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FTX, Moral Philosophy, and Public Philosophy
webWritten after the November 2022 FTX collapse, this piece is relevant to AI safety circles because EA and longtermism heavily fund and shape AI safety research, making critiques of EA's ethical foundations and institutional credibility pertinent to the field.
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Importance: 42/100blog postcommentary
Summary
A philosophical analysis of lessons the FTX collapse holds for effective altruism and public philosophy, examining how utilitarian-inspired EA principles may have provided moral cover for fraud, and what responsibilities moral philosophers bear when their ideas influence public figures and movements.
Key Points
- •SBF's EA-influenced 'earning to give' strategy, encouraged by philosopher Will MacAskill, shaped FTX's founding rationale and public image.
- •MacAskill publicly reflected on whether EA's goodwill may have 'laundered fraud' by lending credibility to SBF's activities.
- •SBF himself admitted EA framing was partly a PR strategy, raising questions about the gap between stated and actual motivations.
- •The episode raises questions about public philosophers' responsibility when their ideas are adopted and potentially misused by powerful actors.
- •Debate emerges over whether EA's consequentialist ethics structurally enables rationalizing harmful means for ostensibly good ends.
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| EA Epistemic Failures in the FTX Era | -- | 84.0 |
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Does the [FTX debacle](https://dailynous.com/2022/11/11/cryptocurrency-chaos-academic-grants/) hold lessons for moral philosophers? For those interested in public philosophy?
**1\. What’s the connection?**
The head of FTX, billionaire Samuel Bankman-Fried, has been an active part of the “effective altruism” movement, which was inspired by [Peter Singer](https://petersinger.info/)‘s application of utilitarianism to problems of world hunger (especially the classic 1972 essay “ [Famine, Affluence, and Morality](https://www.jstor.org/stable/2265052#metadata_info_tab_contents)“) and, more lately, shaped by philosophers [Toby Ord](http://www.tobyord.com/) and [William MacAskill](https://www.williammacaskill.com/) (both at Oxford). Further, it seems MacAskill was an influence on the general direction of Bankman-Fried’s career. As Sigal Samuel puts it in an article for [_Vox_](https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23458282/effective-altruism-sam-bankman-fried-ftx-crypto-ethics):
_When Bankman-Fried was in college, he had a meal that changed the course of his life. His lunch companion was Will MacAskill, the Scottish moral philosopher who’s the closest thing EA has to a leader. Bankman-Fried told MacAskill that he was interested in devoting his career to animal welfare. But MacAskill convinced him he could make a greater impact by pursuing a high-earning career and then donating huge gobs of money: “earning to give,” as EA calls it… So the young acolyte pursued a career in finance and, later, crypto. To all appearances, he remained a committed effective altruist, pouring funding into neglected causes like pandemic prevention._
Since FTX tanked last week (see the Bloomberg columns [here](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-11-09/bankman-fried-s-ftx-had-a-death-spiral-before-binance-deal?sref=htOHjx5Y) and [here](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-11-14/ftx-s-balance-sheet-was-bad#xj4y7vzkg); also [this blog post](https://milkyeggs.com/?p=175)), philosophers have weighed in.
**2\. What are the lessons for Effective Altruism?**
Among those who commented was MacAskill, who wrote in a [series of tweets](https://twitter.com/willmacaskill/status/1591218014707671040?s=46&t=scBhCm1IzSsr-c8LTNXeww):
_If there was deception and misuse of funds, I am outraged, and I don’t know which emotion is stronger: my utter rage at Sam (and others?) for causing such harm to so many people, or my sadness and self-hatred for falling for this deception._ _I want to make it utterly clear: if those involved deceived others and engaged in fraud (whether illegal or not) that may cost many thousands of people their savings, they entirely abandoned the principles of the effective altruism community._
_If this is what happened, then I cannot in words convey how strongly I condemn what
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