I don't think most antibiotics distinguish between good and bad bacteria, you just kill the majority of them and wait until they reproduce themselves again (and hopefully only the good bacterias).
Subconscious synthesis of seemingly unrelated strands of thought is the basis of assessing an event's meaning, for me. A day or two will pass after the event, and I notice the meaning evolves even without new information and without conscious thinking about the event.
For me, the subconscious is the wellspring of sudden insights.
The news is Google layoffs and is interesting to many how the culture of such a large and influential tech company has changed. The person laid off is also a known OSS author (Subversion). If you don’t find it interesting you can just move on you know? Many others find these posts interesting and that’s enough according to HN guidelines.
I think the comment you're replying to is quite literal. A lot of Googlers and ex-Googlers read this site and they are more likely to upvote these kinds of posts.
In the beginning, SBF probably believed in EA. It helped him recruit the executives of AR and FTX.
As FTX experienced the unprecedented growth to fantastical scale, SBF was at the center of it. I strongly suspect he felt deified by it, felt that the market was giving him unqualified approval for his every thought and method.
Somewhere in his ascendancy, I suspect that EA became merely a vocabulary of stock responses that he used to explain his decisions and to frame his public image.
The immorality began when he chose to ignore his fiduciary duty to his depositors, and instead used their funds as if they were VC money available to fund his ideas. The immorality continued when he gave false financial statements to the AR lenders. It culminated when he tweeted "everything is fine" when the withdrawal rush began.
Was he using EA theory to justify these unethical choices? Caroline Ellison thought he was but that was because she was in thrall to his personality.
I would be immensely surprised if EA goals ever crossed his mind when he made these decisions. I suspect he was in empire building mode aiming to enter the pantheon of SV tech titans.
The WSJ had a chart of "where did the money go" showing that only a miniscule slice of the $16B was donated to philanthropic organizations. It was less than $100M.
You are correct that EA has been unmasked as a philosophy unburdened by ethics. However, my view is that SBF only used EA as a convenient label for his motives, when his goals were consolidating his power.
