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"King of the Cannibals": How Sam Altman Took over Silicon Valley

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Re: "King of the Cannibals": How Sam Altman Took over Silicon Valley

#131

Post by dbspin »

throw310822 wrote: post #71
dbspin wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Altman's sister's 'memories' of abuse were developed in adulthood [1]. Recovered memories are deeply suspect, and a number of serious miscarriages of justice have happened because of them. Most infamously the 'satanic panic' trials of the eighties and early nineties. Elizabeth Loftus has done lots of good work on the dubious nature of eyewitness testimony, and recovered memories in particular [3]. Essentially, they'r…

> Recovered memories are deeply suspect, [...] especially when 'recovered' decades later during psychotherapy. > This goes back to Freud's original sin - not believing the direct accounts of family sexual abuse from his female patients, and instead perceiving them as fantasies. I can't understand how these two statements are not contradictory, could you elaborate?

Sure - since talk therapy was pioneered it's vacillated wildly in approach between what we would today call depth and cognitive approaches. At times the emphasis has been entirely on teaching socialisation and behavioural strategies, at other times it's been delving into unconscious motivations. More specifically Freud (and successors, especially Anna Freud) identified a series of defence mechanisms, that have been widely validated and are now accepted far outside of analysis. Two of these are denial (literally refusal to accept or acknowledge reality) and repression.

Meanwhile Freud's developmental framework had young children going through early stages of 'opedipal' development involving attraction towards their opposite sex parent, and fantasies involving them - which would usually be repressed and could emerge as neurotic symptoms.

So you have this concept of memory as a potentially hidden repressed desire or trauma, and also this idea of attraction to the primary care giver. Psychoanalytics techniques - like hypnotism and later free association, were designed to uncover the unacceptable thoughts and primal trauma that lead to neurotic symptoms. So you have this delving for hidden desire and the one original source of trauma (this is another major issue with psychoanalysis, the idea that all trauma connects to an original primal trauma), combined with a fixation on the desire for the parent.

Over time techniques and theory have balkanised, so you have people simultaneously seeking desires in the unconscious and refusing to accept the surface level meaning of symptoms and patient communication - while simultaneously latching on to any 'recovered memory' of trauma. This contradiction can motivate patients to perform for their therapists, producing symptoms, dreams, memories etc which explain the 'origin' of issues which may have other causes - from personality disorders to physiological disease, to social contagions.

Re: "King of the Cannibals": How Sam Altman Took over Silicon Valley

#132

Post by nerdponx »

dbspin wrote: post #103
svnt wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably this, where she is discussing her first memories on a podcast: > Annie then basically proceeds to mention that “panic attack” doesn’t quite feel like her first memory, but doesn’t decisively settle on a “first memory.” She concludes the article: “TBD on the first memory of that history. Here’s to exploring.” > This becomes relevant later on, as Annie ends up remembering an earlier memory than her panic attac…

Her pattern of behaviour is also consistent with the bpd, which frequently involve delusions of persecution. Suicidal ideation and severe anxiety are unfortunately not rare in adolescence either, and certainly don't evidence sexual abuse - when not reported or remembered at the time.

BPD itself is known to be caused by childhood trauma, though both psychological and physiological mechanisms:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5472954/

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2021.7213...

Not to mention the well-established phenomenon of repressing memories of traumatic events, as well as the general memory impairment effects of chronic stress.

Re: "King of the Cannibals": How Sam Altman Took over Silicon Valley

#133

Post by CPLX »

tptacek wrote: post #130
jwoq9118 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is entirely subjective. Hope you can see how this isn’t exactly a strong argument.

I'm still trying to figure out what the argument is.

The argument is that Sam Altman is a central player among the small group of extremely wealthy people whose personalities and decision-making decides how you and me will live our lives.

They buy and sell our politicians, set policy directly or by proxy, and make decisions that lead to prosperity for some and mass misery and death for others.

None of this is subtle or a conspiracy theory, it's how our society is structured, it's not particularly confusing unless you choose for it to be.

Re: "King of the Cannibals": How Sam Altman Took over Silicon Valley

#134

Post by tptacek »

CPLX wrote: post #133
tptacek wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still trying to figure out what the argument is.

The argument is that Sam Altman is a central player among the small group of extremely wealthy people whose personalities and decision-making decides how you and me will live our lives. They buy and sell our politicians, set policy directly or by proxy, and make decisions that lead to prosperity for some and mass misery and death for others. None of this is subtle or a conspiracy theory, it's how our society is struc…

Because he went to the Bilderberg conference?

Re: "King of the Cannibals": How Sam Altman Took over Silicon Valley

#135

Post by CPLX »

tptacek wrote: post #134
CPLX wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument is that Sam Altman is a central player among the small group of extremely wealthy people whose personalities and decision-making decides how you and me will live our lives. They buy and sell our politicians, set policy directly or by proxy, and make decisions that lead to prosperity for some and mass misery and death for others. None of this is subtle or a conspiracy theory, it's how our society is struc…

Because he went to the Bilderberg conference?

