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Sam Bankman-Fried and the geometry of conscience

scottaaronson.blog

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Re: Sam Bankman-Fried and the geometry of conscience

#61

Post by michaelt »

eterm wrote: post #26
chaosbolt wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't go to prison when you are the 2nd biggest donor to the current president's campaign. Mark Karpales didn't go to prison for Mt Gox, he spent some months in jail because they were afraid he might leave Japan + Japan isn't like the west he prpbably doesn't have connections there, then left and worked for different financial companies and then started another company assessing risk or something. Alex Mashinsky…

To be accurate, Mark Karpeles was sentenced to prison, albeit a suspended setence.

Calling a suspended sentence "didn't go to prison" is accurate, because you do not go to prison.

So I'm not sure what you're correcting here.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried and the geometry of conscience

#62

Post by pjc50 »

sschueller wrote: post #38
chaosbolt wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't go to prison when you are the 2nd biggest donor to the current president's campaign. Mark Karpales didn't go to prison for Mt Gox, he spent some months in jail because they were afraid he might leave Japan + Japan isn't like the west he prpbably doesn't have connections there, then left and worked for different financial companies and then started another company assessing risk or something. Alex Mashinsky…

Does anyone remember Marc Rich? "Clinton's critics alleged that Rich's pardon had been bought, as Denise Rich had given more than $1 million[36] to Clinton's political party (the Democratic Party), including more than $100,000 to the Senate campaign of the president's wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and $450,000 to the Clinton Library foundation during Clinton's time in office.[31]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_R…

Is there a Presidential pardon that wasn't abusive of the system? From Nixon to Iran-Contra to war crimes in Afghanistan?

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried and the geometry of conscience

#63

Post by Gatsky »

npinsker wrote: post #12

One of the worst posts I've ever read from Scott, this reads as shockingly tone-deaf and blithely optimistic. He totally ignores the actual events that transpired and instead focuses on Sam's purported ideals, probably because Scott Aaronson feels a lot of kinship with him as a fellow nerd and therefore can't seem to believe anything other than "he just made a mistake somewhere". I don't want to pass judgment on Sam,…

I don’t know if hubris is a sufficient explanation here.

Bankman is a bit hard to pigeonhole. He isn’t a textbook narcissist like Adam Neumann. He doesn’t appear to be a psycho/sociopath a la Jeffrey Epstein or Harvey Weinstein. He also doesn’t have the moral elasticity of someone like Madoff. If I had to guess, I think the relationship (which may or may not be platonic) between him and the people at Alameda is what sunk him. He got into some kind of situation there which he couldn’t deal with effectively. He has various neurodiverse traits IMHO, that make this more likely.

But who knows, he could also just be a crook who is good at maths, or the high priest of a cryptosex cult.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried and the geometry of conscience

#64

Post by whoooooo123 »

Reason077 wrote: post #17
xiphias2 wrote: post #8

There's a guy in the clear stealing billions of dollars and nothing happens. People go to prison for stealing a car, this is literally 1000000 times bigger and he's not even arrested. He belongs to prison for a life time. All the other talk about crypto / regulation is just hiding how corrupt the system is for not arresting this guy instantly.

If the allegations of criminal activity are true, he will very likely end up in prison. Obviously it will take time for investigations to gather evidence, prosecutors to file charges, etc. These are still very recent events. Just be patient!

I'm so lost. I'd never heard of this guy or FTX until a couple of days ago. Can someone give me a link to the best and (this is important) most succinct summary of what the hell happened here? Why did all this money vanish, and what crimes did SBF commit?

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried and the geometry of conscience

#65

Post by causality0 »

pjc50 wrote: post #56
npinsker wrote: post #12

One of the worst posts I've ever read from Scott, this reads as shockingly tone-deaf and blithely optimistic. He totally ignores the actual events that transpired and instead focuses on Sam's purported ideals, probably because Scott Aaronson feels a lot of kinship with him as a fellow nerd and therefore can't seem to believe anything other than "he just made a mistake somewhere". I don't want to pass judgment on Sam,…

"I confess to taking this sort of conflation extremely personally." Man's still very upset about whatever happened to get him cancelled. I refuse to look up this particular piece of drama.

You prompted me to do some reading. I suggest not doing the same. It's a story of people who generalize their personal experiences into the state of the world berating other people for generalizing their personal experiences into the state of the world. It's a great lesson on why communicating your feelings as a man is still liable to subject you to scorn.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried and the geometry of conscience

#66

Post by [deleted] »

npinsker wrote: post #12

One of the worst posts I've ever read from Scott, this reads as shockingly tone-deaf and blithely optimistic. He totally ignores the actual events that transpired and instead focuses on Sam's purported ideals, probably because Scott Aaronson feels a lot of kinship with him as a fellow nerd and therefore can't seem to believe anything other than "he just made a mistake somewhere". I don't want to pass judgment on Sam,…

[deleted]

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried and the geometry of conscience

#67

Post by ETH_start »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #31

> traditional investor who made billions on successful gambles, or arbitrage, or creating liquidity, then gave virtually all of it away to effective charities, would seem, on net, way ahead of most of us morally. This seems a bit of a leap to me. It's a bit like saying a King or Queen is morally ahead of you. You're taking a point of concentrated wealth in a system designed to create that concentration and comparing…

>>You're taking a point of concentrated wealth in a system designed to create that concentration and comparing it to 1 individual and using that to support the system.

I wasn't able to follow. Could you rephrase or elaborate on the last part?

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried and the geometry of conscience

#68

Post by williamcotton »

oldgradstudent wrote: post #2

> In the course of 2-3 days last week, SBF’s estimated net worth went from ~$15 billion to a negative number, possibly the fastest evaporation of such a vast personal fortune in all human history. No. His net worth was never $15B. His net worth might have been negative - less than that homeless living in a tent under the bridge. He was a fraud, a con man. There's no reason to assume his entire Effective Altruism inte…

So you’re using a populist and speculative media narrative driven by the attention economy as your foundation?

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried and the geometry of conscience

#69

Post by [deleted] »

williamcotton wrote: post #68
oldgradstudent wrote: post #2

> In the course of 2-3 days last week, SBF’s estimated net worth went from ~$15 billion to a negative number, possibly the fastest evaporation of such a vast personal fortune in all human history. No. His net worth was never $15B. His net worth might have been negative - less than that homeless living in a tent under the bridge. He was a fraud, a con man. There's no reason to assume his entire Effective Altruism inte…

So you’re using a populist and speculative media narrative driven by the attention economy as your foundation?

[deleted]

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried and the geometry of conscience

#70

Post by ETH_start »

scandox wrote: post #49

> And a traditional investor who made billions on successful gambles, or arbitrage, or creating liquidity, then gave virtually all of it away to effective charities, would seem, on net, way ahead of most of us morally. This is madness. Morality is not a game with points.

Of course it's not strictly points, but capturing a large chunk of profits that would inevitably be earned by someone in the zero-sum trade that occurs in financial markets (though traditional finance, despite the trope, is not zero sum), and donating it, means having a greater positive effect on society than most.
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