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If FTX and the pathetic Elon-simping txts from the Twitter lawsuit discovery have revealed anything, it's that once you reach a certain level of wealth you're s

If FTX and the pathetic Elon-simping txts from the Twitter lawsuit discovery have revealed anything, it's that once you reach a certain level of wealth you're so immune from consequences that losing money has zero effect on you personally, and since most of these guys are extremely ego-centric to begin with, that removes the only constraint they seriously cared about. There are exceptions to this, but that seems to be the trend. Billionaires in general aren't playing 4D chess, why would they? 4D chess is hard, requires sacrifice and valuing something bigger than oneself and one's bank account. Much easier to jump on popular hype trains. If it works you look like a genius and have a million stans to stroke you off, and money number go up so you can flex on other billionaires. If it fails nothing really happens to you personally. SBF wasn't actually at that level, but he had enough paper wealth that he clearly thought he was. We're watching the wealthy equivalent of that COVID-denier who, with their last breath before being intubated, calls the doctors and nurses who diagnosed them liars.

spookthesunset 4y ago
> We're watching the wealthy equivalent of that COVID-denier who, with their last breath before being intubated, calls the doctors and nurses who diagnosed them liars. Which is a work of fiction. Such a thing probably happened no more than a few times. The only reason it gets parroted back is because it serves as a nice bit of propaganda to gin up fear and get people to fall in line.
- babypuncher 4y ago
  Herman Cain's Twitter account was still tweeting COVID denialism after he died of COVID.
  - macspoofing 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - raverbashing 4y ago
      > making it seem like his death was justified. Death by Denialism? Darwin sends his regards "The good thing about science is that it doesn't give a f about what you think"
      - macspoofing 4y ago
        [flagged]
        scottLobster 4y ago
        The science is with him how? Masking is somewhat effective, even the cloth masks may prevent infection in passing. It's only when sharing the same space for extended periods of time that it becomes ineffective, and N95s and Surgical masks remain effective in such environments. Before vaccines masking and lockdowns were the best things we could do to even blunt the death count, refusing to blunt the death count because you considered masks of all things inconvenient is still repugnant, selfish behavior. And validating said behavior in others from a position of influence is even worse. He may or may not have gotten COVID anyway before the vaccines, or perhaps he would have avoided it until vaccines were available and survived, like many people did. We'll never know, because he didn't even try and actively made the problem worse than it had to be. Now there were public health measures that were misguided, outright dumb, and completely ineffective. But the fact that they existed does not vindicate Herman Cain or anyone who agreed with him at the time. They weren't misjudged prophets who knew something other people didn't, they were selfish people making selfish decisions who happened to be partially correct, but also made the problem worse than it had to be.
        macspoofing 4y ago
        >Masking is somewhat effective, even the cloth masks may prevent infection in passing. It's only when sharing the same space for extended periods of time that it becomes ineffective, and N95s and Surgical masks remain effective in such environments. KN95/N95 - yes. Surgical and cloth - very limited, especially at the population level. Large-scale masking was MAYBE effective at reducing transmission by something like 10%. This means that it wasn't stopping anything. >Before vaccines masking and lockdowns were the best things we could do to even blunt the death count, Woah woah woah. No. That is not true at all. It isn't true now, and it wasn't true then. The policy of "lockdowns" (including school closures) or "no lockdowns" wasn't the only thing on the table. It was certainly presented this way, and ANYONE who dared to question that was labeled, well ... the way you labeled Herman Cain in the next paragraph, or worse. The sad part is, we had a century of knowledge when it came to fighting respiratory pandemics .. that we threw out and just winged it based on the Chinese zero-COVID policy (even though it was clear as day that China was lying about its numbers and in hindsight their zero-COVID policy was an abject failure). We could have done targeted lockdowns at high-risk populations, and while letting the low-risk population live their lives and take appropriate measures