Sam Bankman-Fried wasn’t just a crypto wunderkind, he was an ambassador for improving the world through effective altruism. And if you were wondering how he squared those values with all the lying he allegedly did during his time at FTX, wonder no more: the answer is utilitarianism.
Lying and stealing were permitted, as “the only moral rule that mattered would be maximal utility,” Caroline Ellison testified on her second day at Bankman-Fried’s fraud trial. I glanced over at his parents, Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried, to see what they made of this; both appeared to be busy scribbling into legal pads. In any case, the approach apparently worked for much of Bankman-Fried’s life — right up to demanding doctored balance sheets for the…
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