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Annotated: Sam Bankman-Fried's “FTX Pre-Mortem Overview”

mollywhite.net

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Re: Annotated: Sam Bankman-Fried's “FTX Pre-Mortem Overview”

#141

Post by denton-scratch »

breck wrote: post #19

> Judge Dorsey ultimately overruled objections to their retention by two individual FTX creditors. I think Molly White defaults to too much credibility in judges and lawyers. SBF's main argument is that Sullivan & Cromwell misled him into going the Chapter 11 route, which he later learned was more motivated by its ability to make hundreds of millions rather than helping his customers. He made a mistake in trusting th…

> He made a mistake in trusting them.

Oh, come on. He purports to be a finance wizard, not some startup bro. If S&C turned him over, that's because he was a sucker, not a wizard. Finance wizards don't go into Ch. 11 with their eyes closed.

Re: Annotated: Sam Bankman-Fried's “FTX Pre-Mortem Overview”

#142

Post by wpietri »

baobabKoodaa wrote: post #140
wpietri wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are smart enough to have figured this out, but let me spell it out for you explicitly just in case. You are claiming that he is failing as a journalist because of an anti-crypto bias. I am looking for proof of that. So what I'm talking about is statements made in a journalistic context where he has gotten something important about the crypto world provably wrong because of his supposed bias. Your best evi…

> You are claiming that he is failing as a journalist because of an anti-crypto bias. I am looking for proof of that. So what I'm talking about is statements made in a journalistic context where he has gotten something important about the crypto world provably wrong because of his supposed bias. Ok, here's better evidence for you: in 2016 David Gerard was actively defacing crypto-related Wikipedia articles without an…

Once again, I have asked you for evidence of him being a bad journalist, and once again you have provided me with nothing of the sort. You still don't even demonstrate an understanding of what journalism is. I'm done. Have a good day.

Re: Annotated: Sam Bankman-Fried's “FTX Pre-Mortem Overview”

#143

Post by baobabKoodaa »

wpietri wrote: post #142
baobabKoodaa wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You are claiming that he is failing as a journalist because of an anti-crypto bias. I am looking for proof of that. So what I'm talking about is statements made in a journalistic context where he has gotten something important about the crypto world provably wrong because of his supposed bias. Ok, here's better evidence for you: in 2016 David Gerard was actively defacing crypto-related Wikipedia articles without an…

Once again, I have asked you for evidence of him being a bad journalist, and once again you have provided me with nothing of the sort. You still don't even demonstrate an understanding of what journalism is. I'm done. Have a good day.

I'm not the one who called David Gerard a "journalist" in the first place, you are. Not sure why you think the onus is on me to prove that David Gerard is a "bad journalist" when I never claimed he was a journalist to begin with. I claimed he was a crank (as opposed to a scientist). I've provided plenty of examples of him being a crank, but you don't really care about evidence against your beliefs, so you'll just no-true-scottsman any example provided.

Re: Annotated: Sam Bankman-Fried's “FTX Pre-Mortem Overview”

#144

Post by pgwhalen »

notahacker wrote: post #66
timmytokyo wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love to know what his parents think of what he's doing. They're law professors at Stanford; they have to be aware of how utterly stupid this is, don't they?

I imagine his parents, in addition to giving him standard "don't do public speeches about the bad things you've done" lawyer advice, probably also wouldn't have recommended he drop out of Jane Street, make large arbitrage bets on crypto, set up a exchange without proper controls and take money out of that to bet on other cryptos. He may or may not be on very good terms with them, but I don't think he's been following…

He’s literally living in their basement, he can’t be on that bad of terms with them.

Re: Annotated: Sam Bankman-Fried's “FTX Pre-Mortem Overview”

#145

Post by ted_bunny »

Sebguer wrote: post #26
breck wrote: post #19

> Judge Dorsey ultimately overruled objections to their retention by two individual FTX creditors. I think Molly White defaults to too much credibility in judges and lawyers. SBF's main argument is that Sullivan & Cromwell misled him into going the Chapter 11 route, which he later learned was more motivated by its ability to make hundreds of millions rather than helping his customers. He made a mistake in trusting th…

S&C basically invented modern white collar crime. It's hard to find outside of libraries, but: https://www.amazon.com/Law-Unto-Itself-Sullivan-Cromwell/dp/... is an exceptional read on their history. (I still think Crypto is worthless, but the concerns about S&C in this case are likely very legitimate!)

Wow, that book is apparently hard to get. Two copies available, $60 and $240.

Good ol' Archie. https://archive.org/download/alawuntoitselftheuntoldstoryoft...

Re: Annotated: Sam Bankman-Fried's “FTX Pre-Mortem Overview”

#146

Post by wlonkly »

SilasX wrote: post #70
wpietri wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed! And I should mention that Molly has a Substack: https://substack.com/profile/6775195-molly-white I pay her money because I am glad to have her pushing back against the tide of cash funding crypto promotion. The other two have Patreons that I also support: https://www.patreon.com/davidgerard/ https://www.patreon.com/amycastor/

Hold on there. If you're getting coverage like this, where someone comes and takes flattering photos of you, that's the kind of thing you get when you or your supports can fund a PR team to wrangle major journalists into covering you. I think she's fine on support. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/05/29/molly-w... https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/07/11/business/meet-molly-w... https://www.protocol.com/f…

Just look at the photo you linked. The poor woman has no furniture, and you think she can fund a PR team?

