By the end of 2023, will substantial evidence emerge that leaders in EA knew about (or had strong suspicions of) SBF/FTX's unethical investing practices and chose to cover it up?
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Resolves very subjectively, I'm not even going to bother to try to define this exhaustivly. Feel free to ask about hypothetical scenarios and I'll answer how I'd judge them. I'll add clarifications to this description as they're worked out.

  1. "A leader in EA" refers to anyone who has significant influence/social status within the EA community or has the power to move large quantities of EA-allocated funds. Heads of EA organizations, writers of EA-aligned books, grantmakers, etc. I'll be fairly liberal with this definition; I'll lean towards more people being "leaders" rather than fewer. (It does not include SBF or anyone else who could be considered FTX/Alameda leadership.)

  2. The "unethical behavior" in question must have been related to fraudulent investiment strategies that involve spending other people's money without their permission. If SBF engaged in unrelated unethical behavior, such as walking past a child drowning in a pond or illegally harvesting organs, that doesn't count for this market.

  3. "Cover up" refers to knowing about the unethical behavior and chosing to keep that knowledge private. There doesn't have to have been any particular action taken; inaction is morally equivalent to action, after all. Some clarifications:

    1. The EA leader in question must have assigned a decent probability to fraud/theft occurring. It it seems that they had enough evidence to conclude there was fraud happening, but naivety/motiviated reasoning prevented them from realizing it, that does not count as a "cover up". (I won't be too generous with this; if it seems like any reasonable person would have known, yet they still profess innocence, I'll count that as a cover-up.)

    2. If they were afraid of retaliation and didn't publicize their concerns out of fear for themselves, that still counts as a cover-up. Any charitable organization where whisleblowers are discouraged that strongly has a serious problem.

    3. If they only found out about the fraud after signing an NDA and couldn't legally say anything about it, that does not count as a cover-up on their part. (It would certainly be a cover-up from FTX, but we already know that happened.) After all, the whole point of this scandal is that we don't want EAs breaking laws just to do what they personally think is right.

    4. If actions were taken to maintain plausible deniability, or it otherwise seems like they were trying to "avoid finding out" about the fraud, that still counts as a cover up. Bayes cannot be fooled by such games.

    5. Market resolves YES if at least one EA leader satisfies these criteria. Multiple "leaders" is not a necessity.

I will not be placing any trades in this market. I will discuss my intended resolution with the community here before actually resolving it, to ensure people feel my resolution is reasonable.

If anyone wants to submit information completely anonymously, you can do so here.

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predicts NO

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/HjsfHwqasyQMWRzZN/ev-updates-ftx-settlement-and-the-future-of-ev?commentId=b4hkGRFEhgohZrDGQ

Mintz’s independent investigation found no evidence that anyone at EV knew about the alleged fraudulent criminal conduct at FTX and Alameda. This conclusion was later reinforced by the evidence at this fall’s trial of United States v. Sam Bankman-Fried, where the three cooperating witnesses who had all pled guilty (Caroline Ellison, Gary Wang, and Nishad Singh) testified that only four people knew about the alleged criminal fraud – those three people plus SBF. Accordingly, the testimony at the SBF trial was consistent with our conclusion that there is no evidence that anyone at EV knew about the alleged criminal fraud.

predicts NO

@IsaacKing, any update on this?

What about the Alameda schism?

bought Ṁ0 of NO

@JCE You mean the protest by employees described in the TIME article?

predicts YES

@NicoDelon Yea and also Going Infinite.

predicts NO

@JCE All of the accusations of fraud refer to things which happened after the Alameda schism, as far as I know.

predicts YES

@Benthamite I think I’m wondering specifically if the 4 million that was lost and not disclosed count

predicts NO

@JCE I think it says somewhere in the comments that it must be customer money, not investor money, so no

predicts YES

@JCE Would you mind sharing a screenshot or a brief summary of what Lewis says?

predicts YES
predicts YES

@JCE Awesome thanks!

