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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31958 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 5, 2022

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Can we see the math and logic he's said to have done?

I ask because I remember there being something of a dive into his League of Legends ranking based on the infamous investor call, and apparently he was not at all ranked the way a genius mathlete willing to put in the hours would be at all, and also because I myself have seen a lot of people who associate with smart, nerdy things entirely for smart, nerdy cred, and whose actual ability to engage with the crunchy, mathy, requires-focus-and-practice bits of them is completely nonexistent.

I'd absolutely believe that Sam got top marks entirely based on his family and social connections and the fact that a prep school is about making him look good for a college environment that has completely desisted from actual educational discernment. It's absolutely the case that smart people can believe very dumb things, especially when those dumb beliefs are serving as vital shields for their self-image, and that high-IQ memorize-loads-of-facts-and-do-novel-work-with-them types can end up carefully compartmentalizing against the heresies of their day and circle, and get badly bitten when their failure to think in that one context happens to arise.

But until I see Sam's math SAT scores or evaluate some complex code he's written, I'm personally going to hold off on claiming that he's smart.

He got into Jane Street. It's worth reminding that even people who have credentials suggesting very high IQ often do not get in. So, family and connections would not have worked in regard to that. I don't see what is wrong with saying he is a legit very smart dude who fucked up badly.

I wouldn't be shocked if he aced his SAT math, given MIT Physics major/Math minor, but neither would I be impressed.

Assuming that he was a decent student, but not outstanding in context, and that he organized his classes with at least a half-assed gesture towards efficiency, something like the following describes his math education:

  • 5 on the AP Calc AB exam to test out of single variable Calculus general requirement (18.01).

  • Multivariable Calculus (18.02, general req) and maybe Differential Equations (18.03, Physics major req) his freshman year.

  • Physics Flexible track with Math as his focus area--three more math classes after DiffEqs. Let's say Linear Algebra (18.06), Combinatorial Analysis (18.211), and Introduction to Numerical Analysis (18.330).

  • Two more math classes to finish off his math minor. Possibly Probability and Statistics (18.05) and Principles of Discrete Applied Mathematics (18.200).

(Also, the rest of his Physics major.)

130 IQ isn't unreasonable. Very smart; not exceptional. The above courses are roughly the minimum you'd need for his major/minor combo, and nothing I've seen indicates a student that was punching above his weight through grit, determination, and excellent organizational skills.

He attended something called Mathcamp, I don't know if this really is for mathematically-gifted students and can't be finessed, anyone who does know if this depends on pure brainpower please comment.

That his parents are lawyers but he went the STEM route would seem to indicate genuine ability there.

How much IQ would you need to cheat your way through your entire MIT education, I wonder?

My own knowledge of MIT is rudimentary, but I remember it having a strong focus on student trust and honor from looking into the Aaron Swartz fiasco. And it appears that the story of Sam was finding and exploiting high-trust environments where not even bare due-diligence against adversarial actors was being done.

Am I wrong about this? Does MIT gleefully count coup against attempted cheaters? Is there a high-publicity case of a student turning in their roommate for cheating, or a professor being recognized for diligence in uncovering a novel cheating method and bringing it to the attention of all and sundry?

Again, I assume that he needs to have reached a basic minimum to cheat competently; I'll qualify him with "probably smart, with no verys". But nothing I've seen qualifies him as one of the STEM cognitive elite other than some certifications, and in current year, I do not trust any certifiers.

The "Sam is one of the cognitive elite" narrative appears to rest on three pillars; FTX itself (now distinctly counterevidence), his job and educational history (which I don't trust at all without a deeper dive), his accidents of dress and hobby (taking interest in math, logic, debate, and LoL). For myself, I find a missing pillar; I would expect a STEMLord to need to sharpen themselves against the unyielding whetstone of reality to achieve mastery. It certainly could be that Sam was a technical genius who focused all of his productive energies on his set-up for FTX (and then growing FTX), and that he judged a better expected return from laser-like focus on that than a model rocket hobby or a few hundred Project Euler solutions. But absent any hard evidence of such, I consider that Sam could be either a cheat, a liar, and a fraud who is also a brilliant technical mind, or simply a cheat, a liar, and a fraud, and as such do not multiple entities (or properties, I guess).

And, again, if you have evidence that it would be wildly unlikely for MIT to let a cheat, a fraud, and a liar through its programs, I'd love to hear it.

