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Next to nothing is still something. Contrary to HBD-informed opinions popular in rationalist circles, Jews are a people, not just a sample with higher IQs, like Ph.D holders. Accordingly, they have such as thing as Jewish culture. Some assert it's the culture of hard work, curiosity and striving for justice, or whatever. This is not borne out by research. However, this culture does have a lot of exclusive content. For example, it has the notion of chuzpah, a peculiar moral failing and occasionally strength:
Chutzpah amounts to a total denial of personal responsibility, which renders others speechless and incredulous ... one cannot quite believe that another person totally lacks common human traits like remorse, regret, guilt, sympathy and insight. The implication is at least some degree of psychopathy in the subject, as well as the awestruck amazement of the observer at the display. …"that quality enshrined in a man who, having killed his mother and father, throws himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan."
Disregard for consequences befalling others aside, chutzpah has many faces as a general cognitive-strategic attitude. Chutzpah is the hope that you might be a miracle worker and the belief that «there is a crack in everything», as the Messiah wannabe Leo Cohen sang. Chutzpah is extreme rules-lawyering, the denial that laws of Nature and Nature's God are ontologically different from laws and customs of men. Chutzpah is first-order utilitarianism when you're really sure that you have noticed the skulls and divined the golden road betwixt their piles. Chutzpah is having your cake and eating it too. Chutzpah is paying for something with nothing squared, tokenized collateral of your own futures, crypto farts sniffed by friendly SEC regulators, in the name of giving well. Chutzpah is Harry Yud-Potter gaming every challenge via Time Turner, and Unsong's Karma Houdini of a moral lesson: Comet King overdosing on selfish sinfulness to go to Hell to recarve the Universe without the facet of Evil. Chutzpah is whatever the fuck Yevno Azef was doing and what had caused Lavon affair and guided Soros and Berezovsky and Sacklers and keeps Netanyahu in power, and so on and so forth, permeating the book of history. Chutzpah is hacker's mindset, «one weird trick» praxis, cheerful «high decoupler» insanity of the Ratsphere that begets Sneerclub, and the antithesis of the entire edifice of traditional Christlich, Hajnal line, Western civilization – that is built on predictable cooperation and law of equivalent exchange, viscerally felt as truth.
Arguably it was necessary to kickstart modern finance and enable centuries of sustained economic growth. Maybe it's a mental trait needed to transcend this local optimum and pull humanity kicking and screaming into the era of post-scarcity. But in practice it's more about callous exploitation, «X affair» and «Y-gate», broken lives and burned trust and destroyed roads to better future.
Yes, it is «condemned». Except by Alan M. Dershowitz (who just got settlement with regards to that Epstein sex trafficking stuff):
And he had enough pull to cancel one condemner, at least.
As one lives, one starts to notice this peculiarity, even without familiarizing oneself with Jewish self-reflection. It's just as glaring as high IQs if not more so. But it's more costly to point out – although of course even the IQ stuff can get you slammed hard if you don't spin it just right, that is, with enough chutzpah.
Fortunately Coindesk can cancel a black guy for a Hot Take about Jews in the FTX case. Unfortunately, Coindesk (apparently Jewish-owned) isn't above casually taking shots at other broad demographics who allegedly dominate the industry. This kind of particularism is a major factor behind one of the oldest prejudices in the world – one could say, one of the oldest stereotypes. That's what, three special features already? And you can take issue with zero of them.
But, really, all those righteous noises are beside the point for a common man. The point is: on the level of personal decisionmaking, do your beliefs pay rent?
Like they ask you in the Russian prison: there are two chairs. Say, you're a normal rationalist, it's mid-2022, and you want to use an exchange to park some of your crypto in a token. So, there are two major exchanges.
One is a shady operation that started in China and is ran from Singapore; it has «no headquarters» because «decentralized ethos», can't officially operate in the US and is investigated by DoJ on allegations of money laundering and tax evasion. The owner's parents were lowly teachers and he used to work in McDonald's. The company shared data with the warmongering Russian government. Their token chain is a centralized mockery of Ethereum. Really i's a run-of-the-mill scammy crypto gig that grew a bit bigger than others.
The other is ran by an «ultra genius and Musk-like doer builder», math wizard of finance, born into the family of Stanford Law School professors, endowed with the citizenship of the freest nation in the world, praised by mainstream media, tradfi players and public intellectuals. He cut his teeth in Jane Street. He testified and lobbied for crypto before Congress, promising to actively cooperate with regulation. He's proudly inspired by Peter Singer (Unsong: «The kabbalistic meaning of “singer” is “someone who tries to be good.” This reading we derive from Peter Singer, an Australian philosopher who explored the depths of moral obligation. Singer called the movement that grew up around him “effective altruism”». His chief advisor is the author of the book «What We Owe The Future» that extols precautionary principle against catastrophic risks on the astronomic scale and timespan. He finances EAs. He's a vegan. He Has A Savior Complex – And Maybe You Should Too.
The first guy's name is «Changpeng Zhao» (赵长鹏).
