Making Sense - Sam Harris - #271

00:00:00.000 Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast, this is Sam Harris.

00:00:25.280 Okay, as we get to the end of the year here and into the holidays, I guess the theme of

00:00:34.120 the moment for me is doing good in the world, how to think about that, how to do more of

00:00:41.900 it, how to appropriately show gratitude for one's good luck, and share that luck with

00:00:52.860 those who need it. So at the top here, I am going to produce an ad. As you know, I don't

00:01:01.520 run ads on the podcast, but this is an ad for a very good thing, with which I have no

00:01:08.440 direct affiliation. A couple months ago, Peter Singer, the Australian philosopher and one of

00:01:16.360 the patriarchs of the effective altruism movement, told me about a company called Humanitix, which

00:01:22.720 was founded by Joshua Ross and Adam McCurtle. They started in Australia and New Zealand,

00:01:29.660 but now they are global, and they've just set up their first U.S. office in Denver.

00:01:35.560 And this struck me as an extraordinarily cool idea. Humanitix is an event ticketing platform

00:01:42.540 that donates 100% of its profits to children's charities. So they operate like a for-profit

00:01:50.960 business, in that they don't ask anyone for donations. They just sell tickets. It's like

00:01:56.540 Eventbrite or Ticketmaster. However, they're also a registered charity, and 100% of their

00:02:03.540 profits go to social impact projects for disadvantaged kids. And their service is free for free events,

00:02:09.900 and for paid events, their fees are actually lower than most ticketing services, and they offer

00:02:15.820 a special discount for non-profits and schools, etc. And again, all the profits go to charity.

00:02:23.600 So if you're organizing an event and selling tickets, it seems to me this is just a totally

00:02:28.680 straightforward and ethical way to make a tangible contribution to the world. And it's just a very

00:02:36.100 cool model. I think it has the potential to massively scale the amount of money that gets

00:02:41.280 allocated to philanthropy. Because what they've done is they've effectively replicated the venture

00:02:47.100 capital model in the charity sector, which is to say they've built a real business, and in this case

00:02:53.240 they're taking on businesses like Eventbrite or Ticketmaster, but they're doing it 100% for charity.

00:02:59.840 But unlike normal charities, they never have to ask for donations, and they're not sitting on a large

00:03:05.040 endowment that's covering their costs. They're just operating a successful business.

00:03:09.100 This does strike me as genuinely new. It opens up a path for what might be called compassionate

00:03:18.780 capitalism or ethical consumption that has not been altogether obvious, but all of a sudden,

00:03:26.360 here it is. So I think this is very exciting, and I want to congratulate Josh and Adam for doing this.

00:03:33.920 Great idea. Best of luck to you both. And if any of you want more information,

00:03:38.680 if you're looking for a job and want to work for an inspiring company, or you just want to sell

00:03:44.420 tickets, please check out Humanitix.com. That's H-U-M-A-N-I-T-I-X dot com.

00:03:54.660 Okay. Well, continuing with that theme, I want to say something which I believe I've said before

00:04:00.780 on the podcast, but it's an epiphany I keep having again and again. And it's about the generosity

00:04:08.020 of the Making Sense audience. All of you guys and gals. I keep hearing from charities which I've

00:04:17.900 mentioned on the podcast, or perhaps I've interviewed someone involved. These are charities like the

00:04:23.460 Plowshares Fund, which is working to reduce the threat of nuclear war. I mentioned them a couple of

00:04:30.380 times, in particular when I spoke to William Perry about his book on the topic, or the Good Food

00:04:36.860 Institute, or the Bard Prison Initiative, or GiveWell.org, which recommends a wide range of

00:04:44.200 effective charities. These and other organizations keep contacting me just to say how astoundingly

00:04:51.460 generous my audience is. And I'm wondering if you can appreciate what an amazing feeling that is to be

00:05:00.440 on the receiving end of that kind of information. It seems that you all have given millions of dollars

00:05:06.780 to various causes here. And it's just remarkable to see. So sincere thanks to all of you for that.

00:05:15.140 This has become one of the amazing and unexpected pleasures of doing this job.

00:05:21.700 Now, as many of you know, at some point in 2020 I took the Giving What We Can pledge, which exists in

00:05:29.180 various forums, but the basic pledge is to give at least 10% of one's pre-tax income to the most

00:05:37.240 effective charities each year. And this is the minimal pledge. Some people give much more than that.

00:05:45.140 And that's over and above anything one gives to any other causes, whether it's your church or

00:05:50.720 synagogue or your children's school or to your university, or perhaps it's some GoFundMe campaign

00:05:58.140 that inspires you. The Giving What We Can pledge stands on its own over and above all of this.

00:06:05.840 And the main criteria there is to target what you can rationally understand as the most effective

00:06:11.360 ways of minimizing human and animal suffering and mitigating the most catastrophic risks.

00:06:19.600 So there's often long-term thinking built into many of the charities that effective altruists tend to

00:06:24.820 support. And once again, givewell.org is a great source for recommendations. And Waking Up,

00:06:32.220 my meditation app, was the first company to take the Giving What We Can pledge.

00:06:38.140 At my urging, they created a pledge for companies, which is analogous to the personal pledge.

00:06:46.280 Here you commit to giving 10% of profits to charity each year. And if you want to see some of the

00:06:52.840 organizations we've supported so far, you can go to wakingup.com forward slash foundation.

00:06:59.540 But I wanted to say a little more about taking the Giving What We Can pledge because, as you'll hear,

00:07:05.880 it's relevant to today's podcast. Taking this pledge is psychologically much more interesting

00:07:13.780 than I realized. And it's interesting wherever you sit on the economic spectrum. For instance,

00:07:20.280 if you don't make a lot of money, you might think, well, I need all the money I make. I spend more or

00:07:26.040 less every penny. And if I don't spend every penny, I need to save something for the future. So I

00:07:32.760 certainly can't afford to give a minimum of 10% of my money away every year. But the interesting thing

00:07:38.560 is that as you begin to earn more money, and even a lot of money, you begin to think, well, 10% of what

00:07:46.460 I'm earning now is quite a bit of money to be giving away every year. It's a lot more money than most

00:07:52.800 people at my level give away. And so what's interesting is that you can find a way to be

00:07:58.600 uncomfortable with this pledge at any level of earning. But once you take it, some very interesting

00:08:07.140 things happen. Speaking for myself, it really has become a source of great satisfaction because it's

00:08:15.780 just an amazing privilege to support great causes. And to know that whatever else I'm doing with my

00:08:22.580 time, and however mixed my motives might be in any moment, by making this decision, I've taken all the

00:08:30.240 psychological friction out of my being generous and effective in the world. Because I've decided in

00:08:37.600 advance that I'll support these very good causes to this degree. And my giving here is no longer

00:08:44.460 vulnerable to my moods. Or am I rethinking anything? I mean, the only freedom I have is to give more

00:08:51.760 than 10% away, or to give to other things that wouldn't count toward my minimum of 10% that goes

00:08:57.640 to the most effective charities. As I told Will McCaskill in one of our conversations, it is an amazing

00:09:04.000 feeling to be giving money to a children's hospital or to a woman's shelter, and for it to feel like a

00:09:11.420 guilty pleasure. It's like you're splurging on something that you really want selfishly.

00:09:17.100 The pledge just inverts the usual psychology around generosity in a fascinating way. Anyway,

00:09:23.660 I'll have more to say about that in the new year. We have a project over at Waking Up that's relevant

00:09:29.040 here. But in the meantime, if you're at all interested in taking the pledge in any of its variants,

00:09:38.100 please go to givingwhatwecan.org for more information.

00:09:43.980 Okay, and now for today's podcast. Today I'm speaking with Sam Bankman-Fried. Sam is the founder

00:09:52.180 and CEO of FTX, a cryptocurrency exchange, and he's also the CEO of Alameda Research,

00:09:59.700 a quantitative cryptocurrency trading firm. Forbes described him as the richest person in crypto,

00:10:06.280 and one of the richest people under 30 in history. I believe he's made about $29 billion in the last

00:10:14.020 few years. What is more remarkable than that is that he set out to make all this money explicitly

00:10:20.760 for the purpose of giving almost all of it away to the most effective charities, and to thereby do as

00:10:27.500 much good in the world as he possibly can. Needless to say, he's an early adopter of the

00:10:32.640 Giving What We Can pledge, and as you might imagine, he's one of the most prominent people

00:10:37.140 in the Effective Altruist community. Sam is also the son of two Stanford law professors,

00:10:42.520 and he received a degree in physics from MIT. So in this episode, we talk about how Sam became

00:10:49.880 as wealthy as he has, how he got into cryptocurrency. We have a brief discussion about that space

00:10:55.940 to bring you all up to speed. We talk about the Giving What We Can pledge, and about how Sam thinks

00:11:01.880 about using his resources to do the most good. We talk about not stigmatizing wealth, wealth

00:11:08.520 redistribution, the norms of generosity among the ultra-wealthy, pandemic preparedness, the impact

00:11:15.840 we can have through lobbying, how ambitious we should be in doing good. Anyway, it seemed like a great

00:11:22.400 topic to close out the year on, and I wish you all a happy holiday and a happy new year.