MIT's selection processes is hard enough that someone who would be inclined to cheat would not get in. Given that SBF got into Jane Street, likely he was smart enough to graduate without needing to cheat.

Can you demonstrate this? I admit, I'm not seeing how making selection criteria harder would decrease the likelihood of cheating. I mean, in the extreme case, if you make a test that only one billionth of humanity could pass fairly, then the odds that any given person passed the test fairly (when there are great reputational and financial rewards for passing the test, no deep culture of investigating and calling out cheaters, and strong incentives to have everyone passively trust the process and not assume cheating as a default possibility) are fairly low.

Again, I'm not an expert on MIT's admission methods, but if, e.g., they hold their own proctored and blind-graded exam for all students they are considering admitting, I'd definitely update in the direction of considering MIT more reliable. But given that my default assumption about colleges (which is that they will cheerfully drop admissions standards into the ground to accept those of their favored demographics, and raise the standards on the unfavored demographics to compensate), I simply do not believe that MIT is honestly selecting students according to fair criteria.

Demonstrate how? It's well known that MIT is both hard to get accepted ,as is the coursework

Jane Street does not hire traders or interns who cannot pass notoriously tricky technical interviews with math problems and brainteasers. Period. This is well known in the industry.

this guy gets it

I feel like the fact that Jane Street paid Sam a very nice salary to manage crypto trades for them is pretty strong evidence against their own smarts.

But, less facetiously, I'd like to lay out my default assumption here, based on what I've seen of SBF's work and statements so far; he is not IQ <90, and he has ruthlessly exploited the high-trust presumption of society, and because of that, I trust not a single word or explanation that comes from his mouth, nor those of people who would plausibly gain by his own gains. Given his willingness to spend money on regulators and punish dissenters, the general halo effect, and the fact that I know well how easily the job interview process gets twisted in general, I am not willing to assign Jane St. the same impartial evaluation trust that I would a math SAT scantron machine, or a compiler attempting to compile code he wrote.

Again, I don't think that he is an idiot. But I do think that he has absolutely adopted the appearance of smart nerdy things consciously, as part of a presented image, and that I need to consider everything about him from an adversarial position.

I feel like the fact that Jane Street paid Sam a very nice salary to manage crypto trades for them is pretty strong evidence against their own smarts.

The crypto trades came much later, in 2018, and with his own money. Jane Street was 2014.

Fair; I am operating entirely off of a few article summaries which specifically mentioned that he traded crypto at Jane Street, and if there is evidence that Jane Street wasn't trading crypto at the time, I certainly don't have either any specialist knowledge of Jane Street or notable faith in the article summaries.

The point remains, however; if my (hypothetical) investment manager was bragging to me about how much money he made with Bernie Madoff, I would seek another investment manager, even if said investment manager decried buying into the Ponzi scheme specifically and even if Bernie had other legitimate investments. It doesn't matter if they came out ahead (plus, I, being a suspicious bastard, would figure that a smart investment manager would make damn sure to conceal the fact that they lost money by not doing basic due diligence on Bernie's fund if they did lose money in it); no matter the outcome, my own trust in someone who put money down on Bernie would go inexorably down.

But he didn't steal from them, did he? They were smart enough to know how much leash they could give a man like that to safely make use of his talents without him getting ideas. Which is probably the most important part of managing finance guys.

Did he? I honestly don't know. Has anyone done a post-fall post-mortem deep dive on SBF's time in Jane Street?

If I go by the Sequoia article, the timeline goes something like this:

(1) Bankman-Fried is doing his physics/maths degree at MIT

(2) Meets Will MacAskill, who was recruiting for earn-to-give, via people in his fraternity

(3) MacAskill steers him towards an internship in Jane Street

(4) He seems to have done okay there (but as you say, we have no idea what really went on). Meets Ellison there. Article fanboys hard over him, so take the following with a grain of salt:

In 2017, everything was going great for SBF. He was killing it at Jane Street. He was a trader’s trader: so fluent with transactions that others would come watch him work, like one might watch an esports athlete streaming on Twitch.

