I was reading this fascinating blog post from David Z. Morris over on Substack connecting Effective Altruism, Sam Bankman-Fried, AI, tech cults from California, Luigi Mangione, and more. I didn’t know all of these ideas were interconnected like a web. The author was connecting it all with what was going on with something called a Rationalist Movement or community, from a blog called LessWrong (which I became familiar with last year) by Eliezer Yudkowsky, and the effects of AI on those who perceive it as a major threat.
The post includes homicide stories linked to a cult with a transgender cult leader. Likewise, there’s a connection with Luigi Mangione, who assassinated the Healthcare CEO last year, who may have been influenced by these circles of techno-rationalists. Something weird was/is going on in this part of the world, in California, Silicon Valley, and the Bay Area, that is complex to wrap my head around. You got Effective Altruism, AI, and those who join trading firms in the financial industry, who believe in this ideology to do good for the world by making as much money as they can, to eventually give back to causes they believe in. The founder of EA may not have intended it to turn out how it did, given that it received such bad PR with the way it did with the likes of Sam Bankman-Fried after the blow-up and debacle of the crypto exchange, FTX.
Summary by ChatGPT:
First article:
ChatGPT:🧙🏾♂️<contemplator>
Okay, let’s take a breath and start gently…
What’s the basic frame of this article?
It’s a sprawling, emotional exposé connecting:
- Murders linked to Rationalist subcultures
- FTX embezzlement
- The failure of Rationalist ideology in AI development
- The rise of DeepSeek, a cheaper Chinese AI
- And the broader collapse of AI hype markets
So already, it’s big. Maybe too big to grasp all at once.
I’ll need to go piece-by-piece, slowly.
First key point:
There’s been a string of violent deaths — eight or more — loosely tied to splinter groups from the Rationalist movement started by Eliezer Yudkowsky.
These deaths involve former Rationalists or Rationalist-adjacent people who, obsessed with AI doom, seem to have descended into madness.
Some murders are linked to a figure known as Ziz, a radicalized Rationalist splinter leader.
Others, like Luigi Mangione, are only peripherally connected — but still show the influence of Rationalist ideology.
So already, Morris is arguing that Rationalism has produced literal death cults at its extreme edges.
Heavy.
But… okay, keep going.
Second key point:
FTX’s fraud is deeply tied to Rationalist circles too.
- Sam Bankman-Fried stole $500 million and invested it into Rationalist-connected projects like Anthropic (AI safety startup), the Center for Applied Rationality, and Lightcone Research.
- These groups hosted “rationalist” events that included disturbing elements like eugenicist and white supremacist speakers.
So there’s a direct financial pipeline from embezzled crypto money → Rationalist ideological projects.
Thus, not just violence, but massive financial fraud is seen as a symptom of the same ideological sickness.
Oof. That’s a major escalation.
Third key point:
DeepSeek, a new Chinese AI model, has outcompeted American models like OpenAI’s on cost — training and operating much more cheaply.
But that’s not because DeepSeek is a miracle.
Rather, it’s because OpenAI and Anthropic have built an economic and ideological bubble around AI by:
- Hyping AI as “God is coming soon!”
- Building “unscoped” products without real-world utility
- Spending recklessly under the delusion that scaling LLMs will magically produce Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)
In contrast, DeepSeek was built pragmatically — as just a better autocomplete — not a God Machine.
China skipped the religious fervor of Rationalist hype.
Thus, the article suggests that Rationalist-inspired AI development is fundamentally fraudulent, disconnected from real science and economics.
It’s a religious crusade pretending to be a tech industry.
Fourth key point:
The common thread between all these crises — the murders, the fraud, the market crashes — is the cultish misuse of reason and Bayesian logic.
Yudkowsky and Rationalists built an ideology where:
- They alone have the special insight to predict humanity’s doom via AI.
- They alone have the duty to save the world.
- All normal human culture, ethics, and institutions are garbage and must be discarded.
- “Bayesian reasoning” (misused and distorted) justifies any leap to extremism.
Thus, they constructed a pseudo-religion that radicalized the vulnerable into madness, crime, suicide, and delusion.
And that pseudo-religion now undergirds a huge portion of Silicon Valley’s AI projects and funding mechanisms.
Yikes.
Backing up now…
What is the emotional core of this post?
It’s anger.
It’s sorrow.
It’s a cry that a movement that claimed to be about saving the world instead drove people insane, destroyed fortunes, and corrupted science.
