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If Books Could Kill@ifbookspod.bsky.social |
Episode 29: Going Infinite When Michael Lewis looked at Sam Bankman Fried, he saw a young, enigmatic genius who was remaking the financial world. A federal jury strongly disagreed.
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Matthew Wright
@mcmwright.bsky.social
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Strong "Bart the Genius" vibes here
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pidgy_stardust
@pidgystardust.bsky.social
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Here's an indication that SBF was full of shit about effective altruism: "this dumb game we woke westerners play where we say all the right shiboleths and so everyone likes us" www.vox.com/future-perfe...
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Meaghan Walker
@slopclothes.bsky.social
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I read this after Faux’s Number Goes Up (and long after watching Dan Olson’s Line Goes Up) and when Lewis is just like “who really understands crypto amirite” it was both deeply hilarious and unsettling, like watching a zebra drinking at a pond inches from a submerged crocodile.
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@garrand.bsky.social
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Gotta say, my favorite part of this episode is Michael making the "Poly"technic joke, Peter bowling right through it followed by Michael making a sad puppy noise.
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@naila99.bsky.social
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I appreciated the polytechnic pun @michaelhobbes.bsky.social
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Grumpy Rootbeer
@grumpyrootbeer.bsky.social
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Only just started listening, so I'm not sure if you bring it up, but I've become convinced that a big reason lots of people fell for SBF's schtick is because they saw in him their own socially awkward, slovenly, overeducated failsons.
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Kurodou
@kurodzuchi.bsky.social
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I do love that we've finally found the demographic who falls for every relationship scam: venture capitalists
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Bomb Tombadil
@nopassaran.bsky.social
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hell yeah
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Davies
@oldmandavies.bsky.social
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When Michael said, “you can’t just make up a number and call it math” it reminded me of my favorite quote from Lewis’s book Moneyball: “When numbers acquire the significance of language, they acquire the power to do all the things which language can do: to become fiction and drama and poetry.”
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Aspartame Valerian
@aspartame.bsky.social
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The funniest thing about the Shakespeare anecdote is that SBF takes an opinion shared by an admittedly influential but still small slice of humanity and treats it like a physical constant. It's a fundamental misapprehension of the discourse.
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Fuzzy Mike
@fuzzymike.bsky.social
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“SBF: I want FTX to be the most law-abiding, most rule-following crypto exchange” to be generous, a literal ponzi scheme propped up by fraud IS more law-abiding and rule-following than every other crypto exchange
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Sublight Monster
@sublightmonster.bsky.social
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You mention at the start how basic most white-collar crime really is, and I wonder if it doesn’t share roots with the “genius serial killer” idea, in that it mainly serves to excuse authorities for never actually doing anything to stop it.
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Ersatz Haderach
@striderhlc.bsky.social
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Listening to this episode and rolling the phrase “argumentum ad polyculum” around in my head
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Perfect Orb 🍄
@perfectorb.bsky.social
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Tam-on-gouchie
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Dreams are free, motherfucker
@dreamsarefreemf.bsky.social
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Great episode but I was a little surprised you didn’t discuss the Blind Side’s Michael Oher and the story of Michael Lewis’s relationship with Oher’s not-adoptive-parents that was in the news around the time that Going Infinite came out. Extremely revealing about Lewis’s relationship to his subjects
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james
@cranberrymuffins.bsky.social
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At what patreon tier do we get access to the Shadow of the Erdtree bonus podcast in June?
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Michael Kimbell
@shotpoint.bsky.social
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The video game references were amazing, therefore this was my favorite episode. Now waiting for the Elden Ring bonus episode 😎
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Sarah Goldberg
@soglcsw.bsky.social
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This was wonderful & I thought the armchair psychologizing was pretty on track. My pet theory abt Lewis’ blind belief in SBF is that Lewis lost his kid in a car accident during the writing of this & I think he developed traumatic attachment to SBF as compensation.
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Chase Burke
@cburke.bsky.social
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I was excited to hear this is now a pod about Elden Ring, and I am just going to ignore that Peter uses a bleed build.
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William H. Devereaux
@whdevreaux.bsky.social
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This was hard to listen to.. (except for the large amounts of money thing) a lot of the personality traits described are very similar to me.... I could've so easily been a STEM-brained engineer-diseased Shakespeare denigrator....
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