Silicon Valley Techno-Utopianism

A brutal read, a necessary one

https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/2/23944485/sam-bankman-fried-guilty-verdict-parents

getting a lot more schadenfreude from seeing this guy's parents suffer than i could ever get from him tbh. feel strongly that i'm owed for how many articles i read telling me to take this guy seriously because his dad was a "philosopher" (?), and i'm definitely owed for how many times i read the phrase "their work in legal ethics" adduced as evidence against their having raised a con man. would like to take my payment in the form of images of them just standing there frozen like jimmy stewart looking down from the bell tower

ha yeah i weirdly look at him and go “what a deluded self-absorbed fool doing illegal shit,” and look at them and think “what a pair of evil assholes who raised a fool, assisted him in swindling millions, were actors in the swindle to their own benefit, and with all of their alleged expertise and judgment, failed to advise him to his benefit! Fuck them and ruin them!”

the tousle-haired mogul

what a scamp

You talk about day
I'm talking 'bout night time
When the monsters call out
The names of men
Bob Dylan knows
And I bet Bankman-Fried did
There are things in night
That are better not to behold

I appreciate this deep cut

how did this happen so quickly when theranos/various trump cases take years on end? was it just that his crimes were so blatant/uncomplicated?

It certainly seems to have been a straightforward case for the prosecution to make

for holmes the delay was covid + pregnancy

I don't think him taking the stand helped much either

Pretty much everyone else charged immediately folded as well.

starting to think that investing in something called 'crypto' might not be the safest bet

feel strongly that i'm owed for how many articles i read telling me to take this guy seriously because his dad was a "philosopher" (?), and i'm definitely owed for how many times i read the phrase "their work in legal ethics" adduced as evidence against their having raised a con man.

― difficult listening hour, Thursday, November 2, 2023 11:52 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

yeah any reasonable dispassionate observer would see the whole ecosystem of elite institutions guys with bags of money and their media apologists as completely corrupt, because it is

I suspect Michael Lewis's GOING INFINITE is gonna be a long-term record-holder for amount of changes between the hardcover and paperback editions.

its very funny to be literally sitting next to a guy while he commits one of the biggest frauds ever and not notice and also write a book about it

Though the reporting in Going Infinite suggests that Bankman-Fried is an unrestrained sociopath, Lewis’s general attitude toward Bankman-Fried may be best summed up as “I love my gamer son.” In the courtroom, Lewis looked pretty bummed, occasionally shaking his head.

Just happened upon this gem of a sketch from last year

https://i.insider.com/63a4b3307877e10018fd618e?width=700&format=jpeg&auto=webp

George Michael on trial!

outside of the fact that he's incredibly guilty and offered up a godawful defense I think this is maybe the flipside of the two systems of justice thing we got goin here, where if you fuck with rich people's money things suddenly start moving very fast. this should've happened with Theranos too but she got lucky with Covid

I think he looks like a descendent of Genghis Khan. Also there's a dude with an apparent pentagram on his shirt behind him.

That's Michael LaRoux Matthews from OnCinema investigations unit.

his attorneys' heads are weirdly small

he looks like a descendent of Genghis Khan

only a few million of those milling around

its very funny to be literally sitting next to a guy while he commits one of the biggest frauds ever and not notice and also write a book about it

walt isaacson seems to be on the same beat

true, tho i hold him to a lower standard than lewis

I find the politics of these people inscrutable

A grim month: 31 Israeli and at least 3600 Palestinian children have been killed since October 7.

— Paul Graham (@paulg) November 4, 2023

Here is the death age distribution in Gaza from before this conflict (from a pro Palestinian source)

The vast majority of "child" deaths were ages 10-18https://t.co/Uo3TYB8Iqb

— Shaun Maguire (@shaunmmaguire) November 4, 2023

99% of Silicon Valley has the exact politics that leads you to put child in air quotes, and they all worshipped YC until about a month ago.

cultural sociopathy

99% of Silicon Valley has the exact politics that leads you to put child in air quotes, and they all worshipped YC until about a month ago.

