I read that scintillating anecdote in a nonbook — a WaPo scribbling called "Sam Bankman-Fried doesn’t read. That tells us everything" by Molly Roberts.
If an 8-word spontaneous remark "tells us everything" in your view, Ms. Roberts, can I infer that you agree with SBF's anti-book statement?
Well, I don't know what's in Bankman-Fried's mind or Roberts's, but I feel like the headline tells me everything I need to know about the latter.
But I'll read the article anyway, because you are kind enough to read my blog post, which is also not a book, and which mostly is an outgrowth of my reading things that are not books (though 2 posts down is a post about a book (not really, just kidding, it's a short fragment arrived at by searching for an isolated word that came up in conversation)).
Roberts writes:
Behold... SBF’s reason: “I don’t want to say no book is ever worth reading, but I actually do believe something pretty close to that.… If you wrote a book, you f---ed up, and it should have been a six-paragraph blog post.”
Ha ha ha. I hate to admit how close I am to agreeing with the disgraced erstwhile billionaire.
Now, this is paragraph five of this column, so we’re running short on worthwhile words....
Ha ha.
The point for SBF, it seems, isn’t the book itself but what he takes away from it — the instrumental knowledge that, presumably, he can gather more efficiently from a SparkNotes version of any opus than from the work itself. Part of the problem might be an unspoken focus on nonfiction versus fiction, and maybe highly technical nonfiction in particular....
But no matter the type of book he’s talking about, what SBF is missing is the experience.... You read to read; you don’t read to have read. Which brings us back to SBF and FTX — the bookkeeping that, according to the company’s bankruptcy lawyer, was less sloppy than nonexistent; the big bets that executives figured were only a liability if they lost....
All this stemmed... from... philosophy. SBF is a believer in effective altruism.... You pick a career not because you care about the career itself... [but] because it will make you a massive amount of money, and you can spend that money on something that is good....
The trouble is, if you don’t care about what you do, if part of you disdains what you do, your only concern is what the work gets you....
Okay! Nicely done. Roberts redeemed herself.
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54 comments:
All of these people are saying stuff to signal to their tribe how virtuous and smart they are.
Roberts thinks she is a serious intellectual and that means you read books.
SBF thinks he is too smart and too busy to waste time reading books.
They both have tribes and both tribes think they are better than the other tribes.
How did SBF graduate from his exclusive high school and MIT without reading a book?
Why hasn't this clown been arrested?
Efficiency is overrated.
Quicker, faster.
Faster! Quicker!
real learning takes years and years
I think Mr. SBF learned some lessons about fast wealth and fast poverty.
Crypto billionaire = quick fucking mind, can't stop to read your long-winded shit!
People who are still billionaires = going to sleep-in this morning, yawn, maybe buy some farmland or shit like that, conspire to rule the world via food (yawn) might take a nap first
Is that the same Molly Rberts who explained how Democrats stole the 2020 election in Time Magazine ?
"How did SBF graduate from his exclusive high school and MIT without reading a book?
Why hasn't this clown been arrested?"
Why hasn't he been arrested? Well, he was the second biggest donor to the Democrat Party last year. (George Soros was first.) Might that be a clue?
I sometimes think I read so that I have an excuse to buy books.
If an 8-word spontaneous remark "tells us everything" in your view, Ms. Roberts, can I infer that you agree with SBF's anti-book statement?
Clever. If she thinks people can be summed up so easily, then what has novel reading gotten her? The title doesn't necessarily come from her, but it's more likely that it does in an opinion piece than in a news article.
I'm not sure that he's entirely wrong. If you go looking for lessons from books, you can find those lessons elsewhere in condensed form. Reading novels can give you a feel for detail and for how an idea or emotion arises and changes into another, but if it's attention to detail you want, mathematics and engineering are full of that.
Still, so many people are on the spectrum, that actually reading novels may be a therapy to bring them in touch with the world of other people. On the other hand, since so many people are on the spectrum, if SBF had become a professor of literature or a therapist or social worker or a poet, someone else would have stepped into his role.
Speaking of small.
Jesus talks about mustard seeds. You plant tiny seeds, and years later they become very large.
It's wisdom that helped me make money in the stock market. (Invest in small companies now, your wise investments grow very large over time, while your bad investments fall away into irrelevancy).
I think it works on the book/blogging comparison, too.
