Sequoia Capital on Sam Bankman-Fried's upbringing

SBF is from the Bay Area—the eldest son of two Stanford law professors, Joe Bankman and Barbara Fried.  His parents raised him and his siblings utilitarian—in the same way one might be brought up Unitarian—amid dinner-table debates about the greatest good for the greatest number.  One of SBF’s formative moments came at age 12, when he was weighing arguments, pro and con, around the abortion debate.  A rights-based theorist might argue that there aren’t really any discontinuous differences as a fetus becomes a child (and thus fetus murder is essentially child murder).  The utilitarian argument compares the consequences of each.  The loss of an actual child’s life—a life in which a great deal of parental and societal resources have been invested—is much more consequential than the loss of a potential life, in utero.  And thus, to a utilitarian, abortion looks more like birth control than like murder.  SBF’s application of utilitarianism helped him resolve some nagging doubts he had about the ethics of abortion.  It made him comfortable being pro-choice—as his friends, family, and peers were.  He saw the essential rightness of his philosophical faith.

~ Sequoia Capital, "Sam Bankman-Fried Has a Savior Complex - And Maybe You Should Too," September 22, 2022

Sidney Poitier on childhood education

Child psychologists have demonstrated that our minds are actually constructed by these thousands of tiny interactions during the first few years of life.  We aren't just what we're taught.  It's what we experience during those early years - a smile here, a jarring sound there - that creates the pathways and connections of the brain.  We put our kids to fifteen years of quick-cut advertising, passive television watching, and sadistic video games, and we expect to see emerge a new generation of calm, compassionate, and engaged human beings?

~ Sidney Poitier

Abigail Van Buren on parenting

If you want your children to turn out well, invest twice as much time with them and half as much money.

~ Abigail Van Buren, writer of the Dear Abbey column from 1956 to 2002

Tom DiLorenzo on Leftist indoctrination and the complacency of American parents

While American parents slept, university Leftists have turned millions of their children into uneducated, empty-headed, slogan-chanting useful idiots for the most despicable political tyrants and would-be dictators on the planet. Way to go, American parents.

~ Tom DiLorenzo, "Your Marxist Revolutionary Sons and Daughters," LewRockwell.com, October 16, 2020