SBF is not insane according to the U.S. justice system. In order to be found not guilty by reason of insanity your lawyers have to prove you were so whacked out of your mind you didn’t realize you were breaking the law. Sam and his gang of thieves clearly did, because they took many deliberate actions to hide the fraud.
Making poor judgement calls because you’re a megalomaniac is not grounds for a defense. If it were, that’d be a huge problem, because most people that commit massive crimes like these are not entirely sane.
Sam will either plea, or be convicted of massive fraud and spend the rest of his life in genpop. Given how irrational this man appears to be I wouldn’t be surprised if he rejects a perfectly good plea deal (read: anything less than LWOP) against the advice of his lawyers and then gets sentenced to life anyways Ross Ulbricht style.
I dislike using “moral outrage” connotations of words like fraudster and narcissist and especially dislike when that get mixed up on what the words technically mean. Face prettyness and demeanor should not be (atleast decisive) factors in law consequences. Thus in law context it is proper to be blind to it. On the social rumor mill side attaching proper meaning and context is more on scope.
On “social sane person” scale fraudster and megalomaniac are very alike. On “lawful citizen” scale fraudster and megalomaniac are very unlike.
Because of confusions like these it is sometimes possible to play social class recognition tennis where the frame from where an act is percieved impacts how it is processed. This person might be trying to act and angle for the situation to be processed as a normal market trust let down event and away from being a crime. While it is not part of the ideal on how things are supposed to work playing even to jury members hearthstring over law technicalities is a real course of action that happens. The kind of speech that likens fraudster and megalomanian works in the paradigm of pulling hearthstring in the direction of hate. So while in the “sympathy vs punishment” paradigm it might result in the “correct” bin, in the “audience reaction vs mechanistic consequences for actions” it plays to the wrong murky bin. “audience reaction speech” might therefore inadvertly help the effort to have the perperator choose a convenient frame.
A defence of the mental state being dominated by chemical influence of stimulants might use the non-damning behavioural aspects as evidence that the overall behaviour comes from a chemical source rather than unidentified psychological sources. Manicness in this context would be excusatory (with possibly admitting “trading under the influence” in the same go). I think I disagree here on whether megalomania is categorically irrelevant for defence.
That the non-punishment of mental institution is worse than actual punishments is pretty backwards. Medical care being adequate bad outcome for a hated person seems a very ablist attitude (I guess it is consistent with treating “mentally ill” as a label to direct hate).
That the non-punishment of mental institution is worse than actual punishments is pretty backwards. Medical care being adequate bad outcome for a hated person seems a very ablist attitude.
I’m explaining to you how it is. Ableism has nothing to do with it. Being a sane person in a psychiatric facility for criminals found legally insane, in the society we’re in, is a really terrible outcome. Most would rather be in regular prison.
Doesn’t really matter though, because Sam isn’t getting found legally insane. Just isn’t how the law works. If we recognized standard Dark Triad traits motivating criminality as grounds for reduced sentences, large portions of the justice system would have to be reconfigured.
I dislike using “moral outrage” connotations of words like fraudster and narcissist and especially dislike when that get mixed up on what the words technically mean. Face prettyness and demeanor should not be (atleast decisive) factors in law consequences. Thus in law context it is proper to be blind to it. On the social rumor mill side attaching proper meaning and context is more on scope.
On “social sane person” scale fraudster and megalomaniac are very alike. On “lawful citizen” scale fraudster and megalomaniac are very unlike.
Because of confusions like these it is sometimes possible to play social class recognition tennis where the frame from where an act is percieved impacts how it is processed. This person might be trying to act and angle for the situation to be processed as a normal market trust let down event and away from being a crime. While it is not part of the ideal on how things are supposed to work playing even to jury members hearthstring over law technicalities is a real course of action that happens. The kind of speech that likens fraudster and megalomanian works in the paradigm of pulling hearthstring in the direction of hate. So while in the “sympathy vs punishment” paradigm it might result in the “correct” bin, in the “audience reaction vs mechanistic consequences for actions” it plays to the wrong murky bin. “audience reaction speech” might therefore inadvertly help the effort to have the perperator choose a convenient frame.
A defence of the mental state being dominated by chemical influence of stimulants might use the non-damning behavioural aspects as evidence that the overall behaviour comes from a chemical source rather than unidentified psychological sources. Manicness in this context would be excusatory (with possibly admitting “trading under the influence” in the same go). I think I disagree here on whether megalomania is categorically irrelevant for defence.