Also, what happened a month ago?

And what’s YC

Also 10-18 is a bangable age to these guys

YC = Y Combinator? I don't see how this helps the rest make any more sense.

Was using Silicon Valley as shorthand here for Silicon Valley VCs.

They all have insane political theories and practical politics. The all in podcast is representative of this. This is probably not news if you’re on this thread.

YC (Paul graham, sam Altman, etc.) are not an exception. They are also incredibly influential in that set.

Generally the VC reaction to what’s happening in Gaza for the past month has been as vile as you’d expect.

Yet Paulg is posting stuff that is cautiously sympathetic to Palestine. This is upsetting his professional acquaintances (see replies) and tbh doesnt make a ton of sense given all his other views.

Ok I guess it’s not that surprising if you were paying attention to him 10 years ago

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2014/07/start-up-guru-has-enraged-israeli-techies.html

he sometimes seems like he isn’t completely subsumed into the weird rhetoric of his peers and acts confused when he pops his head up with a somewhat-normal opinion and gets shouted at

as for his peers, it’s almost refreshing to see andreesen and others admitting in public that they’d like federal contracts. this was always the wellspring of money, all the way back to the founding days of SV. a handful of people made it big in the salad days of the early internet, funded a bunch of things with their new fortunes assuming the money spigot was permanently on, and now it’s becoming clear that their ideas of how to wring infinite profit out of investing in whatever catered to their own interests (making it easy to have other people do all the things they personally did not want to do, making their own lives convenient at the expense of others) is over.

what did the ncsa in ncsa mosaic stand for, hmm

I find it inscrutable to find "A grim month: 31 Israeli and at least 3600 Palestinian children have been killed since October 7" inscrutable - indeed I would say "it is as a general rule very bad when kids are being killed in large numbers and a sign that things have gone horribly wrong" is an extremely normal and widely asserted opinion, presumably in Silicon Valley as much as anywhere else

cool

presumably!

since we’re talking about venture and investment capital, and about investors who have specifically indicated they’re attempting to pivot to being defense contractors, what are defense contractors and their investors saying?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/30/wall-street-morgan-stanley-td-bank-ukraine-israel-hamas-war

sv vc trying to get into a more serious space is interesting as theyre generally considered unserious by the wider world of investors, but hey if theyve got money im sure there will be takers

sv vc chasing unicorns has led them to weird bad places, crypto ai defense, when theres tons of potentially useful technology thats never going to produce billion dollar valuations that could use their money

I have to admit, had SBF's idea to bribe Trump not to run come to fruition, that really would have put him ahead of most of the YC crew in terms of "this absurd bet that no one should have taken seriously paid off spectacularly!"

FTX and the other pure-crypto efforts are weird because while some get SV backing, they’re now almost purely financial grifts. All the technology’s known and they aren’t doing anything with software or hardware that isn’t already out there

You could say the same of a handful of others that are pure “disrupt this sector” businesses but developers will try to show off the neat tools they made and maybe spin those into their own business. Half of these might just be forks of some open source user interface library but someone working there wants something to post to hackernews

since we’re talking about venture and investment capital, and about investors who have specifically indicated they’re attempting to pivot to being defense contractors, what are defense contractors and their investors saying?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/30/wall-street-morgan-stanley-td-bank-ukraine-israel-hamas-war

― ɥɯ ︵ (°□°) (mh), Sunday, 5 November 2023 16:42 (yesterday) link

The quotes in this article are so dark.

as for his peers, it’s almost refreshing to see andreesen and others admitting in public that they’d like federal contracts. this was always the wellspring of money, all the way back to the founding days of SV.

iirc the original SV was all companies primarily with DoD contracts

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2023/11/peter-thiel-2024-election-politics-investing-life-views/675946/

one of the greatest things i have ever read

amazing how many of these guys think scifi is realest deepest shit