memoir: try the strong version of the FTX footnote?

Subject to email litigation.

diff --git a/content/drafts/if-clarity-seems-like-death-to-them.md b/content/drafts/if-clarity-seems-like-death-to-them.md
index 268da78..675266f 100644 (file)
--- a/content/drafts/if-clarity-seems-like-death-to-them.md
+++ b/content/drafts/if-clarity-seems-like-death-to-them.md
@@ -449,7 +449,11 @@ I said I would bite that bullet: yes! Yes, I was trying to figure out whether I
 
 This seemed correlated with the recurring stalemated disagreement within our posse, where Michael/Ben/Jessica would say, "Fraud, if the word ever meant anything", and while I agreed that they were pointing to an important pattern of false representations optimized to move resources, I was still sympathetic to the Caliphate-defender's perspective that this usage of "fraud" was [motte-and-baileying](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another-brick-in-the-motte/) between different senses of the word. (Most people would say that the things we were alleging MIRI and CfAR had done wrong were qualitatively different from the things Enron and Bernie Madoff had done wrong.[^ftx]) I wanted to do more work to formulate a more precise theory of the psychology of deception to describe exactly how things were messed up a way that wouldn't be susceptible to the motte-and-bailey charge.
 
-[^ftx]: Three years later, the FTX cryptocurrency exchange founded by effective altruists as an earning-to-give scheme [turned out to be an enormous fraud](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bankruptcy_of_FTX) à la Enron and Madoff. I'm inclined to give the posse some amount of epistemic credit for this: the collapse of FTX seems less surprising on Ben and Michael's view of [the influence-seeking tendencies that characterize EA](http://benjaminrosshoffman.com/effective-altruism-is-self-recommending/), even if an ordinary grown-up would say that the crimes of Sam Bankman-Fried as an individual have no bearing on the EA movement as a whole.
+[^ftx]: Trying to describe the Blight to me in April 2019, Ben wrote, "People are systematically conflating corruption, accumulation of dominance, and theft, with getting things done." I imagine a rank-and-file EA looking at this text and shaking their head at how hyperbolically uncharitable Ben was being. Dominance, corruption, theft? Where was his evidence for these sweeping attacks on these smart, hard-working people trying to make the world a better place?
+
+    In what may be a relevant case study, three and a half years later, the FTX cryptocurrency exchange founded by effective altruists as an earning-to-give scheme [turned out to be an enormous fraud](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bankruptcy_of_FTX) à la Enron and Madoff. In _Going Infinite_, Michael Lewis's book on FTX mastermind Sam Bankman-Fried, Lewis describes Bankman-Fried's "access to a pool of willing effective altruists" as the "secret weapon" of FTX predecessor Alameda Research: Wall Street firms powered by ordinary greed would have trouble trusting employees with easily-stolen cryptocurrency, but ideologically-driven EAs could be counted on to be working for the cause. Lewis describes Alameda employees seeking to prevent Bankman-Fried from deploying a trading bot with access to $170 million for fear of losing all that money "that might otherwise go to effective altruism". [Zvi Mowshowitz's review of _Going Infinite_](https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2023/10/24/book-review-going-infinite/) recounts Bankman-Fried in 2017 urging Mowshowitz to disassociate with Ben because Ben's criticisms of EA hurt the cause.
+
+    In light of FTX's actual outcomes, Ben's view of EA [as being characterized by influence-seeking tendencies](http://benjaminrosshoffman.com/effective-altruism-is-self-recommending/) is looking prescient in retrospect, and the comparison to Enron or Madoff less far-fetched than it would initially seem.
 
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