[HN Gopher] Michael Lewis's Blind Side
___________________________________________________________________
Michael Lewis's Blind Side
Author : throwup238
Score : 58 points
Date : 2024-01-28 17:10 UTC (5 hours ago)
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| drcode wrote:
| Like the Lewis book, I feel this review doesn't grapple with the
| basic fact that SBF's quasi-success is just as easy to replicate
| if you just model him as "psychopath" instead of "psychopath AND
| genius"
|
| The first option doesn't make SBF interesting anymore
| refulgentis wrote:
| I'm not sure optimizing for interesting would help - it's hard
| to find genius in a story about building a crypto exchange then
| lying about it's financials.
| collinmcnulty wrote:
| In his podcast, Michael Lewis described his job as finding the
| expert in a topic and then making their understanding legible to
| the reader. Going Infinite demonstrates the weakness of this
| approach, which is that he is entirely too credulous and
| sympathetic once he has picked his "expert". I have enjoyed a lot
| of his writing, so I hope in the future he makes more space for
| changing his initial impression and critique of his subject,
| perhaps he can start by reading The Undoing Project by noted
| author Michael Lewis.
| rjtavares wrote:
| I like Matt Levine's take on Going Infinite:
|
| > Many of the reviews that I have read of the book complain
| that Lewis does not sufficiently explain that Bankman-Fried is
| Guilty and Bad, Actually, but that is not the book that he
| wanted to write or the one I want to read. He wanted to
| understand and explain Bankman-Fried's psychology and tell a
| good story. If you want to read a moral condemnation of crypto
| theft, you can get that anywhere. You go to Michael Lewis for
| character and story.
|
| Michael Lewis does characters, not subjects.
| cmcaleer wrote:
| I have this problem with a lot of media in general these
| days, both fiction and non-fiction. Although it's enjoying a
| huge cultural resurgence today among young people, I feel
| like if American Psycho were to be made today, Bateman would
| have to be made comically evil with his faux liberal (to use
| the language of Bankman-Fried) 'woke shibboleths' left behind
| lest readers get mad that Bateman is being used as a tool to
| bash those beliefs -- ignoring the interesting commentary
| that Bateman actually uses it for status within his social
| circle and as a disguise for the person he really is.
|
| You see this a lot in coverage of very contentious issues
| too. I'm purposefully not naming any directly here (I'm
| thinking of at least 3 varied topics where this is
| particularly bad), but there are a lot of very complicated,
| hot-button issues where if you read any article that goes
| against the 'established' narrative in a nuanced way, there
| are usually several paragraphs of throat-clearing where the
| writer feels the need to go "We all know x is important, for
| reasons 1, 2, and 3".
| barnabee wrote:
| > that is not the book that he wanted to write or the one I
| want to read
|
| Exactly this.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Then perhaps his books belong in the fiction section?
| truculent wrote:
| Okay, sure. But TFA isn't about Lewis not condemning the
| Guilty and Bad SBF, it's about Lewis falling short on his own
| terms.
|
| > Lewis paints a portrait of Sam as singularly motivated by
| doing the EV-maximizing thing despite the social and
| emotional costs inflicted on others. But the real Sam in this
| story is not taking a hit to his reputation in order to
| maximize expectancy; he's carelessly burning expectancy in
| the process of cultivating a reputation for punishing and
| humiliating his competition.
|
| The "blind side" is that we don't get the full illustration
| of SBF's character, because it's filtered through Lewis's
| credulous reporting, lack of access to certain key players,
| and limited attention to the financial details of what was
| going on. This is particularly disappointing because these
| are precisely the things that Lewis is known for doing so
| well.
| bambax wrote:
| But the story is wrong, and so is the character!
|
| SBF is both a fraudster and a fraud -- not an altruistic
| genius.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| > spends most of his time playing video games
|
| ... badly. This to me is one of the funniest parts of the story.
| He wasn't even good at it[1][2].
|
| [1]: https://milkyeggs.com/crypto/what-happened-at-alameda-
| resear...
|
| [2]:
| https://www.ft.com/content/23ab2258-ce03-4fbb-a9b2-7d9ec6e3d...
