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.
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 must understand, Sam, that the utility in deterring future Sams from doing what you did is massive. Astronomical even, if you think of how many companies could embezzle money in a solar system full of virtual beings. So I have no choice but to lock you up; your temporary suffering in the present is so small as to be irrelevant.
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.
sure I don’t NEED to be a utility monster, but I WANT to be a utility monster
don’t let anybody find out i’m a federal judge
Acausal robot gods? In my justice system?
it’s more likely than you think! because if it’s at all possible, by quantum physics, it must occur somewhere, ie, here.