On this blog, Althouse gives us little mustard seeds. She inspires thoughts in us. A lot of mustard seeds on this blog, in my opinion. I like to try to spread out some mustard seeds too.
A few years ago I argued that race is bullshit and we can't even identify how many races there are. And we bounced that idea around for a couple of days.
Now David Bernstein has a book on that very subject.
He's a law professor, I think, and maybe he pops in on the Althouse blog from time to time.
Or not. I have no idea. No idea where his idea came from. I'm sure he'd resent the implication that he got it from me, or some other person.
But that's how ideas grow into books. Mustard seeds -- quick and inspirational thoughts -- become serious books. Every work of serious art is inspired by something, or someone. And Jesus teaches us that we should pay attention to the seeds we plant.
(There's a lot more in that little parable, of course).
What's a book?
I drive around, go places, I don't see any 'books'. I don't see any book stores and I don't see any books in other stores I go to. I go online, click stuff, where the books at? No one apparently wants me to buy them, if they even exist. Are there books in my phone? No. Are there books in my school? No there are not. I don't see any books at work either.
Are books something that happened in the past? An ancient form of recreation, like trepanning?
"If you set up a double-entry bookkeeping system for your business, you fucked up." More wit and wisdom from SBF. Didn't I read somewhere that his outside accountant was a virtual entity on Meta?
"Ha ha ha. I hate to admit how close I am to agreeing with the disgraced erstwhile billionaire."
Quick, compile your blog posts into a book, before Blogger/Google memory holes them...
Ficta - I sheepishly remind myself when I survey my large and meticulously managed library that that is an entirely different pastime than reading. I love both but reading is more beneficial, obviously. Reading is challenging while book collecting and library management is soothing.
also funny that she says "I'm addicted to reading"
and his mind jumps to "books"
like reading on Twitter or the internet doesn't count as "reading"
I bet (but don't know) that Mr. Musk doesn't spend a lot of time reading books.
I read less books now than when I was a kid, for sure. I have less free time.
@Dave Begley: his parents paid - just guessing here - $60K a year (not including library fees, administrative fees, phys ed fees, parking fees , etc). His parents being very influential. Would you, as his lowly 10th grade English Lit teacher, have the courage to fail him or his ilk? How long would you last teaching at that very cushy school allowing the children of the wealthy to fail? He passes with a C. And like the rest of them, able to read, write and carry on a conversation but actually illiterate. Faust, Hawthorne, Milton, just names barely recognized and never recalled.
There's no such thing as 'effective altruism', no matter how many thinkers and journalists continue to insist it's a real thing. People always have motivations and incentives to take action. Some small bit of it might be altruistic for some. But usually there are actual other reasons for people to do what they do. I would think 'effective bullshit' is a better term for what SBF was doing.
And it's clear that SBF has not read any fiction. Many people do not like fiction, but most of those people are not antisocial miscreants using their brain to hornswoggle vast wealth from others. Some do, but most do not. And no one has ever done as much financial damage to others as this guy and his team of characters from 'Avatar'. I almost expect to see a video surface of Caroline Ellison in an 'Avatar' costume.
Had SBF read and felt anything from actual fiction, he would have learned about empathy, loss, gain, what happens when people work or live together, love and hate, how good people can do bad things, and how bad people love to do bad things and dress it up as a good thing.
I doubt it will happen, but he deserves a long time to do all the reading he wants in prison. Along with gaining some new 'friends'.
"How did SBF graduate from his exclusive high school and MIT without reading a book?"
I'm sure there are well-known ways — from commercial notes to using other kids' outlines to learning to write using whatever you happen to know.
I used to feel honor-bound to read every word of all books assigned in high school, so I never developed work arounds, but I can say from my current perspective that I would have written better essays after just reading an outline and then relying on my thinking and writing skills. With less to absorb and cull through, you can zoom right in on answering the question.
I always read for pleasure!
If it's not fun, I have trouble staying with it.
(Bible study saved my ass -- I hope -- because I found it a terrific mental stimulation, ergo fun).
A major component of Christianity is joy, precisely because many of us hate drudgery shit.
I don't insist every book, movie or work of art qualifies as fun. But my extreme bias is toward stuff I love. If your art (or your blog post) makes me work super-hard to get through it, chances are I will skip right over that shit.
@MichaelK, it was Molly Ball.
Some concepts are well conveyed in short form, others need long form. Comprehensive understanding usually takes long form.