00:11:28.460 This episode is yet another PSA, so there's no paywall. And as always, thanks to all of you who

00:11:33.800 are supporting the show through your subscription. You are in fact what makes all of this possible.

00:11:39.320 And now I bring you Sam Bankman-Fried.

00:11:41.720 Sam Bankman-Fried. I am here with Sam Bankman-Fried. Sam, thanks for joining me.

00:11:51.900 Thanks for having me.

00:11:53.040 So there's a lot to talk about. My general interest in speaking with you is your all-too-novel

00:12:01.440 interest in effective altruism. But before we jump into that topic, let's talk about your

00:12:06.660 background a little bit. You are now quite famously referred to as, I believe, unless something has

00:12:13.560 changed based on the volatility of crypto since I began this sentence, the wealthiest self-made

00:12:20.560 billionaire under the age of 30, something like that. Is that still approximately true?

00:12:27.020 Yeah, sounds about right.

00:12:28.520 And how did that happen? I guess before we get into your crypto experience, maybe

00:12:34.240 summarize your background before that. You're only 29, so there's not that many years to run

00:12:41.620 through. But how do you describe your intellectual interests before you jumped into the world of

00:12:48.820 cryptocurrency?

00:12:50.500 Yeah, totally. So I grew up in Stanford, California, went to MIT after that, and really had no clue what

00:12:59.100 I was going to do with my life there. I sort of like half-heartedly thought maybe I'd be a physics

00:13:03.560 professor for kind of no good reason. And quickly at MIT learned that I didn't really like research,

00:13:11.400 and I probably wasn't really built for it, and that that was sort of like not going to happen.

00:13:18.200 And around the same time, started thinking for the first time about what I should do with my life.

00:13:24.020 And I think that started out basically just coming from a utilitarian standpoint of,

00:13:29.880 you know, what would maximize ultimate well-being of the world. I hadn't thought about it very

00:13:35.100 carefully, but when I finally confronted this, as opposed to just sort of like hiding it somewhere

00:13:42.280 in my mind, it sort of quickly became clear that at least there can be some things I could do that

00:13:46.780 would have real impact. And, you know, that one of those was going to be earning to give.

00:13:53.580 I just basically thought of trying to make what I can so I can donate what I can. And at the time,

00:13:59.700 I think I was sort of most involved with animal welfare organizations. And, you know, basically

00:14:05.500 went to them and said, hey, like, would you prefer my time or my money? And they said, definitely your

00:14:09.520 money. You're not very good at leaflets.

00:14:11.080 Mm-hmm. So, but you've jumped into the mode of already earning enough to be of help to anyone.

00:14:18.760 So what was the transition from physics at MIT to finance of some sort?

00:14:25.820 Yeah. So I sort of jumped to the point of thinking about it before I actually got involved in anything

00:14:33.080 that would actually make money. It was very much a sort of like, theoretically, I probably could

00:14:37.560 type thing and, you know, figure out how to do that.

00:14:41.080 And that was sort of the tentative plan. And, but yeah, I hadn't actually yet figured out how.

00:14:48.920 And around that time, I met Will McCaskill and Ben Todd and a few others from sort of the

00:14:54.540 national EA movement who were visiting Cambridge and talked to them about what I was going to do

00:15:01.040 with my life. And they, you know, very much thought that their need to give plan made sense.

00:15:06.040 They also said a bunch of things I hadn't thought about before around what,

00:15:11.080 causes I could ultimately give to. And also confirmed as I'd sort of been thinking that if

00:15:16.100 I was going to earn to give that, like, probably Wall Street was like a good place to look for that.

00:15:21.920 So you met Will McCaskill. Did you also, did you meet Toby Ord as well?

00:15:25.520 I had met him yet. I met him later, but he was not in that particular excursion to the States.

00:15:31.400 Right. So did, did Will give a talk at MIT? Is that where you met him?

00:15:34.360 I think he, he gave a talk at Harvard, but I had lunch with him beforehand in Harvard Square.

00:15:39.860 Right. Yeah. Will's, Will's fantastic. And he, he really is my gateway drug to effective

00:15:45.480 altruism as well. He's been on the podcast a bunch and on the waking up app and Toby has

00:15:50.920 subsequently. And it is fairly thrilling when the scales fall from your eyes and you realize that

00:15:58.920 there's an opportunity to systematically do good in a way that is, it's just like, there's such a clear

00:16:06.640 view of, of ethical daylight in this direction that interestingly becomes uncoupled from the usual

00:16:15.120 things that drive altruism. You just, you know, the good feels of a very compelling story. It's not to

00:16:21.700 say that the good feels aren't important. We want to be as rewarded as possible by the good things we do

00:16:28.200 in life. But there's this other layer of rational acknowledgement that sometimes the most effective

00:16:35.820 ways of benefiting the world are not necessarily the sexiest or not necessarily the, the ones that

00:16:42.760 are effortlessly most enthralling to people. And it's just, just to get a very clear eyed view of all

00:16:49.520 of that. And then to prioritize doing the most good is just a, it's an amazing game to find out

00:16:57.220 that, you know, even exists much less to get involved in. Yeah, I totally agree. And I think

00:17:03.040 that, you know, prior to college, I sort of had somewhere in the back of my mind, oh, maybe I could

00:17:07.760 try and do something with my life that would have impact. And then some sort of part of me is like,

00:17:12.200 oh, I don't know, that sounds kind of hard. I don't even know what that would imply. Maybe I'll just

00:17:16.520 sort of ignore that, you know, who knows what that would mean. And I think like when I started

00:17:21.980 thinking harder about it, and then met, met Will and others and actually sort of dove into the

00:17:27.220 effective altruism community. Yeah, I think one of the first things that really stood out was like,

00:17:31.080 all right, here's like a few concrete proposals, which aren't necessarily the single best thing to do,

00:17:37.140 but are clearly incredibly compelling, and are clearly like massively better than anything sort of

00:17:43.860 like accidental or random that I would have done. And, and that were sort of like, a really

00:17:50.320 convincing case of like, you know, if you think carefully about this, and really do focus on your

00:17:59.560 impact, rather than as you said, on, on sort of just the, you know, that reverberation of the impact

00:18:06.400 back onto you, that you can really get massive, massive numbers.

00:18:12.560 So we've, I noticed we've pitched already into the topic of interest, effective altruism,

00:18:18.240 skipping over the world of crypto. Let's go back for a second, because I would be remiss in not

00:18:25.140 extracting any insights you might have on that topic. Well, first, how did you get into crypto? And

00:18:31.940 what is actually your contribution at this point to that space?

00:18:36.900 Yeah, so I, I went to Wall Street when I when I graduated college and worked as a quant trader at

00:18:44.140 Jane Street Capital for three and a half years. And I had a really, really good time there in a lot of

00:18:49.820 ways. It was a great environment. It was a great fit for me as a job. And it seemed like a really

00:18:55.560 compelling earning to give path. And, you know, they were really good to me there. I just kind of

00:19:01.200 thought that's what my life was going to be. And I was pretty happy with that. And as is, you know,

00:19:06.560 in New York, and then late 2017 came around. And for the first time in three years, I sat down and

00:19:14.280 forced myself to go through an exercise like what I had done in college, where I sort of, you know,

00:19:20.360 drafted down ideas of what I could do, tried to estimate like how much impact could I have through

00:19:25.200 each of them. And shortly after starting that, it became clear what the sort of conclusion of that was

00:19:30.200 going to be, which was that I don't know what I should do with my life that there are actually a

00:19:35.640 lot of things that could have large impact that I wasn't sure which of those was going to be the best

00:19:41.340 and that the only way really to find out was going to be to try them. And it was sort of, you know,

00:19:48.200 either don't try anything and just optimize for this path, or leave and and try a bunch of things and,

00:19:54.760 and that the second in expectation was probably going to be the the better one. So I left this

00:20:02.320 was, you know, late 2017. And I did try a few things I worked briefly for a Center for Effective

00:20:08.540 Altruism. I also started looking at crypto. And this sort of original thesis with crypto was a pretty

00:20:15.200 clear one, which was, it seems like there might be good arbitrages here. Maybe that's true. Maybe that's

00:20:22.820 not true. If that's true, these numbers might be huge. Let's check that out. And so I basically just

00:20:29.800 dove in. And I, you know, create some accounts on some exchanges and like tried to do one example

00:20:36.520 transaction to see like, will this even work? And so what what are in fact, were you arbitraging

00:20:42.480 at that point? So at that point, I mean, it was all over the place. But the clearest one was literally

00:20:48.680 just bitcoins against dollars. Like you look at bitcoins on one US crypto exchange against

00:20:54.060 bitcoins on another US crypto exchange. And you know, they'd be trading for $10,000 on Coinbase

00:20:59.500 and $11,000 on Bitstamp. And in theory, one could then buy a Bitcoin on Coinbase, send it for $10,000,

00:21:08.740 send it to Bitstamp, sell it for $11,000 and make $1,000. And then sort of like rinse and repeat.

