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Comment by NickRandom | Hacker News Reader

Thanks for the link. There are some real gems in there and also made for an interesting read as a non-cryptonite (in other words I have no dog in the fight, skin in the game etc).

"He only gave himself a 20 percent chance of success, but, in his mind, SBF needed extreme risk to maximize the expected value of his lifetime earnings—and, therefore, the good his earn-to-give strategy could do. The fact that he was, by his own lights, overwhelmingly likely to fail was beside the point."

I guess that the whole mess boils down to a few old chestnuts - #1) Don't bet money you can't afford to lose (investors) and also that #2) you can only run at the red-line in terms of pharmacology for so long before it bites you in the arse.

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I'd take the "effective altruism" and long-termism stuff with a pinch of salt. Just seems like a way for wealthy people to justify hanging onto or acquiring boatloads of assets and saying "ah but it's for the good of humanity that I alone possess all this wealth"

I mean "effective altruism" is really just "I know things better than you. See the amount of money I have made is proof, therefore I'll make the decisions on how to spend the money on shaping the future of those peons I took the money from instead of them, you know, doing it themselves".

Good old wish to tell others how to live in a cozy fuzzy warm blanket of dogood. See also politician, dictator, clergy etc.

> I mean "effective altruism" is really just "I know things better than you.

No. It's rather "the marginal utility of this money for me is much less than it is for others". As far as effective altruism is imposing anything on anyone else, it's more of "It's immoral to spend money on things you don't need. You could be saving people's lives instead."

Note I'm not part of the movement. I'm using money to buy free time for myself.

Your interpretation is quit a bit more charitable than mine (pun not intended). I don't disagree with it and I guess it is really hard to judge motivations.

For me, the quota for benefit of the doubt has been mostly used up.

> For me, the quota for benefit of the doubt has been mostly used up.

By what?

It's a shame a few really visible assholes are ruining the public's perception of what is otherwise very reasonable.

The bit about making as much money money as you can is not at all what effective altruism is about, but as usual nuance is the first thing to go when social or traditional media reports on something.

This.

Effective Altruism is not the same as Earning to Give, and I really wish that the distinction was being made more clear.

You can embrace EA to, for instance, make the most of the $1,000 you give to charity every year. There's nothing nefarious about asking "Where does this money do the most good?"

Earning to Give is a becoming a bit of a nightmare though as it's turning out that a lot of people embracing and pushing Earn to Give aren't giving as much as they're keeping, and aren't earning as much as they're stealing.

Yeah, this narrative is getting debunked as we speak. Long overdue.

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