People can invest money into something and make money knowing only that they put money in and more money comes back. Those who fully comprehend the process understand there is risk of losing some or all of their investment, and that risk is understood better with more information which requires long form.
I’m starting to care even less about SBF (never much cared to know about him in the past) and much more about why people thought he was brilliant (he has an impressive resume that doesn’t fit what we are learning about him).
Occasionally I play with the idea of a list called Ten Books that Shook the Internet, meaning the Ten Books that once read you know what the internet is arguing about without reading any more books. For example, An Inconvenient Truth - you read that, then internet, Twitter, blogger battles are just updates. White Fragility for CRT. The Wretched of the Earth for colonialism. Orientalism by Edward Said for Eurocentrism. Deconstructing History by Derrida.
Or on other side The Road to Serfdom by Hayek. The Administrative State by Marini. Since my side is the conservative side it's correct to read older books like the Federalist Papers for the meaning of the US Constitution, Shelby Foote's History of the Civil War to understand the different arguments on the meaning of the US founding in relation to the existing institution of slavery; Winston Churchill on WW I including The Aftermath and The Eastern Front - our time is still tracing back to ideas and arguments launched by that great event.
For a take on behavior genetics, the latest trend in eugenics: Social by Nature: The Promise and Peril of Sociogenomics. 2018. Catherine Bliss
The lists could vary - all I'm saying is that in digital land there's central topics with a lot of repetition (not so much here, BTW) and "news" is just events associated with those central topics aka narratives. In that sense, SBF is right. But what books liberate one from the leaden dullness of the Central Topics Regime? SBF was careful not to read any of them and look how successful he is.
so, if i understand him correctly, he's saying that reading a book is a stupid waste of time,
because you can get there faster quicker with cliff notes (or such)?
The Main Thing that we know about him (and his minions) is that they were sex addicted sex freaks
SO.. Think about his views on reading (Faster is Better! Get IN, and Get OUT!) and think about their sex.
Now go; UGGH!
Also, he was 'supposedly' a video game addict.. And 'supposedly' Really REALLY BAD at video games
I'll let someone think about his views on gaming, and then think about his sexual actions.
I'm going to wash my hands now.. Typing this made me feel disgusting
Seriously; You know what the Fastest, Cheapest, Most efficient way to catch fish is?
You go to the fish shop, and buy some
I read for the same reason i fly fish.. And eating tuna* sandwiches isn't the reason for either
tuna* ugk! now i have to wash my hands Again
Read every word or just the good parts?
It depends. Are you reading The Great Gatsby or Sword of the Golden Stud?
Just another crooked Democrat. A new folk hero for them. Who cares about his reading habits?
Had SBF read and felt anything from actual fiction, he would have learned about empathy, loss, gain, what happens when people work or live together, love and hate, how good people can do bad things, and how bad people love to do bad things and dress it up as a good thing.
As my mother in law says...Hmph.
I am curious about this recreational trepanning that Black Bellamy speaks of.
I know a lot of people who don't read. One is a retired teacher and reading specialist who still tutors kids. Just doesn't dig books.
And I felt duty bound to read all assigned books too and was overwhelmed in college classes that used multiple texts.
One exasperated history prof told us, for god's sake, SKIM!
Why is no one asking how two very accomplished progressives could raise a beyond the pale sociopath
There is nothing wrong with working for the money, to support a good cause. That’s what I do, and the cause is mostly my family, my church, my community. The issue for the SBF and the EA movement is that they are confused what “good” means.
It is my understanding that SBF has not been arrested because he is in the Bahamas and we don't have an extradition treaty, although the money he's spread around may also be a factor...
"spend that money on something that is good"
Has any charity money ever been spent on things that are better than the things that helped earn that money in the first place? Or more generally, does the goodness produced via altruism exceed the goodness produced via egoism?
"I would have written better essays after just reading an outline and then relying on my thinking and writing skills"
Applies to originalist jurisprudence as well. Better opinions after just reading the outline to answer the question rather than wading through dozens of "precedents."
Wow. SBF is just like Sarah Palin. How knew???
The people who gave SBF their money are the ones who never understood. Perhaps they read a lot of books. They understood nothing about human nature, especially their own.
The Best and the Brightest.