(5) Quits, for whatever reason (article says it's all in the service of his devotion to utilitarianism yadda yadda but again, we don't know if he was asked to leave/let go/decided to quit for unknown reasons)

(6) Goes back home to the Bay Area, gets a job - courtesy of MacAskill - as director of business development at the Centre for Effective Altruism

(7) Ellison is sent on a recruiting trip to California by Jane Street, decides to look up Bankman-Fried

(8) Turns out he set up this thing called Alameda Research with a grubstake of $50,000 (could be his own money, his parents' money, who knows) to exploit the 'kimchi premium' and is coining it

(9) But he could be making much, much more! So he goes looking for $50 million loan and gets a good chunk of that via EA contacts

(10) He puts together an admittedly ramshackle operation to exploit this hard

(11) Ellison quits Jane Street and signs up

(12) MONEY! MONEY! MONEY!

(13) But of course, all good things come to an end, and so the next step is "Hmmm, maybe I should open a crypto trading exchange, there is probably easy money to be made there, too"

(14) Founds FTX and the rest we all know

That would interesting, but JS is very secretive too. Employees are incentivized to stay quiet .

Might it be closer to 130 than 160? Sure, but he's not dumb.

He's dumb – for what he got into.

I say often that merely-smart guys like Sam have a tendency of pegging themselves, like, 20 points higher than they deserve, fancying themselves premier league players; and that can have catastrophic consequences for their circle and many others. Bill Gates is, by all accounts, a genius; he was appropriately arrogant for his level when young, and now he has matured into a superficially humble guy with wide latitude of expertise who can afford pretty large-scale shit.

Top-tier colleges are supposed to help with that by exposing a smart guy to actual geniuses and forcing to recalibrate. Certainly helped Bezos..

I say often that merely-smart guys like Sam have a tendency of pegging themselves, like, 20 points higher than they deserve

Early success or praise (which may have more to do with access to material or conscientious/education-focused parents) probably doesn't help

If it helps, a bit of information about MIT's Science Core, which is one of the graduation requirements for every undergraduate, regardless of major--two semesters of Calculus (single and multivariable), two semesters of Physics (mechanics and electricity/magnetism), one semester of Chemistry, and one semester of Biology. Also, if you have not completed every class on that list by the end of your freshman year, something has gone wrong.

As one example from the list, the course summary for 18.02 (Multivariable Calculus) is as follows, from MIT's Course Catalog:

"Calculus of several variables. Vector algebra in 3-space, determinants, matrices. Vector-valued functions of one variable, space motion. Scalar functions of several variables: partial differentiation, gradient, optimization techniques. Double integrals and line integrals in the plane; exact differentials and conservative fields; Green's theorem and applications, triple integrals, line and surface integrals in space, Divergence theorem, Stokes' theorem; applications."

I assume that you and a number of people on this board would have no trouble passing these classes, particularly when you were college-age, but the Admissions Office shouldn't be in the business of approving candidates that can't pass hard graduation requirements, and you need a bit of a pushed IQ to get through that material.

None of that material is remotely difficult to learn and get throught for the first time, if you are a student with no day job or child caring responsibilities that is.

Not that I went to MIT, but the material remains the same even if you study it somewhere else ;-)

I admit trying to learn it between say 2330 and 0000 after being busy all day and having to get up at 6am might be difficult.

Anyone about 100- 115 IQ wise really shouldn't struggle with it if they actually try imho.

Putting SBFs intelligence lower bound as...median..

Anyone about 100- 115 IQ wise really shouldn't struggle with it if they actually try imho.

You severely underestimate how stupid I am 🤣

Not that I went to MIT, but the material remains the same even if you study it somewhere else ;-)

MIT is not a plug and chug school. Their goal is to create engineers and scientists who understand the technology they use/manage on a deep level.

Deep understanding of first year undergraduate material?

Deep understanding, as relevant for scientists or engineers, of the stuff previously listed is still quite superficial.

Edit: For clarity, superficial as in a first year undergraduate course as part of training for scientists or engineers.

I do agree - comparing the deep knowledge in computer science between MIT/CMU/etc grads and even just the next tier of CS universities is night and day - but I was under the impression that much of that happens after freshman year. In which case this…

None of that material is remotely difficult to learn and get throught for the first time, if you are a student with no day job or child caring responsibilities that is.

…makes a bit more sense, even if I think @Azth rather underestimates how much difficulty the average 100-IQ person would have with something like calculus or physics. Like, for someone smart, even something like 15-213 in CMU is possibly doable solo, let alone freshman calculus (not even analysis!), physics, chemistry, and biology.

