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iambateman • yesterday at 11:03 PM • 10 replies • view on HN

I heard a guy I respect say “there’s a short list of things people will ruin their lives for.”

I’m not sure if this will ruin Jensen’s life or not, but it’s a good opportunity for us all to remember that the short-term high is usually not worth it.


Replies

reenorap • yesterday at 11:54 PM

It's not going to ruin his life. At worst he will lose $100 bil and maybe if it's really bad, he will get kicked out of Nvidia. He will still have $100 bil and can do whatever he wants at that point.

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jxramos • today at 5:25 AM

Good reminder to avoid those near occasions of sin.

rustyhancock • yesterday at 11:10 PM

Jensen carries the responsibility here for sure.

But I'm not sure how hard it would be to resist a honey trap.

I mean a state sponsored enterprise to get you to have sex with someone (or one of a group of people).

Getting him to have sex with her was literally this woman's day job and she was probably told it was a matter of national security.

It is quite absurd once you think about it.

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jmyeet • today at 4:43 AM

One can't help but think of Sergey Brin who famously had an affair with an underling on Google Glass, Amanda Rosenberg [1]. This of course blew up his life and he divorced Anne Wojcicki in ~2014. Of course he got married again and divorced again with another expensive divorce (although neither was in the realm of the cost of Jeff Bezos's divorce).

I think it says a lot about what wealth does to you. A lot of people dream of wealth but I suspect many would be less than thrilled by the reality. It must be incredibly isolating. You constantly have to fend off people who are trying to use you. It must make it harder to trust anyone. A lot of ordinary life experiences are now barred to you.

For example, a lot of executives in these trillion dollar companies are forbidden from flying commercial for security reasons. Nobody would think about missing the airport and everything that entails. In most places it's an objectively awful experience but it's still a shared experience. Going to a private FBO by helicopter to take a Global 7500 direct to your destination is something only a tiny portion of the population can relate to.

So I think this kind of isolation makes such wealthy and/or powerful people more susceptible to this kind of thing because, in a way, they're starved from a lot of human interaction and experiences in a way most of us can't understand (and wouldn't want).

What really is the point of somebody hoarding this much wealth? You kind of have to have sociopathic tendencies (IMHO) because such wealth simply cannot exist without the impoverishment of millions of people. And for you it's kind of a golden prison.

[1]: https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2014/04/sergey-brin-amanda-...

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giwook • yesterday at 11:10 PM

Easier said than done. Especially when we’re not thinking logically which is surprisingly and disappointingly too often.

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voidfunc • yesterday at 11:05 PM

There is zero percent chance the board does anything to Jensen.

His likely ex-wife is about to be very rich tho.

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Betelbuddy • yesterday at 11:08 PM

Betcha this is going to turn into: He was being blackmailed but decided to pull a David Letterman on it...

happytoexplain • today at 5:22 AM

I appreciate the sentiment, but literally speaking, we may need to have a conversation about what it means to have your "life ruined".

SecretDreams • yesterday at 11:59 PM

> I’m not sure if this will ruin Jensen’s life or not, but it’s a good opportunity for us all to remember that the short-term high is usually not worth it.

I think what you've just described is "post nut clarity". I'm sure he knew what he did immediately, but the gravity of the consequences might've taken a bit to catch up to him.

hackernud3s • yesterday at 11:25 PM

> the short-term high is usually not worth it.

People continue to under-value the spank bank. SMH.