dr_analog
top 1% of underdog fetishists
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User ID: 583
dr_analog
top 1% of underdog fetishists
6hr ago
In this case the carpenter decided to also be an electrician and plumber and mason and the house burned down because her psycho boyfriend, who owned the house, was tapping the gas line for his craft brewery down the street.
It's probably fine if she sticks to carpentry.
Somewhat related but I was thinking the other day about how a lot of EA people have gotten obscenely wealthy but none of the EA problems really got solved. Shouldn’t bed nets in Africa be fully funded by now?
I think bednets are in fact fully funded and they try investing elsewhere now I misremembered, the marginal bednet today is lower impact than the average bednet. Still worth funding but the bang for the buck isn't as high as it used to be.
I think the central premise of EA charity is wrong. You can’t save lives on the cheap. Many problems are intractable and can’t be solved by just giving money. You actually have to be in the trenches. Giving money to charities is mostly just waste.
Part of moving the needle in Africa or other hell holes is figuring out where to allocate the money so it doesn't get immediately embezzled and also doesn't contribute to poverty trap issues. This isn't just a throw money at it problem. Indeed, part of why DOGE gutting USAID hurt so much is because EA relied on some of this existing infrastructure. Aside from funding odd trans art in Ecuador here and there, and for being a vector for soft power in foreign policy, it also helped make aid auditable. USAID paid for the census data, the logistics chain, and the in-country people who notice when money goes missing, which is exactly the infrastructure GiveWell can't do itself.
I had actually interviewed for a job with SBF and realized I was simultaneously interviewing for a job at three companies at once: Alameda, FTX and some crypto product. I had a decade of quant finance experience at that point and I was talking to a bunch of kids with like, 2. I won't say I predicted they were up to the shenanigans they were but that they had people at the top stepping between companies so casually struck me as conflicted and I didn't continue. These kids felt in over their head and I didn't want to be part of the shit show.
Anyway, the optics are bad but if you ignore them Ellison is probably a decent employee. She did pass a Jane Street interview and left them to pursue Alameda; she would probably be good at most technical jobs. She probably comes cheap given how radioactive she is otherwise. On paper, if you ignore the optics, she's probably a bargain.
Did she fuck up? Oh sure. She should have done more to pump the brakes on bad record keeping practices but that's incompatible with the move fast break things model SBF was pushing. The fact that they had a romantic relationship would also compromise her.
Red flags abounds but that's not something I expect most people to navigate well. Iln most industries what she did doesn't even matter but in quant finance you need a large compliance team and you need to check with them every time you take a shit. I am not surprised they didn't grow this out in 18 months and racked up process crimes left and right because building cool shit was more fun than meeting with the compliance team[1]
I'm looking forward to more drama though. Austin doesn't strike me as a lunatic but the way he writes about her reeks a bit romantic. Oh no!
- SBF also did some blatantly criminal things but a lot of why they imploded was confused record keeping and a lot of why he got such a severe sentence was because US courts pulled FTX Bahamas into US jurisdiction. You don't build FTX Bahamas because you are trying to follow US law and handle US money; they had FTX.US for that and they were solvent and weren't taking the same risks.
In practice, the issue seemed to be mostly framed in terms of identity politics, along the lines of “mistrial caused by obstinate man who refused to listen to reasonable majority of mostly women”. Substitute “black man” and “white women” and this loses its cachet: suddenly it reads like a proud person of color bravely standing up against a group of Karens trying to browbeat him into submission.
I'm surprised at which side of the culture war this falls on. Alternate incendiary explanations: black guy was too dumb/lawless to understand that his purpose on the jury was to apply the particular oddities of MA law when it comes to insanity and instead just nullified the law?
If Xitter can have an endless circle jerk about how online white women are making sexual bigoted arguments for why women should be treated like infants because of their hormones, why can't they also make racial bigot arguments for why black people can't weigh complex topics in a jury box? The white people upheld law and order. The black guy went with his gut.
Since we're rehashing the case, do see Throwaway05's comment from the other week:
- A common response to the media conversation around this case is to criticize women for brainless takes that do not engage with the information about the case or expert commentary. This includes me, I've been frustrated.
- It seems like actual experts in this field are landing on a psychotic process (most likely postpartum psychosis) as the explanation of events. That is to say she is legitimately not guilty by reason of insanity. This moved the needle for me. How can I criticize women for being retarded and not listening to actual information if I don't listen to experts and people with specific knowledge of the case.
- As a legal matter, it sounds like the expectation from knowledgable parties has been a hung jury or not guilty by reason of insanity because of structural, jurisdiction specific aspects of this type of defense in MA.
As a legal matter, a dumb juror might just well say "fuck all that shit I'm not letting you use a bunch of fancy words to try to trick me into saying that bitch walks"
I don't believe this myself. I'm not sure what I believe. I barely followed this case. But the culture war spectacle around it is fascinating.
I think he was up shit's creek anyway once they pulled FTX Bahamas into the US but all of that other stuff didn't help either.
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