Re: Annotated: Sam Bankman-Fried's “FTX Pre-Mortem Overview”

#147

Post by wpietri »

baobabKoodaa wrote: post #143
wpietri wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once again, I have asked you for evidence of him being a bad journalist, and once again you have provided me with nothing of the sort. You still don't even demonstrate an understanding of what journalism is. I'm done. Have a good day.

I'm not the one who called David Gerard a "journalist" in the first place, you are. Not sure why you think the onus is on me to prove that David Gerard is a "bad journalist" when I never claimed he was a journalist to begin with. I claimed he was a crank (as opposed to a scientist). I've provided plenty of examples of him being a crank, but you don't really care about evidence against your beliefs, so you'll just no-…

You contrasted him with Molly White, who according to you "is a legit journalist". That looks to me like you claiming that he is not "a legit journalist".

If you no longer want to stand behind that claim (or somehow believe you never made it) and your new point is that you don't like some Reddit comments he made, then godspeed to you and your opinions. You not liking something he says does not constitute "evidence against [my] beliefs", as I entirely believe a lot of internet randos don't like Gerard and/or how he writes.

Re: Annotated: Sam Bankman-Fried's “FTX Pre-Mortem Overview”

#148

Post by Eisenstein »

bradgessler wrote: post #13
batmenace wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fermat's Library offers something that comes relatively close https://fermatslibrary.com/margins

Slightly tangential: is there software that converts multi-LaTeX PDFs into responsive HTML in a reasonable way? I'd read more of these papers if they were more viewable on a phone-size viewport.

Pandoc?

Re: Annotated: Sam Bankman-Fried's “FTX Pre-Mortem Overview”

#149

Post by baobabKoodaa »

wpietri wrote: post #147
baobabKoodaa wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not the one who called David Gerard a "journalist" in the first place, you are. Not sure why you think the onus is on me to prove that David Gerard is a "bad journalist" when I never claimed he was a journalist to begin with. I claimed he was a crank (as opposed to a scientist). I've provided plenty of examples of him being a crank, but you don't really care about evidence against your beliefs, so you'll just no-…

You contrasted him with Molly White, who according to you "is a legit journalist". That looks to me like you claiming that he is not "a legit journalist". If you no longer want to stand behind that claim (or somehow believe you never made it) and your new point is that you don't like some Reddit comments he made, then godspeed to you and your opinions. You not liking something he says does not constitute "evidence ag…

> You contrasted him with Molly White, who according to you "is a legit journalist". That looks to me like you claiming that he is not "a legit journalist".

Right, David Gerard is not a legit journalist. He's a crank. If you want to claim that he is a journalist of some kind, that's a claim that you are making - not me. I already told you if "journalist" is his preferred pronoun then I'm fine calling him a journalist - he's just not a "legit" one. If you say he's not a journalist at all, that's also fine by me. Again, not a "legit" journalist in that case either.

Re: Annotated: Sam Bankman-Fried's “FTX Pre-Mortem Overview”

#150

Post by SilasX »

wpietri wrote: post #108
SilasX wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hold on there. If you're getting coverage like this, where someone comes and takes flattering photos of you, that's the kind of thing you get when you or your supports can fund a PR team to wrangle major journalists into covering you. I think she's fine on support. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/05/29/molly-w... https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/07/11/business/meet-molly-w... https://www.protocol.com/f…

Excellent FUD. No actual claims, just casting vague aspersions based on nothing but some absolutely generic photos that are typical of what a newspaper photographer will produce. As long as we're making unsupported allegations, can you prove that you aren't funded by the crypto industry or otherwise benefiting financially from crypto? Because it seems suspicious that you're going to go out of your way to produce high…

Funny how HN is willing to accept that submarines[1] are a thing, but, when it comes to a story with a framing they like, they will robotically defend the notion that these articles were 100% organic content, that some honest, well-meaning journalist decided, with no prompting whatsoever from any interested party, that this person's work merits being covered.

The very fact that they went through the effort and expense to stage some photos for the article means someone is being propagandized. Yes, they do that in other stories -- those are PR-driven too.

>As long as we're making unsupported allegations, can you prove that you aren't funded by the crypto industry or otherwise benefiting financially from crypto?

I didn't provide FUD -- I didn't even dispute the core these that White's ideas are worth listening to! I simply disputed one lesser, ancillary point that I think was over-the-top: that White is somehow short on funding or ability to get her message out.[3] Since you didn't do your research, I even personally made one of the very same criticism[2] as in her annotations.

So tell me, what about my writing made you miss the point this much?

[1] http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34360188

[3] A point which would still be valid even if she weren't the one prompting these stories, by the way.

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