Adam McKay and Charles Randolph wrote a script. Therefore, Jared is wrong about what he is capable of doing and what is he capable of learning. However, Jared is based on a real person - Gregg Lippman. Despite this, after a brief search I found no public information about the arrest of this brother. So either Gregg didn't say this or he said it and it wasn't true, because people in his position would have been told the difference during the course of their life or maybe I didn't search hard enough - but I don't think I should search harder, so if you really feel this is strong support please provide evidence it is so.
I'm more interested in building explanations on reality than supporting my positions with comedic fiction. I'll share some small part of my explanation. I apologize for my lack of brevity.
In game playing we have the ability to calculate the time to calculate and store perfect play in various games. After around the complexity of chess we get to the point where it is physically impossible to store perfect play because the combinatorial explosion generates more states than we have atoms to work with in our universe. This forces approximation, which forces error, which means that for almost every task in this universe error is not only present but absolutely demanded. In multi-agent settings these issues only get worse, because not only is the state space very high due to the combinatorics, but in addition the optimal policy is a function of other policies. The connecting point here is that since our problems are a superset of things we know to be physically unrealizable it follows that error is inevitable and therefore the observance of stupidity relative to theoretical ideals is inevitable.
Founder culture is completely at odds with sophisticated cynicism.
- Paul Graham
-Jared Vennett, The Big Short