Hacker News Reader

> It's clear that SBF doesn't look at business/legal logic as an objective "thing" with special givens and nomenclature to which one must adhere. He sees it more as a unique series of situations with their own unfolding logic. He is taking the puzzler's approach.

This is a remarkably generous framing. Is there some reason the SBFs of the world are "puzzlers" and the hundreds of thousands of other people in prison are just criminals?

Remarkable generosity? Eh...to me that would imply giving to him this or that.

If literally describing how SBF's mind seems to work is "giving", then I have to say...

...damn you must judge people so hard. :D

"Generosity" in the context of arguments refers to excessive obeisance, not literally giving someone this or that.

> ...damn you must judge people so hard. :D

I'm advocating for not judging hundreds of thousands of people more harshly than you appear to judge SBF. Again: what makes him different?

> excessive obeisance

Eh, it's not excessive or obeisant. It's simply a straightforward commentary on how the guy seems to think.

Written in earnest, mind, for other community members, some of whom are awkwardly attempting to Judge-Judy their way through the situation.

What does that really contribute, all the commentary on how evil this person is?

Is it supposed to _not_ look like projecting? Eh...I don't think that's working too well. And the news headlines do a way better job anyway.

> I'm advocating for not judging hundreds of thousands of people more harshly than you appear to judge SBF. Again: what makes him different?

This doesn't make sense.

Also, give me someone to compare him to if you are looking for comparative logic. Otherwise do the comparison yourself, it's clearly not that kind of comment.

If you think he's not different because you think just like he does, then you may have an everybody-thinks-like-me problem.

> Is there some reason the SBFs of the world are "puzzlers" and the hundreds of thousands of other people in prison are just criminals?

There were about 26 billion reasons for that, at one point.

e: to be clear, I am pointing out a fact of how the world works here, not condoning it

So was Ponzi an unrecognized genius instead of a fraudster? Money is not a high score in life, and money fraudulently stolen from others even less. This American logic of "guy stole so much money he is rich, lets treat him as better than others" is completely insane, and if you believe it, you deserve to get your money stolen by the SBFs of the world.

I didn't lose any money to SBF, or any other crypto schemes, for what it's worth.

Latin American cartel leaders have notched similar amounts of wealth, how do we evaluate them?

You have to be careful going down this path because, for example, there are people in USG carefully constructing and maintaining bridges (so to speak) with those people every day, and this has been true for at least 50+ years.

If you are looking for a stereotypical "bad person" example, IMO it's at least a good idea to have an accompanying "bad context" or "bad environment" condition, or your own assessment will tend to be full of ethical blind spots.

Well, we evaluate them rather differently than the Sackler family, that's for certain.

Ironic as they’re in the same line of work.

Practically every fraudster or white collar criminal has gotten away with a pretty large sum of money right up until they haven't.

Every single one that caught is an idiot - they misunderstood the system they were trying to rip off, they misunderstood and/or didn't think through what checks and balances exist in the system to catch things after they happen. They are idiots.

> e: to be clear, I am pointing out a fact of how the world works here, not condoning it

I mentioned the same thing, it doesn't seem to make any difference in situations involving extreme consumer-advocacy flex, I mean who are we to attempt to get two completely separate lines of thought to coexist ;-)

It's simpler than that. He's a trust fund kid with wealthy, well-connected parents who assumes nothing bad will happen to him so does whatever he wants. He's also of above average intelligence enough and enjoys "flexing" that intelligence in the avenues he thinks will benefit him most.

IDK if simplicity is really the go-to judgment process for learning from people like this. I mean if you really want to chase that argument--it's simpler than even that. He's human! Therefore he does stupid human things. He's only human after all! (ad infinitum)

Imagine though, if SBF had a reasonable, nuanced opportunity to understand his blind spots long before he got into business.

I've coached people who think just like SBF, discussed the same blind spots, and most of those people were grateful to reach a new understanding. But you'd never get that far if you said, "you have the mindset of a trust fund kid, end of story."

So, that's definitely a thing, to be able to un-simplify a broad generalization, and turn that into problem-solving leverage where others may fear to wade into details.