00:21:13.860 And, you know, whenever you see something like that, you should wonder, like, is this data real

00:21:19.360 or is it garbage? And in particular, the numbers were hilariously big. Unlike in real trading on

00:21:26.340 Wall Street, if you can make 2% of a percent on a trade, so two basis points, that's a good trade.

00:21:34.480 You know, most firms would be like, yeah, do that trade. You know, if you can do more of that trade,

00:21:38.400 do more of that trade. That's pretty good. Well done. You know, like, not unheard of,

00:21:42.740 but just like a really solid trade. And here we were seeing things like 2%. So 100 times as big.

00:21:51.080 And that's almost always fake when you see it. But it was 100 times as big. And the volume wasn't

00:21:56.600 trivial. You know, it was trading a few billion dollars a day globally. And so in theory, you can

00:22:01.760 sort of do this naive calculation of like, well, let's say you made 1% on every trade. And let's

00:22:07.780 say you did 1% of volume. And so that means, you know, $10 million of volume. And a percent

00:22:14.040 on that is $100,000 per day of revenue. And so, you know, $35 million a year or whatever.

00:22:22.420 And that's a pretty substantial number. You know, and obviously, that was like just some

00:22:28.600 complete bullshit calculation that I did with no idea what a Bitcoin even was. No idea if any of

00:22:34.400 this, you know, any of these numbers are real. But it was enough to convince me that like, maybe

00:22:39.280 there's something good to do here. And that is worth trying out. And so I just sort of created

00:22:44.000 accounts on all the exchanges and started trying to like, you know, go send in the money, buy the

00:22:48.040 cheaper Bitcoins, sell them in other places and see if I could make money doing that.

00:22:51.440 Did that turn out to be real? I mean, what explains that inefficiency of pricing?

00:22:56.980 Yeah, so half of it turned out to be fake. About half the cases, it turned out the data that was

00:23:01.220 reported was just misleading in one way or another. A classic example of this is that they would call

00:23:06.840 it a quote, Bitcoin USD market. But the USD, there would not really be US dollars. It would be like

00:23:13.560 dollars on some sketchy third party payment site running through Russia that cost 25% to get

00:23:21.320 money in and out of and you could only get to a Brazilian bank account. So, OK, that was not a

00:23:27.140 real trade. But we got to get you. We got to get you earning to give first. This is your path is

00:23:32.180 blocked by a labyrinth of sketchy tax. Exactly. Yeah. And then you look at like, OK, how about the

00:23:38.440 legitimate data? And it was sort of like a scaled down version of the same issues where, all right,

00:23:43.440 the Bitstamp Coinbase ARBs were sometimes real. But what would happen when you tried to do them?

00:23:49.340 First of all, you'd pay half a percent in fees, all things considered. Second of all, you have to

00:23:55.980 start by getting dollars from your bank account to Coinbase, right? And you send that wire transfer

00:24:00.120 and then you get a notice from your bank that they shut down your account because they didn't have a

00:24:04.020 compliance policy yet for crypto. And now you no longer have a bank account. And then I guess if you

00:24:10.140 want to do the trade a second time, you need a new bank account. And then you get the funds on

00:24:14.480 Coinbase and you buy Bitcoin and they tell you you can withdraw $100 per day. And so you're sitting

00:24:19.340 there and being like, well, I guess I can make $1 per day doing this trade 1% on the $100. And you

00:24:26.140 reach out to them and be like, hey, can I have higher withdrawal limits and get an automated message

00:24:30.340 back saying, sorry, the queue for getting support from us is three months long right now. And you just

00:24:36.860 start running into all these logistical issues that sort of were reflections of the fact that the

00:24:41.600 ecosystem was incredibly new and incredibly unwieldy and not very well developed. The infrastructure was

00:24:50.640 all broken. And it wasn't impossible to do these trades. It was just like really hard and annoying.

00:24:59.100 I'm guessing you now probably have Brian Armstrong's cell phone number.

00:25:02.020 Yeah, I do. And that was, you know, going through that sort of like step-by-step process of like

00:25:10.960 getting an account manager at these exchanges, finding a bank that was comfortable with the

00:25:16.260 cryptocurrency ecosystem and willing to allow us to send transfers to and from crypto exchanges,

00:25:22.180 things like that, you know, getting automated train systems hooked up to these exchanges,

00:25:26.760 some of which didn't even have APIs. And then eventually looking overseas and saying, well,

00:25:32.620 here's a big arbitrage between American and Japanese exchanges. How do we do that? I guess

00:25:38.500 we have to replicate this entire setup in Japan with a Japanese bank. And that was like the hardest

00:25:44.380 part back in 2017, 2018 of actually doing these trades.

00:25:48.560 So then when did you graduate to build in your own exchange?

00:25:54.040 Yeah. So after about a year of this, it's, you know, there are clearly still good trades to do

00:25:58.680 in crypto, but just as clearly like the ecosystem was a mess and, and the ecosystem in crypto really

00:26:06.480 means the exchanges in a way it doesn't in traditional finance. Like if I asked you, like,

00:26:10.840 what are the five most important finance companies? You probably wouldn't just start listing off like

00:26:16.180 New York stock exchange, NASDAQ, CME, ICE, SIBO, like maybe one of those would make the list.

00:26:22.800 Probably not. You know, I'm guessing you'd name like, I don't know, like Goldman or JP Morgan or

00:26:28.000 something or Robin hood, maybe crypto is different. And the reason crypto is different is that the

00:26:33.200 entire financial stack is collapsed into one product and that product is the exchange. And so when,

00:26:39.380 when you go to buy a stock, you're going through 12 companies, you're going from Robin hood to some

00:26:43.920 payment for order flow firm. There's some stock clearing, there's some dollar clearing system in

00:26:48.120 there, some stock loan desk, you go to an, uh, you know, dark pool, another, you know, PFA firm

00:26:53.100 eventually end up at an exchange. And then the whole other side of that, you know, on the selling side

00:26:57.560 in crypto, the only people involved in the average transaction are the buyer, the seller, and the

00:27:02.380 exchange. And all of those functions from clearing settlement risk compliance, know your customer,

00:27:08.260 um, mobile app API matching engine, all of that is collapsed into the exchange. And so they really

00:27:15.240 are the backbone of, of the trading ecosystem in crypto. And so if you wanted to address the

00:27:21.540 infrastructure, that's where you went and boy, did the infrastructure need addressing.

00:27:25.540 Hmm. So then you started FTX.

00:27:28.940 Yep. So started building FTX out in late 2018,

00:27:32.200 launched spring 2019. And basically the thesis was like, on the one hand, these businesses are

00:27:38.620 making a billion a year collectively. They seem like fairly, like fairly understandable businesses.

00:27:44.220 Like we understand their core function pretty well and could build that their online products,

00:27:50.400 um, which are easier to launch. And they're just shit shows all over the place. Like they're losing

00:27:57.520 a million dollars per day of customer funds to incompetent risk controls. Their customer support

00:28:03.160 departments were nearly non-existent. Many of them basically didn't have compliance departments.

00:28:08.040 Many of them didn't have banking. And it just seemed like, you know, boy, if this is the barrier,

00:28:13.640 like we can do better than that, you know, like that we can build a better product than.

00:28:18.960 On the other hand, I had no idea how to get a customer. And that was sort of our biggest worry

00:28:22.520 about this was like, sure, maybe we build a good product and just no one ever knows about it.

00:28:26.620 No one ever uses it. And I didn't even know where to start with getting users. But even if we said

00:28:31.860 there's an 80% chance of failure from that, like 20% of that upside was still a lot and enough to

00:28:38.080 convince us to go for it. I'm tempted to take a slight detour in describing somewhat what is,

00:28:48.140 I mean, I got to think most of our audience at this point understands what Bitcoin is.

00:28:53.360 I'm happy to give like a one minute version of it.