The latter's is «Samuel Bankman-Fried» (סם בנקמן פרייד).
You're a rationalist, that is, supposed to win. So you shut up and calculate expected value using available priors, and known red flags.
Using only knowledge provided here, whom would you rather entrust with your money? And what would an Antisemite do?
Or rather: what would a crypto-rich Antisemite do upon learning that the champion and savior of crypto is now called Samuel Bankman-Fried?
I rest my case.
…Every few years there's another shande far di goyim, another fractal garbage fire that leaves one speechless in its boldness, instigated by some highly educated, well-connected, too greedy, too horny, too crazy or otherwise too-clever-by-half rich Ashkenazi Jew, a chunk of humanity's wealth wiped out by supreme chutzpah. Another cohort gets singed by the flames and starts noticing patterns, and wondering if there are things which do not leak but are equally beyond the pale. Another round of purges and suppression unfolds, «network contagion» and «spread of hate» are again «checked» by well-funded orgs of extremely concerned people. That cohort learns their lesson, and learns to keep it private too: they now have a prior to trust hyped-up Jews somewhat less, and they know that the only socially acceptable comment on this topic is along the lines of Haz – lest you be branded a bigot and destroyed.
But they'll obstinately overlook credentials, connections, persona and reputation and prefer shady Zhaos and Semenovs and Muchgians to Bankman-Frieds, baffling and disgusting newcomers who pay attention.
So it goes, round and round. It's one of the world's oldest, ugliest prejudices, and we'll sooner figure out all laws of Nature and secrets of Nature's God than learn how to extinguish it for good.
Well, maybe Effective Altruists will build a Singleton with SBF's loot, and it'll find some clever one-and-done solution, but I hope not.
Are you quoting something? The link above this line says nothing of the sort. Are you just marking the important bits with italics?
It's quoted verbatim from the Etymology section of that page, though.
Huh, true. Guess I glossed over it. Maybe it's because you changed the order of the sentences (Why?).
I wouldn't agree with the characterization. "Citation needed" seems well placed, at least.
In any case, I pity the people who think חצפה is a negative trait.
It makes sense for the definition to precede the concrete example, both on the scale of the paragraph and the whole post.
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Sam Bankman-Fried. Scam Bankman-Fraud.
Three letters away! I can't believe this is a real thing that happened. A man who was basically named Scam Bankman-Fraud ran a fraudulent, scammy bank. Simulators are getting lazy.
Posted by someone one letter away from Random Danger.
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Yeah. My post is built around the theme of EA philosophy, and those four lines are, more than a quote from Cohen, the epigraph to the ו Interlude of Unsong, «There’s A Hole In My Bucket» (p. 131). The interlude ends with:
I think I have an idea.
(Damn, the book mentions a butt-load of cracks). Oh right, so here's what I meant to show, p. 548:
So it's a bit of a metastable idea, in Scott's mind at least. You might as well give up on getting the maximum value – nothing's ever perfect. But if you really really want and try hard enough, you just might get something better than maximum: you might get something for nothing, cheat math itself and get the Creator to reconsider.
This ties in to my response regarding the nuanced connotation of chutzpah in American English.
And now I beg your forgiveness for a crass but legendary Soviet anecdote.
The interlude's best passage is, IMO, the following:
Just so. I hope there are at least no murders to come to light.
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Not that much wealth was wiped out because there wasn't much there to begin with.
There was a bunch of imaginary internet dollars, people assigned them high valuations based on various hedges and pegs to other imaginary internet dollars. That value was untethered (hah) to anything meaningful as they were neither a medium of exchange nor a store of value, but they were easy to collateralize and so the shit show went on until it couldn't anymore.
That's not to say that no one lost real money, but it's nowhere near the notional value of the deposits held by FTX (or others). If a Nigerian Prince says he'll wire me $7M once I pay his attorney friend $2000 good faith money, I'm only out two grand.
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There's a Jewish culture (or cultures), but there's a lot of Jews, at least in the US, who just aren't a part of it. As for chuztpah, except for being a cool Yiddish word, there's nothing exclusive about it; it basically means audacity, or in one sense, "balls". Elon Musk isn't Jewish, but he definitely has chutzpah.
One is reminded that The Odyssey is the story of a travelling swindler
The trickster is an archetype in all cultures
Wait… so The Odyssey is basically the Loki miniseries but focusing on the trickster who invented the Trojan Horse?
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Yes, there are many different Jews, and in fact a Jew doesn't have to lose relations with the Tribe to be less given to its peculiar shortcomings. After all, it's internal Jewish analysis that I'm citing, we're all reading our Matt Levine to understand the SBF catastrophe better, Yudkowsky is here to deliver a sermon against naive utilitarian reasoning, and Finkelstein's the one who castigates Dersh in his «Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History». But that's just normal, every group has to be aware of its own failings, if perhaps one-sidedly.