"The political-science professors, perfectly sane men, look at me with wonder when I talk about the ruling class in America. They say, “You are one of those conspiracy theorists. You think there’s a headquarters and they get together at the Bohemian Grove and run the United States.” Well, they do get together at the Bohemian Grove and do a lot of picking of Secretaries of State, anyway. But they don’t have to conspire. They all think alike. It goes back to the way we’re raised, the schools we went to–after all, I’m a reluctant member of this group. You don’t have to give orders to the editor of The New York Times. He is in place because he will respond to a crisis the way you want him to, as will the President, as will the head of the Chase Manhattan Bank."

- Gore Vidal

Re: "King of the Cannibals": How Sam Altman Took over Silicon Valley

#136

Post by nonethewiser »

pixelatedindex wrote: post #9
mdorazio wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems there's more to it than that [1]. Altman did a surprisingly good job of cultivating a "nice guy" image among the tech crowd, but I personally don't buy it. [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/what-sam-altman-did-so-bad-h...

[flagged]

Isnt she crazy?

Re: "King of the Cannibals": How Sam Altman Took over Silicon Valley

#137

Post by dbspin »

mcpackieh wrote: post #77
dbspin wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Altman's sister's 'memories' of abuse were developed in adulthood [1]. Recovered memories are deeply suspect, and a number of serious miscarriages of justice have happened because of them. Most infamously the 'satanic panic' trials of the eighties and early nineties. Elizabeth Loftus has done lots of good work on the dubious nature of eyewitness testimony, and recovered memories in particular [3]. Essentially, they'r…

So let me get this straight, your training as a psychoanalyst qualifies you to discredit a woman's testimony, despite you never having met with her? How wonderful. By the way, have you read this? > Today, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) reiterates its continued and unwavering commitment to the ethical principle known as "The Goldwater Rule." We at the APA call for an end to psychiatrists providing professi…

Just to be clear. I'm not a psychologist or psychoanalyst. I trained as a psychoanalyst (and not in the US) but don't practice. Also to note - the APA don't represent psychologists or psychoanalysts, but rather psychiatrists. Anyone discussing the motivations of any public figure is engaging in armchair psychoanalysis, and although I agree with the premise behind prohibiting professionals from doing so, psychiatrists often do in fact provide professional opinions to the media about people they have not examined (for example diagnosing certain political figures).

In any case, I don't think anyone is qualified to credit or discredit a claim in a medical or psychologically diagnostic sense without a clinical interview (something that few psychiatrists are qualified to perform by the way). That's not what I'm doing here. What I'm pointing out is the unreliability of recovered memory. Specifically someone claiming that they repressed sexual abuse at age 4, for decades, and then remembered it accurately. That's simply not how memory usually works.

Re: "King of the Cannibals": How Sam Altman Took over Silicon Valley

#138

Post by tptacek »

CPLX wrote: post #135
tptacek wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because he went to the Bilderberg conference?

"The political-science professors, perfectly sane men, look at me with wonder when I talk about the ruling class in America. They say, “You are one of those conspiracy theorists. You think there’s a headquarters and they get together at the Bohemian Grove and run the United States.” Well, they do get together at the Bohemian Grove and do a lot of picking of Secretaries of State, anyway. But they don’t have to conspir…

If you're trying to make a case that you're not a conspiracy theorist, your first cite probably shouldn't be Gore Vidal. But if you're just trying to be entertaining, he's hard to beat.

Re: "King of the Cannibals": How Sam Altman Took over Silicon Valley

#139

Post by JeremyNT »

tptacek wrote: post #76
andai wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It feels like people are a bit obsessive about this guy. AI is about to take over the world (for better or worse), and this is the guy in charge of building it.

Seems to me there are a lot of people in charge of building it.

It's not even about building it, it's about controlling it.

So if Altman is as smooth and ruthless and self interested as he appears, he's likely to end up in control of... something big.

Even if he "just" becomes the next "richest man in the world," that's still a title that carries with it a massive ability to shape society. It's no wonder people would like to understand what this potential oligarch is like behind closed doors.

Re: "King of the Cannibals": How Sam Altman Took over Silicon Valley

#140

Post by mcpackieh »

dbspin wrote: post #137
mcpackieh wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So let me get this straight, your training as a psychoanalyst qualifies you to discredit a woman's testimony, despite you never having met with her? How wonderful. By the way, have you read this? > Today, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) reiterates its continued and unwavering commitment to the ethical principle known as "The Goldwater Rule." We at the APA call for an end to psychiatrists providing professi…

Just to be clear. I'm not a psychologist or psychoanalyst. I trained as a psychoanalyst (and not in the US) but don't practice. Also to note - the APA don't represent psychologists or psychoanalysts, but rather psychiatrists. Anyone discussing the motivations of any public figure is engaging in armchair psychoanalysis, and although I agree with the premise behind prohibiting professionals from doing so, psychiatrists…

> In any case, I don't think anyone is qualified to credit or discredit a claim in a medical or psychologically diagnostic sense without a clinical interview (something that few psychiatrists are qualified to perform by the way). That's not what I'm doing here. What I'm pointing out is the unreliability of recovered memory.

Uh huh... and in another comment in this discussion you've gone on to speculate that she has BPD, with the implication that her accusations shouldn't be believed for that reason.

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