Comment by npinsker | Hacker News Reader

Comment by npinsker | Hacker News Reader

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, as we don't fully know what happened yet, but Aaronson seems to be taking an extremely strong stance in support of Sam by saying "the worst thing he did is he incorrectly weighted money", which seems undue.

IMO, it seems like Sam had an astonishing amount of pride in himself -- purportedly installing backdoors, playing LoL while on calls with investors, antagonizing competitors, installing nobody with any experience -- and it was all accepted, even rewarded. I can't help but think that if he had trusted others a little bit more, he might have been able to make better decisions for the sake of his company and the world. If I could give him advice, something like that would be it.

Scott is incredibly smart but I have him down as very biased and take everything he writes that is not hard science with a huge grain of salt.

You mean he has the gall not to jump on the “let’s drag the billionaire on Twitter” bandwagon?

The way I am gauging the situation is that even if you tap your breaks on the “this guy is total scum and is trying to make a break for Argentina/Dubai” narrative that you’re complicit in his evil doings.

Why do I make that bold claim? Your very interpretation of Scott’s plea to wait on passing judgment.

"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.

> He totally ignores the actual events that transpired and instead focuses on Sam's purported ideals,

This argument about tone-deafness is kind of collectivist rally against individual conversation. There is no need for everyone to focus on the same thing. One could even argue that overly focusing on the actual events is less productive (as for actual events there will be official investigation that should lead to more solid results).

> but Aaronson seems to be taking an extremely strong stance in support of Sam by saying "the worst thing he did is he incorrectly weighted money"

That just seems like misreading of the post, Scott explicitly wrote: "If SBF indeed gambled away his customers’ deposits and lied about it, then I condemn for it utterly".

You see, one of the most important "rules" of good content marketing is being controversial. No-one like to talk about stuff that is average. Average is boring.

Same here on HN btw. Who cares about another take how evil Sam is.

It obviously pays off for Steve, at least in the short run. He is on the front-page of HN and has gained a couple of subscribers.

That's Scott. Steve's dead.

True!

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.

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