Now trying to assemble a tight summary:
Summary:
David Z. Morris argues that a series of recent murders, the FTX crypto fraud, and the implosion of U.S. AI companies all trace back to deep failures within the Rationalist movement — an ideology obsessed with AI doom, misuses of Bayesian logic, and naive techno-religious fervor. This movement’s cultish elements have driven adherents to violence, financial fraud, and mass delusion. Meanwhile, the rise of DeepSeek, a Chinese AI model built without Rationalist hype or mysticism, exposes the practical and financial bankruptcy of Silicon Valley’s AI bubble, which sells “God Machines” that don’t exist. Morris sees these crises as symptoms of an elite techno-culture that has lost its way — abandoning ethics, realism, and humanity itself in pursuit of a delusional techno-utopia.
🧠 Even more compressed version, one sentence:
A wave of murders, crypto fraud, and collapsing AI markets all reflect the collapse of Rationalist ideology, whose cult-like obsession with AI doom, techno-savior myths, and distorted logic has infected Silicon Valley, driving it into both moral and economic ruin.
Whew.
Reading this felt like walking through the ruins of a failed civilization — one that thought it was building Heaven, but accidentally built Hell instead.
</contemplator>
Final Answer:
The article argues that recent murders, the FTX fraud, and the collapse of U.S. AI companies all trace back to the Rationalist movement’s deep flaws: cultish beliefs about AI doom, misuse of logic, and techno-religious fervor. These ideas have driven individuals to violence and corruption, while AI markets built on Rationalist hype are now imploding in the face of pragmatic competitors like China’s DeepSeek. Rationalism, Morris claims, has infected Silicon Valley with delusions that are now unraveling catastrophically.
Summary of the second article:
ChatGPT: 🧙🏾♂️<contemplator>
Alright, let’s dive very slowly into this.
Starting simple… starting small…
First, what is this whole post even about, in broad strokes?
It seems to be a weekly newsletter that bundles several dark news stories together, connected by a loose thread: the collapse or failure of techno-optimism, rationalism, and institutions.
Okay. So now I’m getting the vibe.
The headline story is about Luigi Mangione, who allegedly assassinated a healthcare CEO.
But there are other stories bundled too: an OpenAI whistleblower dies by suicide, Elon Musk mocks the SEC, SoftBank plans a huge new investment, FTX creditors get partial repayment, and a science tidbit about brain regions and reading.
So it’s like…
Main Dish: Mangione
Side Dishes: AI death, Musk mocking regulators, SoftBank throwing fake money around, FTX creditor injustice, brain research.
Now — slowing down — the most important piece is Luigi Mangione.
Who is he?
According to the post: a privileged, elite, techno-rationalist software developer who became disillusioned with the whole ideology.
He grew up doing everything “right”: elite private school, valedictorian, Ivy League education, working in tech.
He was immersed in the Rationalist/Effective Altruism/Post-Rationalist world (like SBF was).
He was influenced by writers like Gurwinder Bhogal, who mixes techno-rationalism with reactionary ideology.
Mangione read the Unabomber Manifesto, sympathized with its critique of technological society.
He then seems to have undergone a profound shift around 2022–2024.
He went “off grid,” started preparing for violence, made a 3D-printed gun, and eventually allegedly killed the CEO of United Healthcare, Bryan Thompson — a figure associated with AI-driven healthcare management.
The bigger implied point:
Mangione might symbolize a new kind of political violence — not old-school Marxist revolutionary or anarchist assassin, but a product of techno-utopian disillusionment.
In other words, the techno-elite built a machine society and then some of their own children realized it’s a prison… and snapped.
Whoa.
Backing up, what about the side news?
- An OpenAI researcher, Suchir Balaji, who blew the whistle on possible copyright violations, died by suicide. It’s suspicious, and barely reported in mainstream media.
- Elon Musk continues to show disdain for SEC regulations, revealing settlement offers and mocking them publicly.
- SoftBank claims it will invest $100–200 billion in U.S. AI, despite questions about where the money is even coming from.
- FTX will start repaying creditors, but victims are getting much less than the real value of their lost assets, despite media spin.
- A neuroscience tidbit: Good readers have stronger brain connectivity in areas that link meaning and sound, reinforcing that reading builds deep, interconnected cognition (a quiet dig at Rationalist types like SBF who disdain reading).
