this post was submitted on 27 Mar 2024
74 points (96.2% liked)

SneerClub

982 readers
34 users here now

Hurling ordure at the TREACLES, especially those closely related to LessWrong.

AI-Industrial-Complex grift is fine as long as it sufficiently relates to the AI doom from the TREACLES. (Though TechTakes may be more suitable.)

This is sneer club, not debate club. Unless it's amusing debate.

[Especially don't debate the race scientists, if any sneak in - we ban and delete them as unsuitable for the server.]

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

For thursday's sentencing the us government indicated they would be happy with a 40-50 prison sentence, and in the list of reasons they cite there's this gem:

  1. Bankman-Fried's effective altruism and own statements about risk suggest he would be likely to commit another fraud if he determined it had high enough "expected value". They point to Caroline Ellison's testimony in which she said that Bankman-Fried had expressed to her that he would "be happy to flip a coin, if it came up tails and the world was destroyed, as long as if it came up heads the world would be like more than twice as good". They also point to Bankman-Fried's "own 'calculations'" described in his sentencing memo, in which he says his life now has negative expected value. "Such a calculus will inevitably lead him to trying again," they write.

Turns out making it a point of pride that you have the morality of an anime villain does not endear you to prosecutors, who knew.

Bonus: SBF's lawyers' list of assertions for asking for a shorter sentence includes this hilarious bit reasoning:

They argue that Bankman-Fried would not reoffend, for reasons including that "he would sooner suffer than bring disrepute to any philanthropic movement."

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 37 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (5 children)

Holy FUCKING shit this cannot be real. No. He could not have written this.

sbf plans for post-ftx

My estimation of SBF as a wretch just fuckin plummeted.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 7 months ago

'Come out against the woke agenda'

I'm reminded of the person on twitter who went 'Wonder when his sex crimes come out' after Russell Brand rebranded as a conspiracy rightwinger. Note: This tweet was made before his sex crimes came out.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Notably missing: grabbing a couple of millions and run of to a non extradition country.

He is so sure he can get out on top that running away doesn't even hit his brainstorm top 19 list. He doesn't write the list on paper and burn it later, because for it to backfire he would need to fail.

Insane confidence man.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago (1 children)

ah, it’s always fun when the quiet part out loud CONFIDENTIAL.docx leaks. this sub-mediocre rich little jackass really did convince himself all he needed to do was control the narrative and flood Twitter with nonsense and he’d come out of this an unscathed alt-right grifter. what’s fucking amazing is that he still tried a bunch of these tactics (specifically #15 and a lot of the ones throwing shade on the bankruptcy team) even though the prosecution had this document the entire time

[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago (11 children)

the sentencing is in five and a half hours and i can't wait for SBF to try to get up and just explain one more time

[–] [email protected] 15 points 7 months ago (3 children)

if my real-life friends were cooler, I’d have already arranged a watch party, drinking game, and post-sentencing celebratory cocktails

fuck it, we’re doing cocktails

The SBF

  • fill a highball glass to 2/3rds with ice and apple cider
  • float a shot of Skrewball peanut butter whiskey on top
  • to commemorate SBF’s long history of bad decisions, garnish with a serving of your choice of citrus-flavored THC drinkable
  • don’t actually do the above step you will throw up in front of your disappointed family
[–] [email protected] 11 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Here’s my cocktail suggestion:

50 Shades (Sam Bankman) Fried:

Ingredients:

  • 50 different liquors/liqueurs, as many different densities and colours as possible

Equipment:

  • Transparent cylindrical urn with spigot

Steps:

  1. Sort the ingredients in decreasing order or liquid density.
  2. Pour 1/50th of the container capacity of each liquid in order into container, slowly and carefully to retain layers.