I guess what I mean is that both of you are kind of right but some statements are kind of wrong? @Azth underestimates the intelligence needed to take those classes without trouble, and you overestimate the deep learning required in such entry level courses, but would nevertheless be on point about the degree generally.

Yes, I can accept that.

Maybe I underestimate the intelligence reuqired - like stokes theorem is brought up by another poster and that is, at a deep level, implcitly obvious and formalising it is straightforward, dare I say trivial so perhaps I fell into the typical mind fallacy trap (although I am retarded).

Do you really think if you asked a sample of 100 IQ people to learn Stokes' theorem (perhaps with some monetary incentive) to the extent they could describe it and use it in applications that most would be able to?

Yes, once you filter for those who don't know calculus, other prerequisites, have sufficient time, etc. Pay them to learn the prequesites then stokes theorem. I think the main barrier would not be that people can't understand it but that they simply do not care.

Yeah, I think most of us can agree Bankman-Fried is smart. Not as smart as made out when everyone was polishing his shoes with their tongues because he was worth (notional) billions, but not an ordinary dumb criminal either.

Smart in one particular way, but not street-smart enough to know to keep his damn mouth shut. Caroline Ellison seems to be smarter than that, I think she did one NYT interview (but I might be wrong about that) but otherwise has said nothing. Singh and Wang, his co-founders, seem to have dropped off the radar altogether (although the authorities might be on their track). It's Bankman-Fried who keeps stoking the fires with interviews and appearances and what-not.

What are the odds he's making a noble sacrifice play to draw all the heat away from his partners?

I don't think so, he seems to be throwing blame around on everyone he can think of but he was only careless, not intentionally fraudulent.

More like 99%. Even legit smart guys do not get into jane street. You need another tier of intelligence above that.

That’s still just 135. 90-95% would be just 125-130. The 1% aren’t all actual geniuses.

employment at Jane Street suggest he is probably at least 90-95th percentile

That's conservative. Jane Street doesn't hire 90th percentile interns. They work pretty hard to ensure all their interns are 99+ in quantitative skills

For me, it's just parsimony. I have no faith in colleges in general any more, and Sam has demonstrated his ability to manipulate elite institutions, and is also a goober. It could be that he is high-IQ and a goober, or that he's a goober all around and simply bamboozled MIT the same way he did a bunch of others - or it might be that he simply had a lucky interpersonal-connection 'in' to MIT that would have worked whether his boiling-hot IQ was measured in C or F.

I also think it's probably fairly unlikely that we'll get hard data either way, especially now, given the extended time that's passed from any potential objective-ish evaluations like AP exams or SATs. Also, nowadays, it would be trivial for someone of his resources to game a few slightly-harder-to-fake signals, like a ghostwritten StackOverflow profile and some boilerplate personal projects on a GitHub account.

But given the sheer stupidity and utter agnosticism towards the very idea of personal consequences he has displayed so far, I feel like I can safely say he's probably real dumb, in the classic sense, excepting for his ability to lie and manipulate people (which, in fairness, is a non-trivial skill, but also one not necessarily interacting with deep math, science, and programming geekery). I predict that no actual evidence of Sam doing anything difficult and valuable with anything not vulnerable to social pressure, where the results can be verified (meaning mostly math or programming, since those are things I feel I could verify myself) will be found. I am not super-invested in this theory, and I happily admit this is purely a balance-of-probabilities as I see it; I'd be delighted for someone to turn up, e.g., a deeper dive into Sam's LoL rankings, if nothing more objective can be found.

He does seem to have some sort of charisma which, frankly, I wouldn't expect from his appearance. That Sequoia article is embarrassing in how hard the writer is squeeing over him, and it's really hard to know why, unless Bankman-Fried has some in-person ability to baffle you with his bullshit. I cannot get over the account of the Zoom call where Bankman-Fried is looking for funding and he gives some waffle in response to "so what can you do with your crypto exchange?" and they all fall over themselves to throw money at him:

Bailhe remembers it the same way: “We had a great meeting with Sam, but the last question, which I remember Alfred asking, was, ‘So, everything you’re building is great, but what is your long-term vision for FTX?’”

That’s when SBF told Sequoia about the so-called super-app: “I want FTX to be a place where you can do anything you want with your next dollar. You can buy bitcoin. You can send money in whatever currency to any friend anywhere in the world. You can buy a banana. You can do anything you want with your money from inside FTX.”

Suddenly, the chat window on Sequoia’s side of the Zoom lights up with partners freaking out.

