One must already see above the clouds to build a mountain that pierces the sky.
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Jeremy Flores
@_jeremyflores
Inner: jeremyflor.es / Outer: carterhaugh.com • Then: Texas, MIT / Now: California, Industry & Philosophy • Private: / Public: Here
Joined January 2022
Jeremy Flores’s Tweets
See what we need to do to succeed is defraud and assault more people. That’s the key.
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Replying to @timnitGebru
Even disgraced Andy Rubin “has a new startup focused on “surveillance services” for homes, according to public records.” theinformation.com/articles/fathe
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nuclear welcoming messages
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“If there was deception … [then] I am outraged”
Can one be conditionally outraged???
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Venture capital firms and investment funds showered nearly $2 billion on Sam Bankman-Fried and his crypto exchange, FTX. After the company's sudden collapse, investors are now under scrutiny, too, for enabling Bankman-Fried with so little oversight.
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We are getting to one of the deepest problems we are collectively facing: the total misunderstanding of empiricism by extraordinarily powerful and power-hungry individuals.
Here is a relevant, and devastating quote: 
twitter.com/timnitGebru/st…
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This was no simple mistake. An untold number of American investors are negatively impacted, retirement funds are impacted, life savings are wiped out.
This is a full-blown crisis spanning some of the most powerful Western institutes.
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You cannot be more well credentialed than these folks—MIT grads, children of prominent academics, under the “ethical” tutelage of an Oxford “philosopher”, receiving investment from one of the oldest and largest VC funds, represented by one of SV’s most desired law firms.
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In other words, it is important to understand who surrounded him and how he came to formulate these opinions.
It is unfair to the public, to posterity, and to Bankman-Fried himself, if we do not understand how these decision-making strategies came to be.
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It will take time to fully understand the disaster that is still unfolding. But, it is important to remember that MacAskill was Bankman-Fried’s mentor. It is important to remember that his parents are Stanford professors, his ex/ex-CEO is the daughter of an MIT econ professor.
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As Hollenbach points out here, taking outsized risks as an *individual*, with *no possible downside for others*, can be honorable and beneficial to the world.
And doing it from a position of power is utterly reckless.
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But once your failure causes failure in others (increased correlations),
Once other investors and your clients also go bankrupt if you go bankrupt, then betting more than Kelly isn’t honorable anymore, it’s clearly extremely reckless and unethical.
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2) After walking through why Bankman-Fried was both misapplying AND wildly exceeding maximum bet strategies, Hollerbach traces this cognitive error to an *altruistic belief system*.
These irrational behaviors could arguably be directly traced to EA/longtermism/“rationalism”.
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SBF then moves to justify his desire/ability to push beyond Kelly bet sizing because……altruism.
Hes a good person and he's going to give the winning away so he should be super aggressive.
He’s not betting for himself, he thinks he’s betting for the world.
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1) Hollerbach in the past has highlighted problems with utility theory and others bases of modern economic theory—Bernoulli in fact calls *any form of gambling or financial risk-taking an inherently irrational act*!
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I love that he then calls those using the arithmetic return to evaluate fair bets irrational. I wonder if most economists realize one of the foundation documents of their professions says they are the irrational ones, not their subjects that they classify as risk averse.
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This is an *excellent* thread, i highly recommend reading through it. I’ll highlight a few pieces below: 🧵
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Two years ago SBF wrote a thread on bet size and Kelly betting.
I questioned him on it. He engaged with me.
Let’s take a look at this thread and SBF’s views on bet sizing in light of the events with FTX and Alameda this week. twitter.com/SBF_FTX/status…
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All these FTX folks are *literally* in bed with each other!
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AND he used to work at Fenwick, FTX’s law firm. Can’t make this shit up!!
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Wow, here’s an article about FTX’s regulatory officer, Daniel Friedberg: he “was involved in cheating schemes at Excapsa Software and Ultimate Bet”.
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Fun fact: Caroline Ellison, ex-CEO of FTX, is the daughter of MIT econ professor Grant Ellison.
Bankman-Fried is the son of Stanford law professors Barbara Fried (who runs large political programs like Mind the Gap and other GOTV projects) and Joseph Bankman.