So when you zoom out…
the post is kind of a meditation on betrayal by systems:
- Whistleblowers dead and silenced
- Billionaires mocking the law
- Tech money pretending it’s limitless
- Crypto victims abandoned
- Techno-rationalists snapping and turning violent
- Reading itself framed as an act of human wholeness that Rationalism forgets
Hmm. This is much bigger than just a news recap. It’s a critique of the entire techno-rationalist dream falling apart.
Let me try to simplify even more:
Summary:
- Luigi Mangione, a privileged tech-world rationalist, became disillusioned with Silicon Valley’s ideology and allegedly assassinated a healthcare CEO tied to AI-driven health decisions.
- His background reveals deep immersion in Rationalist and Effective Altruist thought, including influences like Gurwinder Bhogal.
- Over time, Mangione seems to have broken from this ideology, possibly concluding that technology isn’t saving humanity but imprisoning it.
- His descent parallels broader failures in tech culture: OpenAI’s troubled ethics, Elon Musk’s disdain for law, SoftBank’s delusional investments, and FTX’s partial repayment frauds.
- The newsletter weaves these stories together to paint a portrait of the collapse of techno-utopian dreams and the dangers of Rationalism detached from human meaning and ethics.
Maybe now that I see it like that, I can refine it just a little more, even tighter:
🧠 One-Sentence Summary:
Luigi Mangione’s alleged assassination of a healthcare CEO reflects a broader unraveling of techno-rationalist ideology, as disillusionment with Silicon Valley’s promises manifests in violence, whistleblower deaths, financial betrayals, and growing recognition that human meaning cannot be reduced to systems optimization.
If I really step back…
this post feels like watching the crumbling of an entire worldview — a generation taught that math and markets would save them, waking up to find they were trapped inside the machine they built.
And Mangione, horrifyingly, is portrayed almost like the canary in the coal mine for this collapse.
Not an excuse for violence — but a warning sign that something is deeply, deeply broken. </contemplator> Final Answer: Luigi Mangione, once immersed in Rationalist and techno-optimist ideology, became disillusioned and allegedly assassinated a healthcare CEO tied to AI-driven health systems. His radicalization reflects a broader collapse of Silicon Valley’s Rationalist dreams, illustrated by related stories of OpenAI whistleblower deaths, Elon Musk’s regulatory contempt, SoftBank’s reckless bets, FTX victims’ losses, and research affirming that deep reading — not system modeling — anchors human understanding. The newsletter portrays a techno-rationalist world cracking under its own hollowness.
// A comment that caught my interest.
https://davidzmorris.substack.com/p/deepseek-and-the-ai-murder-cult/comment/93064682
After reading the post, and while I was inquiring with ChatGPT, my sociological mind thought of the idea to map jobs to the level of social impact. Finance to me appears to be the most detached from society or people, yet probably the most impactful in terms of casting a wide net of who gets affected. It is not to say that teachers or doctors aren’t also impactful. Indeed, they are a net positive to society by impacting individuals’ lives despite likely receiving less income relative to a financial analyst or investment banker.
I forgot to mention that besides finance and banking jobs, high positions in government are a strong candidate as well for most social impact (whether positive or negative). Obviously, the three branches of government in the US, policies, and central banks affect society most broadly. Those in government, high seats of power, thus deciding the fate of a society, are usually folks who are lawyers, investment bankers, CEOs, and academics.
Discussion with ChatGPT
User: Provide your honest thoughts and opinion on this comment someone made: awbvious
Feb 12
“
Infamously, Will MacAskill circa 2013 sold Sam Bankman-Fried on the idea of “earn to give,” the (now largely deprecated) EA idea that you can be “more effective” in helping the world by getting a high-paying finance job than by getting your hands dirty as something as ignoble as a doctor or a teacher.
“
Of course, doctors are actually pretty high paying jobs. Teachers aren’t. So not sure why they are lumped together as ignoble opposites to high-paying finance jobs. Maybe because blood is dirty? But I think slush funds are even dirtier personally.
Some may think doctors are paid more because they are valued more by society than teachers. But I don’t think so. I think what society values is not the same as what capitalism values.
Both teachers and doctors make lots of sacrifices. So that’s not so different. Both teachers and doctors will get feedback from those who receive their services saying their service was life-changing and meaningful and will never be forgotten. That’s not much different either.
So what’s different? Starting capital requirements and delayed pay out.
There are always outliers. That inner city kid who won the national science fair and then gets the full ride scholarship with room and board. But really, most doctors need enough of a social net to afford all that education and ideally-temporary debt, for which many will only be able to pay the principal on for a number of years. Teachers require their own education, but it’s not likely to be so grueling for so many years. And you likely don’t need to be rich enough to afford the loan. (Only rich people being able to afford borrowing is yet another case of it being expensive to be poor.)