| gurchik wrote:
| He is bad at League, but that article framing it as some kind
| of mental disorder is grasping at straws. 20% of all League
| players are in the Bronze tier. I've probably played more
| League than SBF has and I'm still Silver. Why? Because I'm just
| trying to have fun with my friends. Not everyone is trying to
| climb the ladder. A lot of guitarists have been playing for
| years and only know the basic chords because that's all they
| want to play. There's nothing wrong with that.
|
| The other examples the article points to that SBF has "fried
| his brain" are not compelling to me either. The author is
| attempting to explain how SBF could have lost all this money. I
| think the simplest explanation is that his "intellectual
| ability" has nothing to do with it, he's just a crook who
| thought he would get away with it.
| vishnugupta wrote:
| I liked The Big Short, movie and the book, as a story and also
| because the author claims that it's based on true events. Now
| after seeing Michael Lewis fumble all over the place about SBF
| I'm not sure about the latter anymore.
|
| Maybe Michael Lewis got too attached to his subjects and was
| hoodwinked or maybe he knew it was not all true and went along
| with them because they made for a good story.
|
| All in all he lost his credibility big time, at least among lay
| (i.e., outsiders of Wall Street) readers. Later I read somewhere
| on Twitter that apparently WS folks knew his book to be a BS
| anyway.
| lordgrenville wrote:
| In the same vein Flash Boys is mostly about Brad Katsuyama
| starting IEX, and the evils of HFT. I wondered while reading it
| if there was another side to the story.
| tptacek wrote:
| There absolutely is; in fact, most of the story is on the
| other side, and Katsuyama's premise doesn't even make much
| sense.
| nytesky wrote:
| I wonder if Lewis is going through a rough patch professionally
| because of the recent tragedy he suffered -- his daughter died
| in an automobile accident.
|
| I would not be surprised if it made him more sympathetic to a
| "young kid" at this point in his life. That sort of thing is
| soul crushing.
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| Didn't know that, but yeah I could totally see that making
| Lewis more sympathetic.
|
| I've never particularly liked SBF even before he imploded,
| but I don't want him spending the rest of his life in jail
| for a non-violent crime. I'd rather see him banned from
| finance and banking and sentenced to a million or so hours of
| teaching programming and computer science to underserved poor
| children, or something similarly constructive. He has these
| amazing skills that could be put work benefitting society,
| and instead we lock him away so the prison-industrial complex
| can profit. Such a waste, let's rethink that.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Does SBF have amazing skills in CS (or anything) to share?
|
| EDIT: Looks like he graduated MIT with a physics degree, so
| I'd hope so. Then again, maybe we don't want con men
| teaching kids.
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| Well, amazing is relative. To underserved kids in poor
| school districts yeah his skills are probably amazing.
| And while an MIT Physics degree doesn't explicitly teach
| software engineering craftsmanship, his first employer
| Jane Street has high standards for that, and may have,
| depending on what he actually did there.
|
| But compared to, say, Jeff Dean, his skills are garbage,
| tofu-dreg, and devoid of any real craftsmanshift or
| integrity. Pick your point on the continuum.
|
| But I'd rather have high-skilled conmen like Sam, Michael
| Milken, etc. answering for their crimes and
| rehabilitating by helping others and being constructive,
| than wasting away in jail, and potentially teaching other
| criminals there, or becoming more criminal themselves.
| CPLX wrote:
| It's not violence by the literal definition of the word,
| but I'm not a fan of this particular point of view.
|
| Financial crime at this scale _absolutely causes people to
| die_ unless you think several billion dollars worth of
| resources is ineffective at keeping people alive.
|
| The people who engage in fraud at this scale create _far_
| more human misery than your average mugger, though I think
| both should be adequately punished.
| albntomat0 wrote:
| To what degree was the money lost by SBF/etc going to be
| put towards saving lives, versus the dreams of the
| average crypto person?
| nytesky wrote:
| Well, a LOT of crypto investor are limited means and the
| least likely to be able to afford to lose it. Sure they
| shouldn't have risked their life savings, but they aren't
| getting ahead in normal ways so they hooked onto this
| rocket, and FTX was considered safe and above board for a
| long time.