I read books (actual printed paper books - I have read about 4 e-books in my life but they are not the same as an actual hard copy book) for fun as well as to learn something from the book. Life is about continually learning which doesn’t end with schooling. SBF is just a glorified frat boy who was given everything from mommy and daddy. Well, everything but being taught personal responsibility for one’s actions in life and to acknowledge when they f**k up and actually feel remorse. SBF is just another punk who thought that life is just a series of continuous orgies to indulge in for self pleasure. The only way this a**hole learns is for a court to come down on him like a stack of books (the perfect analogy for this blog post!) and put his sorry ass into prison for a (hopefully) large number of years to ponder his f**ked up life.
""How did SBF graduate from his exclusive high school and MIT without reading a book?"
"I'm sure there are well-known ways — from commercial notes to using other kids' outlines to learning to write using whatever you happen to know.""
Also, social promotion:
https://www.edweek.org/leadership/social-promotion/2004/09
The view is that it's better for life outcomes move through school with one's peers than pass arbitrary academic courses and tests. School as completed for "doing time." But, no one wants a doctor, or mechanic, or store clerk who doesn't know the basic requirements of a job. Those who were socially promoted are then either twisted or guilty or confused or clueless about life. Then Wokeness follows.
MadTownGuy said...
"Ha ha ha. I hate to admit how close I am to agreeing with the disgraced erstwhile billionaire."
Quick, compile your blog posts into a book, before Blogger/Google memory holes them...
book.io
They are developing a platform for authors to convert their books to NFT's and sell them without publishers.
Once you own a book converted this way you can keep it in a completely anonymous wallet that can be accessed from anywhere as long as you have your seed phrase.
It can also be saved on a hardware wallet that you can carry with you.
Blogger Dave Begley said...
How did SBF graduate from his exclusive high school and MIT without reading a book?
Why hasn't this clown been arrested?
Because he donated copious amounts of money to democrats and never trump republicans.
He also helped them launder the money sent to Ukraine through FTX.
I had a friend who wasn't certain that he had ever read a book. As well as being a Science teacher, he was a certified financial planner. He was a smart guy, and someone to ask about practical topics like coaching, meteorology, wilderness activities, cooking and training a dog.
It was odd that he admitted not having ever read a book. It does seem like an admission that most people won't make. Usually, there is some kind of excuse or reason, and they'd like to get back to it or try audio books.
SPF is different. It seems like he is saying that he's too busy, or can just hire people who have a deep understanding of a topic.
Blogger MadTownGuy said...
@MichaelK, it was Molly Ball.
Thanks. Too many Mollys around.
'effective altruism' = OPM (other people's money)
I became a book-fiend at an early age. Books were my escape from the many dismal realities around me, and I have few good memories of my school days except for the pretty decent libraries.
Not that it made me a star student mind you, just a well-read one. My core interests are largely the same as they were then, and my reading habits and practices are too. (Things that are common obsessions of many--sports, politics, pop entertainment, religion and religion substitutes--didn't interest me much then and still don't.)
When I began skipping Sunday school and church (after going in with ma and little bros) I had only to walk a few blocks east and watch the excavation and first stages of the recently promoted university's first real, modern library, and imagining how great it would be to have access to half-a-million books.
As it turned out, I ended up helping develop that institution's collections, particularly books, until the number topped a million. (Not counting the 3 or 4 million books and book equivalents on the micro-formats.)
We left that tower and wings in '94 for a more sensible and hi-tech (too hi-tech, but that's another story) building, which is now mostly a tomb for books (and other formats).
Which is OK with me; I check out books to read and CDs to listen to every few weeks.
LeBron has read the first 5 pages of numerous books. When the cameras are on.
It's also a generational thing
Our culture is faster, faster, faster.
I think ADD is a "disease" that's basically created by technology.
I suspect a lot of the kids have trouble focusing on stuff, because of technology. They don't read books as much, because of technology. So I expect this former billionaire whiz (on himself) kid is very similar to the rest of his generation -- not much of a book reader.
What's interesting is that he comes across as a little smug about it. All you need is shallow knowledge! In depth exploration is a waste of time! That's a dumb fucking thing to say, buddy, at least according to my slower (deeper?) generation.
In the future we will ask Blogger to read War and Peace for us and explain that shit in 22 minutes, please, and Blogger will do it.
(We will still be unhappy and feel like we are missing out on something).
Patience is a wonderful virtue.
Technology often makes me more impatient.
I want it to be faster and quicker. A tech glitch can be infuriating, in my experience.
"I read only good books."
- Pastor Rod Flash
Saint Croix said...
