[bmitc]

I have watched him speak, and he doesn't seem charismatic at all. I remember hearing the same things about Sam Bankman-Fried and then going and watching his interviews and feeling the same.

There is just a giant gap here where I simply do not get it, and I see no evidence that explains me not getting it is missing some key aspect of all this. This just seems like classic cargo cult, cult of personality, and following money and people who think they know best

[creshal]

There's different types of charisma; some people appear extremely charismatic in person but not through a camera (there's a bunch of politicians you could name here), and vice versa (a lot actors).

[bakuninsbart]

Charisma is a euphemism for people starting to see dollar signs when they get close to him. The better you are connected, the more people want to connect with you, and Altman seems to have driven this to an exreme in SV, and the broader policy/tech world thanks to OpenAI. If you look at who is (probably) going to leave with him, it is mostly former ycombinator people or people clearly drawn to OAI through his connections.

[djokkataja]

> I have watched him speak, and he doesn't seem charismatic at all.

Consider the relative charisma of the people around him, though.

[joenot443]

Surely you can understand that the persona one presents while giving a speech is often entirely different from the one they assume in private? I figured you knew him personally, this is a pretty funny justification.

If your analysis is based solely off YouTube interviews, I think your perspective on Sam’s capabilities and personality is going to be pretty surface level and uninteresting.

[NoobSaibot135]

+1

tech execs are trained to be toned down when in public and the camera is on them(so they don't say something that will make -ve headlines later).

Example:

Elon's recent biography shows that he swears a lot casually while working (as do many of us). You wouldn't glean that from any of his public interviews.

[aleph_minus_one]

> I have watched him speak, and he doesn't seem charismatic at all. I remember hearing the same things about Sam Bankman-Fried and then going and watching his interviews and feeling the same.

Beside the argument that creshal brought up in a sibling comment that some people are more charismatic live and some are more charismatic through a camera:

In my observation, quite some programmers are much more immune to "charisma influence" (or rather: manipulation by charisma) than other people. For example, in the past someone sent me an old video of Elon Musk where in some TV show (I think) he explained how he wants to build a rocket to fly to the moon and the respective person claimed that this video makes you want Musk to succeed because of the confidence that Elon Musk shows. Well, this is not the impression that the video made on me ...