|
| There are real mental and physical impact to loss of
| majority of your wealth, which can lead to homelessness,
| exhaustion from working more to cover shortfalls, marital
| strife, abuse, suicide.
|
| Considering this wasn't just insiders like high net worth
| investors angel investing, but everyday people, yeah it
| hurts a lot of people in real ways. Probably a lot more
| than the Madoff crowd for example.
| TuringNYC wrote:
| The recent book similarly made me question all of Lewis' books,
| which is unfortunate because I've read every one of his books
| and have been a fan for decades.
|
| The latest book about SBF seems easy to fact check because the
| reporting, data, and primary evidence on the FTX saga has been
| so comprehensively available to everyone. I have followed the
| entire FTX saga like a soap opera and I cannot square Lewis'
| take with the vast evidence it contradicts.
|
| On a side note, as someone very close to the industry, I can
| say The Big Short was spot on. It simplified things, but that
| is to be expected for a mass market publication. I hope this
| means most of his books were equally evidence based, and
| perhaps the quality has only recently suffered.
| stevenwoo wrote:
| It's kind of interesting to hear from someone who had a job offer
| from SBF until they asked questions, otherwise this could have
| been written by anyone months after the trial finished. Also I
| thought for sure the writer was going to mention the book, The
| Blind Side, where it appears possible that Lewis got the primary
| facts wrong because he trusted his source too much,but it's only
| used for the title. For reference the NYTimes review of The Blind
| Side got it right 17 years ago where the primary sources for
| Lewis was his friend Tuohy and wife.
| gist wrote:
| > It's kind of interesting to hear from someone who had a job
| offer from SBF until they asked questions
|
| Well the OP counters his own speculation (but even if he didn't
| who knows what really happened):
|
| "(indeed, I was missing the domain knowledge and operations
| experience required for my role, as I had only ever been a
| trader)."
|
| What's interesting about this is the tendency for people to
| assume the reason 'asked questions' as completely true.
| truculent wrote:
| The subtext here is that OP may not have been qualifies on
| paper, but nobody else was either (indeed, in a world where
| "grown-ups" are unnecessary, it may have been looked at as a
| positive)
| adamgordonbell wrote:
| I think many people will not read the book because of the reviews
| saying Lewis is compromised. But you should absolutely read the
| book. It's very good.
|
| As Matt Levin says:
|
| > You go to Michael Lewis for character and story.
|
| It does give you an inside look at being on the ground at FTX in
| the days before and after the collapse and also spends a big part
| of the book on time at Jane Street, which fascinated me. Before
| this, all I knew was OCAML, and not the craziness of modern
| trading.
|
| The big bet on Trump and the stock market election night 2016 is
| riveting. That insane idea SBF had, to pay Trump not to run again
| and talking to his people about it was also entertaining.
|
| It's just not really a book explaining the fraud. It's a number
| of wild scenes from a strange person's life as it collapses. And
| yeah, it is probably a bit too sympathetic, but it's not shy
| about him being a weirdo, and EA people being all a bit strange,
| and Lewis trying to understand what is going on in this guys
| head.
| blueboo wrote:
| Maybe you're implying this -- it's an obvious omission -- but
| his credibility should encourage us to read "character" and
| "story" for their evocative imagination and not, say, for fact.
| adamgordonbell wrote:
| Nope, not saying that. but the other person in the comments
| has a point:
|
| > It is also an unrealistic ask that an author get close
| access to still living characters and then manage to write a
| book to tell you how bad that person is. They are unlikely to
| be able to find a subject willing to give them access on
| another book again.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| So as a group I shouldn't take such authors as anything
| except entertainers?
| adamgordonbell wrote:
| Just expect they, like everyone, have a bias. Writers who
| do hit piece style things will portray things as bad and
| authors who do deep feature pieces will be positive
| because they each have a certain approach and bag of
| tricks and this has up and down sides.
|
| A hit piece person would never spend months embedded with
| someone, so wont give a deep picture. A lewis will, but
| be appropriately stockholmed by the whole thing.
