Trust the Clowns, I mean Experts
72 sats \ 2 comments \ @kepford 3 Nov 2023 bitcoin
Sam Bankman Fried was convicted yesterday on all 7 charges in this current lawsuit. I've been following the case for entertainment purposes. It blows my mind that this dude was able to scam so many people. What is even crazier is how many celebs and investment "experts" like Mr. Wonderful where taken in by him. I'm not going to bore you with a list of the people that were impressed by him but it includes people from former presidents to athletes.
I remember the first time I heard him speak. I was kinda blown away that this was the dude behind FTX. The dude so many people were fawning over. To me it was obvious he was a scammer. I was not alone in that thinking. Many bitcoiners were saying the same thing at the time. At this point I should be accustomed to this happening but it still blows me away.
One of my favorite things about bitcoin's move into mainstream finance is watching "experts" expose their arrogance, ignorance, and stupidity for all to see. It happens over and over again. This will continue and I love every minute of it. It becomes so obvious that they didn't even do 3 hours of research on bitcoin. It makes me wonder. What else are they frauds about? What other things are they just faking?
What's the take away? Don't trust. Verify. Do your own research. Do not trust the experts. They may not be wrong but you can't trust them.
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @SimpleStacker 3 Nov 2023
My view from academia is that "expertise" has become increasingly self-referential.
"We should trust that guy because all these other smart people say we should trust that guy."
(And it turns out all the smart people who trust that guy were students of his, or friends, or relatives, or business partners, or something)
What's a non-expert to do? You said it: don' trust, verify. DYOR. Take expert opinions as just one data point, but not determinative.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @kepford OP 3 Nov 2023
That's very good view. Makes a lot of sense. Basically "I know a guy". Its just one data point.
The wild thing that was made clear to me during the pandemic was just how easy it is to do your own research. What I mean is that it was easy to fact check so many falsehoods. And I don't mean outsourcing it to Snopes or some other clown outfit. I mean looking stuff up. Remembering what someone said two weeks ago. Listening to what someone says vs what people hear. I wasn't asleep then but my skepticism increased.
Mostly the thing I think people lack is skepticism. We have the tools and information to do our own research. We are just to lazy and trusting.
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