"I hope they can get out from under this and try to find meaning, ideally from repairing the harm they've done."
How exactly would they do this? Have you read the victim impact statements?
Mistakes are errors. Like typing "Rick Heicklen" instead of "Ricki Heicklen".
But intentionally breaking the law in order to profit, is that a "mistake"?
A error in judgment perhaps.
SBF claimed he made "mistakes" but he never admitted guilt and he never apologised for breaking the law. He perjured himself while expecting the audience to believe he was "brilliant", competent and trustworthy to handle other peoples' money.
If what Heicklen calls "smart people" can work for a company with no organizational chart, no board of directors, no CFO, no need to use more than QuickBooks for handling millions of dollars in customer deposits, then perhaps these people are not "smart".
And it would be a "mistake" to believe otherwise. (Heicklen may still be disillusioned.)
We are living in a time when it is not safe to assume that because there is large amounts of money behind something that this something is in fact legitimate.
These people named in the comment all come from privileged backgrounds. Many of the victims of the FTX collapse, the ones who wrote to Judge Kaplan before the trial and the ones who submitted impact statements before sentencing, do not. Call me cynical but I do not forsee any of those named in Heicklen's blog post going to work to serve (cf. exploit) people from non-privileged backgrounds.