Sublime

But SBF extended this willingness to gamble to infinity—he was willing to make a 50/50 coin flip on the future of humanity! This is dangerous and depraved. SBF had been a major investor in the AI company Anthropic.

On the other end of the spectrum were kids like Larry Page, who would come in and say, “Here’s what I think I can do.” And his proposals were crazy. He’d come into the office and talk about doing something with space tethers or solar kites.

The firm had bent over backward to make Sam happy. They’d interviewed the two closest friends Sam had made at MIT and hired one of them. They even hired Sam’s younger brother, Gabe, who had just started on the Jane Street trading floor. They’d allowed Sam to play a central role in cooking up and pulling off a trade on the 2016 presidential election

The most important breakthroughs rarely follow blaring trumpets and a red carpet, with central authorities offering overflowing pots of tools and money. They are surprisingly fragile. They pass through long dark tunnels of skepticism and uncertainty, crushed or neglected, their champions often dismissed as crazy