The fawning mainstream media coverage that SBF received is not particularly unusual. In fact, Elizabeth Holmes arguably received even more at Theranos. Most mainstream media reporters base their stories on simple-to-understand narratives, such as morality plays. Depth of insight is rare. Look elsewhere for accuracy.
I have a very dim view of “journalists” these days. The stereotype you mention is long dead. Yesterday I was reading an article on NPR about blacks leaving the Boston public school system. The mother interviewed blamed poor funding. the journalist found someone who agreed, never looked at the MA DoE data, Census data,... and mailed in the story (literally a story). They don’t even try, they are stenographers, if they agree with you.
Jeb Bush lost the nomination in 2016 because his brother ran a s***show as President for almost 8 years. Even if Trump had never run for President in that primary season, Bush still ends up dropping out early. The country and the Republican voters were done with Bushs.
As I enter the online dating world, this post really rings a bell for me. How should I market myself? How much of what I see is marketing and not really genuine?
"In today’s world, the only defense against other people’s use of image manipulation may be to doubt everyone. Treat every impression as artificial. That seems rather dystopian."
I have plenty of complaints of liberals, conservatives, and even libertarians when they get too extreme but your SAT example highlights a problem i find to be common to most liberals. They "solve" what they see as a problem (it often is) with no thought of secondary and even tertiary impacts that end up bigger and worse than what they hoped to solve, and often didn't.
An example - towards the end they talk about the problems with CA high speed rail.
I suspect part of the issue is that journalists, like youtubers or TikTokers or whatever, are in this brave new online world of trying to make their stories go viral to generate cash and raise their own profile, and SBF played into that with his EA persona. Cat videos and police brutality go viral 'cause they play on our emotional reactions (albeit very different emotions) and this motivates people to share them with others so they can experience the same emotional reaction. Pro-social behavior seems to also trigger a positive emotional reaction in a lot of people, too; I occasionally see videos on Twitter that play into this that more or less boil down "guy bought a sandwich for a homeless man, who then ate it and enjoyed it while we filmed him" or "I gave a thirsty stranger a sip of my Evian" and they both get like 4 billion views for reasons that simply don't resonate with me. I think the narrative of "he made a fortune in crypto, now he's using his vast wealth to solve world hunger, climate change, and eradicate water-borne parasites in the Amazon" is just the 110 IQ Vox reader version of giving a homeless a guy a hamburger for likes and views.
Is there actually any evidence that the media moved on from the Colorado shooter after he claimed to be non-binary? That's definitely something a lot of people predicted would happen but I don't see it to be true. I just googled it and saw many articles from the past day or two about it.
"Donald Trump successfully manufactured a negative image for Bush, and Bush never escaped. Chances are your view of Jeb Bush is similarly dim."
My dim vie of him was that he should have been the person that by just staying in the race could eventually have become the Schelling point for the non-Trump (at the time) majority. His early withdrawal seemed to be a character flaw. A stronger man would have laughed off Trump's taunts or taken them as badges of honor.
I think that’s compelling. I’ve seen the phrase “performance culture” applied to media platforms and, if we dig deeper into what that could be, we can conclude the following: capture something scarce, broadcast to the world, repeat. Build social capital and transform into $$$. “Scarcity” here can be using increasingly volatile and exaggerated language in a creative way that no one else is doing; embracing conspiracy theories that are “scarce” relative to the beliefs of educated and accepted beliefs of your society, photos/interviews with celebrities, thought leaders, public figures (this is used a lot now by so-called “comedians” who defend their realm of free speech to speak what’s considered the unspeakable, which is again scarcity.) Influencers had mastered this protocol with their faked sponsored trips and using the physical world as a kind of mise en scene where they are the main character in the game of life. Impression management is about mastery of the platformula. SBF is a great example of a16z tactics, who perfected this notion of value as a narrative. Think back to those early a16z episodes where Andreessen talked about Hollywood and the boom StarMaker. Hell, Michael Oviz helped construct and build the fund!!! CEOs as the new stars, with reality as the new movie. The Truman Show it is.
I think there is far to much hay being made about SBF, and not nearly enough about the financial environment he thrived in. The FTX token was 'worth' $2 each on the eve of Covid and the loose financial conditions helped that go up >30X to its peak (and that is just the nominal rate against the total float it would have been much higher). Everyone is using other people's money from British pension funds, to Canadian pension funds (lost hundreds of millions in crypto), to stimulus check retail investors to margin loans at 0%.