|
| That inside the actors studio guy, he only interviews
| people about how great they are. You learn a lot, but it
| has a strong perspective. Others are combative and good
| at it. Styles shape form.
| pavlov wrote:
| I read the book and was mostly disappointed.
|
| SBF comes across as a fundamentally uninteresting and
| uncultured person who is very proud of not having any interests
| and not giving a shit about other people. Even his parents
| struggle to tell anything noteworthy or likable about him.
| Lewis seems to relish the massive challenge of turning him into
| a protagonist, but the reader doesn't share in those rewards.
|
| Also, trading stocks for a living is apparently just as boring
| as it sounds like. The descriptions of what Jane Street does
| made me feel somehow sorry for these people who are stuck
| making undiscerning myopic bets for their own sake instead of
| using their intellect for something productive.
|
| In the end, Lewis tries a shock twist: what if the bankruptcy
| lawyers are the bad guys after all? It's unsubstantiated by
| anything in the book and just comes across as desperation on
| his part to close the book with something more satisfactory
| than "it was all a tremendous waste of time and other people's
| money."
| adamgordonbell wrote:
| It's true, about the bankruptcy stuff at the end feeling a
| bit much. That's one of the many points where I felt he was
| being too sympathetic.
|
| But I found the rest of it fascinating. It just wasn't about
| how SBF was bad. Even this review says the book is
| interesting and you'll read it one sitting.
|
| A lot of the crazy scenes from Wallstreet that made lewis
| famous, when he wrote Liars poker are in this one transformed
| into a different world and that is interesting.
|
| It's like look at absurdity and scale of what's happening
| here. But this time with nerds and gaming pcs, instead of
| Wallstreet and suits.
|
| If you don't like narrative nonfiction about finance, thats
| zoomed in on a specific main character, well, you shouldnt
| read a Micheal Lewis book.
|
| I must say I'm biased though, as I'm a fan of him as a
| writer.
| hosh wrote:
| I was looking forward to Michael Lewis's book precisely because I
| wanted to see how these mistakes happened. Some of his other
| books were more like that.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| The purpose of a Michael Lewis book is not to tell you who the
| good guys & bad guys are. He has a way with storytelling and
| manages to get access to some serious players sometimes in
| fringes of the market that are not being written about elsewhere.
|
| He has a bias for scrappy little guys vs big guys across his
| books, but the little guy, on balance, is not always the "good
| guy".
|
| Often in the type of tales he writes, there is no good guy..
| Sometimes it's just a bunch of guys at a poker table and one of
| them is going to go home with the money. I'd try not to derive
| any moral lessons from that.
|
| I also do wonder why everyone wants to be told who is good & bad
| now rather than deciding on their own.
|
| It is also an unrealistic ask that an author get close access to
| still living characters and then manage to write a book to tell
| you how bad that person is. They are unlikely to be able to find
| a subject willing to give them access on another book again.
| anonymousab wrote:
| The issue is Lewis going out of his way, in so many pubic
| forums, to present SBF as a good guy genius with only the best
| of intentions. At worst, as a good kid who made a couple of sad
| mistakes that you should forgive him for. Before and throughout
| SBF's trial, Lewis's biases were displayed more and more in his
| denials and ...fanciful interpretations and justifications of
| the things SBF did.
|
| It is not that his book should have painted a bad guy as an
| unequivocal bad guy. It is that you cannot trust Lewis'
| accounting of events and people because of his known extreme
| bias in the matter; his descriptions of events and emotions at
| play during them are filtered through a very biased lens.
|
| It can still be an entertaining read and story, it just can't
| be a trusted one.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Yeah completely fair to point out that in this particular
| case, Lewis is completely over the top in his support of SBF,
| even well past the point that his crimes are clear.
| OtherShrezzing wrote:
| I really like his books, but Lewis also had this issue in
| Flash Boys. For half of the book, he writes about
| Aleynikov, someone accused by Goldman Sachs of stealing
| high-frequency trading code. Lewis writes a thorough and
| uncontested defense of Aleynikov. Around 3/4 of the way
| through the book, Lewis reveals that Aleynikov did actually
| transfer the computer code in question out of Goldman, but
| contests that this is immaterial because Aleynikov told
| Lewis that he'd taken it to contribute to open source
| efforts.
