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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.

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.
If he loses his family over it, it will ruin his life. There’s more to life than money. I hope for your sake that you don’t really believe this morally bankrupt concept.
The man was cheating on his wife. He already wasn’t thinking of his family.
I think it's common enough for people to have regrets after the fact. Not all do, but enough that you can't rule it out entirely.
Men are known to think with their penises every now and then. His wife knows that too. It's cheating, but cheating is often repaired.
Allegedly he was assaulted by a spy and wasn't able to deflect that assault. Who knows what techniques they use, wouldn't be surprised if they can sprinkle something in a drink that switches off half the frontal cortex.
Is there any example of this specific thing happening before?
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That’s just conspiracy talk. It’s called honeypots for a reason. It requires willingness.
And there is more to life than family too, there is any amount of people who lived great lives without any family.
If the woman involved turns out to really be a Chinese spy, then it will definitely ruin his life.

AI and chips are, for better or worse, considered a national security matter.

Being a “Chinese spy” has very little to do with reality, much like being a terrorist. It’s a matter of what the State Department decides.
He is the the tech CEO most aligned with the current government’s optimism towards the AI build out and also its key orchestrator. What are the odds he will be held to any real punishment ?
Being a state of national security, yes.

Spy is rather easy to define though, and it hardly depends on what the State Department decides (although of course, they can call anybody a spy, for political or other reasons, I agree on that).

I don't know why this is being downvoted. The federal government has never really prevented a terrorist attack that they themselves have not recruited. It is entrapment, and it is legal in most cases. I know it sounds like a conspiracy theory, but even mainstream media has covered this: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/nov/16/fbi-entrapment...

It is perfectly reasonable to suspect similar claims of catching "spies".

Your article doesn't support your claim that the 'federal government has never really prevented a terrorist attack'. And a lot of that was highly motivated reporting itself by people like Glenn Greenwald who was basically denying that things like ISIS were real threats at all in 2014 and then went full victim blaming for things like Charlie Hebdo the year after (it was harder after the Bataclan).

Will you next claim that the police have never really prevented a murder?

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> It's not going to ruin his life.

It might if he loves his wife.

Sometimes, it's the humiliation that comes from the public finding out and putting a spotlight on it that is the kicker; not the random side piece(s) (ex: Bill & Melinda Gates).

I agree, though.

___

edit: Funny enough, there's a House of Cards scene that goes over this exact scenario. Francis is sleeping with Zoe the reporter (they're both using each other for the perks/their own agendas). When Claire finds out, her response is something like "you know you must not embarrass me (publicly) with this", which Francis already knew because he would never do that to Claire... she doesn't say those exact words, but that was the vibe.

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If he loved his wife he wouldn't have cheated on her, and then humiliated her and his children in front of the entire world.
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That is not an automatic fact. Humans are very emotionally complex creatures. And Jensen didn't call his secretary and say "can you pencil in 'humiliating my wife and kids around 4PM'? You can? Great, thanks".
He has full agency over his actions, so yes, it's an automatic fact. He knew what he was doing and he knew what the effects would be on his wife. He knew what would happen when this came out. If you're saying he DIDN'T know what would happen, then you're saying he's extremely stupid. I haven't seen any evidence that he is even a little bit stupid.

Are you saying this was an accident and he didn't have control over himself?

If he doesn't have control over himself and he isn't accountable for his actions, then how does that factor into him being the CEO of the most important globally strategic company in the world? Are you saying that he is capable of making actions that he isn't in full control over? Does Nvidia need to have a CEO that doesn't accidentally make mistakes like potentially giving secret information to Chinese spies?

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$100 bil? You say that like there aren't trillionaires going around in their "flying" cars... /s
Good reminder to avoid those near occasions of sin.
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.

All he had to do was say no and keep his dick in his pants. Use some judgement, think about your wife and kids (oh yeah and all that national security bullshit). The man with all his money and power can't say no, that's what's absurd.
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> But I'm not sure how hard it would be to resist a honey trap.

The guy has enough money to have sex parties with the prettiest girls on Earth every single night until the end of his life, I'm pretty sure resisting a state-sponsored honeypot is not the hardest thing ever.

