Sam Bankman-Fried Needs Jesus
The Superiority of the Christian Revelation over Effective Altruism
Would you murder somebody for a billion dollars?
Why or why not?
In the course of ordinary life it may not matter very much which moral philosophy you adhere to. But when you face extraordinary circumstances, the principles that guide your decisions matter very much
Sam Bankman-Fried (aka “SBF”) is a hardcore Utilitarian, Rationalist, and Effective Altruist. These philosophies boil down to the edict to maximize the good, mathematically. When faced with moral dilemmas like the one above, people like this tend to bite the bullet. If they were to face a trade-off between a billion dollars and committing murder, they would choose to accept what they see as a little bad for a lot of good. We all agree that murder is bad. But you could save a lot of lives with a billion dollars, maybe tens of thousands of lives! So if you save 10,000 lives and kill one, that’s a net savings of 9,999 lives.
This is an alien way of thinking to most of us. But utilitarianism is simple and consistent. On the contrary, you might not be able to explain your deep conviction as to why this is wrong. And if you do, your explanation will lack the simplicity and elegance of utilitarianism.
Fortunately, most utilitarians don’t adhere to their philosophy all the time. Or else they add in some extra rules, muddling its simplicity, but making it less strange. But internet rationalists like SBF are the most likely to take utilitarianism very seriously and literally. “Shut up and multiply” is a motto the rationalist movement uses to counter deep-felt rejections of utilitarian fundamentalism.
Sam actually faced a dilemma much like the one I opened with. Except instead of being offered billions of dollars in exchange for murder, he had the opportunity to make billions of dollars by unethically gambling with the funds of the customers of his crypto exchange.
Sam saw himself as one of the good guys. Interviews with him from before the fraud was uncovered talk about how he was going to “save the world” through investing in long-term risk aversion, pandemic preparedness, and typical EA causes like saving lives in third-world countries as cheaply as possible.
His identity as a do-gooder undoubtedly helped him excuse his risky behavior to himself. In his own words you can read a thread explaining why people like him that want to save the world should take more risks than normal people when gambling. After all, if they win, they will save the world!
Other moral philosophies recognize the danger for abuse in such a simple formula for doing good as “save as many lives as possible”. To prevent them from going off the rails, they adopt a more complicated and nuanced set of rules that forbid certain kinds of behavior, even if they appear to lead to a good result in one situation.
The Christian Revelation
Christianity is not a moral philosophy; it is more of a moral tradition. It predates modern moral philosophies and is the foundation assumed by all of them. Before Christianity, there was no idea that the poor, the stranger, and the lowly person had moral value. Pre-Christian Roman society was a notoriously brutal and callous place, particularly towards slaves and the poor.
The spread of the Christian revolution among the poor and the sympathetic rich upended life in the Roman empire. Out of the Christian tradition come the ideas of Human Rights and universal human value. This had great marketing appeal. For example, a bishop named Basil founded the first public hospital for the sick and his brother Gregory made the first case for the general abolition of slavery.
Christianity reoriented moral reasoning around the axis of good and evil, as opposed to merely strong and weak. It would be impossible to conceive of a movement like Effective Altruism in any place other than a thoroughly Christianized world.
But while Effective Altruism shares some of the ends of Christianity, namely concern for the poor, it abandons all the nuance of the Christian message. EA is to Christianity like distilled moonshine compared to a fine wine: it keeps some of the essence, but it loses all the beauty and complexity, and it introduces some poison.
The Bible is full of what libertarian philosopher Robert Nozick would call “side-constraints”. These are limits on behavior that must be followed even when they get in the way of worthy goals.
There is deep wisdom in the Biblical side-constraints. A good place to look for these is in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew chapters 5, 6, and 7). For example, Jesus instructs his followers not to take revenge, to avoid criticizing others, and to not make a big show of their piety and altruism but to do it in private. Why does he do this? For one thing, it helps avoid what is called “virtue signaling” when people use a reputation for doing good to compete with each other and harm each other. Virtue signaling is a major hazard of the modern world.
A Christian would not murder someone for a billion dollars. What use would it be to them to gain the whole world, and to lose their soul? That offer would fit right in with the temptations that the devil used against Christ in the desert.
Another part of the Christian worldview which is missing in secular philosophies is the belief in the afterlife. Even if you could get away with unethical behavior with 100% certainty, a Christian believes that they will face judgement for their behavior at the end of days. Belief in the afterlife limits moral opportunism. It keeps people on good behavior even when nobody’s watching.
The friends and associates of SBF watching him handcuffed and appearing in court would do better to abandon their Effective Altruism in favor of Christianity, or at least adopt Christian side-constraints on their EA aims. This will help them avoid the catastrophic moral failure modes that Sam ran into. It is better to live in a community of Christians than to live around Effective Altruists. Ironically, their behavior is more predictably pro-social.
I feel bad for Sam and I don’t want to pile-on condemnation of him in this sensitive time as he contemplates decades in prison. He is an idealistic man with tragically mistaken ideals. It’s true that he defrauded people of billions of dollars, but what is done is done. Retribution will not help anyone. But it is the task of the law to dissuade future wrongdoers, so some punishment will be forthcoming.
While the law is unforgiving, Sam should know that God is not. That’s another key to the Christian moral message: nobody is beyond redemption. All is forgiven with repentance. But if Sam truly wants to do good for the world, he should consider replacing his moral philosophy from the ground up. The way of life that Jesus taught creates positive-sum outcomes, and it is only through this that the world can be saved.
love the moonshine analogy