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What a heel turn it would be for them to decide that ill-gotten gains โ€œwellโ€ used constitute a net moral positive, but Iโ€™d worry that itโ€™s hard to avoid in at least some conceptions of utilitarianism! Thereโ€™s something timeless about extraordinary intellectuals extending principles into extremes that fail basic, common sense tests but have no rebuttal within their purified frame of reference!

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I'm not an EA and haven't in any way benefited from his largesse, but if no customers lose their money this is clearly not a Madoff-style fraud. There's a lot of gray area in what's appropriate to do with customer deposits. I agree it would be bad if it could be shown that he intentionally misled people. But it seems a bit early to say that anyone who defends him is guilty of "tribalism."

Maybe another way around this: If you're a pure utilitarian you should not leap to moral judgments, you should try to estimate the net impact of SBF's actions including his many contributions to EA. And if you are not a pure utilitarian I think you should allow people to have a little tribalism, as a treat.

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I'm not sure i've seen any EAs actually defending his actions, now that it appears >90% likely there was a whole bunch of fraud involved. Which is good!

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