This, except that I haven't seen any serious reason to believe that he's unusually intelligent. He certainly thinks he is, though.

Too bad that impeccable puzzler’s logic led him to defraud people out of billions and to confess to doing so repeatedly and in real time after he had been apprehended for doing so.

Oh well, hate the puzzle, not the puzzler.

My guess vis-a-vis the morality is that he naturally ignores it. Try being hardcore logical (not just rational, but like A + B = B + A stepwise logical) and hardcore moral at the same time, you'll be torn forever. And if you don't naturally learn a sort of turn-taking approach for those modes via your upbringing, good luck learning it later.

Unfortunately, ignoring moral perspectives & decision points is effectively the same as "being without morals". And I really mean unfortunately--this is a problem for all of humanity and we keep looking for individual evil scapegoats, but eventually we need to reconcile this.

In practice there's also this extra innovator's dilemma: Yield to known industry practice and reap ethical rewards as a natural part of the process, or lean into the novelty & growth curve and possibly reinvent huge swaths of custom, ethic, and morality which were previously vague.

I don't think people appreciate how close we've come to that happening at various points in history, and to what degree.

If you do take that second path, almost by definition you immediately blind yourself to huge swaths of moral decisionmaking. This is more especially true if you are forced to look at your customers as "audiences" or similar groups.

These groups are effectively perceived at higher levels as cohesive organisms. Groups are known to demonstrate a more primitive subjective morality than most any individual (i.e. individiuals may be smart, humans in large groups not so much), and this can greatly restrict a founder's own willingness to address morality-related issues by more than a couple inches, so to speak, here or there.

I think most any business owner probably understands this view, though in the context of this huge story I'm sure it wouldn't be easy to admit.

But you are right that in terms of individual human perception, the puzzle _must_ be solved, and often in a very subjective manner no matter what resources may be available. That's a huge issue.

There’s no inherent conflict between morality and logic. Even with the vaguer definitions you seem to be using related to business processes, running a business that others (customers, regulators, outsiders) view as morally clean will always provide advantages over one that isn’t perceived that way.

You're referring to big-picture practices and conflicts, which are different.

Also, think about businesses where morality simply isn't a day to day concern of customers, not because they are rotten customers, but because their set of concerns is another facet of the benefit spectrum. "I am their customer because of X and Y." Not _your_ X and Y, but theirs.

In that light, perhaps you can see how much of a blind-spot crutch it can be to end up defending morality as a kind of forced issue by dint of your own subjective focus, which while commendable, isn't the point here.

It's an issue of what else there is.

This is also probably very difficult to understand if you yourself naturally focus extremely hard on giving a clean deal to your customers. As is common in that mindset, maybe you often find yourself the martyr, taking a loss here or there to quietly test your own generosity in that way, for example. Or maybe you enjoy mentally pairing yourself with "good people", those you rate via your conduct system as individuals with whom you feel more free to conduct the generous business that makes you see the world in a better light.

In such a case, of course you have a good argument for branding around that personality facet.

And at the same time, you are still way different from a lot of other businesses...

...which from even this beneficial-morality lens can't be said to come out the worse by some basic psychological calculus. "Be like me" still isn't a fair business assessment tool.

(I know it can be a bit of a frustrating heartbreak to have access to those morality tools, and enjoy demonstrating that benefit in a crooked world...and then hear that a successful business can focus on entirely different facets and psychological processes without cheating their customers...)

It’s certainly true that branding as morally pure isn’t usual beneficial, but even businesses that brand themselves as sinful or evil have internal processes to maintain moral principles. Often to a greater extent than non profits that are selling morality. An example: casinos request regulation to enforce rules about payout odds, while unregulated casinos create mathematical proofs that their outcomes are honest. They also often run programs to provide assistance to customers suffering from gambling addiction. These actions aren’t because casinos are “pure” or making sacrifices; it’s because the expected payouts to the owners are higher by enforcing these processes.