00:28:56.020 Yeah, let's do it. I mean, you know, there are many people listening to us who

00:28:58.980 have listened to me and Bologi for four hours. So they've gotten an eyeful or an earful,

00:29:05.660 but certainly from a crypto maximalist. But give us your how you describe to someone's grandmother

00:29:12.640 or grandfather what crypto is.

00:29:15.480 Yeah. And when I got involved, by the way, in crypto, I had no idea what it is other than like

00:29:19.200 a number that went up and down that you could trade. But the core of crypto is basically like,

00:29:24.660 you know, you want some system where you can like send, you know, money back and forth and assets

00:29:31.240 back and forth and information back and forth between each other. And that means you all need

00:29:36.100 to agree on the protocol for it. And you need to agree on like, who decides, you know, ultimately,

00:29:42.580 which transactions happened, who records that. And it was Gmail, the answer is Google does,

00:29:47.960 you know, everyone tells Google, they want to send an email, and then Google,

00:29:51.680 you know, records that and sends it along. And, you know, with the New York Stock Exchange,

00:29:57.720 the answer is, well, the New York Stock Exchange, you send your orders to it, and then it spits out

00:30:02.980 what happened. It sort of is like the controller of this database. With cryptocurrencies, you know,

00:30:10.240 generally, the way it works is, there's some decentralized group of parties that together

00:30:16.020 are effectively voting on what happens step by step. And anyone in the world can submit transactions

00:30:23.100 to them. You know, so I could submit transactions saying, I'm going to send, you know, $30 to my

00:30:29.020 brother, Gabe, or, you know, a third of Bitcoin or whatever. And I also submit, you know, basically

00:30:35.460 a proof that I have the password to this account. And then you have this sort of global group of

00:30:39.940 validators, sometimes it's miners, sometimes it's staking validators, depending on the blockchain,

00:30:46.140 that sort of get together, you know, vote that yes, this is a legitimate transaction,

00:30:50.000 you know, the necessary information was submitted, and record that. And that's a block. And then they

00:30:55.060 iterate on that, adding block after block after block, which sort of adds a new set of transactions

00:31:00.740 onto this like growing ledger of the whole history of the blockchain. And the goal in the end is to

00:31:06.240 create, you know, a system of payments and sending information and money back and forth that doesn't

00:31:12.460 rely on one central party or government to ultimately be like, you know, this source of truth on what's

00:31:19.680 happened. Right, right. So there's no no trusted third party is distributed across thousands of

00:31:26.220 computers. And because it's distributed, it's transparent to everyone. And there's a consensus

00:31:34.120 algorithm that ensures that no one can cheat, or it becomes so expensive to cheat that you would,

00:31:40.160 it's, it's effectively impossible to cheat. Yeah. So, you know, there's this whole space is it has a

00:31:49.180 Wild West component to it. And it is, you know, as I said, incredibly volatile. And you know,

00:31:57.120 the upside is extraordinarily high, as you've demonstrated, but, you know, we have not seen,

00:32:04.380 I guess there have been micro busts in crypto, I'm sure people got in at the peak and then lost

00:32:10.120 a lot at various moments. But it's generally been a very quickly rising upward trend. So more or less

00:32:18.720 everyone, if they got in early and are still in, feels like a genius. How does this go wrong? What's the

00:32:25.540 probability of this going wrong in your view? And, and if it does, what would account for that?

00:32:33.820 I mean, you could also bring in, I guess, I'm sure, regulatory concerns are top of mind. I know

00:32:38.920 you recently testified in front of Congress. So you can bring in that part of the picture as well.

00:32:44.480 Totally. So, you know, I think that there is, it's a volatile asset, and it might go down,

00:32:50.420 and it might go down a lot. We've seen it have 50% movements in both directions in a few day period

00:32:55.180 before, a number of times. And I definitely wouldn't want to promise that it that won't

00:33:00.380 happen. I think that like each year, the odds have gone down substantially that it's going to

00:33:05.140 go away. If you rewind to March 2020, I think there's a real risk of that. You know, Bitcoin

00:33:10.940 dropped down to $3,500 per token, less than 10% of what it is today. And there was just very little

00:33:18.440 liquidity in it. There was no buyer of last resort that was obviously coming out there. The whole space

00:33:23.940 was sort of teetering on the edge and COVID had just hit. The world was a mess. You know, fast

00:33:29.600 forward to today, the amount of institutional capital getting involved in crypto is massively

00:33:34.500 higher. The number of important financial institutions that are purchasing themselves

00:33:39.360 or on behalf of their customers is massively higher. And all of that just means that there's

00:33:45.620 just a lot more, there's a lot more, I think, sort of, you know, power behind what's going on

00:33:54.460 in this space and a lot more people who, if things did drop enough, would be willing to jump in and

00:34:00.540 backstop on the liquidity side. So I think that that risk has gone down substantially. And a number

00:34:06.960 of institutions have basically decided that they are going to get involved one way or another.

00:34:11.000 On the regulatory side, which I do think is one of the bigger risks, I think that risk has also

00:34:16.740 gotten a little bit less big, maybe substantially less big over the last year or two. It's at this

00:34:23.020 point, crypto is too big for people to just go out and ban it in mass. You know, I don't think that

00:34:27.920 you're going to see, you know, major governments, at least not many of them, hard ban crypto.

00:34:33.240 Which is essentially, didn't China, I mean, China banned crypto mining, correct?

00:34:37.500 China banned crypto mining. It's a little bit complicated, exactly what it has and hasn't

00:34:42.120 banned. And I think that the stories on it are lacking a bit of nuance. You know, they've

00:34:48.160 banned mining, they've nationalized some of the industry.

00:34:50.720 And it didn't hurt Bitcoin.

00:34:52.540 Not that much. It hurt it a bit. But it's, I mean, if anything, I think that there is

00:34:56.680 some advantage in, you know, the sort of forced decentralization geographically of it.

00:35:01.940 Hmm. But, you know, I think it's also the case that like, you know, I think it's basically also

00:35:07.340 the case that if you look at, I mean, they, you know, Chinese governance intervened in a number of

00:35:13.300 sectors domestically over the last year, this is one of them. Almost no other world governments have

00:35:18.400 been trying to ban crypto recently, although many of them are trying to regulate it. And so I think

00:35:24.020 what you're going to see instead is, you know, a messy step by step process jurisdiction by jurisdiction,

00:35:28.860 as countries try and decide what the regulatory framework should be for crypto.

00:35:33.280 I think that's going to be messy. It's not going to follow a really clear, you know,

00:35:38.460 sort of a really clear progression. It's not going to be consistent. There's going to be missteps in

00:35:42.680 both directions. And I think that, you know, about six months ago, my biggest worry probably

00:35:47.800 was that for whatever reason, regulations end up forcing crypto out of major jurisdictions,

00:35:54.800 because the regimes just don't end up being workable. But I think there's been a lot more

00:36:00.220 education and a lot more excitement and willingness on the behalf of regulators and lawmakers to engage

00:36:07.380 on that over the last six months. And hopefully that the industry has done a better job of, you know,

00:36:13.780 communicating reasonably about this with regulators, because I don't I don't think the industry had

00:36:18.900 always been very good about that. OK, so now you're you're earning to give out there in the

00:36:26.120 in crypto paradise. And I noticed you also took the the given what we can pledge. I think you took

00:36:33.320 it some years before I did. This is the pledge that was started by Toby Ord and Will McCaskill.

00:36:38.860 And there are various bespoke versions of it. I think that the generic one is to give at least

00:36:45.480 10 percent of one's lifetime income to effective charities. Waking Up was actually the first

00:36:50.920 company to take the pledge. They didn't they didn't have a company based pledge until I twisted

00:36:56.760 their arms. So I'm happy they did that. And so for the for companies, it's giving a minimum of 10 percent

00:37:04.220 of profits each year to effective charities. But what what what pledge did you actually take? How do you

00:37:11.260 think about the pledge you took and how are you implementing it? Yeah. So I guess I've taken a

00:37:17.320 couple over the course of the years in a few different places. I've taken given what we can

00:37:22.680 pledge more generally, if also I pledge to give way more than 10 percent away. And, you know, my my

00:37:32.180 actual goal is to give away almost everything one way or another. I think it's worth caveat that I don't

00:37:38.020 know what formula of that is going to take. And I don't know if all that's going to be, you know,

00:37:42.320 501 C threes. But but but in the end, you know, other than the sort of amount that I'm I'm living

00:37:48.800 on, my goal is to use all the resources that I have to to, you know, do as much good as I can.

00:37:54.460 Do you think you'll have a family?

