7 ms·

> there really is such a thing as a person with a lot of book-learning but less common sense than a sea slug I don't even think SBF had the book-learning, just

> there really is such a thing as a person with a lot of book-learning but less common sense than a sea slug I don't even think SBF had the book-learning, just intellectual arrogance. "I don’t want to say no book is ever worth reading, but I actually do believe something pretty close to that. I think, if you wrote a book, you f---ed up, and it should have been a six-paragraph blog post."

salty_biscuits 3y ago
I had to search to check that the quote was real, that is some spectacular hubris!
- Zanni 3y ago
  If you like that, you should hear what he had to say about Shakespeare: "I could go on and on about the failings of Shakespeare ... but I really shouldn't need to: the Bayesian priors are pretty damning. About half the people born since 1600 have been born in the past 100 years, but it gets much worse than that. When Shakespeare wrote almost all Europeans were busy farming, and very few attended university; few people were even literate—probably as low as ten million people. By contrast there are now upwards of a billion literate people in the Western sphere. What are the odds that the greatest writer would have been born in 1564? The Bayesian priors aren't very favorable." [Going Infinite, p29] Now I get that Shakespeare doesn't appeal to everyone and is definitely an acquired taste, but to judge his work on probability when the work itself is right there to judge on its own merits is like the joke about an economist who sees a hundred dollar bill on the street and says, "If that were a real bill, someone would already have picked it up." He also dismisses the "plot twist" in Much Ado About Nothing (when Beatrice asks Benedick to kill Claudio) as "illogical" and the province of characters who are "one-dimensional and unrealistic" because "I mean, come on—kill someone because ... his fiancée is cheating on him?" As if no actual human being had ever killed out of jealousy, when it's usually one of the main motives for murder. It's like he's visiting from another planet or something.
  - RandomLensman 3y ago
    Luckily, he wasn't asked about Homer. The Bayesian prior there would have been damning!
    - zero_k 3y ago
      Hahahahaha good point!
  - hef19898 3y ago
    Well, we can be really sure that SBF wont change after being convicted.
  - taylorius 3y ago
    "I could go on and on about the failings of Shakespeare ... but I really shouldn't need to: the Bayesian priors are pretty damning." I don't mean to lower the tone, but honestly - what an absolute bell-end!
  - caboteria 3y ago
    > It's like he's visiting from another planet or something. He's visiting from planet Adderall. If you have $26 in your pocket then you're a tweaker but make it $26B and you're an eccentric genius.
  - lubesGordi 3y ago
    That's really insightful into how this guy works. He's judging everything off probabilities to an egregious degree. He's also utilitarian, which doesn't really offer a foundation for any kind of morality because there's no provision against the ends justifying the means.
mejutoco 3y ago
The craziest thing to me is that when he was saying things like that noone in the mainstream media was questioning him. The FT had a very flattering lunch interview with him shortly before his demise. It was embarrassing how they were portraying him.
- xwolfi 3y ago
  But you had Zeke Faux, a specialist, going there, looking at SBF screen and seeing nothing too special too. Blame the "mainstream media" all you want but as long as we refuse (for good reason) to give audit power to journalists, mainstream or specialist, you'll keep reading positive pieces about frauds if they stay hidden purposefully. I'm not sure why you would have wanted to NYT to destroy every company it interviews just for the sake of it. Wouldnt they need proof ? And how do you get them, when they're hidden by a conspiracy ? Plus, the police in the US, Hong Kong and the Bahamas found nothing and waited for Coindesk to publish a leak by CZ, a competitor, to start looking... I say that because at the peak of the crypto fever I couldnt distinguish SBF from, say, the CEO of Kraken, and I suspect it's hindsight convincing you something could have been done.
  - mejutoco 3y ago
    I don't suggest to "destroy" any company, or to say they are guilty of things without proof. The FT did an impressive investigation of Wirecard, for example. There is a difference between destroying a company and making a couple of common sense questions instead of parroting whatever the interviewee wants. Some basic journalistic practices. It is really not so much to ask. EDIT: interviewer/interviewee
    - xwolfi 3y ago
      Agreed but we only ask that after the conspiracy was revealed and honestly it's so mindblowingly stupid it's hard to imagine anyone could have thought they used QuickBooks or just thad no accountant. Again you re asking someth that had been done several times: many people did dig a bit deeper and couldnt find the Alameda hole or the real balance sheets, or the parents siphoning millions and all that stuff that took even time for prosecutors to find. The role of the media isnt to uncover fraud I think, it's to give you a chance to expose one if you know one. If nobody was willing to talk, what s a journo gonna do? Carreyrou, a personal hero, had tons of witnesses coming to him for instance.
dmoo 3y ago
That’s an unfortunate attitude for a guy looking at a stretch with not a lot to pass the time…
- FFP999 3y ago
  Maybe they'll let him play LOL in prison. But I kind of doubt it.
rezonant 3y ago
If he read more, it's possible his spoken grammar might not be so atrocious.
FFP999 3y ago
As I mention in a thread below I'm using "book-smart" as a concise idiomatic way of saying "educated and talented in a traditional academic field", such as mathematics in this case. Kind of unfortunate that I had forgotten that SBF is not actually a big reader. But he did graduate from MIT: perhaps they'll let him hang his diploma on the wall of his cell.
jimmydddd 3y ago
This is true for many non-fiction and business books. :-)
- FFP999 3y ago
  But on the other hand, I can think of a few books that really might have helped him. The Emperor's New Clothes, and also Extraordinary Popular Delusions And The Madness Of Crowds (dated now, still a good read).
LargeTomato 3y ago
He seems smart and excellent at everything he sets his mind to. He just opted to set his mind to math and things that relate to math. That's an easy way to grow up and become a jerk.

salty_biscuits 3y ago

I had to search to check that the quote was real, that is some spectacular hubris!