@Benthamite If I remember correctly, Sam had claimed multiple times to early investors that Alameda was operating in a pure-Alpa/pure-arbitrage fashion, which turned out to be a straightforward lie, as far as I can tell. I thought that was in the pre-split Alameda times. Seems like that would count as fraud.

bought Ṁ5 of YES

@JonasVollmer I’m curious why the scope of the unethical behavior criterion precludes investor money. From digging through the numerous comments it looks like @IsaacKing was more or less nudged to restrict it to customer funds even though that ostensibly was not the intended meaning in the original description (correct me if I’m wrong).

predicts NO

@NicoDelon presumably because investors gave permission to spend that money, right? If investor funds were spent in a way they obviously didn't give permission for, then it seems like that should count, but that's a pretty high bar for startup investors who are basically giving the founder a blank check to figure out how to create value for them.

predicts YES

@ErickBall Sure, but I don’t think investors gave Sam permission to commit fraud with their money. My question is why that bar hasn’t been met given how brazen Sam’s actions were.

predicts YES

@NicoDelon Like, I’m not sure they gave him a blank check to do this: https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2022-219

predicts NO

@NicoDelon yeah I mean lying to investors to raise money is more out of the Theranos playbook, it's certainly still fraud but can have a lot more great areas around how to tell if it's fraud. But I don't see any reason it should be categorically excluded from this market.

predicts NO

@JCE ignoring anything else here, supposing there were unethical investing practices in early Alameda and there is overlap between those people and "leaders", it doesn't follow that any leaders knew about practices and chose to cover up. Could be that people who knew tried to make a fuss, but that others didn't trust those people enough over e.g. SBF to infer there was a serious problem vs. interpersonal drama. (I was pretty distant, commenting on logic of epistemic situation more than specific people.)

predicts NO

Possibly relevant comment on how we should interpret the fact that Nick was not accused of being aware of fraud: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/JRTkbyaQiMWXjsJDv/jason-s-shortform?commentId=RKeHZ6qYWJHmaX2DG

Jason's Quick takes — EA Forum
Comment by Jason - I wouldn't read very much into it. The complaint only needs to be strong enough to get past a motion to dismiss for now, and it is fairly easy to amend a complaint if need be. There is some benefit to putting your best foot forward, but there are a number of plausible reasons one might not allege knowledge of fraud against depositors despite some evidence. Those reasons follow. I should note that I personally thought -- and still think -- it very unlikely that any FTXFF staff knew about the customer fraud. Keeping one's conspiracy information on a strict need-to-know basis is Being a Fraudster 101, and I can think of no reason why SBF and his co-conspirators would have concluded anyone at FTXFF had a need to know. * Unless they are much richer than charitable foundation officials tend to be, Beckstead and RY are very likely not the primary targets here. There are much bigger fish in this lawsuit and in the pond as a whole. Moreover, as a practical matter, I doubt the recovery against Beckstead and RY would be appreciably higher as a result of proving knowledge about the misuse of customer funds than "merely" proving an allegation that they aided and abetted SBF fleecing FTX (and for RY, Alameda). So the upside of making an allegation of customer-fraud knowledge seems more limited to me than might first appear. * Alleging that someone was basically in on the customer fraud[1]makes that the main story of the complaint and could take the narrative focus away from your primary targets -- the biotech firms that actually have (or had) the money. * Judges are human. If one were going to allege that specific individuals were in on the fraud (when the judge knows that allegation wasn't necessary to make in the complaint), they had best be fairly confident they are going to be able to connect on that allegation. Failure to do so would risk one's credibility with a judge who will decide billions of dollars wo
predicts YES

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predicts YES

Are any members of SBF’s family (parents, his brother Gabe) considered EA leaders? They do seem to meet the liberal criterion outlined in (1). Asking because, having listened to Spellcaster’s inner circle episode, it seems a lot likelier to me than 9% that they could have known and decided to look away.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/spellcaster-the-fall-of-sam-bankman-fried/id1685258534?i=1000619939717

predicts YES

@NicoDelon His mom is for sure.

predicts YES

@BTE That was my impression. I’m honestly surprised they are not, as far as we know, under investigation.

predicts YES

@NicoDelon I read his mom is the only person refusing to cooperate at all with investigators.

predicts YES

@BTE Wow

@NicoDelon It wasn't my impression his mother had status and fame in EA.

