🤯Unknown Unknowns #76 - Altruism for Who?

Nov 19, 2022

In case you've been under a rock, or don't care about crypto, Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) has been in the news for allegedly committing fraud at FTX, a crypto exchange.

The details have been hashed over ad nauseum, so I won't go into them. What does interest me is that SBF was a proponent of Effective Altruism (EA). EA advocates "using evidence and reason to figure out how to benefit others as much as possible, and taking action on that basis".

The lack of meaning in the modern world has led many people to EA. I learned about EA from Will MacAskill on the Tim Ferriss podcast. The message was simple, use the money you make to make a difference in the world. EA extends the economic principle of comparative advantage to charity. Focus on what you're best at, and donate the extra money that you make.

This made sense to me, it was very rational. But the more I thought about it, it just seemed like justifying a job you hate. Is it now your moral duty to make as much money as possible?

EA is an extension of the philosophy of Utilitarianism. You should take the actions that are most beneficial. What does it mean to benefit others? And benefit the most people or the most cumulative benefit? Even if it means harming other people? And how do you even measure benefit? With our understanding of Learned helplessness, how can you even measure long-term benefit? Can we even measure the effectiveness of charities? The questions are endless.

EA is underpinned by "The ends justify the means," in other words, the results matter more than the methods. If you can benefit mankind, you better go toil at your shitty job.

SBF donated his ill-gotten gains to the charities of his choice. Is it ethical to earn money fraudulently if you use it for good? And how do you even know if those donations will be used effectively?

It's hubris to assume that you know what outcome is the best. Even if you could know, you can’t assume you can figure out the right path to get that outcome. On top of that, it’s impossible to untangle the web of unintended consequences.

Whenever you dig in and find out the underlying motivation is "The ends justify the means", you will usually find a narcissistic wannabe Bond villain. Embrace humility, not hubris. The world is a complex system. It’s certain that you’re wrong. The only question is “In what way?”

Writing of the Week:

An essay I wrote, about leaving my job. The moral of the story is to look closely at why you’re not doing what you think you want to do.

🔗 Unsought Permission

Discoveries:

1️⃣

Alex Labossiere interviewed Samo Burja. Two topics came up that interested me.

First, the concept of immortal civilizations. Every civilization so far has ended with huge information losses. Because knowledge compounds, every fall of a civilization is a huge setback.

The second was distinguishing between "live players" and "dead players". Live players are people "able to do things they have not done before, whereas a dead player operates off of a script and is incapable of doing new things". In other words, Live players act with agency and Dead players follow the default path.

🔗 Podcast here

🔗 More on Samo Burja

🔗 More on Live Players vs Dead Players

2️⃣

There's a lot of talk about how abusive Elon is at Tesla and of course Quiet Quitting is still in the headlines, but today's employees didn't have to go through the workplace culture of 1930s IBM. The IBM of Thomas Watson had mandatory singing about the glories of working at IBM.