EA - Wrong lessons from the FTX catastrophe by burner

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Wrong lessons from the FTX catastrophe, published by burner on November 14, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum.There remains a large amount of uncertainty about what exactly happened inside FTX and Alameda. I do not offer any new takes on what occurred. However, there are the inklings of some "lessons" from the situation that are incorrect regardless of how the details flesh out. Pointing these out now may seem in poor taste while many are still coming to terms with what happened, but it important to do so before they become the canonical lessons.1. Ambition was a mistakeThere have been a number of calls for EA to "go back to bed nets." It is notable that this refrain conflates the alleged illegal and unethical behavior from FTX/Alameda with the philosophical position of longtermism. Rather than evaluating the two issues as distinct, the call seems to assume both were born out of the same runaway ambition.Logically, this is obviously not the case. Longtermism grew in popularity during SBFs rise, and Future Fund did focus on longtermist projects, but FTX/Alameda situation has no bearing on the truth of longtermism and associated project's prioritization.To the extent that both becoming incredibly rich and affecting the longterm trajectory of humanity are "ambitious" goals, ambition is not the problem. Committing financial crimes is a problem. Longtermism has problems, like knowing how to act given uncertainty about the future. But an enlightened understanding of ambition accommodates these problems: We should be ambitious in our goals while understanding our limitations in solving them.There is an uncomfortable reality that SBF symbolized a new level of ambition for EA. That sense of ambition should be retained. His malfeasance should not be.This is not to say that there may be lessons to learn about transparency, overconfidence, centralized power, trusting leaders, etc from these events. But all of these are distinct from a lesson about ambition, which depends more on vague allusions to Icarus than argument.2. No more earning to giveI am not sure that this is being learned as a "lesson" or if this situation simply "leaves a bad taste" in EA's mouths about earning to give. The alleged actions of the FTX/Alameda team in no way suggest that earning money to donate to effective causes is a poor career path.Certain employees of FTX/Alameda seem to have been doing distinctly unethical work, such as grossly mismanaging client funds. One of the only arguments for why one might be open to working a possibly unethical job like trading crypto currency is because an ethically motivated actor would do that job in a more ethical way than the next person would (from Todd and MacAskill). Earning to give never asked EAs to pursue unethical work, and encouraged them to pursue any line of work in an ethically upstanding way.(I emphasize Todd and MacAskill conclude in their 2017 post: "We believe that in the vast majority of cases, it’s a mistake to pursue a career in which the direct effects of the work are seriously harmful").Earning to give in the way it has always been advised-by doing work that is basically ethical-continues to be a highly promising route to impact. This is especially true when total EA assets have significantly depreciated.There is a risk that EAs do not continue to pursue earning to give, thinking either that it is icky post-FTX or that someone else has it covered. This is a poor strategy. It is imperative that some EAs who are well suited for founding companies shift their careers into entrepreneurship as soon as possible.3. General FUD from nefarious actorsAs the EA community reals from the FTX/Alameda blow up, a number of actors with histories of hating EA have chimed in with threads about how this catastrophe is in line with X thing they alre...