It’s also important to remember that customers are not the only agents that matter to an entity’s survival. Public opinion, regulators, employees, shareholders, etc also matter. One instance of this in crypto is the lack of assassination markets. There’s been theoretical work on how to build anonymous assassin markets since the early 90s but no one has done it even though there’s proven customer demand. Why? Because for someone with the ability to build such a market, there exist better options that have higher payouts due to lower regulatory enforcement, easier access to capital, cheaper labour, etc. Again being “pure” has nothing to do with it since people with those skills do build dark net markets that sell other illicit services which are viewed as not really wrong by a large percentage of the population and as less severe to regulators than assassins.

Or he's just a narcissist and because everyone has told him he's the smartest person in the world, he has no appreciation of the limits of his knowledge and at this point he simply can't see it.

I don't think you need eight move look-ahead to know you should obey the law or else you will go to jail.

Legal scholars aren't in agreement about everything... but knowing the state of the field deeply does protect them from making more obvious legal mistakes, or whatever he's been doing.

You are being overly generous here, he's the son of law professors, ignorance is not a defence for him.

As a lawyer, I feel like the slightest bit of legal knowledge makes this even more baffling. The answer to most questions is "it depends", but the answer about doing anything concerning a witness against you in a trial is "heck no".

There's no logical reason to do this. I think the answer is that no matter how smart he may be in some areas, he has emotions like anyone else which sometimes lead him to do stupid things. I think many of his decisions are also rooted in a copious amount of pride which leads him to think he will get away with anything.

(As a guy who has fired legal counsel for huge and obvious ethical breaches, IDK if that first line does what you think it does :-))

> There's no logical reason to do this.

Given your experience IOW. Given his lack of it, there absolutely can be. Again, it's contextual, subjective logic he's working with. Not broad experience or broad knowledge of legal affairs. The comparative strengths are there in both cases, but completely different.

Alternatively, his ego is too big for his own good. Intelligence without experience combined with a large ego can present as stupidity to onlookers. A little bit of wisdom would have done him a lot of good.

Have you watched _Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery_ ? Is it possible SBF is actually quite stupid, except perhaps for some cleverness with math?

Stupid is generally part of every personality. :-)

It's the issue of "which sets of perspectives have you basically ignored all your life, which are also relevant right here, now" that tends to make a person appear stupid in a given context.

SBF: needlessly gets himself thrown in jail

Galaxy Brains: Masterful gambit, sir

It’s the same energy that sees an obvious Musk adderall no sleep for days ridden emotional decisional fuck up and strokes their chin mumbling something about 4D chess.

What are the first principles here?

Your post seems like a pretty long winded way of saying he is a fool. It's not hard to understand that when you are facing a federal criminal trial, you shouldn't make the judge mad.

> What are the first principles here?

One of his first principles might have been (example):

"Leaks really work well. I leaked some stuff, it got me good results, and so logically this path is open to me for problem-solving."

This is how subjective logic works for millions of people every day.

Obviously to you and others, if you don't combine that with some wisdom and foresight derived from broader knowledge on the context in question, it might backfire.

But what happens next is probably this: He'll stay in the game and adjust his subjective logical foundations.

"Leaks can also be very risky AND therefore..."

That's a huge difference between him and other people, he is a speculative theorist by nature. Even now he probably won't discard leaking out of hand.

It's not a life lesson about leaking for someone like that, it's a lesson with specific parameters in a specific context.

Is he reinventing the "leaking" wheel in a dumb way? Possibly. But, he's also making the logic his own, which is extremely powerful as experience accrues.

Especially if it turns out that leaking is basically an art one can master, he could probably find a way to master it, because there's no big-picture roadblock in his mind that says "leaking private info to help your case is bad, the end". This is not nuanced enough, i.e. smart enough, for the way his logic operates.

Since he is amenable to working with details, his thinking style has strong long-term flexibility and leverage advantages. Even if it fails hard sometimes.

Just for illustration purposes though. And, once again, I'm not here to talk about his moral character. I also do not believe that he's consciously choosing how to use his personality characteristics. He's working naturally with what he's got, these comfortable, reinforced patterns of good, bad, and everything in between.