|
| The prosecution for Aleynikov's crimes was definitely
| heavy-handed (and that in itself would have made a good
| book), but there's really no doubt that he transferred the
| code out of Goldman, breaking the law while doing so.
| TeaBrain wrote:
| I've enjoyed Lewis's books, but I also noticed this about
| his unfaltering defense of Aleynikov. In one passage that
| stuck out to me, Lewis argued that Aleynikov was not
| guilty of taking anything important as Aleynikov claimed
| not to have taken any code related to specific
| strategies, only that code related to infrastructure,
| which arguably is the most important code that he could
| have taken. In other passages, Lewis used Aleynikov's
| defense, that he not only wanted to contribute to open
| source efforts, but that some of the Goldman Sachs code
| used open source code, so it should have been okay to
| take, as if high frequency trading infrastructure code
| was just floating around in the open source world in the
| early 2010s.
|
| It wasn't the only issue with the book. Lewis also didn't
| seem to understand the dynamics of national best bid and
| offer, and that if a large market order was submitted, it
| will not be executed at the original nbbo necessarily
| because of nefarious activity, but because there are not
| enough bids or offers at the original nbbo to execute the
| buy or sell for every order at the original nbbo. So much
| of the book hinges on a misunderstanding of this idea.
| There is also no discussion of the fact that spreads and
| liquidity used to be worse prior to electronic market
| makers. Instead there's this idea that market makers are
| competing with institutional investors submitting large
| orders, when really, they are competing with other market
| markers/liquidity providers, such as how Goldman Sachs
| e-trading(where Aleynikov left) would have been competing
| with Teza Technologies (where Aleynikov was invited to).
| I think that either Brad Katsuyama, who seems to have fed
| much of the electronic trading related information to
| Lewis, was misled himself or was possibly intentionally
| misleading Lewis.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| I don't imagine Kaysuyama is that naive, he just had a
| product to sell.
|
| That product is a differentiated market that makes nbbo
| latency arb more difficult.
|
| Agreed the big anti-HFT/electronic market making bias is
| funny since we now have decentralized market makers
| competing for penny spreads. Versus the alleged "more
| fair" world we are supposed to yearn for is the pre-
| RegNMS days of 25cent spreads guaranteed to a guy on the
| NYSE floor.
|
| Where do people think their cheap/free trading
| commissions come from (that and PFOF).
|
| Also the idea that large holders of assets should be able
| to de-risk (or put on risk) without market impact by
| buying/selling huge lots at the bid/ask is interesting.
| It's the opposite of defending the little guy. NBBO was
| put into place to protect small investors more if
| anything as the first 100 share lot is protected. There
| is no constitutional right to buy a million dollars of
| some midcap stock at the ask.
| tptacek wrote:
| Right, but a lot of this is also the purpose of fiction.
| gist wrote:
| > The purpose of a Michael Lewis book is not to tell you who
| the good guys & bad guys are.
|
| The purpose of most books (like this book or by a similar
| author or topic) is to sell books and entertain. The value to
| most readers is not knowing the truth but to be engaged and
| entertained. Similar to movies based on real events (which take
| liberties with happenings and story telling to make the movie
| interesting and watchable and profitable).
| steveBK123 wrote:
| The true purpose of books is to subsidize Big Forestry via
| inflating sales of printing paper, subsidizing large
| economies of the pacific northwest and Canada, but no one is
| ready for that conversation.
| paulpauper wrote:
| Right, people who are complaining about his whitewashing are
| failing to see why his books are so successful in the first
| place. Had he told the story everyone wanted/expected, the book
| would have been forgotten.
| truculent wrote:
| I don't really understand how this relates to the article.
| Nowhere does the author suggest that we should be spoon-fed
| moralisms. Instead, it argues that Lewis's perspective and
| approach missed a fundamental part of the story he's trying to
| tell. You don't even need to read the article. It's right there
| in the subheading: "Michael Lewis is not interested in how or
| why people make mistakes"
| billiam wrote:
| Go ahead and read this book if you are fascinated by the
| psychology and character and life of Sam Bankman-Fried. I can't
| imagine a more boring subject--the man-baby is one of the most
| depressing public figures I have come across in my time in tech.
