Co-founder of Arb, an AI / forecasting / etc consultancy. Doing a technical AI PhD.
Conflicts of interest: ESPR, EPSRC, Emergent Ventures, OpenPhil, Infrastructure Fund, Alvea.
This is a great question and I'm sorry I don't have anything really probative for you. Puzzle pieces:
I'm mostly not talking about infighting, it's self-flagellation - but glad you haven't seen the suffering I have, and I envy your chill.
You're missing a key fact about SBF, which is that he didn't "show up" from crypto. He started in EA and went into crypto. This dynamic raises other questions, even as it makes the EA leadership failure less simple / silly.
Agree that we will be fine, which is another point of the list above.
got karma to burn baby
Just shameable.
Thanks to Nina and Noah there's now a 2x2 of compromises which I've numbered:
The above post is a blend of all four.
Maybe people just aren't expecting emotional concerns to be the point of a Forum article? In which case I broke kayfabe, pardon.
Yeah it's not fully analysed. See these comments for the point.
The first list of examples is to show that universal shame is a common feature of ideologies (descriptive).
The second list of examples is to show that most very well-regarded things are nonetheless extremely compromised, in a bid to shift your reference class, in a bid to get you to not attack yourself excessively, in a bid to prevent unhelpful pain and overreaction.
Good analysis. This post is mostly about the reaction of others to your actions (or rather, the pain and demotivation you feel in response) rather than your action's impact. I add a limp note that the two are correlated.
The point is to reset people's reference class and so salve their excess pain. People start out assuming that innocence (not-being-compromised) is the average state, but this isn't true, and if you assume this, you suffer excessively when you eventually get shamed / cause harm, and you might even pack it in.
"Bite it" = "everyone eventually does something that attracts criticism, rightly or wrongly"
You've persuaded me that I should have used two words:
There's some therapeutic intent. I'm walking the line, saying people should attack themselves only a proportionate amount, against this better reference class: "everyone screws up". I've seen a lot of over the top stuff lately from people (mostly young) who are used to feeling innocent and aren't handling their first shaming well.
Yes, that would make a good followup post.
I really think egoism strains to fit the data. From a comment on a deleted post:
The best you can do is "egoism, plus virtue signalling, plus plain insanity in the hard cases".