00:37:56.400 I'm not particularly planning to. I think it's a it's it's just isn't something that

00:38:03.400 had ever been extremely exciting for me. And I think, you know, it's never been a priority of

00:38:11.600 mine, but also that that that I think it's not how I want to spend my life and my time.

00:38:19.100 I think it will just as a as the older guy on the podcast, the caveat I would add there is that you

00:38:25.300 really are young enough, I think, to not be surprised by a sea change in your in your view on

00:38:32.480 this topic. I mean, when I was your age, I really I think I would have said more or less the same

00:38:37.140 thing. I certainly had zero plans and was somewhat skeptical around the prospect of having a family.

00:38:43.860 But that changed. And so but it's relevance to this topic is, you know, many people I actually

00:38:51.240 like this is the larger topic of just how you view wealth and generational wealth in the context

00:39:00.180 of effective altruism. In my conversations with Will, I've wanted to find a line here where

00:39:08.840 wealth itself is not stigmatized. I think I think we want to live in a world where people grow wealthier

00:39:15.660 and wealthier. And, you know, the pie gets bigger and bigger and bigger so that, you know, even the

00:39:20.340 poorest person 100 years from now would be unrecognizably wealthy by today's standards. I mean, that that's

00:39:27.740 what real success would look like, you know, within whatever constraints the laws of nature impose on

00:39:33.880 us as a species. So wealth itself can't be the problem. And yet so much talk about philanthropy

00:39:42.300 does set up a zero sum contest between living a certain kind of lifestyle and being a good person,

00:39:51.220 essentially. And we have a you know, there are concerns about wealth inequality, which I

00:39:57.360 completely share now, you know, in the US and elsewhere, I think it's, there are just obscene

00:40:04.680 attitudes toward redistribution that you often, you know, meet among the most fortunate people in our

00:40:11.980 society, where there's just there's very little concern about the common good or a very little apparent

00:40:17.280 concern about the common good. Once one has read a sufficient amount of Ayn Rand in Silicon Valley.

00:40:26.160 And so it's, I'm just wondering how you think about things like wealth inequality, generational wealth,

00:40:32.440 and redistribution. I mean, I guess the other piece I'd put in here is I think it's as much as I think we

00:40:38.740 need to engineer a tide that raises all boats, you know, recent proposals of, you know, taxing unrealized

00:40:46.280 gains on billionaires, just seem, whatever the ethics, they seem practically unworkable. So I'm

00:40:54.240 just wondering what you're, you know, as a fantastically wealthy person, who is committed to

00:40:59.540 the common good, how do you view things like wealth inequality, redistribution and, and the rest?

00:41:06.700 Totally. And I think I agree with, you know, a lot of what you said there, where it seems to me like

00:41:12.720 there's way, way too little focus in the world on, on doing good. And, and that what you see a lot of

00:41:21.780 instead is this weird, sort of hybrid thing, in sort of large centers of wealth, which is, it's not

00:41:28.600 exactly trying to use, you know, it's not trying to redistribute, it's not trying to use the resources or

00:41:36.420 wealth to have positive impact on the world. It's sort of, I don't know, almost this weird constrained

00:41:43.640 problem of like, doing things which seem kind of good ish. And also are sort of like, weird brand

00:41:53.220 building exercises almost. And, and I think ends up being a confusing combination of things. And I think

00:41:59.600 that like, the sort of classic type of like, kind of do good or thing would be like, endowing a university

00:42:06.420 building or something like that, which is, it's sort of like is kind of trying to do good, but it's

00:42:12.720 also kind of trying to like, build your personal brand, maybe, or maybe not. But but I guess, it sort

00:42:19.960 of seems hard to me for that not to be part of what it is, given that's like, a big part of the impact

00:42:25.380 of it. And it's sort of is kind of focused on like, like, I don't know that there's like a really

00:42:33.680 coherent theory of top universities are underfunded is the biggest problem in the world right now.

00:42:40.560 And so I think that that form is like, quite popular right now. And I think it's not what you

00:42:47.720 would do if you're actually just trying to like, you know, do what was best for the world or anything

00:42:51.680 like that. And and I think that, you know, this just like, incredibly clear that beyond a moderate

00:42:58.720 amount of wealth, there's just not really anything that you can do, that's going to have much impact

00:43:06.400 on your life, even if it weren't the case that you could have absolutely massive impact on the rest of

00:43:12.860 the world. But in fact, you can have absolutely massive impact on the rest of the world. And, you

00:43:17.940 know, impact that's way outsized compared to what you're sort of putting into it. And, and I think

00:43:23.460 that that is incredibly important. And, and I think that's been sort of one of the key pillars of

00:43:30.820 effective altruism. So I basically agree with, with all that. And, but but then looking at sort of

00:43:37.440 another thing you brought up about, like, proposals to address this, I sort of also agree that I think

00:43:42.420 a lot of the ones we've seen recently have not really, they've seen weirdly not trained on, you

00:43:49.340 know, doing it in an efficient or effective way. And I guess what I mean by that is like, you know,

00:43:55.840 you look at the, you know, unrealized cap gains tax. And I think there's like really compelling

00:44:00.840 arguments for increasing tax rates on the very wealthy. I think that it should almost be your prior,

00:44:08.200 I think that that like, probably it's correct to consider doing that, at least. And, you know,

00:44:14.860 I think there's certainly arguments on addressing a lot of loopholes in the tax code as well. I think

00:44:21.320 like that particular approach is probably not the right approach, because any of these probably what

00:44:27.660 you're getting at, but like, it's a total mess, from an operational perspective, where you end up

00:44:32.840 taxing people for more money than they actually have. And, you know, assessing a tax that they

00:44:38.500 literally can't pay. And there's sort of a question of like, what next? Like, what, what, what does that

00:44:43.760 mean? And, and so I think that that that sort of is, is like, probably not the right instantiation of

00:44:50.060 it. And probably came, you know, in some senses, more from a direction of like, decreasing wealth for

00:44:57.900 the wealthy, rather than thinking about how to have like, positive impact for others. I think it's

00:45:02.960 almost how sometimes society treats these things, is them sort of optimizing for the wrong piece of

00:45:09.020 it. Well, yeah, because there's this moralistic layer to it, which is demonizing extreme,

00:45:17.800 understandably extreme disparities in wealth, in a world where there's obvious suffering that could

00:45:24.000 be addressed by money. But in stigmatizing those disparities, you know, the, the, just the shocking

00:45:31.740 inequalities in the world, we wind up stigmatizing wealth itself. And so there's, you have people like

00:45:37.600 Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, who did, they don't even attempt to conceal it. What they are

00:45:43.600 communicating is contempt for people of sufficient wealth. I mean, you know, I think they've even said

00:45:51.560 it outright that there's just, there's no way to become a billionaire legitimately, right? I mean,

00:45:57.400 it's like, if the system were as it should be, it would be impossible to be that wealthy. And so

00:46:03.840 there's, there's moral opprobrium attached to having succeeded to the degree that, that you and, you know,

00:46:10.700 something like, I guess, 3000 others on earth at the moment have. I think they're about, I think

00:46:18.120 there's something like 3000 billionaires. And that's, that part seems completely wrong because

00:46:23.360 it's just, you know, I mean, obvious, you know, one, we have to just, on a first principles basis,

00:46:28.760 we just have to acknowledge it's going to be some degree of inequality. And our real interest

00:46:33.680 is in canceling the most painful extremes at the bottom, right? We don't want to cancel the top.

00:46:42.840 We want to cancel the, we want to raise the bottom so that, you know, the poorest among us

00:46:48.560 still have all that normal people, you know, actually need to live lives of, of real integrity

00:46:57.320 and wellbeing. And that seems possible, right? And that we should, that's the thing we should

00:47:02.740 engineer without, and, and we certainly shouldn't want to create any incentives that make it harder

00:47:09.180 to generate wealth in the first place. I totally agree.

00:47:13.300 So how, I mean, you, you view this terrain from an unusually high perch here. What would you recommend

00:47:21.460 our policies be here? I mean, just given that it's possible to incentivize the wrong things and

00:47:28.200 disincentivize the right things and that there's a lot of confusion about just what the, and just basic

00:47:37.960 uncertainty about what the outcomes would be if we, if we rigged the system very differently.

00:47:43.800 If you could tinker with it, what would you recommend that we do?