As for the rest, I disagree. Elon Musk's distinguishing character trait is daring, not chutzpah. Sure, to the extent that he's leading us by the nose with Full Self-Driving and indulging in irresponsible stunts on Twitter, there is a chutzpah-like quality too. But his rockets go up and come down, his robot walks and his cars charge and he didn't steal anyone's money to get there. Essentially, he is doing honest work, boldly. Oh, and he doesn't hire poker frauds as his «Chief Regulatory Officers» managing this kind of monstrosity.
Now, had you said «Richard Branson», I'd have agreed wholeheartedly. Elizabeth Holmes – even better. And Martin Shkreli... well, there's a reason JewOrNotJew.Com readers were nervously praying he'll turn out to be a Gentile. It was just too stereotypical. And Mavrodi was Russian-Greek but, again, people had trouble believing it.
I am aware that Gentile Americans have appropriated that word. It doesn't mean what they think it means, just like «one baaaad motherfucker» and «sick bastard» and «this nigga is a stone cold killer» aren't really positive descriptors. The problem is, some people use such descriptors as positive despite having their literal meaning in mind; a bit like Russians who embrace the label of «Orcs». Alan Dershowitz, for instance, uses «chutzpah» in the original sense when he calls for assuming the role of bona fide «first-class Americans» while defending spies of the Jewish ethnostate; a beyond-audacious attitude his Gentile admirers may fail to appreciate even as they read a whole book on it.
It's a somewhat common problem.
Elon "FSD in 2018" Musk didn't steal anyone's money to get there?
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Yes, I maintain that it's a peculiar element of Jewish culture, although definitely not some exclusive behavioral pattern.
You're missing the nuance, it seems. Most of the fraud I've seen in my life has been perpetrated by Eastern Slavs, whether in cooperation with other peoples or not. Spanish picaresca is an indisputably Gentile genre. Recently, I've enjoyed watching one Lupin the 3rd movie (sans the leftie moral lesson of «let's punch Nazis and, crucially, break overpowered alien artifacts promising infinite clean energy, yay*), a Japanese take on a French trickster archetype. The Chinese are stereotyped as untrustworthy, which I guess makes CZ only more remarkable. And so it goes.
But fraudsters, tricksters, scammers and chutzpahmancers are qualitatively different. Maybe it's a matter of Bell curves or indeed, verbal tilt. The thing is, chutzpah, at least the kind I talk about here, the hugely consequential kind, looks like this. It's not mere trickery but an unmistakable flavor of in-your-face narcissism and layers upon layers of galaxy brain plotting, the flashy but ultimately degenerate mixture of high and low traits, especially in positions of authority, responsibility and power where people don't expect to see it these days. Or indeed, like TheDag reminds us, consider Adam Neumann. What does one call this nonsense if not chutzpah?
And as for relative trustworthiness of Russians and Chinese: on average, we might not be better. And if I see a Gentile who gets hyped like «SBF», I'll be suspicious. But this very hyping – all this «ultra genius» and «savior» – is not normal and not something Russians and Chinese do. Vitalik is, far as I can tell, a bona fide visionary who didn't simply want to cash in on the crypto craze, and he's rather humble for how grandiose his vision is. CZ is a rogue with low time preference and mild libertarian politics, and he offers a contract I can believe and get behind.
Not so with FTX and Alameda. Accordingly, I have never touched their shit and am very happy for it, although they've still managed to hurt my capital by setting the market in general on fire.
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Ehh I don’t think libertarianism is especially Jewish. Hayek wasn’t Jewish. Locke wasn’t Jewish. Smith wasn’t Jewish.
Obviously libertarians have been influenced by Jews (eg Milton and David, Rothbard, Rand).
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Do you have any evidence more compelling than a few anecdotes about Jewish fraudsters? Fraud statistics that control for likelihood of being in an appropriate industry and/or being in a position with opportunity, that sort of thing? Because if you're going by individual anecdotes then you're just at the mercy of whichever anecdotes you pay attention to.
By comparison if you were trying to avoid getting mugged you might sometimes get some benefit from crime statistics or (in their absence) at least a sufficiently large and unbiased set of anecdotes. You wouldn't get any benefit from listening to a few media anecdotes and deciding the main criminal threat in the U.S. is white men committing mass-shootings and hate-crimes. Sometimes stereotypes are based on fact but sometimes they aren't. Jewish over-representation in the financial industry is already sufficient to explain an anecdotal over-representation in financial fraud, to show it's more than would be expected based on that you would need a more precise method of analysis.
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Excellent post as always, and like some of your others it ties back to this theme. Is TheMotte a safe space for further exploring it, or where do we read more about it? Should I just read Revelation and call it a night?
If you mean, can we talk about Noticing(tm) and write long-winded diatribes barely concealing the core message ("It's Da Joos!") under lots of words, as @DaseindustriesLtd and a couple of others make a hobby of doing, yes, we do not censor any topic or viewpoint per se, so long as you are not advocating violence or just booing an outgroup. However, if by "exploring" you mean "I want to turn this into a white nationalist space to talk about the JQ," no.
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