commensurate to their risk-tolerance. Sweden was heavily criticized for that kind of policy - WHY? Florida was heavily criticized. In the end, there was no difference in outcomes when comparing lockdown regions to non-lockdown regions - comparing Florida to California. >They weren't misjudged prophets who knew something other people didn't, they were selfish people making selfish decisions who happened to be partially correct, but also made the problem worse than it had to be. They weren't prophets. They were people who had major issues with the public health policy. And even if they turned out they were wrong (and in hindsight, they weren't wrong), it was disgusting how celebrated, for example, Herman Cain's death was EVEN THOUGH he was just a victim of viral pandemic, like millions of others. Him masking would not have made a difference, just as it hasn't made a difference to 70% of the population that, regardless of masks, lockdowns, and vaccines, got COVID. The rest of the population will get COVID eventually. Speaking of misguided prophets .. in July 2020, the consensus was that vaccines aren't going to be there potentially for years - so what was the end-game for lockdown policy? I remember that that time. There literally was the idea, amongst the lockdown proponents, that we could kill the pandemic by locking-down even though it was clear that was never going to happen.
- CharlesW 4y ago
  > Which is a work of fiction. Anyone who's spent time browsing r/HermanCainAward, or knows nurses who've been on the COVID front lines, can assure you that it's not. People die horrible deaths, often clawing harder than ever to the conspiracy theories they've been fed.
- scottLobster 4y ago
  How does pointing out idiots doing idiotic things "gin up fear"? If it gins up anything it's pity. The fearful ones are the people being intubated and denying the cause up to their last breath, they're so fearful that they might be even partly responsible for their circumstances, they lack the moral constitution to admit it. They're weak, and weak people do not induce fear unless they're in a mob. If I showed you a homeless person dead from a heroin overdose, would you fear heroin? No, because it's entirely within your control whether you use it or not. I think you need to learn how propaganda works.
jasmer 4y ago
Sam is going to jail maybe for the rest of his life, that is a 'consequence'. Elon is facing a $25B write-down of Twitter the moment, that's also a 'consequence'. They are definitely playing 2D++ chess, and a bit of cheating, making us think they are playing 3D sometimes, but they are not stupid. Most of their glib stuff is calculated and it works to great effect. Musk will probably pull through and still be one of the richest dudes ever with Tesla and Space X still floating, even if the rest burns, that's still way ahead.
- tr_user 4y ago
  If Elon was not rich and he did the same things you'd call him dumb. Why are we pretending someone who impulsively decided they'd buy twitter without due diligence "not stupid"?
  - bboygravity 4y ago
    The statement that he hasn't done due dilligence and the draw down on the investment are both pure speculation. Furthermore it doesn't make much sense to calculate drawdown of a 40 billion USD investment with a timeframe of a few months. The idea of any large investment is to make it grow with time after long term interventions (years, decades). This all sounds like very silly Elon bashing to me.
    - acdha 4y ago
      You might want to read more about the terms of the deal. Musk specifically waived due diligence, which is why he couldn't break the deal when he wanted to: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/06/in-letter-to-twitter-musk-threatens-to-kill-merger-deal-over-spam-data/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/06/in-letter-to-twi... This was unusual to the point of getting criticism from a judge when Twitter sued to force him to follow through on the deal (which bought them at a significant premium over market): https://www.businessinsider.com/judge-calls-elon-musk-legal-team-suboptimal-twitter-legal-battle-2022-9 https://www.businessinsider.com/judge-calls-elon-musk-legal-... > Furthermore it doesn't make much sense to calculate drawdown of a 40 billion USD investment with a timeframe of a few months. The idea of any large investment is to make it grow with time after long term interventions (years, decades). This is vaguely true but in this case the big question is how he'll make it massively more profitable than it's ever been. Twitter was marginally profitable for the last few years but the massive debt load Musk saddled the company with means they need to increase profits by whole number multiples simply to catch up to where they were in 2019-2021. It's not enough to get advertisers back, they have to significantly increase their spending.