00:47:48.880 Yeah, totally. And, you know, I'm not an expert, I think on, on tax policy and all of these are just

00:47:54.500 sort of guesses at it. But in the end, I think that sort of in line with what you said, like I would put

00:48:01.460 the focus here on the focus on the good that we're trying to accomplish or on the problems we're

00:48:08.640 trying to stamp out. And so focus on like, you know, those that are in extreme poverty, like what

00:48:15.120 can we do to get them out of poverty? And, you know, the actual amounts that it would take sometimes to

00:48:19.940 do this, they're significant, but I think they're not as gigantic as some people would sometimes think

00:48:26.520 they would be, you know, I think that for, you know, given the amount of resources that we have as a society,

00:48:32.520 we should have plenty, if we're good at targeting, what we need to do in the ways that, you know, places like

00:48:38.380 GiveDirectly against malaria, and, you know, others have done at addressing that, I think looking at, you

00:48:45.080 know, the suffering of factory farmed animals, it's not a good place right now. And, you know, looking at, I mean,

00:48:51.220 obviously pandemic preparedness, whatever, there, there's sort of a lot of areas where we clearly

00:48:54.700 need to make progress as a society, but I would refocus the conversation on those and on what we

00:49:01.460 can do to address those. And I think, you know, a concerted effort could get a lot of progress on

00:49:07.220 them. What about norms around philanthropy among the very wealthy? I mean, the truth is when you're

00:49:14.920 talking about the wealthiest people, you know, the one-tenth of one-tenth of one percent, the kinds

00:49:21.500 of donations that get newspaper articles written about them really are, you know, so someone writing

00:49:30.600 a check for $50 million to a hospital, say, right? I mean, that is a, an astounding act of generosity

00:49:38.840 when you measure it against most people's wealth, but when somebody has $100 billion, you know, it is

00:49:46.360 really a rounding error. They, they couldn't even estimate their wealth within $50 million on any

00:49:51.540 given day, and they don't have to be in cryptocurrency for it to be that obscure. I think we would be in a

00:49:57.560 different situation with respect to the reality of human suffering and, and animal suffering and, um,

00:50:05.420 the, the perception of wealth if people, more people in your situation and beyond had your attitude toward

00:50:17.240 the amount of wealth they were giving away or planning to give away. And it wasn't just about getting your

00:50:22.920 name on, on a university building for a comparatively tiny amount of money as large, as expensive as a building

00:50:30.060 on the Johns Hopkins or Harvard or MIT campus might be. Uh, it's still, when you're talking about how much

00:50:36.860 wealth people privately hold, these, these are in fact crumbs, you know, albeit self-aggrandizing

00:50:44.160 crumbs in, in many cases. So what, what about spreading this meme to the ultra wealthy that virtually no one

00:50:53.320 is doing enough and to have it be, um, I mean, uh, you know, guilt is probably not the best motivator

00:51:00.380 here, but at a certain point, I think we would reach a tipping point where it would just be,

00:51:04.840 it's what Pete, well, it's the only thing that will seem decent to do in the end is to be much

00:51:10.840 more generous than people are tending to be. Yeah, I totally agree. And I think that like,

00:51:15.720 you know, first of all, there's just absolutely massive amounts that could be done by this.

00:51:19.600 And, and, and as you said, like it, the meme has been successfully spread amongst sort of ultra

00:51:25.400 wealthy that, you know, the sort of like, you know, the right thing to do is to give. But as you said,

00:51:31.940 I think on the amount to give, it's like pretty arbitrary right now. It's sort of like, I don't

00:51:35.660 know, you know, like a significant amount, right. But, but what is the significant amount in a lot of

00:51:40.780 cases, a significant amount might be a pretty small fraction of what someone actually has. And,

00:51:46.880 you know, that doesn't mean it all has to happen tomorrow. And, you know, we can get into sort of

00:51:50.060 all the caveats about like, how to do this strategically, but that doesn't change sort

00:51:54.560 of the, the high level thing of like, you know, you should be trying to find ways to do that.

00:52:00.720 And, and I don't think people are in a lot of cases, I think that there's a lot of cases where

00:52:05.260 people are basically just not at all trying to find ways to do good for the world. And so,

00:52:11.480 yeah, I, I agree with all that. And I think that like, that, that really spreading the notion of

00:52:16.880 like, you should try and do as much as you can, you should try and give most of what you have.

00:52:21.980 And when doing it, you should be focusing on how much good you can do, rather than focusing on,

00:52:29.100 you know, a sort of diverse series of goals, many of which are kind of self serving in the end,

00:52:35.280 and are basically just consumption, like, you know, getting your name. I mean, you know, we've,

00:52:42.320 my, my company is paid to get our name on various things. That is not charity.

00:52:46.340 Like you're not, you know, that, that's not going into the, into the charity budget.

00:52:50.300 And, and, and I think that sort of something along with that is that when you think about,

00:52:55.400 about doing good, like think about it from the perspective of the people you're helping

00:52:59.080 rather than necessarily from like your own perspective. And I mean, from that perspective,

00:53:04.500 like, you know, they're not in it for your warm fuzzies, right? Like from their perspective,

00:53:12.240 like it's not relevant to them. Who's giving it's not relevant to them. What like, like the relevant

00:53:19.020 part for the actual impact you're having is the actual impact you can have and on how many people's

00:53:25.220 lives you're having that impact. And I think that, you know, from that perspective, right, you might get

00:53:31.460 all the warm fuzzies that you need from $50 million of donations, but, but that's not the

00:53:37.000 relevant thing. The relevant thing was helping people. And there's a lot more help to, to give

00:53:41.940 than that.

00:53:43.140 Yeah. This is interesting. It's interesting to navigate this space of ethical norms and pseudo

00:53:49.700 ethical norms and questions of pragmatism. So this is something I've spoke about with,

00:53:55.020 with Will at one point. It used to be thought, as it is still widely thought, that the highest form of

00:54:03.760 giving is anonymous giving. Because there you can be absolutely sure that your, you know, ulterior

00:54:11.360 concerns about your own reputation are not in play. You're not just, you know, this is not virtue

00:54:17.140 signaling. It's not vanity. It's not getting your name on the building. You're just prioritizing the good

00:54:22.620 you can do with the money. But, you know, I've come to believe, and Will, at least for the purposes

00:54:28.600 of this conversation, agrees, that at least in certain cases, anonymity is not the, you know,

00:54:36.320 practically and ultimately ethically speaking, is not the highest ideal, because there's so much good

00:54:42.580 to be done by persuading people to follow this example. You know, so for you to be, I mean, you could

00:54:48.780 be anonymously giving, you know, having taken no pledges publicly, and that would be great. But I

00:54:55.100 think it is much better for you to be modeling to your fellow ultra-rich people that this is a value

00:55:02.640 you hold and that one can hold, and that, you know, even there, and there may even be great social

00:55:08.980 rewards for promulgating this value, you know, people, because it's, what we want to do is to spread

00:55:15.960 this attitude as far as we can. And I can just say, you know, personally, whenever I talk about

00:55:21.480 these things on the podcast, and especially whenever I mention any specific charity, what

00:55:27.760 happens is my audience reliably supports that charity, and, you know, to a degree that is

00:55:33.380 fairly astounding. And that's a wonderful thing to inspire that kind of generosity in thousands of

00:55:41.920 people. And none of that good gets done if you just hide your light under a bushel and do it

00:55:47.780 anonymously, content that you're, you have not been contaminated by the sin of your own vanity.

00:55:54.840 Yeah, I agree. It could be a complicated balance, because obviously, you want to do that. You want to

00:56:00.920 be able to, to, to spread that meme around. I think that's one of the most, you know, in the end,

00:56:07.060 that's, for most people, that's the biggest impact that they can have. You also want to obviously make

00:56:12.120 sure while doing it that, you know, you don't sort of lose, lose focus on what mattered in the first

00:56:18.260 place. And that the publicity doesn't become the goal in and of itself, except to the extent that

00:56:25.260 that goal is for spreading, you know, spreading the meme and encouraging others rather than sort of

00:56:29.760 self-satisfaction. But, but I think that contingent on being comfortable that you can weather that

00:56:37.560 and stay committed. Yeah, I agree that, you know, probably, probably the biggest thing that you can

00:56:43.720 do is, is to, you know, help others get to that point where they're optimizing for what impact they

00:56:53.320 can have on the world.

00:56:54.100 Hmm. So what is your approach to giving at this point? What, what are you, what are you doing

00:56:59.400 currently? And what do you plan to do? And, um, is it just personal or is it, or does FTX give a

00:57:06.380 certain amount of profit away? I mean, how do you approach this?

00:57:10.080 Yeah. So I guess I'll start with the last part, which is the easiest, which is that, you know,

00:57:14.500 the bulk of it is personal. FTX is also giving some FTX is giving 1% of what it makes, but that's not,

00:57:20.540 those aren't the big numbers here. Like that's not where I expect most of this impact to come from.