There are likely plenty of 'honest' crypto exchanges/programmers etc who have had their wealth wiped out by exposure to the broad sector. The issue is not media hype, you simply cannot use reputation within a systemically broken paradigm. Madoff stole a bunch of money, but plenty of people lost a lot when the Obama administration stepped in and favored union pensioners over (legally entitled) bondholders. Lots of diligent short sellers have gone to great lengths to uncover weak businesses only to incur large losses when the federal reserve steps in and juices markets higher. The coming market crash is going to wipe out millions of savers who have followed standard advice to max out their 401k contributions and 'buy and hold' because bad actors have been appraised of the strategy and are exploiting it to enrich themselves.
"Once upon a time, journalists were reputed to be hard-bitten skeptics, the sort of guy who wouldn’t publish his own grandmother’s version of a story without checking it first. If there are still such journalists around, where were they on this story? "
Arnold, I've been meaning to tell you that my father was a U Missouri J school grad as well. Probably a couple of years after your mother, since he transferred there after the war. I recall him commenting on the famous freedom of press case that a journalist took to the Supreme Court because she didn't want to reveal her source. Cynically, he said that she probably didn't have any sources. (Was that about Angela Davis?) . Fast forward a couple of decades to when the day after Janet Cooke received a Pulitzer, she was fired and the award returned after the Washington Post realized the story was fabricated.
In short, the time that journalist checked all the facts has been gone for a long time.
To me, the solution is a form of “privatized social credit score” where being (for instance) a dishonest journalist earns permanent negative reputation points that stick with you for a long time.
"In today’s world, the only defense against other people’s use of image manipulation may be to doubt everyone."
Of course it CAN have a more optimistic version. "They don't really believe Y. They know that X is correct, but they feel that have to economize the truth with their audience. This is the way I excuse much of what Krugman, for example, writes.
The fawning mainstream media coverage that SBF received is not particularly unusual. In fact, Elizabeth Holmes arguably received even more at Theranos. Most mainstream media reporters base their stories on simple-to-understand narratives, such as morality plays. Depth of insight is rare. Look elsewhere for accuracy.
I have a very dim view of “journalists” these days. The stereotype you mention is long dead. Yesterday I was reading an article on NPR about blacks leaving the Boston public school system. The mother interviewed blamed poor funding. the journalist found someone who agreed, never looked at the MA DoE data, Census data,... and mailed in the story (literally a story). They don’t even try, they are stenographers, if they agree with you.
To paraphrase one of my favorite quotes, if you want authenticity, get a dog.
Jeb Bush lost the nomination in 2016 because his brother ran a s***show as President for almost 8 years. Even if Trump had never run for President in that primary season, Bush still ends up dropping out early. The country and the Republican voters were done with Bushs.
As I enter the online dating world, this post really rings a bell for me. How should I market myself? How much of what I see is marketing and not really genuine?
"In today’s world, the only defense against other people’s use of image manipulation may be to doubt everyone. Treat every impression as artificial. That seems rather dystopian."
Welcome to the 21st century
I have plenty of complaints of liberals, conservatives, and even libertarians when they get too extreme but your SAT example highlights a problem i find to be common to most liberals. They "solve" what they see as a problem (it often is) with no thought of secondary and even tertiary impacts that end up bigger and worse than what they hoped to solve, and often didn't.
An example - towards the end they talk about the problems with CA high speed rail.
https://www.econtalk.org/annie-duke-on-the-power-of-quitting/#audio-highlights
I suspect part of the issue is that journalists, like youtubers or TikTokers or whatever, are in this brave new online world of trying to make their stories go viral to generate cash and raise their own profile, and SBF played into that with his EA persona. Cat videos and police brutality go viral 'cause they play on our emotional reactions (albeit very different emotions) and this motivates people to share them with others so they can experience the same emotional reaction. Pro-social behavior seems to also trigger a positive emotional reaction in a lot of people, too; I occasionally see videos on Twitter that play into this that more or less boil down "guy bought a sandwich for a homeless man, who then ate it and enjoyed it while we filmed him" or "I gave a thirsty stranger a sip of my Evian" and they both get like 4 billion views for reasons that simply don't resonate with me. I think the narrative of "he made a fortune in crypto, now he's using his vast wealth to solve world hunger, climate change, and eradicate water-borne parasites in the Amazon" is just the 110 IQ Vox reader version of giving a homeless a guy a hamburger for likes and views.
