Software engineer at the Nucleic Acid Observatory in Boston.
jefftk
Karma: 13,011
Can GPT-3 Write Contra Dances?
Our 2022 Giving
Playing with Aerial Photos
Mastodon’s Dubious Crawler Exemption
NEFFA Should Allow Small Children
Less Successful Cider Adventures
Meme Dialects
Contra Chords
The basic idea that humanity is worth keeping and we should put serious effort into not wiping ourselves out seems pretty clearly right and important to me? If it doesn’t to you, Toby Ord’s Precipice makes a very strong case. This doesn’t mean that everything people do with the goal of trying to reduce this risk is better than bednet distribution, or even positive, but I do think there are a lot of important things that would seriously reduce risk here and aren’t being done. For example, I think Kevin Esvelts’ Delay, Detect, Defend biosecurity agenda is very valuable.
Overall I think the problem with the FTX implosion was primarily “they were reckless and fraudulent”, and this shouldn’t affect our views one way or the other on the importance of the causes they publicly endorsed.
Mastodon Replies as Comments
I don’t know anything about this, but it looks like FTX US was applying for a “trust charter”? And this is what Coinbase has https://cointelegraph.com/news/ftx-us-applies-for-trust-charter-in-new-york
There was never a business plan that made any sense—no actual customers happily paying for something that would exist in good times and lean, at least not in the amounts they were pulling out of it for personal/philanthropic/gambling reasons.
Why isn’t “people put money into the exchange and we let them trade it back and forth while taking a cut on each transaction” a plausible business model?
Nobody is as rich as they thought they were.
If it was just that (which is the situation Open Philanthropy and other funders are in) I’d agree this was expected with a downturn. Some things that would have made sense to fund no longer do, some projects get wound down.
But that’s not what happened with the FTX Future Fund’s grants. Committed grants aren’t going to be paid out, and and people are generally trying to avoid spending any additional money from grants that were already paid out. Organizations that thought they had a year of funding confirmed now have no money, and are scrambling to find other funding.
If Professional Investors Missed This...
Better Mastodon Aliases
About a decade ago people were worried that LW and cults would be associated through search [1] and and started using “phyg” instead. Having a secret ingroup word for “cult” to avoid being associated with it is actually much more culty than a few search results, and I wish we hadn’t done it.
I think you’re probably joking
Yup! But I appreciate the serious consideration regardless
A year ago, maybe. Post VC crash, no.
I linked my earlier post in this one: https://www.jefftk.com/p/vaccine-requirements-age-and-fairness
I still endorse both posts. The idea is, if the choice is between an event that everyone could in theory attend but doesn’t happen, and an event that only some people can attend but does happen, I’d like to see the latter. In this case, however, the other covid policy choices they’re making (wind instruments with testing, no rapid testing for most attendees) don’t seem consistent with a view that children are too risky to allow.