For thursday’s sentencing the us government indicated they would be happy with a 40-50 prison sentence, and in the list of reasons they cite there’s this gem:
- Bankman-Fried’s effective altruism and own statements about risk suggest he would be likely to commit another fraud if he determined it had high enough “expected value”. They point to Caroline Ellison’s testimony in which she said that Bankman-Fried had expressed to her that he would “be happy to flip a coin, if it came up tails and the world was destroyed, as long as if it came up heads the world would be like more than twice as good”. They also point to Bankman-Fried’s “own ‘calculations’” described in his sentencing memo, in which he says his life now has negative expected value. “Such a calculus will inevitably lead him to trying again,” they write.
Turns out making it a point of pride that you have the morality of an anime villain does not endear you to prosecutors, who knew.
Bonus: SBF’s lawyers’ list of assertions for asking for a shorter sentence includes this hilarious bit reasoning:
They argue that Bankman-Fried would not reoffend, for reasons including that “he would sooner suffer than bring disrepute to any philanthropic movement.”
Plenty of anime villains would be insulted by this.
IANAL: His defense team must truly suck ass. To let the prosecution build the case that he is essentially amoral and profit driven is just baffling. To let SBF speak in any capacity at all is more baffling. The only way they could bungle this further is if they asked for more time than the prosecution was asking for.
If I remember correctly SBF taking the stand was completely against his lawyers’ recommendations, and in general he seems to have a really hard time doing what people who know better tell him to, such as don’t DM journalists about your crimes and definitely don’t start a substack detailing how you felt justified in doing them, and also trying to ‘explain yourself’ to prosecution witnesses is witness tampering and will get your bail revoked.
A really good lawyer carries duct tape
At several points, if Sam’s lawyer had jumped across the courtroom and knocked him out with a single punch to the face, it would have been best fulfilling their duty to their client and as officers of the court.
Wonder if that gets taken into account if that was an example of ‘he does calculations in his head to do insane shit like not listen to his lawyers to shut the fuck up’.
There’s a limit to what anyone can achieve with this calibre of client. This is also his second defence team after the others refused to put up with his shit any more. He has a new, third defence team handling his appeal.
Is he the type of guy to go ‘wait if I just explain my stance more and more they will eventually understand’?
Did he try to Rationalist blogpost monologue his defence team because he also wanted to do that to the judge? The idea of him trying to verbose from first principles the law in his own defense sounds very funny to me. Poor lawyers
E: Officially perjured himself 3 times. Oof.
i expect that if you listened to the water pipes in MDC Brooklyn, you could hear SBF tapping out a full explanation of his crimes in Morse code, especially why it was all Caroline’s fault
Come on, that comes in the book soon to be released from prison. Also included in the book, how he is justified in hating books and all who read them as all his book smart lawyers gave him 30 years in prison on the appeal!
by Michael Lewis, published by Kindle Print
@dgerard @sneerclub he’s gonna start a Basilisk cult in prison, isn’t he. Get out in 25 years and head straight for the executive suite in the temple his followers will have built for him.
I expect we’ll soon hear the laments of how prison impacts ev, maybe combined with some utterly twisted argument for prison abolition (along with their own deeply fucked replacement suggestion)
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well, that’s certainly an “attempt was made”-grade opinion
the important point is that prison abolition should start with financial so-called “'”‘“crimes”’“'”,
@dgerard “B-B-BUT prison is meant to be for TEH POORS!! This is WRONG!!!”
that’s why they specifically put in how Sam ripped off his investors too
oh god he totally will won’t he