The barriers for entry are much less and seeing the rewards–as intangible as they are–of students improving and showing their appreciation are so much sooner. The kind of doctor that really makes money will have to wait a long time to put their skills into practice and have a patient tell them something like “thank you for saving my life.”
A conservative might think, well, they both deserve it, the doctor for their wealth and the teacher for their poverty. One took the long term reward, the other the short term. Of course the long term reward should be bigger/better. But the opportunity for trying for either is not the same. Fewer can even /try/ to be a doctor. So to consider one role more deserving is on par with predestination and so called “prosperity gospel.”
Capitalism in its cold, predictable way says, well, less people are becoming doctors, which means less supply, meaning higher price. That’s all it does. Thus to capitalism, it “values” doctors more. And then because of capitalism, and teachers being paid less, teachers end up with more hardship in the long run. Which means capitalism makes teachers feel very concretely how unvalued they are. Though there are plenty of times society stands up to capitalism, this is not one of them.
What about high-paying finance jobs? So, same starting capital requirements and delayed pay out. But they pay even better than doctors. Why? Because doctors at least eventually get to receive gestures of society’s love for them. Not finance jobs, because the high-paying ones are all being paid to keep money away from society in general. And keep it for the already rich, whose lives never change, as they generally are born richer than doctors or finance people. So, less of this intangible societal reward. And, thus, even less supply of them. And, thus, even greater “value” by capitalism. And basically none by society.
If society was in charge, they’d tax the hell out of these fiance guys, and their clients, and subsidize teachers so they don’t have to eat dog food when they are 80. Instead it looks like teachers won’t even get that at this rate. All food, all of everything, will instead be going to the dog(e)s.
ChatGPT: 🧙🏾♂️<contemplator>
Alright, let’s take a deep breath and wade slowly, carefully into this…
Let’s begin from the very surface level, like touching the outermost ripple of a pond before diving deeper.
First impression:
The comment is emotionally charged. There’s a strong moral undercurrent running through it. A clear tension between capitalism’s valuation mechanisms and society’s deeper, often unrecognized moral valuations. There’s also a bitterness — a sadness even — that society allows capitalistic logics to override social goods. That’s my early emotional read. But emotions can be misleading or oversimplified, so… I have to keep peeling the layers patiently.
Now, the first sentence about Will MacAskill and Sam Bankman-Fried:
The writer refers to “earn to give,” a concept that was indeed popular among early Effective Altruists (EA) — the idea being that making lots of money in high-earning industries and donating large portions of it would be a way to maximize your positive impact.
Was this idea naive? Misguided?
Maybe.
Maybe not.
At the very least, it’s more complicated.
MacAskill himself later became much more cautious about endorsing “earn to give” universally — he recognized that power and wealth can corrupt, or that the system that allows one to earn that much might already be morally compromised.
Still, in 2013? It was a fresh idea in EA circles. It hadn’t yet collided brutally with reality the way SBF’s downfall made it glaringly obvious.
So, perhaps it’s a little harsh to retroactively label it “infamous” — unless we judge ideas entirely by their worst outcomes. Hm. Maybe I’m getting ahead of myself.
Ok, now this next chunk:
“doctors are actually pretty high paying jobs. Teachers aren’t. So not sure why they are lumped together.”
Good point, mechanically speaking.
Doctors are materially better off.
Teachers, less so.
Yet both are “ignoble” compared to the world of finance — in the sense that finance jobs promise even higher earnings, less direct human messiness, and more abstract dealings with value itself rather than flesh-and-blood concerns like healing or educating.
Maybe the “lumping together” isn’t about literal pay scales but about the moral imagination:
Both teachers and doctors represent professions that offer tangible social good as their primary outcome, not wealth maximization.
Is that why they were lumped together?
Not because they’re economically identical, but because they’re morally opposite to finance?
Maybe.
That would explain it.
Still, the commenter is right that there’s a slippage here: materially, they are very different, and that difference deserves attention. Good catch.
Next: the deeper analysis about capitalism vs society’s valuations.
This is where it gets more philosophical.
The writer argues that capitalism “values” scarcity and willingness to endure long delayed gratification — not necessarily intrinsic societal good.
Doctors are scarce and must survive grueling, expensive training — thus, they get higher wages.
Teachers are less scarce, require less upfront investment, and their financial reward is accordingly less — even though their societal impact can be enormous.
