What do absurd pandemic prevention policy proposals have to do with the catastrophic collapse of crypto markets?
Quite a lot, actually, and it all comes back to this guy:https://t.co/F9cFm99tfY
— Dr. Angela Rasmussen (@angie_rasmussen) November 17, 2022
It’s all fun & games, if you’re Sam Bankman-Friend and his polycule buddies, or the hordes of entranced journamalists who fell for his ‘Effective Altruism’ blather. But it’s a real tragedy if, for instance, you were one of the West Africans caught up in SBF’s ‘evangelical’ ‘multi-level-marketing like’ promotions.
And then there’s the broader social contagion, one not-very-visible part of which Dr. Rasmussen explains:
This dude is Sam Bankman-Fried AKA SBF. Until last week, he was the billionaire head of FTX, a crypto exchange, and was known for being an “effective altruism” philanthropist. Effective altruism is the idea of using evidence & reason to benefit the most people.
That all seemed to go fine for SBF until there was the crypto equivalent of a bank run and he went bankrupt overnight. Now there’s a whole lot of EA longtermist pet projects that are suddenly without funding.
So why am I talking about this? I’m not a billionaire. I’m a boring academic virologist on the Canadian prairies. Why should I care about the self-regarding strategies tech bros use to make themselves feel better about being unrepentant wealth-hoarding capitalist moneyphages?
Well, because SBF decided, in between meetings spent playing League of Legends and being inappropriately barefoot that one of these projects was to end risky pathogen research. And he was willing to spend cash, though evidently without due diligence on how that money was spent.
One example was funding a company called SecureBio. SBF donated $1.2 million to them for pandemic preparedness & defense. On the surface it appears they are doing wastewater surveillance. In reality they insist that essentially all virology is just bioterrorism waiting to happen. pic.twitter.com/nMNsmqkq3D
— Dr. Angela Rasmussen (@angie_rasmussen) November 17, 2022
Its author is pitching it as a call to arms against bioweapon proliferation.
Virus sequence? It’s a recipe.
Virus research? It’s a blueprint.
Virology training? It’s bioterror school.
ALL virology research is an information hazard.https://t.co/FJ9fxKfROb— Dr. Angela Rasmussen (@angie_rasmussen) November 17, 2022
The only problem is that reality doesn’t match up with the claims. Here’s just one example: there are not “many thousands of people” who can immediately generate infectious virus to start a pandemic with just a sequence, much less ignite multiple pandemics simultaneously! pic.twitter.com/dTrSaSAnUv
— Dr. Angela Rasmussen (@angie_rasmussen) November 17, 2022
There are 1000s of virologists, but far fewer with these skills. We aren’t cooking up novel viruses all the time for several reasons. Starting with reverse genetic systems are *very* technically challenging. I spent half my PhD trying to get an infectious clone of rhinovirus!
Not because it’s so complicated or because I’m bad at cloning (I’d say I’m average) but because I had to tweak and optimize every. Last. Thing. And HRV1A is a short, + sense genome…it’s relatively easy to clone compared to – sense viruses like Ebola or longer genomes like CoVs.
Infectious clones aren’t something you can whip up in a garage, even if you do synthesize the whole genome and put it together with Gibson assembly. And most “complete” viral genome sequences actually have pretty poor coverage at the ends and in highly structured regions.
Maybe I’ll do another thread later looking at all the dumb ideas in this white paper but let’s get back to the topic at hand: SBF spent $1.2M on a technofantasy about how one bad virologist can coordinate simultaneous pandemics with genome sequences & a penchant for evildoing.
That $1.2M went undisclosed in the acknowledgements section, despite its author stating SBF’s flameout means “SecureBio’s work is in peril” & explicitly cites the white paper.
Interesting omission, as COI disclosure has been used to diminish actual research on pandemic origins. pic.twitter.com/jzejLEFazT
— Dr. Angela Rasmussen (@angie_rasmussen) November 17, 2022
What is Gryphon Scientific, you ask? Just a little mom & pop biodefense contractor with a major practice area focused on regulating virology research.
And one of their cofounders, Rocco Casagrande, gets a shout out in the acknowledgements for “thoughtful comments.” pic.twitter.com/g95YhCY4HQ
— Dr. Angela Rasmussen (@angie_rasmussen) November 17, 2022
If I kept poking around, all sorts of funny coincidences would pop up linking pandemic experts who believe the real threat we face are not the viruses but the virologists who study them.
But SBF didn’t just support experts with these views. He also used media to mainstream them.
