Culture hash: William MacAskill has re-entered the chat

Have you been wondering what SBF's chief mentor in doing good thought about the FTX debacle?

• William MacAskill, the famous evangelist for Effective Altruism (EA), has finally spoken up about what he thinks went wrong at the failed exchange.

Worth your time: He wrote about it on the EA forum, and discussed it on the Sam Harris podcast, "Making Sense" and the "Clearer Thinking" podcast.

• Big picture, he seems convinced by a book by Eugene Soltes about white-collar criminals, which explains they often fall into embezzlement without meaning to.
• It's worth noting, however, that Caroline Ellison testified that SBF directed Alameda Research to begin siphoning FTX customer funds well before the crypto markets became strained.

Between the lines: MacAskill took pains to say he wasn't defending SBF, just that the Soltes model best fit his understanding of the facts.

• Also, the reason he hadn't spoken up before now: lawyers and advisers.

The intrigue: One piece of evidence from the trial, Ellison's list of things SBF was "freaking out about" included "Willie being happy."

• We never learned for sure what this meant, but... my bet is that "Willie" was MacAskill.

The upshot: The influential Scottish philosopher has come away from the crisis with a determination to always encourage classic corporate governance at anything he's involved with and to quit thinking of fellow EAs as morally exceptional.