51–60 of 72 posts
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I think that the issue is that most people do not make enough money to live comfortably, stash some away, and not worry. For example, if someone wants to own a home in a major cosmopolitan city in the United States, then they must be extremely wealthy.
If you can't afford a home in "a major cosmopolitan city" then you probably shouldn't be there.
There is a more basic reason missed by the article: many smart, hardworking people don't know how to sell. Almost everything in life, regardless of what you work on, is selling and no one is born with this particular skill set. You learn it like any other. It was likely the single most valuable skill I (eventually) learned, as a "smart hardworking people" by nature.
How did you go about learning it?
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Politics require social skills, being smart is detrimental because it lets you see thru all the bullshit.
People who succeed at politics are able to do so because they can see through the bullshit, but also because they can pretend it’s not bullshit. Politics is war without the violence. You need you be able to signal to potential allies what you’re willing to give and take with plausible deniability. Many smart, principled people aren’t able to sufficiently lie to themselves or feel comfortable using ambiguous terms and…
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If you were smart, wouldn't you know how to optimally deal with bullshit?
This takes a whole different set of skills against e.g being good at programming. For example, how do you react to inherently unfair situations, someone taking advantage of someone else? If you start picking on people good politicians will quickly “plausibility deniability” you out of the equation. It’s much easier to accept (with a bit of anger) that you made a mistake in your program that bring defaced due to your…
There is a more basic reason missed by the article: many smart, hardworking people don't know how to sell. Almost everything in life, regardless of what you work on, is selling and no one is born with this particular skill set. You learn it like any other. It was likely the single most valuable skill I (eventually) learned, as a "smart hardworking people" by nature.
I always found the notion that we have to climb upwards and always make more money to be a bit weird. As long as I have enough to live comfortably, stash some away and not worry I'm good, I don't need more. As such, I don't really get involved in most of the things that this post is about nor do I particularly care to do so either. Work is what I do in order to sustain myself, it's not my life. The minute I walk out…
If I was single and had no dependents, I would need very little to make myself feel comfortable. But with dependents, I feel as if I need to however much I can to ensure their security. That means the living in the best neighborhood I can afford, cultivating a network that can be useful to them in the future, having sufficient income for legal/health matters, and passive income if I become incapacitated.
And this feeling is compounded by the fact that the numbers indicate that if the kids don't get funneled into the "right" tracks, then they will fall further and further behind in society as the wealth/income gap grows and it becomes that much less likely for them to be able to catch up.
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Politics require social skills, being smart is detrimental because it lets you see thru all the bullshit.
Smart, nerdy people tend to spend a lot of time alone with books/computers/hobbies, so they simply do not spend enough time with other people to properly develop their social skills.
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I think you really illustrate GP's point in a fantastic way. Let's define "smart" as the kind of smarts that would be in abundance on HN: Technical smarts, rapid learning smarts, knowledge smarts, creative smarts, idea smarts. A smart person might be good at school and individual contribuitorship, and so believe that they should naturally be good at political games as well. But truly, politics takes a whole other set…
This is so true and sad. Often the smartest people at a company are literally just being moved about by the business people. They literally can't see the real game above them.