Tech billionaires seem intent on giving away a lot of money. But are those who support ‘longtermism’ and ‘effective altruism’ ignoring the very real problems of today?
Tech billionaires seem intent on giving away a lot of money. But are those who support ‘effective altruism’ ignoring the very real problems of today?
Tony Blair, Bill Clinton and Sam Bankman-Fried on stage at the Crypto Bahamas conference in April this year.Tony Blair, Bill Clinton and Sam Bankman-Fried on stage at the Crypto Bahamas conference in April this year.n the past few weeks a photograph of Tony Blair and his buddy Bill Clinton sharing a panel with a scruffy kid wearing a T-shirt, baggy shorts and trainers has been doing the rounds.
And then, suddenly, it wasn’t. In fact it was effectively bankrupt. And it had been managed, said the administrator brought in to sort out the mess, using fraternity-house accounting principles – which kind-of squared with SBF’s sartorial style. The thousands of get-rich-quick schmucks who had invested their savings on various FTX exchanges, however, were not impressed and may even now be having to pawn their handmade suits.
All of which is par for the course for the crypto racket, except for two things. The first is that SBF is a proclaimed effective altruist, ie a believer that the most important moral imperative is to make shedloads of money in order that one can give it away to do good. The second is that he is a confirmed subscriber to “longtermism” – the idea that the far future should be given at least as much weight as the present in moral and political decision-making.
This strange convergence of a philosophy of philanthropic giving with a concern about existential risk to humanity’s future is intriguing. The philosophical roots go back to Peter Singer, an Australian moral philosopher who teaches at Princeton and now describes himself as a
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