Review
Comment
Morality
7 min read

Sam Bankman-Fried: doing the math on morality

The calculated character and philanthropy of crypto-criminal Sam Bankman-Fried is analysed by Krish Kandiah, who finds it doesn’t to add up.

Krish is a social entrepreneur partnering across civil society, faith communities, government and philanthropy. He founded The Sanctuary Foundation.

A man with curly dark hair.
Sam Bankman-Fried at a crypto-conference, 2021.
Cointelegraph, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Going Infinite, Michael Lewis’ biography of Sam Bankman-Fried, the world’s youngest self-made billionaire is quite the compelling read.  

For a start Lewis has an incredible ability to explain complex economic and business scenarios in a way that is not only accessible, but also gripping.  It is no wonder his previous books have been turned into Hollywood blockbusters.  

Lewis also has a knack for finding the humanity in almost any given situation. Whether he is writing about the system for picking a world-beating baseball team, the global economic crisis or, in this case, the rise and fall of a cryptocurrency exchange, he delves deep into the characters at the heart of the stories, exposing their strengths and weaknesses, their struggles and values.   

The publication of Going Infinite last month also coincided with Bankman-Fried’s real time court case, ending in a guilty verdict for, in the words of US attorney Damian Williams, “one of the biggest financial frauds in American history – a multibillion-dollar scheme designed to make him the king of crypto.” 

This fraud centred on Sam Bankman-Fried’s company FTX, a cryptocurrency exchange. It   emerged as one of the largest in the world with billions in deposits. All helping Bankman-Fried, aged just 29, to become recognised by Forbes magazine as the 41st richest American.

For all Bankman-Fried’s (and his friends’) talk of altruism, they weren’t very good at being nice to each other.

My personal interest in the man behind the fraud was shaped by three things. Firstly, as an adoptive and foster parent of two children who are on the autistic spectrum, I was interested in what Lewis would say about the common speculation that Bankman-Fried is also on the autistic spectrum.   

I was also intrigued by Bankman-Fried’s philosophical approach to philanthropy and how Lewis would present the problems with the movement known as Effective Altruism.  

Finally, I was interested in just to what extent Bankman-Fried’s commitment to mathematical algorithms overshadowed his moral awareness, given that it may well ultimately result in a sentence of 100 years behind bars.  

Autism  

Lewis invites us into as much of the inner world of Bankman-Fried as he can. He writes about his loneliness in childhood and his struggles with social conventions, for example. One particularly powerful moment is when we are allowed to eavesdrop on a video call with Vogue editor Anna Wintour. Bankman-Fried cannot do the call without simultaneously playing a video game. He doesn’t want to see Ms Wintour’s face while she is speaking and only looks at her when he is speaking.  

While Lewis readily points to traits that are commonly associated with people on the autistic spectrum – Bankman-Fried’s struggle to comply with social norms and difficulties understanding facial expressions, for example – he avoids using the term “autism”.   

 It seems that Bankman-Fried himself is aware of his neurodivergent traits and is not afraid to talk about the way they impact his emotional and existential intelligence.  

At one point he writes to his girlfriend:   

“I don't feel happiness. What's the point in dating someone who you physically can't make happy?"  

He went on to say:  

“In a lot of ways I don’t really have a soul”  

I found statements like these hard to read, but insightful. As a culture we are growing in our understanding and appreciation of a range of areas of diversity, however this has yet to be robustly applied to enable both widespread social acceptance and self-acceptance. The fact that Lewis chooses not to use the term autism may be a symptom of this. 

Altruism  

Sam Bankman-Fried was a very visible member of the Effective Altruism (EA) movement. EA is a fascinating philosophical approach to philanthropy which challenges individuals to consider their lives in terms of maximising their resources for the benefit of the world. Bankman-Fried’s answer to the question “How can I do most good with my life?” was to plan to earn a very large sum of money, ideally an infinite sum of money, that could then be used to help solve huge global issues such as the threat of nuclear war or another global pandemic.  

