LEARN. THINK. EXPLORE.
  • Home
  • class sampler
  • Summer 2023
  • Fall 2023
  • FAQ
  • About
  • Blog
  • Contact

Learning Outside the Box

"PHILOSOPHICALLY SPEAKING...":

12/4/2022

0 Comments

 
Ethics aside, what, if anything, does philosophy have to do with the collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX?  This opinion piece ties Silicon Valley's favorite philanthropic philosophy, "effective altruism," to Sam Bankman-Fried's approach to FTX:

"Effective altruists claim they strive to use reason and evidence to do the most good possible for the most people. Influenced by utilitarian ethics, they’re fond of crunching numbers to determine sometimes counterintuitive ideas for maximizing a philanthropic act’s effects by focusing on “expected value,” which they believe can be calculated by multiplying the value of an outcome by the probability of it occurring.SBF belonged to the “longtermist” sect of effective altruism, which focuses on events that could pose a long-term existential threat to humanity, like pandemics or the rise of runaway artificial intelligence. The reasoning for this focus is that more people will exist in the future than exist today, and thus the potential to do more good for more people is greater. He also adopted one of the movement’s signature strategies for effecting social change called “earning to give,” in which generating high income is more important than what kind of job one takes, because it enables people to give away more money for philanthropy. As a college student, SBF had lunch with William MacAskill, the most prominent intellectual advocate for effective altruism in the world, and then reportedly went into finance, and then crypto, based on the idea that it would allow him to donate more money. ...

"In online conversation with the reporter, SBF referred to his bids in the past to appear regulator-friendly as 'just PR,' and he disavowed some of his previous statements about ethics. There’s some ambiguity in this part and other parts of SBF’s exchange with the reporter, but broadly speaking, one can interpret the meaning of his responses in two ways. The first possibility is that he’s confessing that his entire set of ethical commitments — including effective altruism — is a ruse. ... The second possibility is that he’s saying that he’s extremely committed to effective altruism, and that he would be willing to do anything — including unsavory things — in order to get to what he saw as the greatest good. ... Remarkably, both scenarios are plausible — and damning. ... While these two scenarios reflect different outlooks on the world, both expose something alarming about effective altruism. It is a belief system that bad faith actors can hijack with tremendous ease and one that can lead true believers to horrifying ends-justify-the-means extremist logic. The core reason that effective altruism is a natural vehicle for bad behavior is that its cardinal demands do not require adherents to shun systems of exploitation or to change them; instead, it incentivizes turbo-charging them. ... The value proposition of this community is to think of morality through the prism of investment, using expected value calculations and cost-effectiveness criteria to funnel as much money as possible toward the endpoint of perceived good causes. It's an outlook that breeds a bizarre blend of elitism, insularity and apathy to root causes of problems. This is a movement that encourages quant-focused intellectual snobbery and a distaste for people who are skeptical of suspending moral intuition and considerations of the real world. ... This is a movement in which promising young people are talked out of pursuing government jobs and talked into lucrative private sector jobs because of the importance of 'earning to give.'"
www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/ftx-sbf-effective-altruism-bankman-fried-rcna59172
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Blog sharing news about geography, philosophy, world affairs, and outside-the-box learning

    This blog also appears on Facebook:
    www.facebook.com/LearningOutsideTheBox.LearnThinkExplore

    Archives

    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016

    Categories

    All
    Biogeography
    Book
    Cartograms
    Climate
    Contests
    Cultural Geography
    Demographics
    Economic Geography
    Extraplanetary Geography
    Geography Technology
    "Global Issues..."
    Historical Geography
    Human Geography
    Language Geography
    Miltary Geography
    Out Exploring
    Outside The Box
    Philosophically Speaking
    Physical Geography
    Political Geography
    Quiz
    Science Fiction
    Scifi
    U.S. Geography
    Video/interactive
    World Geo_Africa
    World Geo_Asia
    World Geo_Europe
    World Geography
    World Geo_Latin America
    World Geo_Mid.East
    World Geo_N America
    World Geo_Oceania
    World Geo_oceans
    World Geo_polar
    World Geo_S America

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Home
  • class sampler
  • Summer 2023
  • Fall 2023
  • FAQ
  • About
  • Blog
  • Contact