00:57:25.800 I expect most of it to come from, uh, from what I personally give. And, you know, in terms of what

00:57:31.980 it looks like in the end, and I think there's something I think is really, really important

00:57:37.040 is that in the end, there is no metric other than what, what, you know, has the most positive

00:57:43.480 impact on the world. And, you know, if it starts to look like something that I hadn't previously

00:57:48.460 thought was important is the most important thing. I think it's important to recognize that

00:57:53.600 and pivot to that and to keep iterating and not to get sort of stuck in the mindset of one particular,

00:58:00.720 one particular path, but, you know, kind of putting aside, you know, long-term hedge words and

00:58:07.640 focusing on like, okay, but sure. How about like today? You know, I think that the things that I've

00:58:13.080 been looking at the most, there's some amount of giving that I do to a variety of places for

00:58:18.600 a sort of set of reasons that maybe I don't think are ultimately the most important for the bulk of

00:58:24.740 the money, but that I think is quite valuable to do with some of it. And I think that like,

00:58:29.920 you know, examples of things there are, you know, basically like, you know, making sure that I'm

00:58:37.820 giving at least some periodically, no matter what, even if I can't find something that seems like

00:58:43.480 the best place to give to me, to make sure that I'm in the habit of it, making sure that I am

00:58:48.420 supporting causes that I think are good and that I want it to be known I'm supporting and that I want,

00:58:53.940 you know, there to be more supporters of. And so I'm doing sort of some of that, but for sort of the

00:59:00.660 biggest parts of this, you know, and maybe I'll say like, you know, on, on, on those fronts, like

00:59:06.260 I think, you know, I've been giving some to global poverty causes each year. I've been giving some to

00:59:11.780 animal welfare causes each year. I've been giving some to effective altruism, community building

00:59:17.740 charities like center for effective altruism each year. I think the things though, that like I've ended

00:59:23.480 up giving the most to recently and thought were the most interesting, probably fall in a few buckets.

00:59:29.480 One of which is, is pandemic preparedness stuff. And, you know, it's, it's sort of false. And I think

00:59:38.580 this really dangerous middle category right now where it's, you know, decently likely to, you know,

00:59:46.700 pandemics have the potential to be massively more deadly than something like global warming is. But on

00:59:52.560 the other hand, they're actually kind of shovel ready in, in the bad sense. And I think that's something

00:59:58.360 that we've learned over the last few years is that global pandemics can happen. This isn't like a

01:00:04.360 theoretical concern. And I think we've, it's also become super clear that we have no ability as a

01:00:13.040 society to react to them, that we have no, no idea what we're doing. And, you know, we're, we're flying

01:00:19.900 blind here. And, and that's not great. You know, we've, I think like almost no countries would I

01:00:27.260 give more than like a B minus two over the last two years for handling COVID. And we got lucky with

01:00:33.240 COVID. Yeah. We got lucky because it, it's nasty, but it's not, it's not deadly in the way SARS is.

01:00:39.280 Right. Like this isn't something that has like a 30% mortality rate.

01:00:44.720 Yeah. And this was a dress rehearsal that we clearly failed in, you know, in our defense in

01:00:49.980 large part, because, or at least this is a possible alibi. We were just in, we were in the uncanny

01:00:55.460 valley with respect to the lethality of the virus. It just was not lethal enough to get our attention

01:01:01.300 or get everyone's attention. And so now we have debates about whether COVID is even, you know,

01:01:07.340 worse than the flu or whether you should get vaccinated for it. I mean, the one success here

01:01:11.920 is that we did develop the vaccines very quickly, but we can't even get half of our society to agree

01:01:16.660 that they should be vaccinated in the first place. One could imagine that's because this isn't MERS or,

01:01:23.880 or SARS or something that's far more lethal. You know, one can only hope that if there were bodies

01:01:29.300 being piled in the streets, you know, in order of magnitude, worse, lethality, you wouldn't have the,

01:01:36.020 the same conspiracy thinking and sheer lunacy that is causing us to fail this test of, of cooperation

01:01:43.200 and coordination. I would hope so. I, I wish I felt more confident in that than I do.

01:01:49.560 I'm with you. I'm, I'm in my darker moments. I'm, I'm entirely with you. I think a maniac like Alex

01:01:56.080 Jones and anyone who would listen to him is capable of being just as crazy in the presence of the bubonic

01:02:02.340 plague. I think that's mostly right. And, and I think some of it is, as you said, like,

01:02:07.180 we don't have a good understanding of society as some of something. And we're really bad at,

01:02:11.840 at sort of addressing middles, like at saying, this is like clearly more deadly than the flu

01:02:17.240 and clearly less deadly than SARS. Like that's just not, it's not in our lexicon. Our lexicon is

01:02:22.700 like, it's fine or it's terrible, you know? And I think similarly, like we're really bad at

01:02:29.380 strategically addressing things and saying like, this intervention seems to have like 80% reduction

01:02:35.540 for like, not that much cost. This intervention seems to have 25% reduction at enormous cost.

01:02:41.520 Like it is absolutely worth it to do number one and probably not to do number two. And like,

01:02:46.280 instead you just like, I find myself in like a shockingly few set of people who like, you know,

01:02:52.720 thinks that like vaccines are great for this, but that like, it's not clear we should be shutting

01:02:59.120 down society forever for it. So, so yeah, we don't know what we're doing. And if you look at sort

01:03:03.980 of the takeaways that society has had from this, I almost want to say the biggest thing that I

01:03:09.760 noticed is that there isn't a clear takeaway. What's, you know, what moral has society taken

01:03:15.920 from COVID? It's a very confused lesson. I mean, the lesson that many of us have drawn is what you,

01:03:21.340 what you just stated, that we are painfully unprepared for the real thing because we have botched this

01:03:28.840 so fully again, you know, module of the, um, the vaccine, the vaccine development,

01:03:33.700 which, which was, which was some parts of that, I think are a good story where we now have the

01:03:38.120 ability in 24 hours to make an MRNA vaccine, which is absolutely fucking amazing. And it's a superpower.

01:03:43.960 On the other hand, it still took a year from COVID appearing to people getting vaccinated.

01:03:50.380 And so I think when it comes to, I mean, obviously detection, like we're really bad,

01:03:55.120 but also like it then took us eight months after having the vaccine to get it through the process

01:04:00.480 to start giving to people. That was eight months when people were dying and COVID was spreading and,

01:04:06.240 you know, we know, we know that people will volunteer for challenge trials. So if we can

01:04:12.280 just articulate the ethics of that more clearly, I think the next time around we can probably get

01:04:18.800 challenge trials approved and hopefully that, yeah, that would speed it up. Yep. Yeah. So anyway,

01:04:24.400 going back to like what, what I've been giving to recently, some of it is various pandemic

01:04:28.960 preparedness related things. A lot of this actually is lobbying. A lot of this is information for

01:04:34.680 lawmakers and trying to get, you know, the government to take seriously its role in preparing for

01:04:42.920 pandemics. And I think you can have extreme leverage doing that. If you look at, you know,

01:04:49.040 just sort of the ratio of what it costs to, you know, versus how much impact you could potentially

01:04:55.680 have there. I think it's super compelling. Now that doesn't mean it's necessarily going to get

01:05:00.780 there, right? Like it, you could absolutely imagine a world where all that is for naught. And I don't,

01:05:06.300 I don't want to say that that's definitely not happening, but that's, I think one of the things

01:05:09.800 I've been doing that I actually feel sort of weirdly best about, and that I think it's been

01:05:15.680 super high leverage. And then on the side, I've also been having a lot of conversations with people

01:05:20.700 about what infrastructure do we need to be developing as a world to be better prepared

01:05:26.800 for the next pandemic and what we can do to fund some of that infrastructure, whether it's, I mean,

01:05:32.740 there's sort of, you know, one idea, which I've seen thrown around a few times and I think it's

01:05:36.780 like fairly compelling is, you know, what if we just went out and funded a giant vaccine stockpile,

01:05:44.480 right? And it's there variants on that. So that's one direction that I've been, that I've been going

01:05:49.020 with. And that I think is, is just like really high upside. If it can be pulled off well, you know,

01:05:57.080 I think these are threats that could be potentially, you know, existential and if not existential,

01:06:01.060 at least like really fucking bad. And then, you know, I've been doing more generally a bunch of

01:06:07.880 policy work in DC and, you know, electoral work there. And I think there's also just some numbers

01:06:14.240 there that don't quite, that are sort of shockingly out of line with what you might predict. You know,

01:06:19.580 if you just look at like how much is spent on elections, how much is spent on lobbying, it's sort

01:06:25.880 of a big amount, but it's actually a really small amount compared to the scope of, you know, the

01:06:31.000 impact that the government can have and that it has had on, you know, among other things, just like