predicts YES

@DavidMathers Every podcast where I’ve heard her mentioned she was described as an influential utilitarian and do-gooder. She’s on the fringe of the movement, and I’m not sure SBF took the EA from her rather than MacAskill, but she definitely 1. had an influence on him and 2. ostensibly espouses a lot of the principles of the movement. We should ask core EAs how they perceive her.

predicts YES

@NicoDelon 100 percent it came from his mother. I will find the specific story. He has been into it since he was a kid. I actually know someone who grew up with him at Stanford who is a philosopher at IU that works with my wife. I will get the deets.

predicts YES

@BTE Nice. I think he got the earning to give schtick from a MacAskill talk at MIT.

@NicoDelon I'm not "core", but I am a philosophy PhD (not in ethics though) who works for a (small, not very well-known) EA org, and my impression was she's a mildly significant utilitarian philosopher with no particular ties to organised EA beyond being SBF's Mum. But I'm not super-confident in that impression and anyway, I'm only one person.

predicts YES

@DavidMathers I’m not very confident either which is why I asked and why I only said it was my impression. I’m a philosophy PhD in ethics and fellow traveler of EA and I didn’t know of her until last summer. I have learned though, that EA is a big tent and not every name is well known to everyone in the movement.

predicts YES

@NicoDelon Btw I realize we have crossed paths on Daily Nous threads. 👋

@NicoDelon 'Btw I realize we have crossed paths on Daily Nous threads.' Oh when?

Hopefully not the one where Shelley Tremain claimed (roughly) that nothing natural could be undesirable, and when David Wallace said what about metatastic cancer, tried to argue that cancer was a social construct or something, and it devolved into a weird fight about whether all tumors ever found in dinosaurs were benign? That was bad.

predicts YES

@DavidMathers That one yes. She accused us of harassing her.

predicts NO

@NicoDelon I'm fairly involved in EA and I've never heard of her outside of being SBF's mother.

I'm open to arguments in favor of or against considering Barbara Fried to be an EA leader. At the moment I'm leaning towards no. Simply being someone who donates to EA-aligned charities doesn't mean you have outsized influence or respect within the EA community. I've never heard her name in any context other than being SBF's mother.

Also, that thread about dinosaur cancer is amazing.

predicts YES

@IsaacKing Thanks for chiming in. I concede that she may not have been a widely recognized name before the SBF debacle. Folks should listen to SBF’s conversation with Tyler Cowen (pre-debacle). To Cowen, she seems to be an important influence on her son and a hardcore utilitarian. Granted, not qua EA, but I would discount talk of ‘Id never heard of her before.’ Like, I’m close to EA and yet I’d never heard of most of the people commenting on this site until a little while ago.

@NicoDelon Agreed that "never heard of her" doesn't mean all that much, especially considering how little I'm involved in the EA community. It was just a supporting anecdote.

I don't think that "was a big influence on an EA leader" is enough to make that person themselves count as an EA leader.

predicts YES

@IsaacKing Agreed. FWIW I’m really not sure she counts, which is why I asked. Happy to be told she doesn’t.

predicts NO

@IsaacKing I've been very involved in EA since it began and didn't know her name until this thread, nor had I heard of her existence outside of being SBF's mom. It's a big movement and I'm reclusive so generally wouldn't be that surprised if there was a 'leader' I didn't know of, but I'd be surprised if she was one, partly because it would be weird if she was introduced to my notice more recently without any mention of being an influential EA, if she was one.

predicts NO

@KatjaGrace I think she clearly shouldn't count

predicts YES

@KatjaGrace SBF’s parents have been mentioned in several interviews he did before the debacle, and they have been in the spotlight ever since. Everyone knows they’re Stanford professors, introduced him to utilitarianism, etc. Had you really not heard her name until this thread?! (Setting aside whether or not she’s a leader, which I’m inclined to think she’s not, that’s quite unusual for anyone who’s been following this even casually.)

predicts NO

@NicoDelon Might have heard name ever, that's a lower bar than knowing it for me. Have probably never listened to an SBF interview, knew that his parents were professors somewhere prestigious, and into utilitarianism.

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