Is there actually any evidence that the media moved on from the Colorado shooter after he claimed to be non-binary? That's definitely something a lot of people predicted would happen but I don't see it to be true. I just googled it and saw many articles from the past day or two about it.
"Donald Trump successfully manufactured a negative image for Bush, and Bush never escaped. Chances are your view of Jeb Bush is similarly dim."
My dim vie of him was that he should have been the person that by just staying in the race could eventually have become the Schelling point for the non-Trump (at the time) majority. His early withdrawal seemed to be a character flaw. A stronger man would have laughed off Trump's taunts or taken them as badges of honor.
I think that’s compelling. I’ve seen the phrase “performance culture” applied to media platforms and, if we dig deeper into what that could be, we can conclude the following: capture something scarce, broadcast to the world, repeat. Build social capital and transform into $$$. “Scarcity” here can be using increasingly volatile and exaggerated language in a creative way that no one else is doing; embracing conspiracy theories that are “scarce” relative to the beliefs of educated and accepted beliefs of your society, photos/interviews with celebrities, thought leaders, public figures (this is used a lot now by so-called “comedians” who defend their realm of free speech to speak what’s considered the unspeakable, which is again scarcity.) Influencers had mastered this protocol with their faked sponsored trips and using the physical world as a kind of mise en scene where they are the main character in the game of life. Impression management is about mastery of the platformula. SBF is a great example of a16z tactics, who perfected this notion of value as a narrative. Think back to those early a16z episodes where Andreessen talked about Hollywood and the boom StarMaker. Hell, Michael Oviz helped construct and build the fund!!! CEOs as the new stars, with reality as the new movie. The Truman Show it is.
According to his substack, his name is Clinton, not Clifton.
I think there is far to much hay being made about SBF, and not nearly enough about the financial environment he thrived in. The FTX token was 'worth' $2 each on the eve of Covid and the loose financial conditions helped that go up >30X to its peak (and that is just the nominal rate against the total float it would have been much higher). Everyone is using other people's money from British pension funds, to Canadian pension funds (lost hundreds of millions in crypto), to stimulus check retail investors to margin loans at 0%.
There are likely plenty of 'honest' crypto exchanges/programmers etc who have had their wealth wiped out by exposure to the broad sector. The issue is not media hype, you simply cannot use reputation within a systemically broken paradigm. Madoff stole a bunch of money, but plenty of people lost a lot when the Obama administration stepped in and favored union pensioners over (legally entitled) bondholders. Lots of diligent short sellers have gone to great lengths to uncover weak businesses only to incur large losses when the federal reserve steps in and juices markets higher. The coming market crash is going to wipe out millions of savers who have followed standard advice to max out their 401k contributions and 'buy and hold' because bad actors have been appraised of the strategy and are exploiting it to enrich themselves.
"Once upon a time, journalists were reputed to be hard-bitten skeptics, the sort of guy who wouldn’t publish his own grandmother’s version of a story without checking it first. If there are still such journalists around, where were they on this story? "
Arnold, I've been meaning to tell you that my father was a U Missouri J school grad as well. Probably a couple of years after your mother, since he transferred there after the war. I recall him commenting on the famous freedom of press case that a journalist took to the Supreme Court because she didn't want to reveal her source. Cynically, he said that she probably didn't have any sources. (Was that about Angela Davis?) . Fast forward a couple of decades to when the day after Janet Cooke received a Pulitzer, she was fired and the award returned after the Washington Post realized the story was fabricated.
In short, the time that journalist checked all the facts has been gone for a long time.
To me, the solution is a form of “privatized social credit score” where being (for instance) a dishonest journalist earns permanent negative reputation points that stick with you for a long time.
"In today’s world, the only defense against other people’s use of image manipulation may be to doubt everyone."
Of course it CAN have a more optimistic version. "They don't really believe Y. They know that X is correct, but they feel that have to economize the truth with their audience. This is the way I excuse much of what Krugman, for example, writes.