Kelsey Piper's recent interview of SBF

Dude is going to prison for life. I can't believe how many rationalists are out here suggesting he's gonna just walk away from this "because he's a democratic donor". Sam is sounding and acting like a megalomaniac to the point of being mentally ill. One wonders if he even realizes he's going to be criminally charged regardless of the outcome of his "fundraising".

Sam has since tweeted "25) Last night I talked to a friend of mine. They published my messages. Those were not intended to be public, but I guess they are now."

His claims are hard to believe. Kelsey is very well-known as a journalist in EA circles. She says she interviewed him for a piece in May. Before Sam's tweet, she made a point of saying that she avoids secretly pulling "but I never said it would be off-the-record, you just asked for that" shenanigans. She confirmed the conversation with an email from her work account. She disputes the "friend" claim, and says they've never had any communication in any platform she can find, other than the aforementioned interview.

The only explanations that make sense to me are:

• Sam expected Kelsey's coverage to be more favorable and is now regretting his conversation
• Sam has been under so much stress that even the incredibly obvious fact that this was a professional interview was something he failed to realize
• Sam is just lying here, perhaps after hearing from his lawyers about how dumb the interview was 

According to his twitter, he didn't expect it to be published, but given that he was speaking to a journalist whose last interaction with him was an interview, given how many people obviously want to understand what just happened, given how many journalists must have tried to contact him, and given that (according to Kelsey) no indication was offered that this conversation would not be published, this is an absurd expectation.

25) Last night I talked to a friend of mine. They published my messages. Those were not intended to be public, but I guess they are now.

The idea that he was trying to distance himself from EA to protect EA doesn't hold together because he didn't actually distance himself from EA at all in that interview. He said ethics is fake, but it was clear from context that he meant ordinary ethics, not utilitarianism.

Someone on sneerclub said that he is falling on his sword to protect EA's reputation, I don't have a good counterargument to that.

I see a lot of the EA discussion is worried about the public consequences of SBF using EA to justify bad behavior. What if people unfairly conclude EA ideas corrupt people's thinking and turn them into SBF-alikes? And some concern that EA genuinely could do this.

If you think that is the big danger then I understand how you might conclude SBF saying "I never believed the EA stuff, it was all an act." is better for EA. Valid thing to worry about (especially about your own thinking), but it's online rationalists who are worried about this. Looking at this as an outsider, this is missing the forest for the trees. 

Much of the public starts from the assumption that rich people giving to charities is all a big scam, generally. Just a means to enrich or empower themselves. EA's biggest donor admitting it was a scam along is not protecting EA, it's confirming this model in everyone's minds. They knew it all along! Every future EA donator will be trivially pattern matched to have the same motives as SBF.

I enjoy reading discussions on EAs role in sub optimal Kelly bet size conclusions. But big picture that is not the the biggest danger by far.

I'm not trying to be rude, but if you can't see a perspective from which that is nonsensical, then perhaps you are not strong enough in the relevant way to read what bullies say about those that they hate.