Easier said than done. Especially when we’re not thinking logically which is surprisingly and disappointingly too often.
“God gave men enough blood to run their brain or penis but not enough for both” - robin williams
Honestly this might be the most accurate statement ever made.
Honestly a terrible way to deflect responsibility. If you're finding your judgement impaired take a breather, the opportunity is usually not going to disappear right away.
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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-...

Does wealth do this to people or are people with these tendencies more likely to become wealthy?
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And this is part of why we need a billionaire tax - to help these bright, talented people hold on to their humanity.
If there are any billionaires out there who are too alienated by their inability to wait in line at the airport: don’t worry, you can give me the money. It’ll be a burden, but one I think I can handle.
The airport was just an example. You simply can't do normal people things.

I might not like airport lines but I'd hate to be forbidden from going through that process. I also couldn't just walk down the street to get a pizza. Or go out dancing at night. Or to play board games. Or take a random walk or bike ride around the city. If I was rich and everyone knew it, I'd have to live in a bubble.

That's different from "comfortable rich" where you own your own home and a retirement fund and live mostly normally.

> I also couldn't just walk down the street to get a pizza.

Well, not necessarily. Jensen Huang was famous for going to random food stalls in Taiwan and eating street food.

It might be harder and riskier, and I get what you mean, but it's not like you actually can't do those things.

Also maybe it's not necessarily a billionaire thing, but more like a fame thing. Billionaires tend to get famous just due to being rich, but I'd imagine a random person wouldn't recognize 80+% of the people on the billionaire list if they saw the billionaire chomping down a pizza in the local pizza place.

If you’re that rich but you can’t live a normal life, and you aren’t willing to restructure things to prioritize your life, you’re obviously making a choice in favour of continuing to accumulate wealth or power.
You reckon that if the Concorde was still in existence then all the tech billionaires would be avoiding it? I doubt it.
With regards the "What really is the point of somebody hoarding this much wealth?" question, I've been thinking a lot about this recently, as the billionaires accrue more influence than ever before. And I think that's the keyword - 'influence'. After a point, wealth doesn't buy you more things, it buys you power, which is seductive. It goes far beyond making your family comfortable and doing right by your company, employees and shareholders; it becomes a means to lever the world. Yes, some of this drive is about being apart from the real world and possibly an element of personal sociopathy (corporations are famously sociopathic entities, too, which probably rubs off on the C-suite execs), but hedonistic adaptation (we're very good at getting used to things, even vast wealth) and wanting to change the world are (I imagine) very addictive. I imagine it even goes some way to assuaging the embarrassment of The Leader of the Free World calling you his AI Expert...sorry, 'SI' Expert.

And it really doesn't help that all these tech bro billionaires think Ayn Rand was a good writer with some fine ideas.

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You’re making my heart bleed for the suffering alienated billionaire class.
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There is zero percent chance the board does anything to Jensen.

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

We don’t know the extent of what happened. My first thought, given MegaSpeed, is chip diversion.

How much of NVIDIA’s sales and revenues is actually to China? Would that be allowed to happen still?

I honestly feel truly sorry for her. No amount of wealth can replace what she’s lost.
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I'll take the other side of the wife -> ex-wife bet. He was photographed publicly with the "spy" and has been signing boobs.

If the camel had a back, then it was already broken, IMHO.

He wasn’t photographed in a romantic context as far as I know, and he just signed the upper part of a woman’s chest with tons of cameras around, clearly a marketing ploy rather than him trying to enter into a relationship with her.
>afaik

What? [0]

You just touch someone's lower back, throw an arm around their neck, and share seats for one at lounges with platonic friends?

[0] https://www.thetimes.com/world/asia/article/jensen-huang-rom...

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It’s pretty much cruel to share a paywalled link after that description.
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They are both rich, lmao. The wealth is marital.

But I agree with you that both of them or one of them will be very rich because they will get to sell at the top without upsetting the market.

OH NO WE HAVE TO SELL BECAUSE OF THE DIVORCE NOW. BEFORE THE DEMOCRATS NUKE AI COMPANIES. OH NO. [insert croc tears here]

You can google Luo Pai (from Enron) to learn more.

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

She was already rich

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Betcha this is going to turn into: He was being blackmailed but decided to pull a David Letterman on it...
I appreciate the sentiment, but literally speaking, we may need to have a conversation about what it means to have your "life ruined".
> 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.

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

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