Institutionally, EA was defending SBF up until he was arrested, not up until the point he started saying stupid shit. He was doing that for a long time before he was arrested.
So I got "guy who posted on forum" on one side and William MacAskill and Nick Beckstead (and, well, SBF himself - he left CEA voluntarily right?) on the other - which of these would you say has the institutional support?
Will was slow to come out against SBF sure, but the majority of people were asking why he was being silent WAY before the arrest. Are you involved in anyway, out of interest? As in, were you there or are you going off of media reports? I don't know many people involved in EA who'd say it was institutionally pro SBF, just that a couple people were silent too long. Interesting if there are some.
I have no connection to CEA or SBF, I'm just someone who's desperate to recover moral philosophy from financialization by wannabe tech bros.
Edit for reply:
> around October/November 2022
i.e. after the run and it's clear he's going to be arrested... Usual EA bullshit.
> Nice moving goal posts :)
This isn't the gotcha you think it is. The relevant time is the ~4y period from 2018 to 2022 while he was running an obvious fraud and totally insane, not the few weeks between the run, collapse, and formal arrest. If you think he only looked bad from late 2022, that's just more proof you EAs are dumb as rocks.
What is an extremist with respect to an ethical system? An ethical philosophy is not some scripture you can interpret and misinterpret.
The existence of extremists implies the existence of moderates. What are they? When their moral code says "Fraud, in this particular circumstances, is good", are they the ones that can't shake off the vice of honesty?
Or are they the ones who use motivated reasoning to bring their moral philosophy to conformance with their instinctual moral feelings?
But the fact that a few extremists would take an idea way beyond any measure of reason is a human effect, not an EA effect.
I can't think of any good ideas that haven't been distorted by a few. That's no reason to abandon them.
My personal opinion is that EA is mostly worthless navel gazing, but that doesn't mean that we should dismiss it over the SBFs.