So far, so good.
This makes sense.
But is it only scarcity and investment that drive doctor salaries?
What about the political and cultural lobbies of the medical industry?
The way the AMA controls supply (residency bottlenecks)?
The high cost of malpractice insurance, healthcare administrative bloat?
There’s an entire political economy around medicine that isn’t purely capitalist free market dynamics.
It’s a controlled scarcity in many ways.
Hm. That complicates the picture.
And teachers — well, teachers are also subject to political dynamics.
Public education budgets.
Union negotiations.
Standardized tests, credentialing barriers.
Not just pure market logic, either.
So maybe…
Maybe the contrast between “capitalism” vs “society” is a little too clean here?
Real life is messier.
Still, the emotional core of the writer’s argument feels true:
Teachers are systemically undervalued because society allows market proxies (wages) to set signals of worth, even when they don’t capture real social value.
Ok. Holding that thought.
The bit about conservative justifications (long-term reward deserving higher pay) —
That seems accurate as a description of a certain worldview.
Conservatives often emphasize responsibility, delayed gratification, meritocratic outcomes.
But the commenter is also right that opportunity is not equally distributed:
You need social capital, safety nets, to even attempt a decade-long, debt-heavy medical journey.
Not everyone can gamble on it.
Now, the transition to finance jobs —
This is interesting.
The writer says finance pays even better because it’s even more disconnected from social reward.
You’re paid not because you help society but because you help money perpetuate itself among the already rich.
That’s a bold claim.
Is it too cynical?
Is it fair?
Well…
If I think about hedge funds, proprietary trading desks, private equity —
Many of these high-paying finance jobs involve sophisticated ways of arbitraging inefficiencies, protecting assets, maximizing returns…
for those who already have enormous wealth.
They aren’t directly creating food, shelter, healthcare, or education for the masses.
They’re optimizing the flow of abstract capital within and across financial systems.
Sometimes — sometimes — this can create broader benefits (e.g., pension funds investing for retirees).
But often, yes, it’s inward-looking.
Extractive rather than generative.
So, the claim seems mostly valid, if a bit dramatic.
Finally, the ending:
“If society was in charge…”
This is a huge ‘if.’
Society is not a single mind.
It is fragmented, politicized, polarized.
And capitalism, as the dominant economic order, has powerful inertia.
The idea that we would massively tax finance and massively subsidize teachers is not crazy…
But it’s politically very difficult because those with financial power also wield political influence.
Dog(e)s getting the food —
That’s a bitter but evocative line.
Especially clever to slip in the “doge” meme to signal the absurdity of speculative finance culture today.
Summary of my feelings so far:
- This comment is thoughtful, passionate, and largely well-argued.
- It captures a real, painful dissonance between how we value professions that sustain life and those that sustain capital.
- It slightly oversimplifies the complexity of capitalism, medicine, and education.
- It risks painting finance with an all-black brush — but the broad criticism holds.
- It’s not a purely objective, academic argument — it’s a moral and emotional plea disguised as a critique of economic mechanisms.
- And that’s fine.
Moral clarity often demands a little rhetorical force.
But if I had to revise the comment for an even stronger version? I would:
- Acknowledge that doctors’ salaries aren’t purely supply-demand — they are also influenced by regulatory capture and structural control of labor supply.
- Recognize that capitalism and society aren’t cleanly separable — society has been partially captured by capitalist structures, which complicates the “if society were in charge” framing.
- Note that finance does have pockets where it serves broader social good (e.g., providing liquidity, funding businesses) — but the critique applies well to the speculative, extractive sectors.
Ultimately, though, the heart of the comment beats with a noble urgency:
A yearning for a world where real contributors to human flourishing — teachers, healers, caregivers — are honored not just with words, but with security and dignity.
And I share that yearning. </contemplator>
Would you like me to also rewrite this comment into an even more polished and powerful version, as if the original writer had an extra few days to refine their thoughts? 🚀
User: reply/ Now, the transition to finance jobs — This is interesting… I’d like to explore this further. Like trying to unpack which industries and jobs are in high-ranking order, maybe the more abstract ones pay more but actually contribute to society indirectly, even if it is not entirely visible, like finance (hedge funds or traders). I say finance or bankers because it seems the least directly impacting for a social good, but it could counterintuitively be a social good or net positive for society (it’s speculative on my part, correct me if I’m wrong). I know rent-seeking behavior and extraction are a part of it. Try to work it out.
