Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

Here is another fascinating passage from Lewis' book, GOING INFINITE. In this passage, chapter five, Lewis is telling his story through the eyes of Caroline Ellison. For those of you new to the subject: Ellison was Samuel Bankman-Fried's sort-of love interest, and at this point in our story she had joined his project to create a crypto oriented hedge fund.  (This project evolved into the FTX exchange and an affiliated hedge fund, but we aren't there yet.)  One more preliminary note: an "EA" is an "effective altruist," a member of a group of usually quite bright people committed to a very long-range sort of utilitarianism which produces some counter-intuitive results. We don't need to get further into it than that.   Anyway, the passage: " In late March [2018] she started the job. The situation inside Alameda Research wasn't anything like Sam had led her to expect. He'd recruited twenty or so EAs, most of them in their twenties, all but o...

  This is turning into a fascinating year for litigation.  Of course there is the former President and his four indictments, as well as his continued civil troubles.  The civil troubles feature an old lawsuit about a videophone he was hawking back in the day -- a marketing scheme that was mostly about selling the right to sell the phones, or selling the right to sell the right, etc, in classic pyramid fashion.  That aside, the year  2023 has seen the trial and conviction of Alex Murdaugh for the murder of his wife and son.  The Telles/German case is still hanging fire.   Dominion's lawsuit against Fox News would really have enlivened the year. As it happened, the willingness of the Fox empire to pay three quarters of a billion dollars to avoid a trial was itself remarkable and almost as much fun. Another great upcoming trial expected this year will be that of Sam Bankman-Fried, one time impresario of the great cryptocurrency exchange, FTX. The cas...