In the future we will ask Blogger to read War and Peace for us and explain that shit in 22 minutes, please, and Blogger will do it.
“I took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It involves Russia.”
― Woody Allen
I go to estate sales pretty often, and it is shocking how few people readers. Clearly successful and accomplished people who have scarcely any books are the norm. Of course, some have wonderful collections.
The book made the Modern Age; Postmodernism is, among other things, post-book.
One of the things that has struck me while reading Klemperer's testimony of life in the Turd Reich is how important books were to him through it all. OK, he was a lit prof, but still . . . Ben Hur, I Claudius, lots of Pearl Buck. Probably in translation, as his languages were the Romance ones.
The flip side is how important an old Jew's reading was to the Reich authorities.
I usually gag at comparisons of our system to Nazism, but parallels are really starting to emerge when it comes to regime control of narrative and the use of euphemism and neologism.
It is my understanding that SBF has not been arrested because he is in the Bahamas and we don't have an extradition treaty
And it’s my understanding that there certainly is an extradition treaty between the US and the Bahamas. Any lawyers out there who can confirm or deny?
Did we get all these interesting factoids about Bernie Madoff? Why is Bankster-fraud not under arrest? As for not reading books, well there's no book on how to steal $Millions through finanical fraud.
In a more general way. As a book worm, I doubt reading just as reading means much. What if you spend all your time reading trashy novels? OTOH, the right kind of books can broaden your horizons and help you understand other people and other cultures. And it can help you understand the past, and therefore understand the present.
But books can also corrupt your mind, waste your time, and just provide entertainment that is no better than watching TV. For example, you're better off watching Kubrick than reading Stephen King. You get the same crap, but its only 2 hours.
So it is not specifically a reading thing, just a book thing. I guess that's fine. We all have preferences.
The thing is SBF managed to completely dupe a large number of "intelligent" people, despite, if the reports are to be believed, being so blatantly and sloppily dishonest that it should have been obvious to anyone doing minimal due diligence. If that makes him "dumb" then what does that say about our "elite" class?
Static Ping said:
"The thing is SBF managed to completely dupe a large number of "intelligent" people, despite, if the reports are to be believed, being so blatantly and sloppily dishonest that it should have been obvious to anyone doing minimal due diligence. If that makes him "dumb" then what does that say about our "elite" class?"
What it says is that I am actually on to something with my contention that our current system of "elite selection/production/placement" is absolutely not working.
I sat around a table, not so long ago, and there were some "very smart people" who were going awnandawnandawn about the wonders of cryptocurrency. All the college-educated types were sitting there, drinking it in and fully taken in by the presentation. The two "working-class types", and myself? We're sitting there, watching all of them, going "WTF? Just... WTF??", because it was obvious to us that there waren't no there there.
Common sense is so damn uncommon, these days, that it ought to be ranked as a super-power. Period. I knew there had to be something like this whole FTX fraud lurking in the background somewhere, and my take on crypto has always been the same one I take playing poker: Look around the table, spot the mark/sucker. If you can't, look again, and this time, use a mirror, 'cos you're likely the mark.
That's the whole deal with crypto and all the other Ponzi schemes. The people who get taken in are the smart-but-unwise, the ones with more horsepower in their heads than they properly know what to do with. Intelligence is not a survival trait; often, it's an active threat to survival, because the so-called "intelligent" will talk themselves into taking ethical and other shortcuts such that they screw themselves.
I knew a guy who wasn't all that smart, but he worked hard and was "lucky". Most of his "luck" consisted of not doing the really stupid things his peers did. He didn't buy the multi-million dollar homes; he didn't have the flash fancy car. And, unlike all the "educated yet idiot" types around him, when the scam artist showed up at his church and promised incredible rates of return on the investment instruments he offered up, he went "Yeah, ya know... This sounds too good to be true, and, anyway... It looks like a really unfair deal. I'd rather work for my money, thank you..."
Only one who didn't invest, inside his church's upper echelons? Him. Only one who didn't lose everything when the "wealth manager" absconded with all the lucre? Him. It wasn't that he was smarter than them; he wasn't. It was that he knew his limitations, and when he couldn't understand what the guy was saying up on the podium, and it "didn't smell right", he abstained.
Our society is infested with these credentialed dolts, these "educated, yet idiot..." types. Look around you; how many people are there in the hierarchy around you that really demonstrate real merit, and good judgment?
My experience has been that there are vanishingly few of either.
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