“I LOVE THIS FOUNDER,” typed one partner.

“I am a 10 out of 10,” pinged another.

“YES!!!” exclaimed a third.

...The B round raised a billion dollars. Soon afterward came the “meme round”: $420.69 million from 69 investors.

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.

So I find myself convinced that, if SBF can keep his wits about him in the years ahead, he’s going to slay—that, just as Alameda was a stepping stone to FTX, FTX will be to the super-app. Banking will be disrupted and transformed by crypto, just as media was transformed and disrupted by the web. Something of the sort must happen eventually, as the current system, with its layers upon layers of intermediaries, is antiquated and prone to crashing—the global financial crisis of 2008 was just the latest in a long line of failures that occurred because banks didn’t actually know what was on their balance sheets. Crypto is money that can audit itself, no accountant or bookkeeper needed, and thus a financial system with the blockchain built in can, in theory, cut out most of the financial middlemen, to the advantage of all. Of course, that’s the pitch of every crypto company out there. 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.

If you were familiar with the interview process at Jane Street you would know that you were wrong.

Would you care to elaborate?

I know nothing about Jane St. other than they're a finance shop that is known for brain-teasers in their interviews. If they have in-depth procedures for, e.g., double-blinding the results of applicants' written responses to their math and statistics questions, so that the person deciding "Yes, this answer shows sufficient mastery of the topic and reasoning skills." has no cues from college or name, then that's a significant data point in favor of me being wrong, and I'd welcome it being pointed out.

But I've been in IT for a while and I know exactly how much brain-teaser questions (or, for that matter, basic tests like FizzBuzz) are actually treated as hard checks when either upper management or even just the interviewer in question really wants the interviewee to pass, and it is not much at all. And I absolutely do not consider Jane Street a quasi-priesthood of intellectual integrity, and that every employee working for them cares utterly about the incorruptible truth, because (again), they hired SBF to trade crypto for them.

But again, I know no specifics, and if Jane Street has specific procedures and checks in place to stop a charismatic fraud from joining their august ranks, I'd love to hear about them in more detail.

And I absolutely do not consider Jane Street a quasi-priesthood of intellectual integrity, and that every employee working for them cares utterly about the incorruptible truth, because (again), they hired SBF to trade crypto for them.

He worked at JS in 2014-2017. The crypto trading was in 2018 with his own money or other money, unrelated to JS.

As someone who's gone through the Jane Street interview loop (no offer), I never was asked brain teasers; its questions are harder and more rigorously evaluated than any I've gotten at FAANG companies (many offers). As much as I'd like to write it off as their bias for privileged scion, there's no real reason to think that. Take that anecdote for what it's worth.

I'd be terrified of getting fizzbuzz at Jane Street; they'd be expecting something like this.

He said multiple times he played LoL to distract his brain while doing other things, and that he never cared about rank. The fact that people think his League of Legends ranking could actually correlate to his IQ in this thread is surprisingly high.

What the heck does the fact that SBF said something (in this case, something nakedly self-serving) have to do with reality, reason, or any truth about the world?

It could be that this is the case, that SBF chooses to play a competitive ranked multiplayer game and generally bring his random teammates down, and deal with a notoriously stressful and distracting environment that (to my knowledge) no one else says is a good flow-supporting distraction like music or walking, and that he puts in zero effort because he doesn't care.

Or, alternatively, he could play the game because LoL is the kind of thing that smart, nerdy, driven people play (because it's so miserable for the casual player), wholly as part of a brand-building activity, and that he not only has no real interest in the game beyond the bare superficial needed to use it as a prop, and the reason he has not gitten gud in his hundreds of hours of play is because either he is profoundly uninterested in learning, improving, and gaining skills, or because he can't, and bronze league is his natural skill ceiling. (Also, as a note: this is entirely from second-hand absorption from one of my friends who plays MOBAs and extremely cursory research. I could be absolutely wrong about the rank of his accounts, the hours he's spent playing, and what both signify. I eagerly await any LoL-players present to chime in with first-hand information.)

My current position is that everything SBF says or has said, and that everything everyone around him who would plausibly benefit from him looking good or be punished for blowing the whistle on him, is suspect. He's a super-affirmative-action-hire, basically; he could be as competent and smart as his rep and just happened to fail horribly in these few cases (or, possibly, used to have been extremely smart and competent and then fried his brain on nootropics), just as an affirmative action hire maybe possibly good have gotten their job even if they'd been evaluated fairly, but there's no real way to know.

