Effective Altruist Scott Alexander was a personal friend of Caroline
Ellison and interacted with her on tumblr, but somehow didn’t see any
red flags from the self-described “fake charity nerd girl”.
I think the biggest red flag was that she is a member of a racist, millenarian cult. But Alexander's a member of the same, so he wouldn't view that as a red flag.
Clarification: Is the red flag the post or that given how open she is about financial crimes on Tumblr, she must have been even more open irl / in personal exchange?
Also are they confirmed as friends? I know they interacted on Tumblr, but I don't know how deeply either on it or out of it.
I'd say there were at least 3 red flags: she joked about committing financial crimes that she actually committed in this post, she [revealed herself to be willing to take ridiculous risks in another one](https://speakertoyesterday.tumblr.com/post/700814996538523648/worldoptimization-slatestarscratchpad-all), and called herself "fake charity nerd girl" (note that they're supposed to be Effective Altruists).
Scott confirmed they knew each other and had met IRL in [a reddit comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/zqbqqk/did_anyone_else_notice_that_sbf_was_a_commenter/j0y3caf/), and he described himself as being "friendly" higher-up in his open thread 250.
This is like the tutorial stage of a game where you play as a
prosecutor, where every step is made as obvious as possible (“check the
defendant’s online history for clues!” social media page calling
themselves a ‘fake charity nerd girl’ and joking about wire fraud pops
up) so you understand the basic gameplay loop and controls.
Effective Altruist Scott Alexander was a personal friend of Caroline Ellison and interacted with her on tumblr, but somehow didn’t see any red flags from the self-described “fake charity nerd girl”.
Didn’t follow the Stringer Bell Rule for Criminal Conspiracies
Imagine, as a lawyer, trying to defend your client from a huge criminal case and being confronted with that.
This is like the tutorial stage of a game where you play as a prosecutor, where every step is made as obvious as possible (“check the defendant’s online history for clues!” social media page calling themselves a ‘fake charity nerd girl’ and joking about wire fraud pops up) so you understand the basic gameplay loop and controls.