[grebulon]

I think so. The way I see it, effective altruism is a dangerous trend because it can very quickly go into the 'ends justify the means' territory.'

In the case of SBF, if he essentially stole from a bunch of retail investors, and then went about doing altruism (this is not yet verified, of course) did he ultimately create a net positive? That only works if the investors in FTX did not lose out, which they did.

Anything that goes into the 'ends justifies the means' territory ends up badly. Sometimes immediately, sometimes over time, but always.

[eddsh1994]

> and then went about doing altruism

He did donate and fund many people through his FTX Foundation and donations via Giving What We Can. I know this because 1) people were funded with real money, even if some people who have not received money yet are of course screwed and 2) I did some voluntary data analysis work for some EA orgs and saw figures, SBF donated.

[GregSutliff]

There are uncountably many cases where people defraud/steal from others, destroy the environment or do any number of bad things in order to accumulate wealth for themselves or their families. These are all cases where people have thought that the end (i.e. their own personal benefit) justified the means. Indeed, this kind of behavior is more-or-less the norm. People seek to advance in their careers to make more money to buy the things that they want to buy, often regardless of the moral character of the companies they choose to work for or the detrimental effects that their purchases have on others.

In the case of EA, we now have exactly one instance where someone engaged in this ends-justify-the-means behavior in a morally problematic way, and this is for some reason supposed to show that EA is irredeemably flawed. This seems a bit absurd.

[MarkPNeyer]

Can you name some notion of “good” that doesn’t run the risk of going into “ends justify the means” territory?

[phkahler]

Offering to help a stranger that seems to be in need.

[thazework]

Bartleby

[mc32]

From the horse’s mouth:

“Ya. Hehe. I [SBF] had to be. It’s what reputations are made of, to some extent. I feel bad for those guys who get fucked by it, by this dumb game we woke westerners play where we say all the right shibboleths and so everyone likes us.”

https://www.gawker.com/money/sam-bankman-fried-is-so-stupid-...