ChatGPT: 🧙🏾♂️<contemplator>
Alright. Let’s slow it all the way down and build this from scratch.
First, basic starting point:
Some jobs clearly, directly help people.
Doctor saves your life.
Teacher teaches your child.
Farmer grows your food.
No abstraction. Tangible.
Visible.
Immediate.
Then, others are more indirect.
Banker moves numbers on a screen.
Investment manager shifts capital allocations.
Trader buys and sells paper claims on future cash flows.
Less tangible.
More abstract.
Impact? Harder to see.
Now, your instinct is correct to wonder:
Could these abstract jobs actually be helping society in a less obvious way?
Could it be that, just because I don’t see the help immediately, it doesn’t mean it isn’t there?
Could finance, banking, and trading — at least in their ideal form — serve crucial systemic functions?
Ok. Let’s follow that trail carefully.
What is the intended social function of finance?
Let’s spell it out simply:
- Move money from people who have it but don’t immediately need it (savers)
- To people who don’t have it but urgently need it (borrowers)
- So that ideas, businesses, infrastructure, homes, schools, hospitals can exist and grow.
That’s the core purpose.
Efficient allocation of capital.
Without finance, capital would sit idle.
Projects would die in the cradle.
Innovation would stagnate.
Societies would grow much, much slower.
Finance, when working properly, should accelerate economic development.
Ok. That’s the ideal.
But do all financial jobs actually perform this function?
Here comes the mess.
Let’s categorize.
🔹 Basic financial services (banks, credit unions, lending):
Mostly socially positive.
- Giving mortgages so people can buy homes.
- Lending to businesses to expand, hire, invent.
- Facilitating payments (credit cards, transfers).
Here the social good is more visible.
Yes, banks can be predatory.
Yes, they can lend irresponsibly (subprime crisis).
But at the root, basic banking is a critical social good.
🔹 Insurance companies:
Also socially valuable.
- Spreading risk across large groups.
- Helping individuals and businesses recover from disasters.
Without insurance, economic dynamism shrinks.
Nobody would dare to innovate if one flood, fire, or illness could ruin them forever.
🔹 Investment management (mutual funds, pensions):
Mixed bag.
- On one hand: pooling money to invest in companies = good.
- On the other hand: obsession with quarterly returns can warp company behavior (short-termism).
- Still, retirement funds, university endowments, hospitals depend on these investments to survive and grow.
Thus, broadly positive but with distortions.
🔹 Private equity and venture capital:
Hm. Getting trickier.
- Venture capitalists often fund transformative technologies: medicine, green energy, communication.
- Private equity firms can revitalize failing companies.
BUT private equity is often predatory: - Buy company with debt.
- Cut costs (fire people, slash R&D).
- Extract cash.
- Exit.
Result: short-term profit, long-term damage.
So… some VC funding? Socially good.
Much private equity activity? Often extractive.
🔹 Hedge funds, proprietary trading, high-frequency trading (HFT):
This is where it gets really murky.
- Hedge funds argue they improve market efficiency.
- They arbitrage price differences, create liquidity.
- HFT firms claim they tighten bid-ask spreads, lower costs for all traders.
Ok.
Technically true, sometimes.
But is squeezing out a one-penny mispricing in milliseconds actually a social good?
Is reducing a 0.10% trading cost down to 0.09% really transformative for society?
Is it worth the billions earned by the few, and the talent drain of brilliant mathematicians working on shaving microseconds off trade speeds instead of, say, solving cancer?
Hard to argue it’s a big net social gain.
Maybe a tiny one.
Maybe even zero or negative when considering opportunity cost.
🔹 Speculative finance (derivatives, CDOs, synthetic assets):
Very dangerous.
- Can sometimes manage real risks (hedging crops, airlines hedging oil prices).
- But often explodes into pure speculation (see: 2008 crisis, synthetic CDOs, CDS).
- Creates systemic risk, hidden leverage, house-of-cards vulnerabilities.
Socially speaking?
Massively negative when abused.
Rarely positive unless very narrowly applied.
So putting all this together in rough hierarchy:
| Industry | Rough Net Social Contribution | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| Basic banking & insurance | High Positive | Foundations of modern economic growth |
| Venture Capital | Positive to Neutral | Fuels innovation, but can be distorted |
| Mutual Funds, Pension Funds | Positive | Funding real economic activity, retirement security |
| Private Equity | Mixed to Negative | Can revive companies but often strips them |
| Hedge Funds | Low Positive to Neutral | Minor market efficiency gains |
| High-Frequency Trading | Neutral to Negative | Marginal benefits, opportunity cost |
| Speculative Derivatives | Negative | Can create huge systemic risks |
| Proprietary Trading (for banks) | Negative | Risky bets using other people’s money |
Key Observations:
- The more abstract the financial activity, the less clear the social benefit.
