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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   23141 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 7, 2026

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The thing with people who have a toxic past is like, can't you just not hire them? I'm sure there are other people out there who are just as qualified who aren't nationally famous criminals.

I feel like there must be some kind of other angle. Some kind of favors or backroom dealings that is securing her this position, and probably the fact it may also be a sinecure.

His answers to queries about it were all primarily "I like her, my kid likes her, I owe favours to FTX from back in the day" and not "as a business decision this is good sense because X, Y and Z" (he then gave a second set of 'this is why it's a good idea' reasons). Not very inspiring of confidence.

This is just my own personal view and I'm probably as wrong as a clock striking ninety, but I get some kind of aura of "she is now very grateful to me for this second chance which nobody else would give her and that obligation of gratitude is going to be very useful to me going forward" from the whole thing. I do think Ellison is vulnerable in that she's radioactive right now, she probably could only get hired on as low-level admin in a one-man-band operation in Podunk, and if she gets on the wrong side of Chen she could get booted from Manifund and that's her only new chance gone up in smoke. So she has every incentive not to get on his wrong side, and unfortunately that includes going "yes sir no sir three bags full sir" if he ever expresses a view on "Don't you think that maybe we should do A not B? Just think about it, Caroline, but I'm not saying you have to decide that, just that I personally feel it's the right choice" when it comes to her research on grant-making and the rest of it.

I'm not saying this is what is going on, just that the perception is that she now owes him a big favour (and seems to be well aware of it*) and that the view formed of her from previous actions is not reassuring that she would have the confidence to say "No" when or if that favour gets called in.

*From Chen's Substack announcement:

But I’m very grateful to Austin for giving me a second chance, and judging me on my current work performance rather than my past. I feel very lucky not only to have a job, but to be working somewhere that I think is doing great work and has a mission I believe in.

It's very human to have difficulty refusing a favour to someone who once helped you. I think certain areas have a problem where people do well and rise because they're nice, intelligent chaps and then they get to the level where you need to be nice, intelligent, and a bit of a bastard when appropriate and they flounder.

EA is worse at this than most because it's at least partly a refuge for mildly autistic do-gooders from the cruelty of the world.

I feel like not hiring a convicted financial criminal to run your grant-issuing charity's finances, even though they're a friend who helped you in the past, doesn't rise to the level of being a bastard. Being a nice guy doesn't require you to violate your fiduciary responsibilities by handing out massive sinecures (funded by charitable donations) to literal criminal fraudsters. If Manifund were a publicly traded company, this would be grounds for a shareholder derivative suit.

It just requires you to adhere to traditional business practices, and unfortunately all the Silicon Valley/Bay Area types are infected with the whole "move fast, break things" ethos and with EA you get "we are so smart, we have Bayes!" on top of that, which encourages "those darn brakes are holding us back, just rip 'em out, accelerating down this hill is what we need to do!" views.

What I'm saying is that there's a level of pathological niceness I've observed in certain friends where they absolutely would feel compelled to do this. It makes them an absolute menace to be around or work with.

Maybe if you get rich off some crypto you send her a million dollars if you really think you owe her, or give her some equity in a startup you’re invested in. If you want to plausibly give her some VC funding then you have her register an ‘institute of leadership and learning from mistakes’ type self help organization of the kind most convicted former fraudsters with fame and chutzpah create (like the Wolf of Wall Street guy, or the Barings guy) and hire her to give a few lectures and teach some classes at an inflated fee.

Hiring her as an actual employee is extremely stupid even if you’re an autistic do-gooder.

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