EA - SBF interview with Tiffany Fong by Timothy Chan

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: SBF interview with Tiffany Fong, published by Timothy Chan on November 29, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum.Covered here:And here:/Disclaimer: My transcriptions might contain some inaccuracies.The section beginning 11:31 in the second interview might be especially interesting for the readers of the forum. From this and other publicly available information, it seems likely to me that Sam acted as a naive consequentialist. This, of course, isn't mutually exclusive with having elevated dark triad traits (as mentioned here and here).Quotes from that section:"Honestly, I like, right now, I'm mostly focusing on, what I can do, and like, where I can be helpful, and like, it's... there will be a time and a place for (...) ruminating on my future, but [sighs] I, right now it's more one foot in front of the other, and you know, trying to be as helpful and constructive as I can, and uh, that's all I can do for now, and there's no (...) I don't know what the future will hold for me - it's pretty unclear - it's certainly not the future I once thought it was (...) my future is not the thing that [inaudible] not the thing that matters here - what matters is the world's future -I'm much more worried about the damage that I did to that than whatever happens to me personally.""I made a decision a while ago that like, I was gonna, like you know, spend my life trying to do what I could for the world, and like obviously it hasn't turned out like how I had hoped.""I feel really really bad for the people who trusted me and believed in me, and, then, you know, we're trying to do great things for the world and tied it to me - and that got, you know, undermined so I fucked up. And that's like... I don't know, that's the shittiest part of it. If it were just myself that it hurt, like, then whatever, but it wasn't."Other highlights:Sam claims that he donated to Republicans: "I donated to both parties. I donated about the same amount to both parties (...) That was not generally known (...) All my Republican donations were dark (...) and the reason was not for regulatory reasons - it's just that reporters freak the fuck out if you donate to Republicans [inaudible] they're all liberal, and I didn't want to have that fight".In response to to his lawyers' advice regarding his public apologies, Sam says he told his lawyers "to go fuck [themselves]" and claims that they "know what they talk about in extremely narrow domain of litigation - they don't understand the broader context of the world, like, if you're a complete dick about everything, even if it narrowly avoids maybe moderately embarrassing statements, it's not helping [mostly inaudible - but maybe he said 'any of them'?]".Sam describes the collapse as a "risk management failure". Fong asks: "I mean, you can't be the only person that was like, aware - in charge of all of this." Sam replies: "I think the bigger problem was that there was no [...] person who was chiefly in charge of monitoring the risk of margin positions on FTX. Like there should have been but there wasn't". Later, Sam also says "at the same time, I think, you know, we stretched ourselves too thin. And we're doing a lot of things at the company - and, you know, I think we should have cut a few of them out and focus more on making sure that the fundamental, like, the most important things we were doing well at". Malice and incompetence can mix and match, so that might be the case (in addition to a lack of moral qualms).Other relevant videos from Fong:Why is Sam Bankman-Fried Talking To Me? (AUDIO CLIP) Phone Call with SBF - Former FTX CEO / FounderCONTEXT: My Phone Call with SBF / Sam Bankman-Fried- Former CEO of FTX - Phone Calls About Ch 11Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org.