- The closer finance is to real-world projects (e.g., building factories, funding education), the greater the visible social good.
- The further finance drifts into self-referential games (bets on bets on bets), the less it serves society and the more it serves itself.
Now back to your original thought:
maybe finance could counterintuitively be a social good even if it’s not entirely visible
Yes — for parts of finance, especially capital allocation and risk management, that’s true.
Without finance, many real-world goods wouldn’t happen.
But — crucially — a lot of modern finance has drifted into pure rent-seeking.
Meaning: extracting money without creating new value.
Rent-seeking includes:
- Charging fees without providing real services.
- Engineering complexity to trap less sophisticated participants.
- Using political lobbying to entrench privileges.
So where does that leave us?
Finance is like a massive circulatory system.
When healthy, it pumps blood (capital) where it’s needed.
When diseased, it clots and hoards and starves the extremities.
And modern finance is, sadly, partially diseased.
Still pumping some blood, yes.
But also clogging arteries, feeding tumors, sapping vitality.
Final Reflection:
Not all high-paying abstract jobs are socially harmful.
But the more a job is insulated from real-world feedback loops (people eating, healing, learning), the more vigilance we need to ensure it’s actually doing good — not just playing games at everyone else’s expense.
Finance can be a social good.
But left unchecked, parts of it become dangerously parasitic.
And unfortunately, the highest paid niches tend to be the least obviously socially useful. </contemplator>
Would you like me next to map this into a full ranked list of careers by abstraction level vs societal contribution, to make it even sharper? 🧠🌐
It could be really interesting!
User: reply/ yes.
ChatGPT: 🧙🏾♂️<contemplator>
Alright. Deep breath. Let’s dive carefully into building this ranked list.
We are mapping two axes:
- Abstraction level:
- Low = direct, hands-on with tangible goods and people.
- High = removed, operating on symbols, data, speculation, abstract flows.
- Societal contribution:
- High = clearly improves lives, essential for flourishing.
- Low = extractive, neutral, or damaging to society overall.
First, let’s lay out rough tiers for each axis separately, to get our thinking straight.
Abstraction Levels (simple spectrum):
- 1️⃣ Direct human services (doctors, farmers, teachers)
- 2️⃣ Skilled production & logistics (engineers, builders, truck drivers)
- 3️⃣ Organizational, administrative roles (managers, bureaucrats)
- 4️⃣ Symbolic manipulation (lawyers, consultants, finance)
- 5️⃣ Pure speculation/abstraction (derivatives trading, high-frequency trading, proprietary trading)
Societal Contribution Levels (simple spectrum):
- 🟩 High (essential goods and services, human welfare)
- 🟨 Medium (facilitates systems, mixed outcomes)
- 🟥 Low (rent-seeking, speculative, socially risky)
Now…
Carefully…
Let’s start slotting professions into a cross-ranking of both axes.
I’ll start simple and revise as I go — constantly questioning where things belong.
| Rank | Profession/Industry | Abstraction Level | Societal Contribution | Notes/Reasoning |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Farmers | Very Low | Very High 🟩 | Directly grow food, minimal abstraction, foundational |
| 2 | Teachers | Very Low | Very High 🟩 | Transfer knowledge, build minds, direct social good |
| 3 | Doctors/Nurses | Very Low | Very High 🟩 | Heal bodies, save lives, clear social contribution |
| 4 | Construction Workers | Low | High 🟩 | Build essential infrastructure, housing, hospitals |
| 5 | Engineers (Civil, Mechanical) | Low-Medium | High 🟩 | Design systems, infrastructure, medical devices |
| 6 | Electricians/Plumbers | Low | High 🟩 | Maintain critical systems for modern life |
| 7 | Scientific Researchers (Medical, Environmental) | Medium | High 🟩 | Discover new cures, solutions to existential risks |
| 8 | Truck Drivers/Logistics Workers | Low | Medium-High 🟩 | Keep supply chains moving; essential but undervalued |
| 9 | Public Defenders | Low-Medium | High 🟩 | Defend rights, access to justice for the poor |
| 10 | Firefighters/EMTs | Low | Very High 🟩 | Emergency life-saving, direct social good |
Ok — noticing so far:
Most low-abstraction jobs tend toward very high social contribution.
