The polycule/testosterone stuff is just speculation. It’s known a number of stimulants were used by him and his top people, unknown if they were abusing them.
I think this take is a misunderstanding of the conversation. What they were discussing was the “Phillip Morris” question that he was asked earlier this year. Like if it’s so cheap to save peoples lives in poor areas with endemic malaria (which has some issues but I think most likely is close to true, donating to the AMF is probably one of the least weird and most likely to hold up EA ideas, better than all x-risk stuff) then why not kill 100 westerners (with tobacco, or whatever) to save 10,000 people elsewhere? And in interviews he was like, well you can’t do that heh heh heh, but uh, if he was raised a utilitarian, uh, well, why not? You’ve got some additional framework? And later interview was him saying, no, not actually, kill the westerners.
Which is a take you could hear from utilitarians, an-prims, and the tiny but not non-existent eco-fascists. It’s definitely one of those I am enlightened/logically superior takes that often reveals more about the person saying it than they think.
EA is a mishmash of ideas and philosophy that's been changing over the past decade through endless pontificating debate, book sales, and billionaire largesse. Sam and his core team were all EAs since the beginning, I don't think it's all that important to ascertain which rationalizations they were using.
Ultimately Sam was admitting that his personal ethics, whatever they may ultimately be, are not what he was espousing. The others involved in the fraud have shown the same.
I don't doubt the sincerity of many in the EA movement, but ultimately it's dependent on and co-opted by a few extremely wealthy individuals. FTX has shown the public that a significant portion of those with power are neither trustworthy nor sincere, and the philosopher-kings of the movement itself are not able or willing to see through the charade.
> I don't doubt the sincerity of many in the EA movement
Insincerity isn't the thing to be worried about. Concentrated utilitarian thinking is itself, to use their terms, an existential risk at least if its combined with significant funding.
My favorite example is that there is a small EA faction that believes-- presumably on the basis of their golden rational analysis, totally unsullied by empirical inputs such as first hand experience-- that wild animals are suffering tremendously and the most efficient way to the reduce total suffering on earth would be to engage in bio-engineering to genocide all the wild animals.
Some greedy capitalist might pollute the earth for gains through indifference, if they speak of charity they might be insincere but mankind is capable of much much worse. Say what you want about non-utilitarian philosophies, but they aren't going to @#$@ rationalize themselves into killing all animal life on earth and sincerely think they're committing the most efficient kindness possible while doing it!
We should regard utilitarianism as an intellectual tool we can use to aid our decisions balanced against other perspectives and considerations and not a uniquely correct philosophy.
EA has become quite a broad church. At one end, it's still just nerds doing spreadsheets to find which is the best charity, but at the other end, it's the state religion of the capital-R Rationalist cult. I don't know to what extent SBF really cared about helping people, and to what extent he just needed to demonstrate his righteousness to people in his social sphere.
You may be confusing bros with jocks. SBF was the quintessential cryto bro, checking all the boxes of the startup / tech bro stereotype: young white man with a elite education, or a dropout of such, liberal values wants to change the world, quirky but a genius, filthy rich as a result of his own, totally self made business.
Well, that's the whole meta-joke, that he wasn't a nerd (what he was trying to project to fit in the startup/venture culture), he was in fact a bro with bellow average intelligence.
When people talk about crypto bros and tech bros that's the whole shtick, they are saying their targets are not defined by technical ability (which is stereotypically attributable to geeks). So pointing out he wasn't really masculine is failing to see the metaphor behind "crypto bro" used as an insult.
Part of the SBF schtick was the "anti-bro" vibes. The intentionally awkward, low social skills presentation is used by some major altcoin promoters too-- but I don't think many people would identify it as "crypto bro" and that's a big part of why its effective.
He wasn’t. He knew what people like you perceived a crypto bro to be and filled it while simultaneously filling the Wall Street trader wunderkind like Christian Bale played in the Big Short. He’s as crypto bro as the “pimple faced white kid in his mothers basement” that people like you call all hackers.
Edit: upon reflection, maybe he is indeed a crypto bro - nothing in your definition is untrue. Using my analogy above, Crypto Bros are the Script Kiddies of crypto. Apologies.