Or, the null set is that SBF is incredibly fucked-up to the point that he somehow enjoys what would be an otherwise painful and salt-inducing experience. There are people in the world who can eat durians or jellied scorpions or whatever and actually like it, maybe mining the League of Legends angle isn't very productive and has little implications for the things we know he did.

Yeah, again from that article and things his 'psychiatrist' (the guy whose job apparently was to write prescriptions for the Adderall etc. type drugs the FTX/Alameda people were on) said, Bankman-Fried has few interests. Doesn't read books, doesn't watch movies, is a vegan, isn't interested in fine food, etc. So playing vidya games is one of the, or maybe only, hobby he has.

Or, alternatively, he could play the game because LoL is the kind of thing that smart, nerdy, driven people play (because it's so miserable for the casual player), wholly as part of a brand-building activity, and that he not only has no real interest in the game beyond the bare superficial needed to use it as a prop

This is a great point, if he truly had a crafted/scripted persona to sell to VCs and finance folks, as well as crypto maxis and regulators. I still haven't bought the whole 'he's really a genius mastermind' narrative, I think it's likely he truly was nerdy and raised in an extremely weird way, but got nerd sniped by naive utilitarianism.

The fact that people think his League of Legends ranking could actually correlate to his IQ in this thread is surprisingly high.

IQ supremacists online seem weirdly attached to proxies for IQ tests, so that they can then turn that proxy produced IQ to an indication of ability at {x}. I've noted before the difficulties with layering multiple potential correlation margins-of-error on top of each other.

I've noticed this as well - Chess was the game of choice for a long until time it was conclusively proven that there isn't a real link between IQ and chess. Helps that Magnus Carlson, the world champion of the past few years, refuses to get his IQ tested and specifically argues chess masters can't be too intelligent.

I hope there are studies being done on the link between League of Legends (or MOBAs in general) and IQ. Unfortunately studying IQ becomes less and less fashionable every year, unfortunately.

How would one equalize for effort? It seems like prep, especially in terms of research, is going to mean too much to any game outcomes for it to be a useful IQ proxy. That seems an insuperable barrier to using any casual hobby. Only things in which we can presume an average effort of "full" work as proxies for ability, things like competitive levels of sport, schools, and professions. Otherwise we're rating effort not ability.

It's worth nothing that correlations are likely to increase with ability. That is, being good at chess is not that highly correlated with IQ, but being among the best in the world is highly predictive of having a high IQ, too.

Still, there's something pretty funny about the suggestion that a guy's ranking in a video game is an indicator of intelligence. It's like suggesting that a guy who wins his fantasy league every year would be a good NFL GM.

Paul DePodesta seems to be doing pretty well career wise even if he mostly gets hired by loser teams, they tend to improve after bringing him on.

Paul DePodesta has also been working in Major League front offices since he got out of college. It's not like he got hired off the street after someone saw how he dominated his roto league.

Have you ever met a < 100 - 1sd IQ person trying to bamboozle you? They are not very good at it.

I am quite sure SBF must be > 100 on the basis that he managed to run FTX and related organizations for several years. Maybe he scores better on verbal than math, but I think there are all indications he is above average, because your average manager and quant certainly are. Difficult to say if it was "boiling hot", but where did that claim from anyway? You don't need boiling hot for score > 105 or even >115, and I'd guess >50% chances he is above that cutoff.

I feel like there's a point around good toupees here; it could be that I've been bamboozled by dozens of low-IQ people and just never though to check.

As for my boiling comment, I was making a joke along the lines of room-temperature IQ, in that 212 (F) and 100 (C) are both boiling depending on your measure. And, to be clear, I don't think that SBF is significantly below average, and assume he's between 107 - 115 IQ generally just based on his heritage.

But I put no faith in his words, his presentation of himself, and any evaluation by someone who would either gain by reporting him smarter or be put at risk of retaliation by reporting him dumber as indicators of his smartness. I think that his first talent is shamelessness, and his second is creativity in exploiting trust, and his third is in presentation to limit the number of people who think to check on his first two strengths, and while he could also be quite smart at the shape-rotate-y stuff (and is probably not blisteringly incompetent at it), I see at present absolutely no reason to assume that SBF is "really really good at STEM/maths".

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A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


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