For me, having listened to the guy talk is even stronger evidence since I think I’d notice it if he was lying, but that’s obviously not verifiable.
Going to quote from Astrid Wilde here (original source linked in post):
i felt this way about someone once too. in 2015 that person kidnapped me, trafficked me, and blackmailed me out of my life savings at the time of ~$45,000. i spent the next 3 years homeless.
sociopathic charisma is something i never would have believed in if i hadn’t experienced it first hand. but there really are people out there who spend their entire lives honing their social intelligence to gain wealth, power, and status.
most of them just don’t have enough smart but naive people around them to fake competency and reputation launder at scale. EA was the perfect political philosophy and community for this to scale....
I would really very strongly recommend not updating on an intuitive feeling of “I can trust this guy,” considering that in the counterfactual case (where you could not in fact, trust the guy), you would be equally likely to have that exact feeling!
I would really very strongly recommend not updating on an intuitive feeling of “I can trust this guy,” considering that in the counterfactual case (where you could not in fact, trust the guy), you would be equally likely to have that exact feeling!
Fictional support:
Romana: You mean you didn’t believe his story?
The Doctor: No.
Romana: But he had such an honest face.
The Doctor: Romana, you can’t be a successful crook with a dishonest face, can you?
Early EA was not a productive environment for sociopaths or conmen. I don’t buy that story. Faking vegan for example will be hard over such long time with low expected reward. I think a more plausible story is that he changed. Many people change over time esp. if their peer group changes or if they acquire power.
I don’t think “He was pretending to be vegan” adds any more complexity to the “He was a conman” explanation than “He was genuinely a vegan” adds to the “He was a naive/cartoon-villain utilitarian” explanation?
Huh, didn’t expect the different intuitions here (yay disagreement voting!). I do think pretending to be vegan adds substantial complexity; making such a big lifestyle adjustment for questionable benefit is implausible in my model. But I may just not have a good theory of mind for “sociapaths” as lc puts it.
I do agree that it adds complexity. But so does “He was actually a vegan”. Of course the “He was actually a vegan” complexity is paid for in evidence of him endorsing veganism and never being seen eating meat. But this evidence also pays for the complexity of adding “He was pretending to be a vegan” to the “He was thoroughly a conman” hypothesis.
But didn’t he project a highly idealistic image in general? Committing to donating to charity, giving off a luxury-avoiding vibe, etc.. This gives evidence to narrow the conman hypothesis down from common conmen to conmen who pretend to be highly idealistic. And I’m not sure P(vegan|highly idealistic) exceeds P(claims to be vegan|conman who pretends to be highly idealistic).
I once saw a picture on twitter claiming to disprove him being vegan, by showing him standing in front of his fridge where there were eggs visible in the fridge in the background. The veganism might be a lie.
I’d like to submit SBF being vegan as strong Bayesian Evidence that this narrative is, in fact, entirely correct. (Source: Wikipedia.)
For me, having listened to the guy talk is even stronger evidence since I think I’d notice it if he was lying, but that’s obviously not verifiable.
Going to quote from Astrid Wilde here (original source linked in post):
I would really very strongly recommend not updating on an intuitive feeling of “I can trust this guy,” considering that in the counterfactual case (where you could not in fact, trust the guy), you would be equally likely to have that exact feeling!
As for SBF being vegan as evidence, see my reply to you on the EA forum.
Fictional support:
Doctor Who
How do you know he is vegan? A sociopath would have no problem eating vegan in public and privately eating meat in order to keep a narrative.
Early EA was not a productive environment for sociopaths or conmen. I don’t buy that story. Faking vegan for example will be hard over such long time with low expected reward. I think a more plausible story is that he changed. Many people change over time esp. if their peer group changes or if they acquire power.
Possible, but adds additional complexity to the competing explanation.
I don’t think “He was pretending to be vegan” adds any more complexity to the “He was a conman” explanation than “He was genuinely a vegan” adds to the “He was a naive/cartoon-villain utilitarian” explanation?
Huh, didn’t expect the different intuitions here (yay disagreement voting!). I do think pretending to be vegan adds substantial complexity; making such a big lifestyle adjustment for questionable benefit is implausible in my model. But I may just not have a good theory of mind for “sociapaths” as lc puts it.
I do agree that it adds complexity. But so does “He was actually a vegan”. Of course the “He was actually a vegan” complexity is paid for in evidence of him endorsing veganism and never being seen eating meat. But this evidence also pays for the complexity of adding “He was pretending to be a vegan” to the “He was thoroughly a conman” hypothesis.
But not a lot since highly idealistic people tend to be vegan. I think P(vegan|highly idealistic)>P(claims vegan|conman)
But didn’t he project a highly idealistic image in general? Committing to donating to charity, giving off a luxury-avoiding vibe, etc.. This gives evidence to narrow the conman hypothesis down from common conmen to conmen who pretend to be highly idealistic. And I’m not sure P(vegan|highly idealistic) exceeds P(claims to be vegan|conman who pretends to be highly idealistic).
I once saw a picture on twitter claiming to disprove him being vegan, by showing him standing in front of his fridge where there were eggs visible in the fridge in the background. The veganism might be a lie.
Edit: here it is: https://twitter.com/SilverBulletBTC/status/1591403692246589444/photo/1
He lives in an apartment with multiple roommates. Pretty obvious explanation when there’s multiple different egg cartons and JUST egg in there.
oh that makes sense lol
In the 80000 hours interview, Wiblin asks him about the vegan leafletting at university. That’s more commitment to veganism than the average vegan.
I’m pretty sure the tweet I saw was something similar to this. Would be happy to have this disproven as a hoax or something of course...