Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon

by Michael Lewis

Sam himself took a bit longer to recognize the gulf between himself and other children. He didn’t really know why he didn’t have friends the way other kids did. Between the ages of eight and ten, he was sideswiped by a pair of realizations that, taken together, amounted to an epiphany. The first came one December day during the third grade. Christmas was approaching, and a few of his classmates brought up the critical subject of Santa Claus. The Bankman-Frieds weren’t big on the usual holidays. They celebrated Hanukkah but with so little enthusiasm that one year they simply forgot it, and, realizing that none of them cared, stopped celebrating anything. “It was like, ‘Alright, who was bothered by this fact? The fact that we forgot Hanukkah.’ No one raised their hand,” Sam said. They didn’t do birthdays, either. Sam didn’t feel the slightest bit deprived. “My parents were like, I dunno, ‘Is there something you want? Alright, bring it up. And you can have it. Even in February. Doesn’t have to be in December. If you want it, let’s have an open and honest conversation about it instead of us trying to guess.’ ” Sam, like his parents, didn’t see the point in anyone trying to imagine what someone else might want. The family’s indifference to convention came naturally and unselfconsciously. It was never, Look how interesting we are, we don’t observe any of the rituals that define so many American lives. “It’s not like they said, ‘Gifts are dumb,’ ” recalled Sam. “They never tried ...

Of course Sam was aware of Santa. “I’d like heard of it,” he said. “I hadn’t thought that deeply about it.” He thought of Santa roughly the same way he thought of cartoon characters. Bugs Bunny existed too, in some sense, but Bugs Bunny wasn’t real. Now, at the age of eight, he realized that other children believed that Santa was real, in a way that Bugs Bunny was not. It blew his mind. He went home that afternoon, shut himself in his room, and thought it over. “Imagine you had never been introduced to the idea of Santa as a real thing,” said Sam. “And then one day someone tells you that ninety-five percent of the people your age in the world believe in him. That this guy lives in the North Pole and has these elves. That he takes off with these flying reindeer. He flies into your chimney and brings you presents. Unless you’ve been naughty, in which case he brings coal. Though for some reason no one actually knows anyone who has gotten coal. And he does this just once a year. You’re like, ‘What the fuck? Where did that come from?’ ” He found his way to a solution that offered temporary relief: only children suffered from this madness. Yes, kids believed in Santa. But grown-ups did not. There was a limit to the insanity. But then, a year or so later, a boy in his class said he believed in God.

From the widespread belief in God, and Santa, Sam drew a conclusion: it was possible for almost everyone to be self-evidently wrong about something. “Mass delusions are a property of the world, as it turns out,” he said. He had to accept that there was nothing he could do about this. There was no point in arguing with other kids’ belief in Santa Claus. Yet he didn’t feel the slightest need to pretend to agree. He simply came to terms with the fact that the world could be completely wrong about something, and he could be completely right. There could be a kind of equilibrium in which everyone in the world could remain wrong and he could remain right, and neither side would even try to change the other’s mind. “There are times when we’re just going to stare at each other,” said Sam.