I’d also add these lessons I’ve personally learned:
- Greed is blinding even to intelligent people, especially greedy people in groups
- Society is incredibly vulnerable to lying, we mostly rely on the disincentive that people usually feel bad about it, but the ones who don’t can get away with anything.
- There’s really only a subtle difference between many successful startups and Ponzi schemes. Sam Altman’s grift is only one level more sophisticated than SBF or Elizabeth Holmes
I don’t think that’s the case. The relatively small cabal of people driving this stuff are all pretty weird people who live atypical lives and are hella smart, aware, and unconstrained.
They don’t care about the wake of destruction, and likely believe that it is virtuous to bring it on.
- Greed is blinding even to intelligent people, especially greedy people in groups
- Society is incredibly vulnerable to lying, we mostly rely on the disincentive that people usually feel bad about it, but the ones who don’t can get away with anything.
- There’s really only a subtle difference between many successful startups and Ponzi schemes. Sam Altman’s grift is only one level more sophisticated than SBF or Elizabeth Holmes