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a great thread that is spot-on. some people were idiots for trusting a cynical utilitarian with billions. others were very supportive and very clear-eyed about this because he was their cynical utilitarian.
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The link between effective altruism and SBF is that if you were an effective altruist, you were okay with him stealing billions of dollars, because you figured it had greater utility in his hands (as a genius EA philosopher) than in the hands of the people he stole from.
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Agreed 100%. Also, if Bankman-Fried was your primary donor so much so that you can no longer deliver on grant commitments, then you are an arm of his enterprise.
It is inseparable—just like a “researcher” taking money almost exclusively from the tobacco industry.
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a lot of people in media showed their asses with SBF/EA/longtermism and i hope no one trusts their judgement again but that's not how this works, especially not because some of them are in the movement or friendly with key people in it
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Lawmakers and regulators should do what they are best at: devising general frameworks that do not restrict particular specificities and instead disallow certain emergent behaviors.
I would not look to the VC market or their successes for reliable advice.
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In a way that does not harm innovation—but, having lived in Silicon Valley for over a decade, I can say that innovation has been materially harmed by the incumbents, & they continue to do so.
Lest you have any doubts, go read that Sequoia article and try to keep a straight face.
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The VC market is not the same as it was 15-20 years ago. The insanity that Sequoia published about Bankman-Fried is so untethered from reality that they hastily took it down once the music stopped.
The entire innovation market needs to be examined and scrutinized.
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It is definitionally uncareful behavior: the VCs handle LPs’ money (without nearly the level of required compliance/regulation one would expect), Alameda-FTX handled a bunch of people’s money also without nearly the level of required compliance/regulation one would expect.
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If this is true, then in those succeeding months new customers were acquired, new capital injections from the public kept coming in, despite the known risks.
And, to cap it off with a statement about his “sparring partner”. This is not Magic: The Gathering—these are lives!
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One other key factor is threaded throughout this behavior: customer safety and protection was deprioritized, plain and simple.
If this liquidation issue did occur months ago, Bankman-Fried took actions to cover it up—at the eventual expense of the public.
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The Alameda-FTX relationship should’ve been closely scrutinized by democratically-controlled forces.
Sequoia and the VC market had their chance—they failed so utterly that even *their* relationships with Alameda-FTX must now be scrutinized.
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Probably a multitude of factors that contributed to this situation, eg Bankman-Fried admitted to a mislabeling of custodial accounts.
A key common factor is the unhealthy relationship between FTX and Alameda.
This situation reeks of behavior necessitating regulation.
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Interesting theory:
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FTX is reported to have an $8B hole in their balance sheet based on liquid assets, an absolutely insane number.
I have a theory as to how it got that big:
FTX's liquidation engine broke down, leaving them and Alameda with huge losses
I'll explain below (x/14)
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“A Crypto Emperor’s Vision”
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No Pants, His Rules: Bankman-Fried’s mantra in his combination boardroom/bedroom
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Daaaaang, this is a sucky vector to have to think about
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passing on someone else’s reminder:
might want to check if you have any accounts where your only way to log in is through twitter authentication
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More seriously, Paul here is betraying himself: he really doesn’t understand that consequences exist.
It would simply be pathetic were he not also so very powerful and had he not been indoctrinating a bunch of kids-turned-kings for the past 10+ years.
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The question becomes: what makes EA/longtermism/“rationalism” different from these other approaches? Certainly cozying up to billionaire tech bros seems to be a differentiator.
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For like the millionth time, EA does not have a monopoly on applying “reason and evidence to the project of improving the world.” Some would say that this is a long-standing human tradition (even if imperfectly done and at times a minority position).
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Replying to @dangaristo
I still think trying to apply reason and evidence to the project of improving the world is a good idea
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Who is responsible for the credulity around crypto and Musk?
A LOT of people. For instance six days before SBF's Ponzi scheme came undone Matt Yglesias attacked the New York Times for having made a 'weird' editorial decision to look at tech as a corrupt power center.
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“A sociopath who rationalizes bad actions doing math” - one kind of utilitarian
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The next piece of evidence I used was Bankman-Fried’s ideology.
He’s a self-declared “hardcore utilitarian,” which can means he’s really serious about doing good… or a sociopath who rationalizes bad actions using math.
The evidence of character indicated more of the latter.
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