Going Infinite by Michael Lewis – Interesting Tidbits

Founder Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) and his team at Alameda Research understood themselves as “Effective Altruists”; they focused their “labor” on exploiting trades of securities to generate funds to donate to only a handful of nonprofits that would make the world better according to what they believed was their superior view of what was needed for the masses.  

Yet SBF has severe challenges with interpersonal understanding and communication.  Caroline Ellison (b. 1994), who had a sexual relationship with several people at FTX and Alameda Research, including SBF, exchanged bullet-pointed memos with SBF about their relationship (which he had no interest in making public).  Her memos would read like “pros and cons of recognizing a romantic relationship with me”. And he would issue a reply memo to “Arguments Against and In Favor of Continuing a Sexual Relationship” – with something like:

“Against:

•  I do not experience happiness. 

• I cannot make you happy. 

In Favor:

• I enjoy having sex with you.” 

A methodical and unfortunately all too real format for delusional yearning.

The cult under Sam had a remarkably similar way of thinking – unsurprising, given that SBF hand-selected the original staff. There was a bay area psychiatrist who eventually wheedled his way into becoming a sort of in-house therapist for the ‘Effective Altruist’ true-believers who populated Alameda Research.  Lewis quoted the therapists’ comparison of what it was like to service lawyers vs. silicon valley entrepreneurs vs. Alameda Research Effective Altruists.  For this therapist, the lawyers would talk only about their inability to prioritize and maintain relationships.  The Silicon Valley entrepreneurs had no interest in talking about relationships and focused exclusively on min-maxing their personal life to become more emotionally stunted hyperproductive workers.  Weirdly unique, the Effective Altruists focused a bit on the factual world and then spent the rest of their sessions going over philosophical thought experiments that related to ethics.

Another emblematic takeaway is that SBF will never read Going Infinite.  SBF decided in high school that books and a lot of writing in general which communicate the metaphors, beliefs, and wishes of other people, are things that cannot be objectively proven as “right” or “wrong”.  SBF, who also openly appreciated that he was not capable of empathy, decided books are therefore useless and chose to not consume such things.  At the same time, he had not one qualm to make himself into the patron saint of what was to be done with a fat pie slice of global currency to “better” the lives of humans.