Nate Silver: belief

Transcript context

…What’s the richness they get added to their lives that maybe I would not? I’m somewhat risky with travel, but I’m not at all risky with physical activities. I think the notion of cheating death has to be thrilling. I think some of them are maybe a little bit depressed in some ways. It’s not quite self-destructive or suicidal but adjacent to that. Maybe you figure, “Well, I’m a little depressed, and so I can have a lot of fun and cheat death, or if I die, then maybe it’s not that bad.” I know it’s going to a dark place. Some of Sam Bankman-Fried’s confidants, who are I think are in a very different category than these mountain climbers — they would say things like, “Well, he was miserable anyway, so he wouldn’t necessarily mind going to jail because in his day-to-day life, he was depressed and unhappy, so therefore . . .” That’s probably a pretty bad reason to be massively risk-taking, but I think there might be some element of that. It’s going in a slightly dark place. But an Anthony Bourdain type — there’s someone who you would think of as being very risk-taking and probably liked traveling to places where it’s objectively pretty dangerous. I’m sure he had a very adequate crew with him and things like that. He never struck me as a risk taker. He was always going to places that look dangerous and aren’t, would be my sense of what he did.…

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