The Michael Lewis SBF Book, and the trouble with gifted kids.
After reading the Sam Bankman-Fried book, Going Infinite, you get two interesting insights.
Firstly, it is clear that Lewis –– as many in the media highlight –– was seduced by SBF. But, in my opinion, that happens only in the end where he presents his case for why John Ray wasn’t necessarily the best person to oversee the FTX bankruptcy.
Outside of that, for the majority of the book, he isn’t explicitly defending SBF, but he almost adopts some SBF quirkologies. like casually describing people using some form of math formula to think about people.
It can be said that Lewis feels a kindred connection with his fellow Bay Area native, since so many of the kids who live around there are in a share in SBF’s oddness and ambition.
This brings the second realization, that SBF and many of the effective altruists, or EA’s, were likely a combination of naturally odd people, who through their parents, were encouraged to be odd. Nature and nurture manifest.
These parents also shared a similarity in that they were all from somewhat firmly upper-middle-class, educated backgrounds. What I mean by allowed to be odd is that when SBF’s parents took him to Six Flags, he expressed no joy. Same with going to Europe. Most tragically, they essentially got rid of all holidays/birthday celebrations, saying “If you want something for your birthday, just tell us and we’ll get it.”
Celebrations like these are vital for our souls. Even if it is just something as small as arranging the bacon in a cute way, a la Breaking Bad.
It is what in effect draws us to the collective idea of being a human in society in this specific moment. The way that maybe a Native American tribe would celebrate a Powwow, or the feast the Gauls in Asterix and Obelix throw following an adventure. By removing an aspect that society promotes, in this case, birthdays or holidays, you’re isolating a person from that society.
The EA’s all seem — from Lewis’ description — to be products of that similar kind of child-psychologist-induced behavior. The parents almost treated their kids as adults and in doing so created an isolation in them from both the necessary immaturity that kids ought to embrace, since conquering said immaturity is a fundamental part of growing up, and a hatred of the elderly. The hatred stems from the feeling that the majority of elders are the types that fall for societal constructs, or even those who are aware of the follies of them, still seek to fit in with
Compound this with the way that the STEM-inclined feel towards those who are just mere mortals, or worse … Liberal Arts majors, and you have a clear understanding that SBF probably was consistently reinforced in his mind that he could behave differently and was above the masses. As Anthony Scaramucci puts it, SBF has a God-complex.
Maybe the best way to deal with smart kids is to recognize that they are kids, and even if they protest being them.
