In her sentencing submission to the judge in the FTX trial, Barbara Fried argues that her son is just a misunderstood altruist, who doesn’t deserve to go to prison for very long.
Excerpt:
One day, when he was about twelve, he popped out of his room to ask me a question about an argument made by Derik Parfit, a well-known moral philosopher. As it happens, | am quite familiar with the academic literature Parfi’s article is a part of, having written extensively on related questions myself. His question revealed a depth of understanding and critical thinking that is not all that common even among people who think about these issues for a living. ‘What on earth are you reading?” I asked. The answer, it turned out, was he was working his way through the vast literature on utiitarianism, a strain of moral philosophy that argues that each of us has a strong ethical obligation to live so as to alleviate the suffering of those less fortunate than ourselves. The premises of utilitarianism obviously resonated strongly with what Sam had already come to believe on his own, but gave him a more systematic way to think about the problem and connected him to an online community of like-minded people deeply engaged in the same intellectual and moral journey.
Yeah, that “online community” we all know and love.
I’d bet good money any judge reading this is gonna go “Yep, this kid does not want to change” and ramp up the sentence as a result.
this is almost word for word in Going Infinite too, evidently it’s a story she tells a lot
Sorry Barb, I really wish I could help, but the utility I get from sneering at Sammy while he rots in prison is simply too high to justify letting him out.
each of us has a strong ethical obligation to live so as to alleviate the suffering of those less fortunate than ourselves
Sounds like he did a bad job at living up to those principles then, huh?
Also is it just me or is this not actually a very good description of utilitarian beliefs lol
nuh uh, you see, he was scamming the poors because he would use their money in most efficientest way to prevent robot overlords. if scamming the poors is wrong then why did invisible hand of free market made it so easy?
If I were the judge handing out the sentence:
“Well, if your son is a strict utilitarian, let it be known that I am a utility monster and would derive infinite utilcoins from him being in jail for a million forevers.”
I would not make a good judge.
You don’t even need to be a utility monster.
Applying standard EA logic with utilions (approximately 1 utilion = 1 dollar) shows that when SBF was free he caused billions negative utilions. He says he did nothing wrong, and presumably he would continue to do nothing wrong. After updating our priors on the consequences of SBF doing nothing wrong, we can conclude that the risk is above 99% that SBF doing nothing wrong will cause billions in negative utilions. So the only utilitarian thing to do is hand out a life sentence.
Fortunately for SBF the judge is probably not in the business of creating philosophical justice.
Sometimes people say things that make this prison abolitionist’s heart waver.
in the luxury space communist future, when the allocation of whatever few resources are still scarce is discussed by ad-hoc committees in meetings that take hours, it needs to be made clear to Sam that his participation will not be required
@TinyTimmyTokyo @sneerclub At 12, I was a dedicated utilitarian too. It’s hardly an advanced state. It’s something you grow out of.
can’t remember where I heard this quip but:
“I used to be a utilitarian. Then I turned 13.”
Removed by mod
Buh bye now.
with the elections coming up quick, I’m not at all looking forward to the start of Weird Paid Republican Fuckwit season
doing the lorde’s work^