(Do not actually make this)

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago

ah yes the diabetes potion (bulk of density difference in drinkable things is due to differing sugar content)

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago

breakfast of sneers

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (10 replies)
[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago (1 children)
  1. Say you’re crazy
  2. Say they’re crazy
  3. Get muscular dystrophy when you’re a kid
  4. Marry J. Edgar Hoover
  5. Take up residence in Albania
  6. Stretch yourself on a rack so that you become over 6 1/2 feet tall
  7. Marry your mother
  8. Marry your father
  9. Blow up the state of liberty…

Hey I think some of these are pretty good ideas

https://archive.org/details/2917616.0001.001.umich.edu/page/3/mode/1up

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 11 points 7 months ago (1 children)

These clowns are so fucking incompetent at being evil geniuses that they need a document outlining their Evil Plan™ and not once think how that might be a stupid idea.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 7 months ago (2 children)

at this point, multiple people involved in crypto have been famously caught with a crimes.txt file on their unencrypted desktop, in signal chats named some shit like financial crimes and real gamers clubhouse where they talk about the crimes and Fortnite they’re doing, or with toilet phones protected by ziplock bags with crime burner phone (with evidence of my crimes) written on the bag with a sharpie

[–] [email protected] 11 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I suddenly feel like Hackerman because my PGP-encrypted file with Steam backup tokens is infinitely better secured than some crypto bro's detailed confession of crimes that could land them jail for 50 years.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I wonder how much of this is hubris from the cryptocurrency assholes consistently trying to confuse the public into associating their horseshit with general cryptography (especially with the crypto abbreviation for both) and in the process gaslighting themselves into thinking they’re cryptography and computer security experts

[–] [email protected] 11 points 7 months ago

This is why my crimes.txt file just contains the recipes that I really should not try making, like Jake Morgendorffer's chile con cheesepuffs with fresh mint, and my actual crime plans are in... oh ho, I see what you did there, you clever jack-a-napes!

[–] [email protected] 26 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Turns out being a fucking sociopath is a good indicator of reoffence, who would've thinkity thunked.

Give him 50 years of being forced to talk to a normal person that swats him in the head with a newspaper every time he says "expected value", we can rehabilitate this boy.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 7 months ago (2 children)

morality of an anime villain

Plenty of anime villains would be insulted by this.

IANAL: His defense team must truly suck ass. To let the prosecution build the case that he is essentially amoral and profit driven is just baffling. To let SBF speak in any capacity at all is more baffling. The only way they could bungle this further is if they asked for more time than the prosecution was asking for.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 7 months ago (2 children)

If I remember correctly SBF taking the stand was completely against his lawyers' recommendations, and in general he seems to have a really hard time doing what people who know better tell him to, such as don't DM journalists about your crimes and definitely don't start a substack detailing how you felt justified in doing them, and also trying to 'explain yourself' to prosecution witnesses is witness tampering and will get your bail revoked.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 7 months ago (1 children)

A really good lawyer carries duct tape

[–] [email protected] 14 points 7 months ago

At several points, if Sam's lawyer had jumped across the courtroom and knocked him out with a single punch to the face, it would have been best fulfilling their duty to their client and as officers of the court.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago

Wonder if that gets taken into account if that was an example of 'he does calculations in his head to do insane shit like not listen to his lawyers to shut the fuck up'.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 7 months ago (1 children)

There's a limit to what anyone can achieve with this calibre of client. This is also his second defence team after the others refused to put up with his shit any more. He has a new, third defence team handling his appeal.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Is he the type of guy to go 'wait if I just explain my stance more and more they will eventually understand'?

Did he try to Rationalist blogpost monologue his defence team because he also wanted to do that to the judge? The idea of him trying to verbose from first principles the law in his own defense sounds very funny to me. Poor lawyers

E: Officially perjured himself 3 times. Oof.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago (2 children)

i expect that if you listened to the water pipes in MDC Brooklyn, you could hear SBF tapping out a full explanation of his crimes in Morse code, especially why it was all Caroline's fault

[–] [email protected] 11 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Come on, that comes in the book soon to be released from prison. Also included in the book, how he is justified in hating books and all who read them as all his book smart lawyers gave him 30 years in prison on the appeal!