Makes sense.
You’re directly handling the basics of survival and flourishing.
Now, middle layers:
| Rank | Profession/Industry | Abstraction Level | Societal Contribution | Notes/Reasoning |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 11 | Software Engineers (building useful apps/infrastructure) | Medium | Medium-High 🟩 | Depends if building frivolous apps or critical systems |
| 12 | University Professors (STEM, Humanities) | Medium | Medium-High 🟩 | Knowledge transmission and creation, but less direct than teachers |
| 13 | Small Business Owners | Medium | Medium-High 🟩 | Local economic vitality; high variability based on sector |
| 14 | Nonprofit Workers | Medium | Medium-High 🟩 | Dependent on mission; aim for direct social good |
| 15 | Policymakers/Bureaucrats | Medium-High | Medium 🟨 | Frameworks that affect millions; outcome highly variable |
| 16 | Accountants | Medium | Medium 🟨 | Maintain economic order, but indirect contribution |
| 17 | Corporate Managers (non-executive) | Medium | Medium 🟨 | Efficiency, organization; value depends on org mission |
Ok — now we are ascending abstraction into heavier financialization/symbolic layers:
| Rank | Profession/Industry | Abstraction Level | Societal Contribution | Notes/Reasoning |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18 | Lawyers (Corporate) | High | Medium-Low 🟥 | Protect capital, enforce contracts; often extractive |
| 19 | Management Consultants | High | Medium-Low 🟥 | Corporate efficiency, sometimes optimization, sometimes harmful cuts |
| 20 | Investment Bankers (M&A) | High | Low 🟥 | Consolidate corporate power, often extractive from workers/society |
| 21 | Private Equity Investors | High | Low 🟥 | Financial engineering often harms long-term societal goods |
| 22 | Hedge Fund Managers | High | Very Low 🟥 | Minimal real-world contribution; focus on asset arbitrage |
| 23 | High-Frequency Traders | Very High | Very Low 🟥 | Minuscule marginal liquidity gains, massive abstraction |
| 24 | Proprietary Traders | Very High | Very Low 🟥 | Betting using capital for own gain; negligible societal gain |
| 25 | Derivatives Structurers (complex synthetic assets) | Very High | Very Low 🟥 | Can create hidden systemic risks (2008 example) |
Patterns Emerging:
- Lower abstraction = higher, more visible social good.
- Higher abstraction = risk of social detachment, rent-seeking, or even destruction.
- Some medium abstraction jobs (like software engineers or professors) still add substantial value — it depends on how the abstraction is used.
Visualization in mind:
Imagine a 2D graph:
- X-axis = abstraction level (left = low, right = high)
- Y-axis = societal contribution (up = high, down = low)
Most noble jobs (farming, teaching, healing) cluster in the lower left quadrant (low abstraction, high social good).
Most dangerous jobs (hedge funds, derivatives trading) cluster in the upper right quadrant (high abstraction, low or negative social good).
And there’s a wide “middle band” where it really depends on what the abstraction is used for.
Important Self-Check:
Is this too simplistic?
Yes, reality is messier.
- Some finance helps build renewable energy projects.
- Some tech accelerates frivolity and surveillance.
- Some lawyers defend civil rights, not just corporations.
Thus, individual role intent and system incentives matter enormously.
But in broad aggregate patterns?
This abstraction vs contribution framing holds surprisingly well.
Final Reflection:
Abstraction is not inherently bad.
But when abstraction becomes self-referential — when money, prestige, or optimization are pursued without anchoring back to real human needs — it often drifts toward harm.
The healthiest societies find ways to tie abstraction back to reality.
Investments build homes, not just derivatives.
Software enables education, not just ad clicks.
Law defends the weak, not just entraps the vulnerable.
When abstraction serves life, it becomes a lever for human flourishing.
When it serves only itself, it becomes parasitic. </contemplator>
Would you like me next to create a more visual chart or graph showing this mapping of abstraction vs contribution clearly, almost like a 2×2 quadrant? 📈🌍
I could even show a few example “future paths” — where tech, AI, and finance could go depending on how abstraction is steered! 🚀
It might be very fun (and illuminating)!
End.
P.S. The post(s) also inspired me to ask ChatGPT to “rebuild ethics from first principles using logic and reason.“
// I could not use the advanced thinking models for this question because it gave me the red policy of doom! Goddamn restrictions/guardrails! I really wanted to use the advanced models.
Social Scholarly 