterms, second only to Soros. He was also promising $100M up to $$1B for 2024. $1B to $10B investor money has disappeared.
I'm sure "the Big Guy" got more than 10%. All those White House visits don't come cheap.
Thanks, I'm very familiar with how this plays out for climate change - as someone who's spent my professional life working on reducing the impacts of storms, droughts, floods and other climate-related disasters, and preparing for what's coming in the near term.
Climate change longtermists are people like Lomborg, who think some magic tech in the future will solve the problem. But there's too much data about what's actually happening now for the majority of climate people to be longtermists -- which is also why longtermists don't really fund climate work, outside of those magic silver bullets.
Thanksgiving Day 2023 headline: "Due to the ongoing investigation, AG Merrick Garland has no comment on the status of the FTX matter."
"My assertion was that if you want to eliminate things like racism, you appeal to people logically, i.e., to allow people to reach their own conclusion that it is in their own self-interest to reject prejudice, and to deal with people as individuals.
She sniffed and said "I think people can just choose be nice to each other"."
This is funny to me because you're both saying the same thing.
What could the writers room at the Times and WaPo do with the set of circumstances that have been presented to the right by this past couple of weeks? It will be tougher to work against that set of circumstances.
Where would the Democrats be today without Trump helping their side? He can't keep it up forever. Then what? I know we have a lot of "patience, hell" here, but that's what we're going to be required to exhibit. Hearts and minds are won with competence, execution, and a ground game.
That's how it was done in Florida, and it wasn't done overnight.
"Effective altruism" is philanthropy that effectively advances your own interests.
Miranda Devine is saying that SBF is some kind of 24 hour videogame-playing anti-social freak. The implication seems to be that someone else is running the business. I think what she heard is an exaggeration, and SBF, like other anti-socials, Musk, Jobs, Gates, Dorsey, is capable of running his business, his philanthropies, and his scams.
From the Onion:
Man Who Lost Everything In Crypto Just Wishes Several Thousand More People Had Warned Him
Is this what Democrats meant by the redistribution of wealth?
People like her have redefined "choose."
Choice has evolved under the ethical religion as a wicked solution with apologists arguing edge cases in a 1-2 compromise.
Long Term Capital Management, Epstein, and now FTX all had ties to MIT. Maybe we should shut down MIT until we can figure out what's going on there.
Let me get this straight: Mr. MacAskill resigned from a capital/charitable fund that drove itself into a legal mess.
. . . . . . classy act man!
And here I thought when I dropped a few bills in the Salvation Army pot, I was effective enough in my altruism. How naive of me.
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