EZRA KLEIN v MATT YGLESIAS

the problem with tech coverage is that it's not glowing enough

Instead of covering the industry with a business press lens or a consumer lens they started covering it with a very tough investigative lens — highly oppositional at all times and occasionally unfair.

Almost never curious about technology or in awe of progress and potential.

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) November 3, 2022

Matty is probably still in awe of the potential represented by Theranos and its game-changing technology

its a small thingin the wider world -- and sure he's not unflawed himself -- but jeet heer's open contempt for yglesias, increasingly robustly and directly stated ("reactionary cetnrist" etc etc), is funny and good

Fascinating piece from Matthew Yglesias from a few months ago defending the intellectual integrity of Sam Bankman-Fried ("SBF is for real"). Worth revisiting in light of recent news https://t.co/xKzyijbAFz

— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) November 12, 2022

lol he despises him so much

lol, this is kind of onethread with a lot of other things, but i love how in that yglesias substack where got ratio'd, he includes a Wasserman tweet where Wasserman says "I've seen enough."

i'm starting to get to know these characters and their catchphrases

haha, this is from that same Yglesias article (https://www.slowboring.com/p/understanding-effective-altruisms). i don't read him that often but

SBF is for real

Sam Bankman-Fried’s life choices are unconventional, and I think that has made it easy to dismiss Carrick Flynn as a “crypto-backed” candidate or Protect Our Future as a crypto play. But there’s a pretty clear and plausible argument that this is simply not the case:

SBF was raised by a leading consequentialist moral theorist.

While attending MIT, SBF went to a Will MacAskill lecture on Effective Altruism and got lunch with him.

At this point in time, MacAskill was heavily promoting “earn to give” as a life plan, specifically promoting the virtues of the then-unfashionable life choice of going to work in finance.

SBF then went to work at Jane Street Capital, a proprietary trading firm notorious for employing smart weirdos, giving half his salary away to animal welfare charities.

He left Jane Street to briefly work directly for the Centre for Effective Altruism, which MacAskill founded, but while there hit upon a crypto trading arbitrage opportunity.

He left CEA to focus on crypto trading, starting a company called Alameda Research focused on making money through crypto arbitrage and other trading strategies.

He then left Alameda to found FTX. Now the co-CEO of Alameda Research is Caroline Ellison, also an EA who writes posts on EA Forum explaining how much weight2 she puts on ensuring that potential hires are aligned with EA values.

FTX has been incredibly successful, and Bankman-Fried is now a multi-billionaire.

lol

effective alt is like "why we can be complete pricks and that's good not bad"

turns out that in a billion years our being pricks will be proveably beneficial for humanity QED, ps i was raised by a leading consequentialist

or "leading consequentialist moral theorist" as yggy puts it

let's just do it and be dickheads, man

lol at ‘got lunch with him’

SBF then went to work at Jane Street Capital, a proprietary trading firm notorious for employing smart weirdos, giving half his salary away to animal welfare charities.

people really abuse the word notorious

matty could totally rescue this for me by going to bat for polycules

wait that's the polycule on the lower rolley traintrack isn't it

trolley

trofl

one track has a polycule on it the other has baby hitler which one do you choose

rockefeller figured this one weird trick out a century and a half ago and iirc his dad was only a snake oil salesman. idk whom he might have had lunch w later tho.

also you could purchase petroleum from him, and ignite it to make things go.

The fact that even Republicans are now realizing that transphobia is bad politics makes it even more shameful that reactionary centrist Matt Yglesias (among others) urged Dems to throw trans people under the bus just a few weeks ago. https://t.co/AGgpAdEW5Q pic.twitter.com/ko5OCsPmvi

— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) November 11, 2022

ah matt replied to the jeet tweets yesterday asking for constructive criticism via email and everyone was telling him to stop being such a loser lol he deleted tho shouldve screencapped

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FhZTanMXEAEua37?format=jpg&name=large

love how any time something happens that matty was absolutely wrong on, the alarm sounds and everyone shows up

“It’s plausible that without SBF’s money, Trump would still be in the White House.”

Wasn't sure whether to post this in the outbreak thread or the Ezra/Matt thread but I decided to post it here because (and I say this as someone who generally likes Yglesias's work) this one really highlights a very particular way in which he sometimes misses

There’s a faction on US Twitter that insists we could have had Xi Jinping’s Covid policies if not for David Leonhardt and Emily Oster. https://t.co/5B2UpVbiW9

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) November 26, 2022

truly cannot imagine liking this slug at this point

we’ve got some fans left it seems!

ride or die

ah well

You can post pepe memes because you're the richest person on the planet and nobody can tell you what to do or you can convince brand advertisers that you're a safe bet they can count on but you can't do both at the same time.

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) November 28, 2022

matty in his role as The Littlest Echo

is lagoon prepared to apologize for the time he said klein was just as bad as this guy

im prepared to do a yglesias level galaxy brained take on why klein is just as bad if it comes to that

klein is a very dull writer imo

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2020/11/21/business/00VOX-print/00VOX-articleLarge.jpg

pretty funny how klein has become an "ideas" podcaster and matty has become a substacker, the two perfect paths for vacuous blogger scoundrels

even tho matty is the laziest person in the world ezra is more likely to get caught in a plagiarism scandal

was thinking the other day about how when vox started their big idea was to have little linked explainers you could click through to get more info on various topics, this was going to save journalism

omg its ok to say ur wrong, the two guys are literally not in the same orbits at all right now, matty is a sad clout-chasing blogger, ezra for all his faults tries to understand stuff, they’re not the same!

if youre a sucker for ezras shtick thats 100% your problem not mine

i don't see much difference between them. ezra doesn't really write about politics as regularly anymore (seems to be positioning himself as a post-wonk ira glass figure) and is now attached to a legacy media company while matt writes constantly about politics and is an independent blogger

matt is better cause he stayed true to blogging, ezra became a professional apologist for power which is the lowest form of writer, even lower than a worm (matt yglesias)

Dunno why you would need to read either of these guys when you can just read a book

a book about how america should get a billion people?

Idk whatever book you want, there’s dozens of em

like when it comes down to it, who actually are these guys?

Has Ezra ever written about effective altruism?

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Has Ezra ever written about effective altruism?

― papal hotwife (milo z), Thursday, December 1, 2022 7:53 PM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

excellent question! he has a podcast with the longtermism philosopher and crypto hanger on William MacAskill https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/09/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-will-macaskill.html

this one also seems to be about that shit https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/05/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-holden-karnofsky.html

im sure ezra thinks very deeply on this obvious garbage

Dunno why you would need to read either of these guys when you can just read a book

― G. D’Arcy Cheesewright (silby), Thursday, December 1, 2022 7:37 PM (twenty-nine minutes ago) book

the thing is ezra actually reads books and interviews ppl about them smh they’re not even the same species