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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   Edited 2yr ago   34791 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 14, 2022

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EDIT: Okay, returning to "just how far up Bankman-Fried's backside can this reporter fit his head?" times, the excited admiration of what is (at best) extremely rude behaviour from Bankman-Fried does a Thelma and Louise drive off the cliff:

The next day, I finally get a chance to interview Sam Bankman-Fried. We meet in a tiny conference room. I’m prepared with a mic and an MP3 recorder at the ready. SBF comes in with his laptop and opens it to start playing his new favorite computer game, Storybook Brawl, before he even sits down. It’s an obscure title, an “auto-battler”: an emerging genre that combines elements of trading card games (like Magic: The Gathering) with chesslike moves and strategy. The game was released only a few years ago by an equally obscure low-budget “indie” game company, Good Luck Games.

Though we’re face-to-face, SBF makes no eye contact at all—zero, not even a glance. His eyes are glued to his screen. His fingers are tapping on the keys, sometimes furiously, sometimes hardly at all. His right knee is bouncing at 100 bpm: a nervous tic, the result of a forgotten fidget spinner. The interview starts.

I open with a doozy: “Am I,” I ask, “talking to the world’s first trillionaire?”

…This interview has morphed into my own personal economics seminar, and Professor Bankman-Fried is my tutor. He’s as good at explaining the principles of macroeconomics as anyone out there in the world today—and I know this for a fact because I’ve subsequently watched YouTube’s best on the same subject. But SBF teaches me Macro while simultaneously playing round after round of Storybook Brawl.

Wait for it....

…SBF is now interviewing himself. He slows down for a moment, and I assume that’s because of the cognitive load of doing three things at once. He’s asking good questions (my job); he’s formulating answers (his job); and he’s playing Storybook Brawl (no one’s job). But then I hear the tap-tap-tapping from his fingers start to accelerate, and I realize he’s not slowing down under the load at all. Just the opposite, in fact: This guy is in the Storybook Brawl equivalent of a gank!

Are you impressed? Wow, so impressive!

All this is still with not even a glance at me—his true focus is on the screen. He’s playing the video game. But, to be fair, perhaps “playing” is the wrong word here. Perhaps he was play-testing: looking for ways to incorporate crypto into his favorite game because, unbeknownst to me at the time, as we were talking, Good Luck, the indie game company behind Storybook Brawl, was being absorbed into the FTX empire—the latest in a string of FTX acquisitions.

Does this behaviour convince our Star Reporter, one Adam Fisher, that Bankman-Fried is, in fact, talking out of his ass? You be the judge!

…After my interview with SBF, I was convinced: I was talking to a future trillionaire. Whatever mojo he worked on the partners at Sequoia—who fell for him after one Zoom—had worked on me, too. For me, it was simply a gut feeling. I’ve been talking to founders and doing deep dives into technology companies for decades. It’s been my entire professional life as a writer. And because of that experience, there must be a pattern-matching algorithm churning away somewhere in my subconscious. I don’t know how I know, I just do. SBF is a winner.

But that wasn’t even the main thing. There was something else I felt: something in my heart, not just my gut. After sitting ten feet from him for most of the week, studying him in the human musk of the startup grind and chatting in between beanbag naps, I couldn’t shake the feeling that this guy is actually as selfless as he claims to be.

…The FTX competitive advantage? Ethical behavior. SBF is a Peter Singer–inspired utilitarian in a sea of Robert Nozick–inspired libertarians. He’s an ethical maximalist in an industry that’s overwhelmingly populated with ethical minimalists. I’m a Nozick man myself, but I know who I’d rather trust my money with: SBF, hands-down. And if he does end up saving the world as a side effect of being my banker, all the better.

Let's hope for his sake that Mr. Fisher did not sink every cent he possessed into FTX trades, else he'll be working till he's eighty to clear off his debts 🤣

Yeah the article is pretty bad. Good thing it was memoryholed so few people will find it heh...

On the other hand SBF must have some insane charisma to be able to get all these people in line. I mean lord, I know some people that are charismatic but it sounds like he is next level. Despite being kinda ugly.

Yeah, I can't figure it out simply by how he looks in photos, but he must be something special in real life so that even when he is being rude (or autistic, take your pick) about avoiding eye contact and playing games while supposedly talking to you, people who should know better because they're dealing with guys who are trying to sell them on get-rich-quick-schemes for years just fall down at his feet in adoration.

On "The Top Ten List Of Things I Regret Writing" in the future for Adam Fisher, this Sequoia article is going to take the Numbers 1-5 slots.

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