spookthesunset 4y ago

> We're watching the wealthy equivalent of that COVID-denier who, with their last breath before being intubated, calls the doctors and nurses who diagnosed them liars. Which is a work of fiction. Such a thing probably happened no more than a few times. The only reason it gets parroted back is because it serves as a nice bit of propaganda to gin up fear and get people to fall in line.

babypuncher 4y ago
Herman Cain's Twitter account was still tweeting COVID denialism after he died of COVID.
- macspoofing 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - raverbashing 4y ago
    > making it seem like his death was justified. Death by Denialism? Darwin sends his regards "The good thing about science is that it doesn't give a f about what you think"
    - macspoofing 4y ago
      [flagged]
      - scottLobster 4y ago
        The science is with him how? Masking is somewhat effective, even the cloth masks may prevent infection in passing. It's only when sharing the same space for extended periods of time that it becomes ineffective, and N95s and Surgical masks remain effective in such environments. Before vaccines masking and lockdowns were the best things we could do to even blunt the death count, refusing to blunt the death count because you considered masks of all things inconvenient is still repugnant, selfish behavior. And validating said behavior in others from a position of influence is even worse. He may or may not have gotten COVID anyway before the vaccines, or perhaps he would have avoided it until vaccines were available and survived, like many people did. We'll never know, because he didn't even try and actively made the problem worse than it had to be. Now there were public health measures that were misguided, outright dumb, and completely ineffective. But the fact that they existed does not vindicate Herman Cain or anyone who agreed with him at the time. They weren't misjudged prophets who knew something other people didn't, they were selfish people making selfish decisions who happened to be partially correct, but also made the problem worse than it had to be.
        macspoofing 4y ago
        >Masking is somewhat effective, even the cloth masks may prevent infection in passing. It's only when sharing the same space for extended periods of time that it becomes ineffective, and N95s and Surgical masks remain effective in such environments. KN95/N95 - yes. Surgical and cloth - very limited, especially at the population level. Large-scale masking was MAYBE effective at reducing transmission by something like 10%. This means that it wasn't stopping anything. >Before vaccines masking and lockdowns were the best things we could do to even blunt the death count, Woah woah woah. No. That is not true at all. It isn't true now, and it wasn't true then. The policy of "lockdowns" (including school closures) or "no lockdowns" wasn't the only thing on the table. It was certainly presented this way, and ANYONE who dared to question that was labeled, well ... the way you labeled Herman Cain in the next paragraph, or worse. The sad part is, we had a century of knowledge when it came to fighting respiratory pandemics .. that we threw out and just winged it based on the Chinese zero-COVID policy (even though it was clear as day that China was lying about its numbers and in hindsight their zero-COVID policy was an abject failure). We could have done targeted lockdowns at high-risk populations, and while letting the low-risk population live their lives and take appropriate measures commensurate to their risk-tolerance. Sweden was heavily criticized for that kind of policy - WHY? Florida was heavily criticized. In the end, there was no difference in outcomes when comparing lockdown regions to non-lockdown regions - comparing Florida to California. >They weren't misjudged prophets who knew something other people didn't, they were selfish people making selfish decisions who happened to be partially correct, but also made the problem worse than it had to be. They weren't prophets. They were people who had major issues with the public health policy. And even if they turned out they were wrong (and in hindsight, they weren't wrong), it was disgusting how celebrated, for example, Herman Cain's death was EVEN THOUGH he was just a victim of viral pandemic, like millions of others. Him masking would not have made a difference, just as it hasn't made a difference to 70% of the population that, regardless of masks, lockdowns, and vaccines, got COVID. The rest of the population will get COVID eventually. Speaking of misguided prophets .. in July 2020, the consensus was that vaccines aren't going to be there potentially for years - so what was the end-game for lockdown policy? I remember that that time. There literally was the idea, amongst the lockdown proponents, that we could kill the pandemic by locking-down even though it was clear that was never going to happen.
CharlesW 4y ago
> Which is a work of fiction. Anyone who's spent time browsing r/HermanCainAward, or knows nurses who've been on the COVID front lines, can assure you that it's not. People die horrible deaths, often clawing harder than ever to the conspiracy theories they've been fed.
scottLobster 4y ago
How does pointing out idiots doing idiotic things "gin up fear"? If it gins up anything it's pity. The fearful ones are the people being intubated and denying the cause up to their last breath, they're so fearful that they might be even partly responsible for their circumstances, they lack the moral constitution to admit it. They're weak, and weak people do not induce fear unless they're in a mob. If I showed you a homeless person dead from a heroin overdose, would you fear heroin? No, because it's entirely within your control whether you use it or not. I think you need to learn how propaganda works.

jasmer 4y ago

Sam is going to jail maybe for the rest of his life, that is a 'consequence'. Elon is facing a $25B write-down of Twitter the moment, that's also a 'consequence'. They are definitely playing 2D++ chess, and a bit of cheating, making us think they are playing 3D sometimes, but they are not stupid. Most of their glib stuff is calculated and it works to great effect. Musk will probably pull through and still be one of the richest dudes ever with Tesla and Space X still floating, even if the rest burns, that's still way ahead.

tr_user 4y ago
If Elon was not rich and he did the same things you'd call him dumb. Why are we pretending someone who impulsively decided they'd buy twitter without due diligence "not stupid"?
- bboygravity 4y ago
  The statement that he hasn't done due dilligence and the draw down on the investment are both pure speculation. Furthermore it doesn't make much sense to calculate drawdown of a 40 billion USD investment with a timeframe of a few months. The idea of any large investment is to make it grow with time after long term interventions (years, decades). This all sounds like very silly Elon bashing to me.
  - acdha 4y ago
    You might want to read more about the terms of the deal. Musk specifically waived due diligence, which is why he couldn't break the deal when he wanted to: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/06/in-letter-to-twitter-musk-threatens-to-kill-merger-deal-over-spam-data/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/06/in-letter-to-twi... This was unusual to the point of getting criticism from a judge when Twitter sued to force him to follow through on the deal (which bought them at a significant premium over market): https://www.businessinsider.com/judge-calls-elon-musk-legal-team-suboptimal-twitter-legal-battle-2022-9 https://www.businessinsider.com/judge-calls-elon-musk-legal-... > Furthermore it doesn't make much sense to calculate drawdown of a 40 billion USD investment with a timeframe of a few months. The idea of any large investment is to make it grow with time after long term interventions (years, decades). This is vaguely true but in this case the big question is how he'll make it massively more profitable than it's ever been. Twitter was marginally profitable for the last few years but the massive debt load Musk saddled the company with means they need to increase profits by whole number multiples simply to catch up to where they were in 2019-2021. It's not enough to get advertisers back, they have to significantly increase their spending.