Unfortunately for Sam the law is pretty clear here on what kind of time he’s expected to do given the size of the fraud. It’s not up to the judge if a jury votes him guilty, and a jury is very probably not going to nullify this crime, so there just doesn’t seem to be the axis of leeway you suggest here. A prosecutor might decline to charge him, or attempt to convince the judge to give him a sweetheart plea deal, but in practice this seems unlikely.
Sam is sounding and acting like a megalomaniac to the point of being mentally ill.
I currently understand that this meant only to say disapproval and social disparagement and has nothing to do with megalomania, mania or mental illness despite using words that ordinarily refer to those.
I guess you could say that’s an ableist comment. What I mean is more “he is traditionally sociopathic to the point that it is causing him to make grave mistakes such as steal billions of dollars and then go freely talk to journalists afterwards.” You could make an argument that this is impairing his judgement to the point of mental illness, but then you can make an argument that Hitler was similarly mentally ill. Either way I have little sympathy.
SBF is not insane according to the U.S. justice system. In order to be found not guilty by reason of insanity your lawyers have to prove you were so whacked out of your mind you didn’t realize you were breaking the law. Sam and his gang of thieves clearly did, because they took many deliberate actions to hide the fraud.
Making poor judgement calls because you’re a megalomaniac is not grounds for a defense. If it were, that’d be a huge problem, because most people that commit massive crimes like these are not entirely sane.
Sam will either plea, or be convicted of massive fraud and spend the rest of his life in genpop. Given how irrational this man appears to be I wouldn’t be surprised if he rejects a perfectly good plea deal (read: anything less than LWOP) against the advice of his lawyers and then gets sentenced to life anyways Ross Ulbricht style.
I dislike using “moral outrage” connotations of words like fraudster and narcissist and especially dislike when that get mixed up on what the words technically mean. Face prettyness and demeanor should not be (atleast decisive) factors in law consequences. Thus in law context it is proper to be blind to it. On the social rumor mill side attaching proper meaning and context is more on scope.
On “social sane person” scale fraudster and megalomaniac are very alike. On “lawful citizen” scale fraudster and megalomaniac are very unlike.
Because of confusions like these it is sometimes possible to play social class recognition tennis where the frame from where an act is percieved impacts how it is processed. This person might be trying to act and angle for the situation to be processed as a normal market trust let down event and away from being a crime. While it is not part of the ideal on how things are supposed to work playing even to jury members hearthstring over law technicalities is a real course of action that happens. The kind of speech that likens fraudster and megalomanian works in the paradigm of pulling hearthstring in the direction of hate. So while in the “sympathy vs punishment” paradigm it might result in the “correct” bin, in the “audience reaction vs mechanistic consequences for actions” it plays to the wrong murky bin. “audience reaction speech” might therefore inadvertly help the effort to have the perperator choose a convenient frame.
A defence of the mental state being dominated by chemical influence of stimulants might use the non-damning behavioural aspects as evidence that the overall behaviour comes from a chemical source rather than unidentified psychological sources. Manicness in this context would be excusatory (with possibly admitting “trading under the influence” in the same go). I think I disagree here on whether megalomania is categorically irrelevant for defence.
That the non-punishment of mental institution is worse than actual punishments is pretty backwards. Medical care being adequate bad outcome for a hated person seems a very ablist attitude (I guess it is consistent with treating “mentally ill” as a label to direct hate).
I’m explaining to you how it is. Ableism has nothing to do with it. Being a sane person in a psychiatric facility for criminals found legally insane, in the society we’re in, is a really terrible outcome. Most would rather be in regular prison.
Doesn’t really matter though, because Sam isn’t getting found legally insane. Just isn’t how the law works. If we recognized standard Dark Triad traits motivating criminality as grounds for reduced sentences, large portions of the justice system would have to be reconfigured.
Unfortunately for Sam the law is pretty clear here on what kind of time he’s expected to do given the size of the fraud. It’s not up to the judge if a jury votes him guilty, and a jury is very probably not going to nullify this crime, so there just doesn’t seem to be the axis of leeway you suggest here. A prosecutor might decline to charge him, or attempt to convince the judge to give him a sweetheart plea deal, but in practice this seems unlikely.
I kinda agree how the law works. So in
I currently understand that this meant only to say disapproval and social disparagement and has nothing to do with megalomania, mania or mental illness despite using words that ordinarily refer to those.
I guess you could say that’s an ableist comment. What I mean is more “he is traditionally sociopathic to the point that it is causing him to make grave mistakes such as steal billions of dollars and then go freely talk to journalists afterwards.” You could make an argument that this is impairing his judgement to the point of mental illness, but then you can make an argument that Hitler was similarly mentally ill. Either way I have little sympathy.