01:06:36.620 global discourse. Well, that was always amazing to me. I mean, they've lost their influence, I think,

01:06:42.600 a little bit of late, but just to look at how little an organization like the NRA needed to spend

01:06:50.140 every year to completely dominate our politics, right? To become an unmovable object in the middle

01:06:55.960 of American politics for as long as I've been alive. It's a trivial amount of money when you're

01:07:01.900 talking about the resources of even one very wealthy person. Yeah, it's absolutely right. And

01:07:07.320 it's pretty wild. Like at some point, you know, there's all this pushback on their lobbying, but

01:07:12.500 I think some of the answer is like, geez, like that's how much they gave, like how, I don't know,

01:07:18.440 like there are a lot of people who could be looking to have impact in DC. And I think like,

01:07:24.360 you know, we're like, I think people sometimes have the wrong takeaway from, from, from that

01:07:30.440 lobbying. And the takeaway is like, everything is fucked instead of being like, we're getting outplayed

01:07:35.520 here. Right. Well, it's just, it's not all causes are equivalent, right? It's like, yes, everybody

01:07:41.440 thinks they're the good guys, even when they're the bad guys, but there are some good guys, right? And

01:07:46.660 there are, you know, there are benign, there are at least benign causes and they're, you

01:07:51.740 know, truly malicious and destructive causes. So it's, um, yeah, no, I'm, I'm with you there.

01:07:58.840 Do you have people advising you at this point on philanthropy? I mean, that's like, I got to

01:08:03.640 think this is not just you doing Google searches. You must have smart people who are in your ear.

01:08:08.860 Yeah, I've been building that up. And, and I mean, it's something I, I would really want

01:08:13.740 to spend more time on than I can and regret that I can't, or at least haven't just because

01:08:18.720 work takes up so much of my life, but I've been growing out the team that's, that's working

01:08:23.840 with me and advising me on that quite a bit. I recently hired, I don't know if you've ever

01:08:27.780 talked with Nick Beckstead, but he's one of sort of the original, uh, hardcore EA, um,

01:08:34.540 I don't think I've, it's possible we've exchanged emails, but the name's not ringing a bell.

01:08:39.920 Yeah. He's a great guy and he's recently brought him on to help lead our foundation.

01:08:45.760 Okay. I'm working with a number of people in DC who have way more knowledge than I do

01:08:51.140 of that arena. A number of people who have way more knowledge about bio than I do. And,

01:08:55.840 and in general, like trying to, you know, build out subject matter experts on everything that

01:09:00.180 we're working on, in addition to sort of a core group of people focusing on, on what our direction

01:09:06.160 should be. And, and I think it's worth knowing that this also, this isn't all, all me. I'm,

01:09:11.080 you know, really fortunate to have started FTX up with, with a number of, of other effective

01:09:16.800 altruists who have, you know, a ton of respect for and, and who have been working with me on all of

01:09:21.900 this. Nice. Well, if, um, I can ever profit from your research, um, I'd love to do that. I mean,

01:09:28.220 I've got various effective altruists advising me. Um, I don't know if you know, um, Natalie Cargo

01:09:34.360 from long view philanthropy and, uh, the founders pledge and, uh, other groups there that are, um,

01:09:41.840 you know, that I've connected to through will, but yeah, if at any, any point, your summary of

01:09:49.060 what you're doing in any given year can be exported to my brain, I'd love to see what you're doing and

01:09:54.080 perhaps just follow your lead. Absolutely. We should, we should absolutely stay in touch with

01:09:58.540 that. Cause I mean, there's a ton that we've been doing and I think a lot of it is, is super cool.

01:10:02.900 And, and obviously we'd love to, to also just get your thoughts on all of it as well.

01:10:07.640 Nice. Well, Sam, it's been great to speak with you. Is there anything

01:10:10.760 that we didn't cover that you think we should touch?

01:10:14.000 The only other thing maybe I'd touch on briefly is something around how, when you're trying to do

01:10:19.640 good, how ambitious, I think it makes sense to be where, you know, if, if you're just optimizing for

01:10:26.440 your personal wellbeing, because you just sort of cap out pretty quickly with like a really comfortable,

01:10:32.720 life, I think there are a lot of incentives to be not super ambitious on that. But I think that if

01:10:38.760 you're optimizing for impact the world to the world, I think that really changes the story

01:10:44.320 because all of a sudden you're looking at something that can really scale something where there really

01:10:52.560 isn't this sense of like, Oh, you know, you've had a fair bit of impact. You can't really have much

01:10:57.320 more impact than that. I think instead the answer is generally like, no, you can have absolutely

01:11:01.520 massive impact. It just keeps going and going and going. And, and I think that means that it,

01:11:06.300 it makes a lot of sense to shoot really high with it. And I think one piece of that, that we've touched

01:11:10.860 on is like, not just thinking about how can we do good, but thinking about how can I maximize the

01:11:16.720 amount of good that I'm doing with the resources I have, you know, not just giving away 5%

01:11:21.320 eventually, but giving away 95% eventually, and not just trying to give it to something good,

01:11:26.540 but think hard about what would be better, what would be the best that we could give to.

01:11:31.260 I think another side of that though, is also, you know, trying to think about, I mean, if you think

01:11:36.140 about like how much impact you've had with your life, I'm actually, I don't know how you thought

01:11:40.280 about what you're going to do with your life earlier, but you've had absolutely enormous impact

01:11:44.820 impact on a huge number of people. I think like massively outscaling what I think most people

01:11:52.320 would think of with their careers. And I think that thinking about ways that you can have not

01:11:57.520 just some impact, but absolutely enormous positive impact with your life and your career and what

01:12:01.900 that would imply you should be doing is actually like really important and powerful.

01:12:06.320 Yeah. And again, it is in fact separable from the, the good feels component of it. And again,

01:12:14.340 I don't want to diminish the importance of good feels because I mean, that really is the driver

01:12:19.600 for a lot of people, but it's also just the, it's the moment to moment substance of what it's like

01:12:24.220 to be you, you know, it's the difference between whether you are smiling or not. But the reality is,

01:12:30.740 is that there are things each of us can do that can affect the lives of, you know, literally millions

01:12:38.040 of people positively. They're almost entirely out of sight and out of mind, even when we're

01:12:44.200 consciously engaging them. You know, it's like, I mean, you could cut a check for tens of millions

01:12:49.460 of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars used as effectively as possible. And it could take you

01:12:54.920 five minutes. And the thing that you're, is good, that's going to leave a much bigger residue on how

01:13:01.260 you feel that day is the interaction you had with some stranger in a Starbucks, right?

01:13:06.540 Yep.

01:13:06.640 There's a paradox of sorts there. You know, I think we want to optimize both of those things.

01:13:12.220 And I think it's good to reflect in a way on the, you know, the more ambitious good we do,

01:13:18.760 so as to internalize the psychological rewards of doing that good. But I think it is just a fact

01:13:25.640 that certain things will always be more salient than other things. And it just, you'll, I mean,

01:13:32.340 this is the conversation I had with Will about, it's like, if you could run into a burning building

01:13:37.640 and save a child, you know, on your deathbed, that will be the thing you remember as the best

01:13:42.980 thing you ever did in your life, perhaps. But the reality is, is that if you just use your

01:13:49.100 resources at all compassionately, you could be saving children in analogous situations by the

01:13:56.260 thousands and thousands, you know, every day of your life at this point.

01:13:59.720 And it just, but it's not going to feel the same. And that, that's okay. You know,

01:14:03.640 you can get your good feels elsewhere. And this is what rationality is for, is to uncouple us from

01:14:10.660 being entirely pushed around by our emotions and to get a more of a bird's eye view of the ethical

01:14:18.560 terrain so that we can actually do the most good that's there to be done.

01:14:23.360 Completely agree. And I think, you know, as you said, it's, it doesn't mean denying the existence

01:14:28.720 of the feelings that you have, but acknowledging that while it's, it's really important not to lose

01:14:35.600 sight of that and not to forget that the goal in the end is to make people feel better and not to

01:14:42.320 lose track of what that, that feels like, that when you start to scale things, that's not the

01:14:48.280 thing that scales. The thing that scales is the more direct impact that you have on other people's

01:14:55.060 lives. Nice. Well, Sam, to be continued, I look forward to meeting you someday. And please keep

01:15:01.180 me in the loop as you learn more and more about how to do good in the world. Absolutely. And you know,

01:15:06.080 if you're ever thinking about coming down to the Bahamas, we'd love to have you here.

01:15:09.620 Sure, sure. Well, twist my arm.

01:15:11.400 Sure, sure.

Making Sense - Sam Harris - December 24, 2021

#271 — Earning to Give

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