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Is it a coincidence that CE and SBF were both raised by professors at elite institutions (MIT/Stanford)? Or are these just two people who were academically succ
by gnicholas 4y ago
Is it a coincidence that CE and SBF were both raised by professors at elite institutions (MIT/Stanford)? Or are these just two people who were academically successful and parlayed that success into what looks to be a massive fraud?
- vkou 4y agoPeople who went to elite schools hang out with other people who went to elite schools. This isn't particularly surprising.
- gnicholas 4y agoI was referring to the hubris that is presumably required to even attempt a fraud on this scale. Were the uniquely able to get away with this because of their bona fides, or were they uniquely predisposed to attempt this, due to the circumstances of their upbringing?
- hammock 4y agoI'm sure plenty of "non-elite" people have the hubris. Just not the access to capital
- EMM_386 4y agoThey did both get hired by Jane Street, which is not so easy to do to. So they did have the "smarts", it just depends on if this started out as, or became, a massive fraud.
- KMag 4y agoJust a wild guess, but my guess is that they intended to run everything legitimately, but bought into their own hype, and then got trapped by their egos into not admitting defeat. Once honestly admitting defeat was off the table, I'm not sure there were any non-fraudulent options left. I'm not saying the fraud is excusable, but it's entirely understandable how they may have been trapped by their own egos.
- ARandomerDude 4y agoGiven that most of the university establishment is a massive fraud, it seems they likely drank in the culture from a young age.
- enkid 4y agoPeople used the association with the elite institutions as a substitution for any sort of analysis about their strategy or actual credentials. It's not that the association caused the issue, but it allowed these people access to people and money they normally would never have. You aren't more likely to be a crook if you have parents who are professors at MIT, but your scams are more likely to be successful and people are less likely to use common sense because they are more likely to accept things they don't understand if they perceive someone as smarter than them. Something similar happened with LTCM, which brought together multiple Nobel laureates in economics only to go bankrupt 3 years after its founding.
- quartesixte 4y agoI wonder if it’s some combination of access + exposure + hubris. When you are raised by well-off professors who also happen to be players in the political sphere, phrases like “well, that’s just not for us kiddo” or “happiness is when you learn to accept your place in life” are probably not heard at the dinner table. And if you hit a special kind of streak of never encountering real failure, hubris gain can be massive.