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago

by Michael Lewis, published by Kindle Print

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago (2 children)

@dgerard @sneerclub he's gonna start a Basilisk cult in prison, isn't he. Get out in 25 years and head straight for the executive suite in the temple his followers will have built for him.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago (2 children)

I expect we'll soon hear the laments of how prison impacts ev, maybe combined with some utterly twisted argument for prison abolition (along with their own deeply fucked replacement suggestion)

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago (1 children)

the important point is that prison abolition should start with financial so-called "'"'"crimes"'"'",

[–] [email protected] 11 points 7 months ago (1 children)

@dgerard "B-B-BUT prison is meant to be for TEH POORS!! This is WRONG!!!"

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 17 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (3 children)

ACAB and abolish prisons, but we can leave finance cops and SBF until quite late in the process

come the fabulous gay luxury space communism future, when scarcity itself becomes all but obsolete, we will absolutely have to make it clear that, at the mind-buggeringly long and rambling cadre meetings discussing the disbursement of the few items that remain restricted, Sam's opinion is not invited

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago (1 children)

"what will you do after the revolution" "I'll be telling sam bankman fried to shut the fuck up"

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 15 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Here is the document that mentions EA as risk factor, some quotes below

Fourth, the defendant may feel compelled to do this fraud again, or a version of it, based on his use of idiosyncratic, and ultimately for him pernicious, beliefs around altruism, utilitarianism, and expected value to place himself outside of the bounds of the law that apply to others, and to justify unlawful, selfish, and harmful conduct. Time and time again the defendant has expressed that his preferred path is the one that maximizes his version of societal value, even if imposes substantial short term harm or carries substantial risks to others... In this case, the defendant’s professed philosophy has served to rationalize a dangerous brand of megalomania—one where the defendant is convinced that he is above the law and the rules of the road that apply to everyone else, who he necessarily deems inferior in brainpower, skill, and analytical reasoning.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 7 months ago

Utilitarianism is just a vapid philosophy, and so gross.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 7 months ago (1 children)

@Architeuthis

"Almost all of the letters lamented the likelihood that victims will not be able to enjoy the gains on their crypto assets, as the bankruptcy proceedings are likely to pay out claims in dollars based on the price of Bitcoin and other assets on the date of bankruptcy ($16,871, in Bitcoin's case) rather than their prices today (around $70,000, or over four times as much)" oh no what a shame

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago

Your honor, My client caused no damages.

As clearly seen in the impact statements the only thing that was lost was crypto currencies and as they state they would have been held on to if not lost. By holding on to the crypto currencies, the victims shows a common delusion in the crypto sphere, namely that crypto has value. In all certainty they would have held on until said crypto was lost, stolen or had collapsed. The true expected value was zero.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I remember people convinced his big donations to Democrats would enable him to walk.

Edit I'm pretty sure those same people are gonna defend the judge's opinion that SBF is the worst defendant he's ever met with the fact he's autistic.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] RatBin 11 points 7 months ago (1 children)

He also brainstormed ideas to rehabilitate his image, including "Go on Tucker Carlsen [sic], come out as a republican", seek support from "random subgroups" including the alt-right or "some other displaced group", "come out as extremely pro crypto, pro freedom", embrace the narrative that "SBF died for our sins", condemn the bankruptcy lawyers, or applaud the bankruptcy lawyers.

This person...he's not fit to live in a normal society. He also planned to launche another crypto exchange after ftx. He's going to do that again and again...if they let him free (they won't)

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago (2 children)

embrace the narrative that “SBF died for our sins”

Huh? This is so absurdly self-aggrandizing that I struggle to comprehend what he's even saying. What did he imagine "our sins" were, and how did getting imprisoned absolve them?

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago

"SBF died for our sins". "Archangel LTD".

Oh my what a humble and altruistic boy genius.

load more comments
view more: next ›