There are many criticisms of the EA movement, and, Lewis explores several of them during the course of the book.  Perhaps most obviously, for all Bankman-Fried’s (and his friends’) talk of altruism, they weren’t very good at being nice to each other. In fact, there was a major falling out between the effective altruists at his first company Alameda Research where half of the employees left because of his leadership style. Charity, it seems, did not begin at home.  
It is also unclear how much money Bankman-Fried actually gave away to philanthropic causes. And it is alleged that just a month after FTX collapsed, the company even began trying to claw back the charitable donations it made. According to direct messages on X with journalist Kelsey Piper, Bankman-Fried agreed his ethically-driven approach was "mostly a front".  

"Some of this decade's greatest heroes will never be known," he wrote to Piper, "and some of its most beloved people are basically shams." 

The quest to do good in the world seemed to have become more like a gambling obsession with Bankman-Fried, a game in which the ends justified the means.

They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions. It is uncertain whether Bankman-Fried had good intentions at all or whether the lure of billions of dollars became so irresistible that whatever virtue once existed was sacrificed to vice.  

There was another dark side to Bankman-Fried’s EA philosophy. He seemed to be fascinated by the question of just how far he could go in his calculations of trade-offs and risks in the supposed cause of saving the future of humanity? What was the highest risk he would take? What boundaries would he cross for financial gain? What would need to be sacrificed on the way? The quest to do good in the world seemed to have become more like a gambling obsession with Bankman-Fried, a game in which the ends justified the means.  

Automatism  

Sam Bankman-Fried was not afraid to be honest about his struggles to process and express empathy in socially acceptable ways.  He once said:  

"There's a pretty decent argument that my empathy is fake, my feelings are fake, my facial reactions are fake.” 

However, what he seemed to struggle with in empathy, he apparently tried to make up for in logic. The following example is helpful.  

Lewis records that Bankman-Fried saw Donald Trump as an “existential risk” to democracy and good governance and decided the best way to remove the threat was to offer to pay him not to run for president—an idea Trump was reportedly open to. 

“His team had somehow created a back channel into the Trump operation and returned with the not terribly Earth-shattering news that Donald Trump might indeed have his price: $5bn. Or so Sam was told by his team,” Lewis writes

I have some admiration for Bankman-Fried’s out-of-the-box thinking. He was speaking Trump’s language. He was trying to save the world. He was trying to solve a problem. Logically it was sound. But his $5,000,000,000 calculation was fundamentally flawed. It took no account of democratic values, of the consequences of feeding an ‘existential threat’ billions of dollars, or the illegality of bribery and corruption on that scale.   

The same miscalculation haunts the EA movement. While earning infinite amounts of money to save the world or prevent the climate emergency sounds logical, it fails to factor in the dark side of humanity: greed, lust, pride or gluttony, or whichever vice stopped Bankman-Fried from giving away his promised sizeable sum of money and led him rather to committing one of the largest frauds in history. The tech-bro altruistic movement also doesn’t factor in the bright side of humanity: compassion, humility, generosity, sacrifice. It doesn’t account for the human things that keep us going as we pursue justice - proximity to the people we are serving, faith or beauty.  

The verdict against Bankman-Fried shows us that hard logic, like lofty ideals, is not enough to protect us from the bad we might do or propel us unswervingly towards the good we should do. The equations are flawed. We are more than machines. We are not social or biological robots. Our emotions and reactions can never be completely predictable or automatic because we are human beings, each of us with our unique strengths and weaknesses.  

Ultimately, this is what I liked about Lewis’ book – his portrayal of Sam Bankman-Fried not in terms of how much money he made, or how many years he will spend behind bars, not as Crypto-King or Lord of Frauds, but as a uniquely talented and flawed individual who wrestles with some of the biggest existential paradoxes, and who is still, by the way, only 31 years old.  

