Who is Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) really, and how could he have done what he did? – three theories and a lot of evidence

November 10, 2023

As you may know, Sam Bankman-Fried ("SBF") was convicted of seven counts of fraud and conspiracy. He now faces the potential of more than 100 years in prison. I've been trying to figure out how someone who appears to believe deeply in the principles of effective altruism ("EA") could do what SBF did. It has been no surprise to me to see that the actions he was convicted of are nearly universally condemned by the EA community. Could it be that he did not actually believe in EA ideas despite p...

Some Signs of Harmful or Untrustworthy Relationships

November 3, 2023

Image generated by Clearer Thinking team using Adobe Express

Coauthored with the Clearer Thinking team and cross-posted from the Clearer Thinking blog. We recently conducted qualitative research by crowd-sourcing over 100 open-ended responses to the question: "What signs do you look for that help you identify people who are likely to be untrustworthy or who are likely to hurt you if they become your close friend or partner?" We thought the answers contained some insights that may help you to identify people with whom it would be risky ...

On How to Process Your Emotions

December 20, 2020

We’ve all heard that you should take time to “process your emotions” and not “repress them.” But after a bad event occurs, what exactly does it MEAN to process your emotions? I think that, ideally, it involves a mix of these components: (1) Noticing: paying close attention to your negative thoughts instead of pushing them away or trying to ignore the bad feelings. What are the EXACT words running through your mind? How does it feel right now to be you? What do your body and mind feel li...

The Fourier transform of happiness

October 17, 2020

Photo by Enrapture Captivating Media on Unsplash

H/T to Robert Paul Chase for the title. (For those who don't know, this is a reference to Fourier analysis.) Your happiness, like the level of the ocean, is caused by a superposition of waves of different frequencies. Each operates on a distinct scale - they sum up to determine your well-being at any given point in life. Each wave tends to oscillate around its mean or neutral point (except for the slowest waves, which take your whole life to unfold). One useful way to think about becoming ha...

The many forms of belief

October 11, 2020

What does it mean to believe? We often say things like "I believe..." and "they think that..." But what do we really mean by a "belief"? It's notoriously tricky to define. For starters, we sometimes think of beliefs in binaries (true vs. false) and other times in probabilities (a 90% chance of coming true). We sometimes would be willing to bet on our beliefs ("I'll bet you $100 that New York City is not the capital of New York State"), and other times we wouldn't be willing to bet (e.g...

The Impact of Indirect Punishments

October 4, 2017

I think it’s important to be aware of what we punish other people for. Including, and perhaps especially, barely detectable punishments that we give (which we may ourselves only be dimly aware of), and punishments that we give to people in our life, such as friends, family members, romantic partners, and work colleagues. Since punishment reduces certain behaviors, it’s important to consider whether we actually want to reduce the behavior we’re punishing. It’s critical that we not punish beha...