— Dr. Angela Rasmussen (@angie_rasmussen) November 17, 2022
(Click over for the *second* half of the thread)
***********
And let me finish up this saga-length thread by disclosing my motives.
I am a virologist & I study emerging viruses, the pathogens that cause pandemics. This pandemic had a zoonotic origin. Most pandemics & epidemics have zoonotic origins.
To prevent them, we need to study them
— Dr. Angela Rasmussen (@angie_rasmussen) November 17, 2022
War for Ukraine Day 270: Russia’s Alliance With Iran Is Getting Out of Hand
Jerzy Russian
I keep reading that dude’s initials as SFB, or Shit For Brains in long form. I guess that kind of fits.
Alison Rose
@Jerzy Russian: When I first saw “SecureBio” I thought it was SecureBro and I was like, feels fitting.
Ken
I wonder if I can get $1.2 million from someone for writing a 30-page paper claiming tornados are caused by meteorologists. Maybe if I work in the existing HAARP lunacy….
GGordonL
I would really be interested in an analysis, or thought piece, about these tech dudes and their subject matter biases. These guys who think the worst part of the field of virology are the virologists, who must be constrained. But seems like these were the same dudes who were not climate denialists, but who did tend to argue that we as a species should just keep burning carbon to maximize engeneering potential, because that would be the best way to arrive at an engineering nirvana where the experts would engineer a giant space vaccum to suck up all our excess carbon. Problem solved. Seems to me if your biggest fear is bad actors with too many tools for producing viruses, and you are a tech dude, your solution would be fund virologists to develop better and faster tools to defeat viruses.
Ken
@GGordonL: Possibly there’s some projection in play. “Obviously we can’t trust virologists, because if I had that kind of power I would abuse it,” as in this famous Doctor Who scene.
Another Scott
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by this. TechBros are notorious for thinking and acting as if they know more than anyone and everyone else about just about anything.
Yet another example of why these MotUs need to be regulated, and their funders taxed.
Grrr…,
Scott.
lgerard
So this SBF guy pledged to give away 99% of his wealth during his lifetime.
Mission accomplished!
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Jerzy Russian: Yes, this is like having a stack of turtles, one dumber and crazier that the other being described. Still, I suppose it should be no surprise that Cryptocurrency fan bois are also Medical Conspiracy Believers.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Ken: Sort of along the lines “If wasn’t against the laws of the gods and man, I would be murdering and eating people in the streets”.
mrmoshpotato
@Ken: I thought tornadoes were caused by not enough basketball jones year-round.
YY_Sima Qian
SBF also funded the notorious Vanity Fair/ProPublica article on COVID-19 origins, that parroted a Senate Republican political product, w/ a mess of disastrously wrong (or dishonest) translations of the Chinese source material. Neither organizations have retracted its article.
Poe Larity
We should stop at nothing to get Elon back on SpaceX and fund construction of Ark Fleet Ship B.
We don’t have time for twitter distractions as the crew list is not getting smaller.
Gvg
Why is this guy considered a tech bro? He seems like a fake tech bro, a propaganda media creation that real tech guys would laugh off stage. Some of the problem is we are all used to thinking we know something about tech because we use it and live it and therefore we know the leader creators when they speak, but really we just know the modern stagecraft.
Chetan Murthy
@Gvg: By your definition (which, btw, I agree with) most “tech bros” aren’t that at all, but merely “busiiness bros who happen to work at or found tech-related companies”. I mean, it’s well known that Marc Andreesen didn’t do the heavy lifting on NCSA Mosaic: that was Eric Bina. And at Netscape, it was Bina and others like Zawinski. Andreesen …. was good at talking up Mosaic on Usenet.
James E Powell
@Gvg:
I think the “tech” mostly refers to where he made his money or the world he inhabits rather than his skills or work.
Ohio Mom
As someone who misspent her youth writing grant proposals for arts organizations, then administering and monitoring the funded projects, and preparing the final reports, I could only roll my eyes at: “Effective altruism is the idea of using evidence & reason to benefit the most people.”
Entities that give out funding do not do so on whims. They have a mission and judge requests against how well the requesting organization will be able to contribute to progress toward that mission.
They ask for data (e.g., many people will be served), evidence of the requesting organization’s ability to manage the proposed project, and much more.
Often, funders will engage subject matter experts to help them determine which requests are the strongest. This is especially true in the sciences, where funding requests are peer-reviewed.
