primeideal (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
primeideal) wrote2023-10-05 04:53 pm
primeideal) wrote2023-10-05 04:53 pm
Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking
Someone who's eccentric but honest and successful in their chosen field deserves the benefit of the doubt a lot more than someone who's eccentric and credibly accused of major crimes. Like, innocent until proven guilty and all that, but I think there's a lot of evidence to suggest that Sam Bankman-Fried was doing fraud.
But all the same, the things that reviews have picked out from the new biography to kind of gawk at are weird. Haha, look at this guy who doesn't appreciate how important fashion is! This guy struggles with facial expressions, what a weirdo! I kind of thought we were past that?
I'm not part of the effective altruism movement (which is probably good, I think it would likely make me even more neurotic; traditional religion probably takes that place for me). But the stuff about "wow, this guy claims he wants to do good for Humanity as an abstract but can't even care about individual humans..." yeah, so do a lot of people?? Like, maybe I'm just self-selecting towards communities of other people like me, but I feel like even the "chattering classes" have a lot of wild and out-there worldviews of their own and are in no place to talk. This, like, fulfills every stereotype about "normies" that I thought we'd discredited several decades ago.
It's "Trump has no pets" all over again. Which, speaking of--if you're a catastrophist and prophesying doom about how Trump is the worst thing ever!!!! and if we don't defeat him it's the end of the world!!!!, can you blame someone for considering bribing him to not run? Like, I would not do that myself, but I also don't have $5 billion to throw around. If I did...IDK, it's like, people urging others to self-flagellate and then acting shocked, shocked I tell you when people actually try taking extreme steps.
Again, there's a good chance that Bankman-Fried mismanaged his companies and maybe his colleagues' testimony will reflect as much, in which case, absolutely, yeah, criticize him for actually doing crimes. Not for being a nerd.
(This is also probably a side affect of the newspapers only recycling a few articles and quotes over and over again and just reprinting other papers' quotes in the guise of "articles," and I'm stuck doomscrolling newspapers at work because I don't know how to actually do my actual job and am just desperately hoping I can move to a different position rather than continue to waste my current boss's time by pleading for help. Which is a different problem.)
But all the same, the things that reviews have picked out from the new biography to kind of gawk at are weird. Haha, look at this guy who doesn't appreciate how important fashion is! This guy struggles with facial expressions, what a weirdo! I kind of thought we were past that?
I'm not part of the effective altruism movement (which is probably good, I think it would likely make me even more neurotic; traditional religion probably takes that place for me). But the stuff about "wow, this guy claims he wants to do good for Humanity as an abstract but can't even care about individual humans..." yeah, so do a lot of people?? Like, maybe I'm just self-selecting towards communities of other people like me, but I feel like even the "chattering classes" have a lot of wild and out-there worldviews of their own and are in no place to talk. This, like, fulfills every stereotype about "normies" that I thought we'd discredited several decades ago.
It's "Trump has no pets" all over again. Which, speaking of--if you're a catastrophist and prophesying doom about how Trump is the worst thing ever!!!! and if we don't defeat him it's the end of the world!!!!, can you blame someone for considering bribing him to not run? Like, I would not do that myself, but I also don't have $5 billion to throw around. If I did...IDK, it's like, people urging others to self-flagellate and then acting shocked, shocked I tell you when people actually try taking extreme steps.
Again, there's a good chance that Bankman-Fried mismanaged his companies and maybe his colleagues' testimony will reflect as much, in which case, absolutely, yeah, criticize him for actually doing crimes. Not for being a nerd.
(This is also probably a side affect of the newspapers only recycling a few articles and quotes over and over again and just reprinting other papers' quotes in the guise of "articles," and I'm stuck doomscrolling newspapers at work because I don't know how to actually do my actual job and am just desperately hoping I can move to a different position rather than continue to waste my current boss's time by pleading for help. Which is a different problem.)