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suy  1yr ago (astralcodexten.substack.com)   Edited 1yr ago   3846 thread views

Scott Alexander on Sam Bankman-Fried, FTX and Effective Altruism

astralcodexten.substack.com

I made this a top level post because I think people here might want to discuss it but you can remove it if it doesn't meet your standards.

Edit: removed my opinion of Scott from the body

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Reading Scott's post about feeling anxious and betrayed made me think back to Zero HP Lovecraft's tweet about the quokka, the Australian mammal. I don't have much else to say besides how frustrating it is to see a full grown adult act so naively. Don't have much charity left for someone so easily manipulated.

I think you kinda underestimate how easy is to manipulate a grown adult outside of their area of expertise. Especially if the manipulation is towards the result that they want to achieve (which is how any skillful conman would do it). Especially if the target is commonly living in a low-threat environment where it's usually ok to trust people and most of people you encounter aren't actually out to get you. It's probably easier to manipulate a very smart professor than a very dumb prison inmate - because the latter won't just believe any word you say regardless of what you say, just on general principle that they don't know you.

Considering things like Epstein's whole shtick, I have to wonder how on earth one makes themselves manipulation-proof. The only way I can think of is what I'm going to call the Hedgehog Method: become so guardedly anti-social that no one can get into your life enough to ruin it.

One good heuristic is to be slightly more suspicious of individuals with frizzy hair and strangely shaped ears/nose. It works for Epstein, Bankman, Weinstein, or even Sasha Baron Cohen.

Alright, you've been warned about derogatory tropes and antagonism, and you've been warned about darkly hinting weakman opinions about your outgroup. Now you're just being racist, which puts you under be no more antagonistic than is absolutely necessary and provide evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory your claim might be.

Read the rules carefully and stop doing this sort of thing. This time you're getting a three-day ban.

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