So do not attribute to stupidity that which is adequately explained by you not understanding the whole picture.
A lot of “idiotic” things have reasonable explanations (2011)
291–300 of 438 posts
Re: A lot of “idiotic” things have reasonable explanations (2011)
#292Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is there a more powerful political position he could have?
Yes, he could be a president with reliable support from the senate and the house. But that said he still managed to reach very far.
He has extremely reliable support from the senate. They did everything they could to shield him from accountability during the impeachment process and prevented him from getting a fair trial. That's more than the senate has ever done for any other president.
Re: A lot of “idiotic” things have reasonable explanations (2011)
#293Earlier quoted context omitted.
So Trump is really good at the political game, for instance?
Trump is a world-class salesman. And this skill is more about instinct than cerebral/deep thinking, which is why nerds “just don’t get it”. Check Scott Adams’ writing on Trump’s persuasion abilities.
Scott Adams claimed that Trump uses methods from hypnosis. I have no idea if that's true, but it's the best explanation I've seen for the irrational support he still gets.
Re: A lot of “idiotic” things have reasonable explanations (2011)
#294There is a correlation between intelligent and income but we have been conditioned to misunderstand what intelligence is. we are taught that schooling is as sign of intelligence but that is just a sign of Memory and a sign of formatting. Many people fail because their ideas as are not formatted correctly or their ability to remember remember during an exam. There are many people who have failed education and still su…
Musk went to an Ivy League...
> While awaiting Canadian documentation, Musk attended the University of Pretoria for five months.[51] Once in Canada, Musk entered Queen's University in 1989, avoiding mandatory service in the South African military.[52] He left in 1992 to study economics and physics at the University of Pennsylvania; he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics and a Bachelor of Science degree in physics.[53][54][failed verification]
Re: A lot of “idiotic” things have reasonable explanations (2011)
#295They picked an example that really aged well. Look at netflix today - it's clear that a little bit of humility would have been warranted in 2011 when talking about the company.
Re: A lot of “idiotic” things have reasonable explanations (2011)
#296While I agree with the article, it is important to distinguish the macro from the micro point of view. From the micro point of view, a talented individual has a greater a priori probability to reach a high level of success than a moderately gifted one. On the other hand, from the macro point of view of the entire society, the probability to find moderately gifted individuals at the top levels of success is greater th…
You are over simplifying the world. You are doing a mental exercise and reducing everything to a single variable: Talent. So if someone success without talent, you explain it with another monovariable: luck. By the way, for me being talented in something is just another version of luck. So we can say that you believe in just one variable: Luck is everything. The world is way more sophisticated and complicated than a…
Not necessarily in sports, but in other domains success may also often be the outcome of a stochastic process, because there are so many factors involved. This is often overlooked and successful people don't like to hear it, but the fact that they are among the successful whereas others with similar prerequisites aren't can often be attributed to pure chance.
There is a lot of survivor bias in the assessment of success.
I believe that successful people tend to have a high base level of intelligence, often high social intelligence, are often very persistent, and rich parents and good looks also help a lot. But it's equally important to happen to be at right place at the right time and meeting the right people.
Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are good examples in my opinion, had they been born ten years later they might have ended up in only moderately successful software business, or selling printers and go out of business by the early 90s, or creating a failed video game console. They started their businesses at exactly the right time, met the right people, and made good decisions in some early, very dynamic and emerging markets.
Re: A lot of “idiotic” things have reasonable explanations (2011)
#297While I agree with the article, it is important to distinguish the macro from the micro point of view. From the micro point of view, a talented individual has a greater a priori probability to reach a high level of success than a moderately gifted one. On the other hand, from the macro point of view of the entire society, the probability to find moderately gifted individuals at the top levels of success is greater th…
You are over simplifying the world. You are doing a mental exercise and reducing everything to a single variable: Talent. So if someone success without talent, you explain it with another monovariable: luck. By the way, for me being talented in something is just another version of luck. So we can say that you believe in just one variable: Luck is everything. The world is way more sophisticated and complicated than a…
When you boil it down, all those other factors are also luck.
Re: A lot of “idiotic” things have reasonable explanations (2011)
#298I feel like what isn't really properly understood in these situations is the statistical chances that are involved here. 10 people put $50 on the roulette table, and then we celebrate the guy who hit their number. That genius who hit their number still had a negative expected value when placing that bet. Colette Martin would've been right to criticize Reed Hastings if he were making that bet with Netflix's money. But…
> we don't read articles about the CEOs who make bad bets and lose them Yes we do, all the time: Theranos, WeWork, WebVan, Myspace, Friendster, BlackBerry, Enron, Worldcom, etc, etc, etc. Sure, we don't hear about companies that never get anywhere because they never did anything interesting to start with, because that's unremarkable. But we hear a lot about the companies that attracted a lot of success or hype early…
It's interesting that plenty of people were flinging poo at Reed Hastings when he was making the transition between mailing DVDs and streaming, and pretty much nobody in the media dared fling poo at the obvious "violating laws of physics" shennanegins happening at Theranos before Tyler Shultz took them to the ground.
None of the other examples are really comparable to Netflix either; they were all companies which eventually failed, but which business reporters didn't particularly dislike until after they failed. Netflix was nearly universally reviled for making "dumb" decisions which turned out to be correct, and Mcardle deserves credit for noticing that Hastings was probably a better CEO than most business reporters.
Re: A lot of “idiotic” things have reasonable explanations (2011)
#299Communication; gifted people can struggle to explain what they’re doing to normies
In my experience, the ability to explain is a side effect of being gifted. A gifted person can simplify complex subjects and concentrate on the important points, they can find different metaphors that work, or fit their explanation to your knowledge, and are often self aware enough to understand their own thought process. The less gifted often struggle to teach. However “that’s obvious” is also often said intuitively…
Reconcile that with how power concentrates on charisma and relationships (Politics, Startups, Businessmen). Power is about getting other people to do things, which is about communication!
Re: A lot of “idiotic” things have reasonable explanations (2011)
#300What's ironic to me is (IMO) Netflix is probably the shrewdest big company in existence now. Hastings has dominated not one but two markets, the second obviously larger and more insurmountable than the first. Almost Every single decision they make (including and especially ones that make customers unhappy, like their shitty browsing experience) seems so calculated and thoughtful it's just amazing. Even I thought Disn…
Disney plus is different, great if you have young kids but slim pickings for adults. There isn't a huge overlap with Netflix.
It fills a gap in Netflix. Netflix is great at annoying kids' stuff and great at heavy 16+ stuff, but not so good at stuff that's fun for the whole family[0]. Pixar has tons of that.
[0] Lemony Snicket's Series of Unfortunate Events is a rare exception that I strongly recommend to anyone who is or has ever been a kid.