Article
Books
Culture
Morality
Sin
7 min read

After the Salt Path revelations I’m liking it even more

We edit our own reality by the stories we tell ourselves

Roger is a Baptist minister, author and Senior Research Fellow at Spurgeon’s College in London. 

A newspaper front page shows its title and a falling sea bird
How The Observer broke the story.

The Observer held nothing back in its exposé headline:

“The real Salt Path: how a blockbuster book and film were spun from lies, deceit and desperation”

The truth behind the summer’s feel-good movie and the reputation of author Raynor Winn lie in tatters, shredded by the revelations unearthed by relentless investigative journalism.

The uplifting story of how a couple face financial ruin, homelessness and a terminal illness by walking the South West Coast Path has been an inspiration for many who’ve either read the book or seen the film, or both. The story works because it reflects back to us the life we know, the lives we live. And when you add the seaside of Somerset, Devon, Cornwall and Dorset, what’s not to love?

But now it needs to be seen in an altogether different light.

The article beneath the headline was thoroughly researched, carefully constructed and uncompromising in the allegations implied by the discoveries, observations and commentary of its narrative.

“… not her real name”

“… she was a thief … embezzled the money”

“… arrested and interviewed by the police”

“… five county court judgements”

“… they owned land in France”

“… nine neurologists … were sceptical”

Point by point the back story of the Salt Path is pulled apart.

First, Raynor and Moth Winn are not the “real”, “legal” names of Sally and Tim Walker.

Second, The Observer uncovered that the couple had money troubles for reasons other than the failed business investment they had claimed. Rather, as a part-time bookkeeper for an estate agent and property surveyor, Sally was accused of syphoning off £64,000 from the company’s accounts. Concerning which, it was reported that she was arrested and interviewed by the police.

Third, it was mounting debts from settling the matter with her former employer, alongside other debts, that actually led to the repossession of their home and their resulting homelessness. Not the failed business venture.

Fourth, they weren’t actually homeless as they owned a property in France, near Bordeaux. While it was in a state of disrepair and not habitable, they had previously stayed on site in a caravan.

And then finally, in a revelation that undermined the very heart of the story of their journey together, medical experts observed that it was extremely doubtful that Moth had suffered from corticobasal degeneration (CBD) for 18 years. The journalist had consulted nine neurologists, and this was the reported consensus. Not only were Moth’s presenting symptoms not what were expected, the normal life expectancy with the condition was tragically short at six to eight years.

Pulling the various strands of its investigation together The Observer thumps the tub about the importance of ‘truth’. It is not acceptable to be mis-sold an idea of truth where important passages of the book are invented. There are both “… sins of omission and commission”:

“The story, no doubt, has elements of truth, but it also misrepresents who they were, how they started out on their journey and the financial circumstances that provided the backdrop.”

However, life is complicated and there are always two sides to a story.

In a response posted to her website Raynor Winn answers each of the accusations in turn. Amid the storm of vitriol and threat unleashed online by the article, she protests that, “… [it] is grotesquely unfair, highly misleading and seeks to systematically pick apart my life.”

Most distressing has been how Moth has been traumatised by the suggestion his diagnosis was made up. Along with her online statement Winn has posted appropriately redacted letters from the neurologists treating Moth that confirm his diagnosis and the narrative of the book.

As for the charges of embezzlement, she does concede that there were difficulties with a former employer. Allegations were made to the police, and she was questioned about them. However, no charges were brought, and a settlement was reached that included her paying back money on a “non-admissions basis”.

“Any mistakes I made during the years in that office, I deeply regret, and I am truly sorry.” Raynor Winn

This, however, was not the failed business deal that lay behind their financial difficulties and which triggered their homelessness and the Salt Path story.

Winn reports that the property in France is an “uninhabitable ruin in a bramble patch” with its own, unrelated, back story. When they did explore selling it at the height of their difficulties, a local French agent valued it as virtually worthless and saw marketing it as pointless.