| I've seen his selfishness, self-absorption, and privilege many
| many times among startup founders. What Lewis is actually selling
| here and what he is always peddling in his books is a breezy,
| readable way to understand complex subjects for a readership who
| can't be bothered to learn the details, and crypto is a perfect
| candidate. His act is wearing thin, and The Blind Side exposed
| just how lazy his approach appears to be. He can pretend this
| book isn't about how clueless people like him can be taken in by
| a recognizable conman and sociopath, but that is what this book
| is about.
| gitfan86 wrote:
| Agreed, that this book was written with a target audience in
| mind. (People who loved the blind side movie)
|
| But, I also wonder how much of this is Lewis trying to avoid
| legal culpability. If he knew that the whole thing was a total
| scam and he didn't warn anyone but is now making millions of
| dollars of the story, the people who lost money in FTX may want
| to sue?
| aragonite wrote:
| > ... A sharper Lewis would have evaluated Sam on his own terms,
| tracking his probabilities and interrogating how closely they
| aligned with reality. At a minimum, he should have pressed Sam on
| how he reached his probabilistic claims. When Sam asserts that
| the $4 million worth of Ripple that went missing in the early
| days of Alameda had an "80 percent chance" of eventually turning
| up, Lewis asks no further questions. ... Lewis' failure to
| examine that 80 [percent claim] is especially jarring.
|
| What sort of 'further questions' was Lewis supposed to ask sbf?
| Lewis began work on the book in Spring 2022. The missing
| Ripple/XRP tokens incident happened around April 2018 [1]. This
| is not even to mention the fact that the tokens did eventually
| turn up on their own, so Sam's "80 percent chance" hunch proved
| entirely correct in retrospect [2].
|
| [1]
| https://www.google.com/books/edition/Going_Infinite_The_Rise...
|
| [2]
| https://www.google.com/books/edition/Going_Infinite_The_Rise...
| jeffhwang wrote:
| I have read many Lewis' books and admired his skills as a
| storyteller and stylist for decades. I found Going Infinite fun
| to read but less satisfying than The Big Short, Liar's Poker,
| Moneybag, etc.
|
| As a good complement or even substitute, I highly recommend Zvi
| Mowshowitz's review[1] of Going Infinite. I have some familiarity
| with the trading world but virtually none in crypto. The book
| review is incredibly long but very rich in both micro details and
| macro perspective. Zvi seems to know what he's talking about as a
| former Jane Street employee who knew people in the book
| (including some acquaintance with SBF before he became _SBF_ )
| and as a crypto trader.
|
| [1]:https://thezvi.substack.com/p/book-review-going-infinite
| fredgrott wrote:
| Note read the CoffeeZilla YT podcast notes, a more interesting
| story and the facts are right all the time not just
| sometimes...better journalist on fin and fin crime than Lewis
| will ever be.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFQMnBA3CS502aghlcr0_aw
| AlbertCory wrote:
| This is a great, great article. I'm always interested in the
| Hindsight Bias: people say "oh, it was obvious it was fraud."
|
| Well, not really. If you're one of those: tell us what opinions
| you have NOW that everyone else doesn't also have. That's the
| test: what do you see that isn't generally accepted?
|
| What I especially like about this article is, in the "How can we
| do better?" section he tells you how you can avoid falling in
| with the conventional wisdom.
| bambax wrote:
| > _I 'm always interested in the Hindsight Bias: people say
| "oh, it was obvious it was fraud." Well, not really._
|
| Well, I don't know about that. On one side, there were people
| who were convinced it was a fraud, some of which were very
| vocal and public about it. On the other side there were people
| who didn't care, or wanted to believe.
|
| But there was not one serious and knowledgeable person who took
| a strong good look at FTX and concluded it was legit.
|
| I think that's a tell.
| Dowwie wrote:
| What makes the Lewis story worse is that he was asked to vet SBF
| as part of investor due diligence
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