{"id":85554,"date":"2023-11-06T04:00:01","date_gmt":"2023-11-06T09:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=85554"},"modified":"2023-11-05T18:35:18","modified_gmt":"2023-11-05T23:35:18","slug":"but-heres-the-catch-if-you-actually-try-to-put-this-philosophy-into-practice-you-might-sell-your-granny-to-sex-traffickers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2023\/11\/06\/but-heres-the-catch-if-you-actually-try-to-put-this-philosophy-into-practice-you-might-sell-your-granny-to-sex-traffickers\/","title":{"rendered":"“But here’s the catch, if you actually try to put this philosophy into practice, you might sell your granny to sex traffickers”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ted Gioia<\/a> explains why (people like) Sam Bankman-Fried drove him away from his formal studies in Philosophy at Oxford:<\/p>\n

I abandoned philosophy because of Sam Bankman-Fried, the crypto scammer.<\/p>\n

Well, that’s not entirely true. I abandoned my formal study of philosophy because of people like<\/em> Bankman-Fried.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, they were my professors at the time.<\/p>\n

Where do I even begin in telling this?<\/p>\n

It’s not easy. That’s why I’ve never given a full account of my years as a philosophy student at Oxford \u2014 despite some readers requesting this. I don’t talk about it because the story is complicated<\/em>.<\/p>\n

But Sam Bankman-Fried gives me the excuse \u2014 or even the necessity \u2014 of digging into this gnarly matter. That’s because the crypto scammer was deeply involved in a philosophical movement that originated at Oxford. It draws on the same tenets I was taught in those distant days.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

My teachers didn’t run crypto exchanges, and (to my knowledge) never embezzled anything more valuable than a bottle of port from the common room. Even so, there’s a direct connection between them and Mr. Bankman-Fried.<\/p>\n

They were erudite and devoted teachers, but I was disillusioned by what they taught. It eventually chased me away from philosophy, specifically analytic philosophy of the Anglo-American variety.<\/p>\n

I had no idea that their worldview would come back to life as a popular movement promoted by the biggest scam artist of the digital age. But I’m not really surprised \u2014 because it’s a dangerous worldview with potential to do damage on the largest scale.<\/p>\n

The philosophy is nowadays called Effective Altruism<\/em>. It even has a web site with recruiting videos<\/a> \u2014 there’s a warning sign right there! \u2014 where it brags about its origins at Oxford<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But here’s the catch, if you actually try to put this philosophy into practice, you might sell your granny to sex traffickers.<\/p>\n

\n

You think I’m joking?<\/p>\n

In fact, that’s exactly<\/em> what you would do. Effective altruists don’t look at the actual actions at hand or their consequences today \u2014 hah, that would be too obvious. They only think about long-term holistic results<\/em>, and hope to maximize pleasure and good feelings in the aggregate:<\/p>\n

So it stands to reason that:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Granny is old and doesn’t have long to live, so she can’t experience much pleasure even under the best circumstances.<\/li>\n
  2. But the sex traffickers could use Granny to increase the pleasure of many of their customers.<\/li>\n
  3. Hence …<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    I’m not going to spell it out for you, but you can guess where this is heading.<\/p>\n

    You just better hope that, if you’re ever a grandparent, your progeny aren’t Effective Altruists. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Ted Gioia explains why (people like) Sam Bankman-Fried drove him away from his formal studies in Philosophy at Oxford: I abandoned philosophy because of Sam Bankman-Fried, the crypto scammer. Well, that’s not entirely true. I abandoned my formal study of philosophy because of people like Bankman-Fried. Unfortunately, they were my professors at the time. Where […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,79,13],"tags":[194,576,764],"class_list":["post-85554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-education","category-usa","tag-fraud","tag-philosophy","tag-university"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-mfU","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85554"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85554\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85556,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85554\/revisions\/85556"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}