For some context, longtermism is the idea that it is a moral imperative to extend the effective lifespan of humanity as a whole as much as possible.
That sounds fine, but the movement has issues acknowledging that things like quality of life for the majority matters, that it is morally repugnant to write off the damage done by climate change because "well, humanity itself will probably survive", and that most people will find the idea of plunging most of humanity into misery to eke out a few more centuries absolutely horrifying. Many of the longtermists don't see a problem with the latter scenario. The core of the movement is a lot of really wealthy people with very little experience with deprivation.
Edited by Zendervai on Dec 5th 2022 at 8:07:57 AM
There are also some lines of thought within longtermism that balance the imaginary future of mankind on the scales. For example, say you have a proposal that, you argue, will lead to huge results in 80-100 years that will help support humankind colonizing the galaxy - in other words, your proposal could lead to quadrillions of human lives over millions or billions of years of existence. And when you have numbers of that scale on one side, suddenly two hundred thousand humans being displaced right now, or a thousand casualties a year due to unsafe practices, are, in practical terms, a rounding error.
When you claim anything you do now is instrumental to the "future of humanity," it lets you stack those unthinkably huge numbers (and the unknowable vagaries of the future) firmly on the side of the thing you want to do that will make you a lot of money.
It's been fun.The plans they argue are also generally...unclear about why their approach is superior.
Like...if we sent a permanent colonization effort to Mars tomorrow, it's basically guaranteed the colonists would die really quickly setting up basic infrastructure, so it'd be there when a mission with better technology lets people actually survive the mission.
Longtermism would say that's acceptable, but basic critical thinking would suggest that just waiting until the technology is better for the first mission would be smarter because it, you know, won't have a horrible crippling effect on morale. And longtermists can't really explain why the latter approach is supposedly inferior. (It's actually just because we could send an ultra-high risk mission more or less now, the crypto fad would almost certainly be dead by the time a proper mission could be sent)
There's a reason crypto is so tied up in longtermism and effective altruism, and it's because it, like both of those philosophies, are unsustainable garbage that ignores how things actually work and pushes people to do repugnant things to try and justify it.
Edited by Zendervai on Dec 5th 2022 at 11:01:56 AM
Pretty much, yeah. And there's next to no concern about the actual quality of life of those future humans. It's basically just how long humanity lasts without going extinct. I met one longtermist who thought the Xeeleeverse future was superior to the Federation in Star Trek because the former is plotted out a very, very long time into the future...and it's a neverending parade of horrors. The Federation future was "bad" because (at the time) it was only plotted out to the 27th century. The only factor he cared about was length of time.
You do not want people who think like that in charge of anything. They're significantly more dangerous than any self-aware AI could ever be.
Edited by Zendervai on Dec 5th 2022 at 11:06:40 AM
It occurs to me that if the collapse of FTX actually does lead to crypto fading into irrelevance, then SBF will have actually created a net positive for humanity — just not in the way he might have envisioned (assuming he was ever serious about that and not scamming people from the start — unlikely I know).
Anyway, here's some more news of FTX Fallout:
Yahoo News (though the source is Coindesk): Crypto Bank Silvergate Cut to Underweight at Morgan Stanley Following FTX Collapse
For stock newbies, underweight is bad.
New York Times (12/5/2022): Ordinary Investors Who Jumped Into Crypto Are Saying: Now What?
Tl:dr; people are re-learning why banks are regulated.
I want to feel sorry for these people...but seriously, what were they expecting?
The example the article starts out with is a father of two who invested $600,000 (most of his life savings) into a Blockfi account...this November.
Blockfi went bankrupt just days later.
Edited by M84 on Dec 5th 2022 at 9:58:42 PM
Disgusted, but not surprisedI hope that is the case - and frankly it really should be - but people who haven't already realized how much of a garbage trap crypto is after Celsius and Luna crashes won't learn from this one either.
Continuously reading, studying, and (hopefully) growing.Edited by AlleyOop on Dec 10th 2022 at 3:08:24 PM
Really?
Well at least it will inconvenience them for a bit, though I doubt this will go anywhere.
Most of all Paltrow. She'll sell anything, and any damage done to her brand is good, what with the whole alt-medicine stuff associated with her. The rest, I don't know what else they've done, though I assume they've also done something else at least once.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-63953096
To the surprise of no one, SBF was arrested in the Bahamas and awaiting extradition to the US.
Burning love!Here's a link to the bankruptcy filing
, where the guy running the bankruptcy proceedings says under penalty of perjury that a) he was deeply involved in cleaning up the Enron mess and b) he's never seen a failure of oversight as bad as the FTX one.
That's only like the fifteenth time someone's linked it.
SBF has been making the apology tour rounds over the last few weeks, maintaining a steadfast defense that he wasn't aware of all of the problems at FTX. Supposedly he's too much a "head in the clouds" guy to pay attention to his company being drained of funds by its sister company which was operated by his girlfriend.
I'll be very curious to see how that holds up in court. A startling number of journalists seemed willing to believe it.
Edited by Fighteer on Dec 13th 2022 at 8:10:01 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!""I'm too stupid to realistically be expected to have actually run the company" is a defense that has worked in the past...but this particular case is one where I doubt that'll work. That defense mostly works in cases where the person in charge is receiving bad information and allegedly isn't able to parse the good information out from the bad (Rudy Giuliani has been using this defense). It doesn't hold for stuff that's beyond a certain level (like...say, losing several billion dollars because you forgot to double-check something) because then it turns into gross negligence that should have prevented the person in question from being able to hold their position at all.
And when your public image is that you're a cool and smart guy who knows what he's doing and is revolutionizing the market "I'm actually a blithering idiot with no concept of how anything at all works ever" usually doesn't fly.
Edited by Zendervai on Dec 13th 2022 at 8:18:04 AM
Coffeezilla did a vid about the arrest, with Legal Eagle guest starring for a bit.
He points out at the start that the reason we didn't hear about any investigation earlier was because the DOJ actually sealed the indictment and hid it from the public. This was to make sure SBF wouldn't flee the country.
Basically, people were looking to arrest him all along — they just didn't want to tip him off. And it worked.
Disgusted, but not surprisedSo, uh...
Donald Trump has launched a line of NFT trading cards.
Watch the announcement video embedded in the article. It is amazing.
I've looked around and this does not appear to be satire.
Edited by VampireBuddha on Dec 15th 2022 at 9:59:39 AM
Ukrainian Red CrossThey're not NF Ts. They are purely digital files, but they don't use any of the blockchain infrastructure at all.
Trump outright calls them as such in the announcement video.
Sure, he may not realize that, but thats his words.
So I don't blame people for thinking they are and laughing at them for it.
Watch SymphogearSo they’re fake NF Ts? That’s the most NFT thing imaginable.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranI wonder how Trump would react to getting his NF Ts getting screenshotted.
Also, man, this whole AMZTR spam bots are really annoying and shows up in almost any crypto related youtube vids....
Edited by dRoy on Dec 16th 2022 at 8:47:25 PM
Continuously reading, studying, and (hopefully) growing.

SBF also championed longtermism iirc.
BTW, here's another Coffeezilla vid where he managed to ambush interview (sort of) SBF.
SBF's so unused to having his bullshit actually challenged that he ends up making excuses to quit the interviews early.
Edited by M84 on Dec 5th 2022 at 9:04:38 PM
Disgusted, but not surprised