Zanni 3y ago
If you like that, you should hear what he had to say about Shakespeare: "I could go on and on about the failings of Shakespeare ... but I really shouldn't need to: the Bayesian priors are pretty damning. About half the people born since 1600 have been born in the past 100 years, but it gets much worse than that. When Shakespeare wrote almost all Europeans were busy farming, and very few attended university; few people were even literate—probably as low as ten million people. By contrast there are now upwards of a billion literate people in the Western sphere. What are the odds that the greatest writer would have been born in 1564? The Bayesian priors aren't very favorable." [Going Infinite, p29] Now I get that Shakespeare doesn't appeal to everyone and is definitely an acquired taste, but to judge his work on probability when the work itself is right there to judge on its own merits is like the joke about an economist who sees a hundred dollar bill on the street and says, "If that were a real bill, someone would already have picked it up." He also dismisses the "plot twist" in Much Ado About Nothing (when Beatrice asks Benedick to kill Claudio) as "illogical" and the province of characters who are "one-dimensional and unrealistic" because "I mean, come on—kill someone because ... his fiancée is cheating on him?" As if no actual human being had ever killed out of jealousy, when it's usually one of the main motives for murder. It's like he's visiting from another planet or something.
- RandomLensman 3y ago
  Luckily, he wasn't asked about Homer. The Bayesian prior there would have been damning!
  - zero_k 3y ago
    Hahahahaha good point!
- hef19898 3y ago
  Well, we can be really sure that SBF wont change after being convicted.
- taylorius 3y ago
  "I could go on and on about the failings of Shakespeare ... but I really shouldn't need to: the Bayesian priors are pretty damning." I don't mean to lower the tone, but honestly - what an absolute bell-end!
- caboteria 3y ago
  > It's like he's visiting from another planet or something. He's visiting from planet Adderall. If you have $26 in your pocket then you're a tweaker but make it $26B and you're an eccentric genius.
- lubesGordi 3y ago
  That's really insightful into how this guy works. He's judging everything off probabilities to an egregious degree. He's also utilitarian, which doesn't really offer a foundation for any kind of morality because there's no provision against the ends justifying the means.

mejutoco 3y ago

The craziest thing to me is that when he was saying things like that noone in the mainstream media was questioning him. The FT had a very flattering lunch interview with him shortly before his demise. It was embarrassing how they were portraying him.

xwolfi 3y ago
But you had Zeke Faux, a specialist, going there, looking at SBF screen and seeing nothing too special too. Blame the "mainstream media" all you want but as long as we refuse (for good reason) to give audit power to journalists, mainstream or specialist, you'll keep reading positive pieces about frauds if they stay hidden purposefully. I'm not sure why you would have wanted to NYT to destroy every company it interviews just for the sake of it. Wouldnt they need proof ? And how do you get them, when they're hidden by a conspiracy ? Plus, the police in the US, Hong Kong and the Bahamas found nothing and waited for Coindesk to publish a leak by CZ, a competitor, to start looking... I say that because at the peak of the crypto fever I couldnt distinguish SBF from, say, the CEO of Kraken, and I suspect it's hindsight convincing you something could have been done.
- mejutoco 3y ago
  I don't suggest to "destroy" any company, or to say they are guilty of things without proof. The FT did an impressive investigation of Wirecard, for example. There is a difference between destroying a company and making a couple of common sense questions instead of parroting whatever the interviewee wants. Some basic journalistic practices. It is really not so much to ask. EDIT: interviewer/interviewee
  - xwolfi 3y ago
    Agreed but we only ask that after the conspiracy was revealed and honestly it's so mindblowingly stupid it's hard to imagine anyone could have thought they used QuickBooks or just thad no accountant. Again you re asking someth that had been done several times: many people did dig a bit deeper and couldnt find the Alameda hole or the real balance sheets, or the parents siphoning millions and all that stuff that took even time for prosecutors to find. The role of the media isnt to uncover fraud I think, it's to give you a chance to expose one if you know one. If nobody was willing to talk, what s a journo gonna do? Carreyrou, a personal hero, had tons of witnesses coming to him for instance.

dmoo 3y ago

That’s an unfortunate attitude for a guy looking at a stretch with not a lot to pass the time…

FFP999 3y ago
Maybe they'll let him play LOL in prison. But I kind of doubt it.

rezonant 3y ago

If he read more, it's possible his spoken grammar might not be so atrocious.

FFP999 3y ago

As I mention in a thread below I'm using "book-smart" as a concise idiomatic way of saying "educated and talented in a traditional academic field", such as mathematics in this case. Kind of unfortunate that I had forgotten that SBF is not actually a big reader. But he did graduate from MIT: perhaps they'll let him hang his diploma on the wall of his cell.

jimmydddd 3y ago

This is true for many non-fiction and business books. :-)

FFP999 3y ago
But on the other hand, I can think of a few books that really might have helped him. The Emperor's New Clothes, and also Extraordinary Popular Delusions And The Madness Of Crowds (dated now, still a good read).

LargeTomato 3y ago

He seems smart and excellent at everything he sets his mind to. He just opted to set his mind to math and things that relate to math. That's an easy way to grow up and become a jerk.