Contrast this with Bezos giving Dolly Parton a hundred million she did not ask for, just because he thinks she’ll use it well. He’s heard of her and her good works, and thst was enough “evidence and reason” for him.
gwangung
@Ohio Mom: Tech bro altruism sounds like reinventing the wheel that’s actually kind of broke in the first place
Which…come to think about it…applies to a lot of the philanthropy the new generation of the ultra wealthy….
frosty
@Ohio Mom: But Bezos’s grant to Dolly Parton advanced the mission and goals of the funding agency which were to make Jeff Bezos look less like a Robber Baron and more like an empathetic human being. It worked, too.
Yutsano
OT: Ye gonna come save us all. Or something.
Sister Golden Bear
@GGordonL:
Simple: “I’m smarter than everyone else, therefore I know [insert field that they don’t know anything about] better than anyone else, so if anyone disagrees they must be wrong.”
Princess
Isn’t effective altruism a branch of Utilitarianism that basically argues that the most effective way to be altruistic is not to spend your life being devoted to others and helping them but making a bazillion dollars and using the money to change the world? I’m shocked, shocked that someone who embodies this view had about zero moral/ethical sense. And I’m genuinely glad we could all witness it’s failure this quickly so we no longer need to take it seriously as an ethical viewpoint.
Chetan Murthy
@Princess: Heh, I’ve also read that they believe that you don’t count the increased utility over all *existing* humans, but over all humans who could *possibly exist in the future*. Which means that it’s *perfectly* EA-approved to …. spend all your money on building rocket ships to allow humanity to spread throughout the stars! Or building AI so we can all be uploaded into the cloud! Imagine the massive utility for all future generations of humans! And the suffering of existing humans … that doesn’t matter a whit in comparison!
It’s the same wheeze the Communists in Russia used: the transitory suffering of people today, will be more than compensated by the raptures and joy of future generations in the Communist paradise we’re building. Etc. etc.
I remember reading a guy who said that this is how you recognize death cults: they prioritize notional human lives (and suffering) over really-existing human lives and suffering. [like the force-birthers, natch]
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Gvg: Well he had a 20 min presentation from some programmers (because we all know programmers are famous for easily and simply explaining complex topics) so he is now the expert on the topic.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@frosty: Well that’s the thing, Bezos got that Bond villain vibe about him. He knows the shit he does hurts people and enjoys it, that requires empathy.
frosty
@Sister Golden Bear: True story, not a tech dude but an engineer*. I’m doing a stormwater planning presentation at a public meeting and take questions. A guy comes up and starts asking me skeptical questions about how we arrived at our conclusions. At one point he tells me “I’m an engineer.” I ask him what branch, he says “I design helicopters for Boeing.”
Which obviously makes him an expert on hydrology, open channel hydraulics, and water quality. Sheesh.
*Confession: I have a PE.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Sounds like my Aunt’s wingnut uncle’s husband, who is an expert on virology, because he is a fluids engineer. lol
One of the observations I’ve had as a tech working with engineers and doctorates is the engineers have a nasty tendency to not know what they don’t know.
Joey Maloney
Ph.Disease: thinking that because you know everything about something, you know something about everything.
Frank Wilhoit
@GGordonL: Expertise is a potential source of accountability. It’s always about unaccountability; never look further than that.
Mimi
@frosty: Not really. At least I’m not impressed. Not to diss Ms Parton, but handing her money to do good is more sheer laziness and a good whiff of misogyny.
snoey
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: We all do it. I remember a couple of people on this board who thought epidemiology was easy enough.
artem1s
you could say the same thing about craps too.
artem1s
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
there’s not nearly as much
profitgrifting potential investing in cures that can take 40-50 years to develop (for example modified RNA), especially since the target market for the cure is a bunch of poors.Matt McIrvin
@Chetan Murthy: That’s “long-termism”. It’s popular among a bunch of these rich tech guys.
A while back I recall an argument going on between economists and activists about how heavily you should discount the utility of future lives vs. present lives when reasoning about global warming, and some people on the more environmentalist side were arguing you shouldn’t discount them at all–suffering in the year 2100 should count as much as suffering today; it’s still a person, after all. The counterargument being we know a lot less about what resources people in 2100 will have, etc.
This “long-termism” thing strikes me as an attempt to turn that argument on its head: no, you’re the short-term thinker, worrying iin your shortsighted way about 2100, because I’m doing what I do for the sake of the 10^23 minds in the computronium galaxy of the year 10^17!
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
JR
I wonder if, in the end, SBF becomes sone sort of inadvertent hero for destroying public trust in idiotic ideas?
mrmoshpotato
@JR:
Does this involve punching Elon Sucks in the nuts?