He doesn't say he thinks it is okay to act unethically, he says that in general acting unethically doesn't matter the way he previously said it did because public perception is shaped more by winning than it is by whether the winner was ethical or unethical.
Elsewhere in the DMs he says "I didn't want to do sketchy stuff [...] and I didn't mean to" and "it as never the intention".
None of this reads like bombshell level "Wow this guy is terrible". He comes across as maybe terrible or maybe someone who played a little too fast and loose with an explosively growing business of which he lost control.
> He comes across as maybe terrible or maybe someone who played a little too fast and loose with an explosively growing business of which he lost control.
Same type of statement would be like... They came across as maybe terrible or maybe someone who just had a few too many drinks and then lost control of a new sports car that they were not familiar with and accidentally drove into a crowd of people.
Yes and that's a great analogy because it's possible that your person driving the new sports car did not intentionally get drunk and drive into a crowd of people.
Most people wouldn't call that driver a sociopath who intentionally murdered a crowd of people, they'd say "wow, that person made a couple of really poor decisions and they really messed up and ended up ruining a lot of lives".
You do realize that states recognize ignoring the risk means that person was intentional and they are convicted of murder? Anything can be seen as a poor choice. By your logic Hitler made really poor decisions and ended up ruining a lot of lives.
It's possible for SBF to be both guilty of a variety of crimes and also not an intentionally terrible human.
I don't know if he is or isn't a sociopath who lied to everyone while stealing billions. I just find the "wow, this guy is a monster" outrage interesting as the source DMs here don't really uphold that portrayal.
You could argue there’s no such thing as a “terrible person”, we are all at the mercy of our sensory inputs and the innate properties of our neurons. In order to keep society functional we need to enforce boundaries on human behavior, and in some cases label people as untrustworthy and possibly lock them up to stop them from doing more damage. If “terrible person” is the wrong label, we could pick a different one.
The next bit of that exchange is: "each individual decision seemed fine and I didn't realize how big their sum was until the end".
That's a classic "ends justify the means" slippery slope.
And even if he didn't want or mean to, he was more than happy to engage in that kind of behaviour if needed.
Someone like that is absolutely a terrible person in my book. I would not trust or be friends with someone who has that attitude. He is more concerned with "winning" than behaving ethically.
Imagine if you were an FTX employee, customer or investor who was in the dark. Would you really just chalk this up to playing "a little too fast and loose with an explosively growing business"? Would you be happy to work with SBF again? I know I wouldn't.
"each individual decision seemed fine and I didn't realize how big their sum was until the end"
This reads to me as "I was viewing all these situations in isolation instead of looking at the full system" not your reading which seems to be more "I thought I could get away with each individual thing".
To your last point, Parker Conrad was dragged through the mud and shunned everywhere when Zenefits imploded but he came right back with Rippling and is a tech darling now.
They are effectively the same reading to me. He's the CEO. It's his job to understand the whole system. Whether he looked at things in isolation, or thought he could get away with each one he was still reckless.
From a quick reading of what happened with Zenefits (Was not keeping track of tech back then), it seems bad but not as bad as FTX.
I'm also not saying that everyone would not want to work with someone like that again. I'm sure some (Most?) people would, but for me it would take lot to convince me they're not going to repeat that behaviour.
Most non-sociopaths would experience a huge amount of shame/stress from stealing billions of dollars from trusting people and losing it. SBF shows none of that.
Are you f'ing kidding me, taking this at face value?
Note in other tweets he said he was trying to "raise capital". The man is likely going to prison for years, he is either delusional or trying to promote his delusions to pretend the he didn't know what he was doing was wrong.
Looks like pretty classic desperation, which is an expected response to this situation for plenty of personality types that aren't indicative of anti-social personality disorder.
My issue is only using the half of the source that backs up the assessment (of sociopathy) and ignoring the other half that contradicts it. That is not fair, balanced or even good guessing, its just seeing what you want to see in the data by excluding what doesn't support your theory.
Are you responding to me, the original poster who was claiming sociopathy, or responding to the world in general?
All I was doing is pointing out that if person A claims person B is lying about their motivations and good deeds and actually causing harm because they are a sociopath, saying person A can’t claim that doesn’t make much sense.
I have no particularly strong opinion in if anyone is or is not a sociopath. I’m just pointing out that lying about your intentions and good deeds while causing harm is a pretty textbook element of ASPD. It’s certainly not unique to ASPD of course!
Do you have specific elements of sociopathy you think can’t apply?
Or more just pointing out all of this is bullshit speculation anyway because no one can diagnose someone off a couple of tweets in the middle of a scandal anyway?
hn_throwaway is the user that wants to use this as a source to prove SBF's sociopathy but then mocks another user for taking anything he says in the same source at face value. That's why I'm commenting, because that looks to me like a double-standard.
For HIS life, meaning he’s likely to go to prison if he fails to make his depositors whole. He doesn’t care about his customers which is why he embezzled the money, didn’t do any accounting, created a backdoor in the finance software, and tried to keep the charade going for as long as he could.
I don't interpret it that way. I interpret this as "the most important thing is getting myself out of this jam - because otherwise I'm going to prison and my life is fucked."
Elsewhere in the DMs he says "I didn't want to do sketchy stuff [...] and I didn't mean to" and "it as never the intention".
None of this reads like bombshell level "Wow this guy is terrible". He comes across as maybe terrible or maybe someone who played a little too fast and loose with an explosively growing business of which he lost control.