Live data from Hacker News

Sam Bankman-Fried tries to explain himself

vox.com

301–310 of 401 posts

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried tries to explain himself

#301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fascinated to read that you thought he came across as contrite. My reading was the opposite - that he was nihilistic, narcissistic and utterly devoid of contrition. Specifically: there seems almost no recognition of his own agency - it’s all just bad stuff that happened to him.

Says he screwed up, wants to make people whole again... When my old boss blew up it was "hmm they knew what they invested in".

He also says that perception is all that matters and that his talk of "ethics" was a sham.

I believe he'll try to avoid jail at all costs, and that may include making people whole again, but trying to flee seems much more likely.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried tries to explain himself

#302
post #123

SBF, his foundation and his family are well connected politically. NYT already did a bizarro puff piece on him, now Vox does this (which apparently directly received FTX foundation money). It’s absurd as he is essentially a well connected criminal. edit I do want to correct one thing - this is not a puff piece like the NYT one, actually it implicates him.

This and the NYT interview are not puff pieces. They are handing SBF the rope to hang himself with, putting his confession on the record. Not sure what what the people pushing this narrative aren’t understanding. If they wanted to protect him they would refuse to interview him and try to convince him not to speak to anyone but counsel about this.

> Not sure what what the people pushing this narrative aren’t understanding.

From the other day, it seems, they're angry that the NYT isn't saying, in exact words, "SBF is a massive criminal who committed massive fraud".

And when you respond and say "That's because their lawyers understand the concept of defamation", they say "well, then they just need to talk to people and have them say it so everyone knows he's a criminal and committed fraud".

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried tries to explain himself

#303

to be clear: - he lent his own hedge fund $8b collateralized by tokens he controlled issuance of (FTT, SRM, MAPS, OXY). At full size, the liquidation price of these tokens was 0 (he also purchased billions worth of FTT off the market when he could print them himself for free?). - Sensing alameda was insolvent and customer funds were misappropriated, customers withdrew until they ran out of liquidity. - Withdrawals we…

> - SBF goes on twitter to make new one-letter tweets while simultaneously deleting incriminating tweets so as to not trigger deletion bots picking up that he deleted said tweets. This part seems to have been mostly speculation. He deleted 118 tweets & retweets, so his one letter tweets did little to cover his tracks[1]. I have no idea why he did the one-letter thing. Maybe to get attention? [1] https://www.cryptonew…

I dont think he didnt delete any tweets. The counts were off because people like Tom Brady and other famous people associated him where deleting re-tweets.

....that is what I read and it makes sense.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried tries to explain himself

#304
post #80
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>COWEN: Then you keep on playing the game. So, what’s the chance we’re left with anything? Don’t I just St. Petersburg paradox you into nonexistence? >BANKMAN-FRIED: Well, not necessarily. Maybe you St. Petersburg paradox into an enormously valuable existence. That’s the other option. This logic is literally "You either win the lotto or you don't, 50/50 chance"

Not quite. The question is defined in a way that the EV of bet is positive, even though repeatedly doing it gets you an arbitrarily high chance of (moral) bankruptcy. The original thing being referenced is St. Petersburg lottery, and each round of that is 50/50: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Petersburg_paradox

Recent Powerball bets have a positive EV too. It'll just cost you maybe $800M and 262M entries to get there.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried tries to explain himself

#305
post #288
post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i had to re-read what you were saying about 5 times before i understood your point, i honestly thought you were some kind of schizophrenic with the way you phrased it and kept repeating the same awkward term -- edit: I'm rate-limited so I can't respond to your other reply. I'm saying that your comment looks like something a crazy person would write and I had a hard time parsing it. this is like a garden-path sentence…

Sorry, what is your point? What are you trying to contribute?

I’m not dain, but your choice of language is confusing.

You are attempting to communicate on the internet and you are not being easily understood. It’s your choice if you’d like more people to understand you or not.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried tries to explain himself

#306
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am 30 years old and I am laughing at anyone who has trusted these kids with anything. His balance sheet shows just how childish and out of depth he and his possie of "execs" are.

Just looked it up. SBF is 30?

And I believe for the CFO it was her first job after college.

And for another linked CEO they'd been a trader for three years, and then were made CEO at Alameda?

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried tries to explain himself

#307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how you'd read this as a puff piece. The reporter described his reaction to the interview as "appalled".

I’ve edited to clarify. I actually posted before I read the article (typical!).

>I actually posted before I read the article (typical!)

I'm not sure whether you're saying "I did something bad, repeatedly, but it's ok because I'm admitting it" (while arguing someone else who did something bad shouldn't be let off the hook for admitting they did something bad), or whether instead you're taking pride in routinely acting in a way that subtracts value from the community (while arguing someone else who acted in ways detrimental to the community should receive harsher judgements than you feel he's received).

Either reading suggests an opportunity for productive self reflection.

Posting criticisms of articles you haven't read isn't the scale of damage that SBF caused, but the belief that "I'm not intending to cause harm so the harm I'm causing isn't real" appears to be at the root of both sets of outcomes. The impact of SBF's actions was higher simply because one day he found himself holding a larger lever than most of us have the occasion to hold. It's good to be in practice, should that day come.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried tries to explain himself

#308
post #288
post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i had to re-read what you were saying about 5 times before i understood your point, i honestly thought you were some kind of schizophrenic with the way you phrased it and kept repeating the same awkward term -- edit: I'm rate-limited so I can't respond to your other reply. I'm saying that your comment looks like something a crazy person would write and I had a hard time parsing it. this is like a garden-path sentence…

Sorry, what is your point? What are you trying to contribute?

You didn't understand and now you do. I guess those who upvoted the original comment also did? It's taken a back and fourth of 5 comments to establish that clearly. BTW I'm not sure using a mental illness as a superfluous pejorative is a useful approach but ymmv.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried tries to explain himself

#309
post #305
post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, what is your point? What are you trying to contribute?

I’m not dain, but your choice of language is confusing. You are attempting to communicate on the internet and you are not being easily understood. It’s your choice if you’d like more people to understand you or not.

"I don't understand this, are you saying x..?"

vs

"what"

Spot the difference in terms of being confusing. But he does understand now without assistance so we're all good, right?

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried tries to explain himself

#310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He says in the DMs that the most important thing in his life now is making customers whole and returning their funds. "that's basically all that matters for the rest of my life"

Are you f'ing kidding me, taking this at face value? Note in other tweets he said he was trying to "raise capital". The man is likely going to prison for years, he is either delusional or trying to promote his delusions to pretend the he didn't know what he was doing was wrong.

Looks like pretty classic desperation, which is an expected response to this situation for plenty of personality types that aren't indicative of anti-social personality disorder.
Post reply on HN