Ultimately, they chose not to declare themselves bankrupt and simply wipe out their debts. Rather, they made an agreement with their creditors for minimal repayments. The success of the book has enabled all their debts to be cleared.

Which leaves the implicit accusation of not being who they said they were, of hiding behind pseudonyms and not owning their “real”, “legal” names. She explains that the reasons Sally Ann and Tim Walker are Raynor and Moth Winn is really quite straightforward.

In the early years of their relationship she told Moth how much she disliked being called Sally Ann and would have preferred the family name, Raynor. Moth called her Ray from that point on. Winn is her maiden name. As for Moth, well his name is Timothy, get it? Friends and family use the names interchangeably, Sal/Ray, Tim/Moth.

Having read the book and seen the film earlier this summer I was particularly taken with The Salt Path. The humanity of their story, the journey they’d been on and the insights to a life well-lived that it offered.

Goodness, which one of us has never made a mistake, a bad call, or a wrong choice, “through weakness, through ignorance or through our own deliberate fault”?

When The Observer’s bombshell broke my heart fell. Moral high horses were being mounted and outrage expressed. Raynor Winn was being cancelled, literally cancelled.

She pulled out of her forthcoming Saltlines tour, which would have seen her perform readings from her books alongside the music of the Gigspanner Big Band during a string of UK dates. There were also calls for Penguin to cancel her next book, On Winter Hill, set for publication in October.

But do you know what? On reflection, after the revelations about the Salt Path story I’m liking it even more. And for exactly the same reasons I liked it before. Because it reflects back to us the life we know, the lives we live.

For a start, life is messy. Sometimes it’s even murky, full of misunderstanding, misinterpretation and constructed narratives. Goodness, which one of us has never made a mistake, a bad call, or a wrong choice, “through weakness, through ignorance or through our own deliberate fault”? Skeletons and cupboards come to mind.

Then, on the back of that, we all fashion the story of our lives. Whether it’s curating our online presence with the images we post to social media, or the anecdotes we share and the face we present to those who are part of our day-to-day lives. The pull is always towards a version that shows us in the best light.

In fact, it can even go right down to the stories we tell about ourselves, to ourselves. The interpretation of what has happened to us and why. Interpreting how much of our experience is down to what has been done to us or is the fruit of our own responsibility.

Now, I may not want to go as far as University of Sussex Professor of Neuroscience, Anil Seth, whose books, articles and Ted Talks see us living in a kind of ‘controlled hallucination’. An interpreted version of reality constructed and calibrated by our brains out of our experience. But there is no doubt in my mind that we edit our own version of reality by the stories we tell ourselves and each other.

This is how things are. This is what it means to be human. Some bits are edited in, others edited out. Some experiences we can interpret in one way, while others might view them very differently from where they stand.

When we feel the temptation to write someone off because of what they’ve done we do well to reflect on our own experience. Then we may well be grateful that we haven’t been cancelled because of our past indiscretions.  As the old saying goes, “There, but for the grace of God, go I.”

I’m reminded of how Jesus handled himself is such circumstances. When a self-righteous crowd were swiftly wanting to rush to judgement on a woman’s flawed sexual choices, Jesus encouraged those who were without fault to be the first to act. Slowly they all realised what he was saying and backeddown.

For myself, I have always found the prayer of confession to be profoundly helpful. It keeps us grounded in the reality of our own experience and should caution us about cancelling others and writing them off.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father,

we have sinned against you

and against our neighbour

in thought and word and deed,

through negligence, through weakness,

through our own deliberate fault.

We are truly sorry

and repent of all our sins.

For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ,

who died for us,

forgive us all that is past

and grant that we may serve you in newness of life

to the glory of your name.

Amen.

For our skeletons there is forgiveness.

For what lies ahead, we have the possibilities of starting over.

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