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Sometimes powerful people just do dumb shit

joanwestenberg.com

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Re: Sometimes powerful people just do dumb shit

#21

Post by muglug »

qznc wrote: post #3

For my mental model how White House politics work, this article was very influential: https://www.thewrap.com/obama-aides-say-veep-accurate-west-w... > “The funny thing about ‘Veep’ is, we as people who worked in the White House always get asked, okay, what’s the most real? Is it ‘House of Cards? Is it ‘West Wing’? And the answer is, it’s ‘Veep.’ Because you guys nail the fragility of the egos, and the, like, day-to-…

All gossip I hear about the extremely powerful leads me to believe that they’d be utterly unable to organise any sort of conspiracy themselves.

Most haven’t touched Google Calendar in a decade. They can’t call anyone without their assistant typing in the number first.

Re: Sometimes powerful people just do dumb shit

#22

Post by taffydavid »

Elons robot obsession is probably more 4d chess / hidden plan theory. At a time when Tesla sales are flagging in Europe despite an enormous surge in overall EV sales due to yet another energy crisis, he's turning Tesla factories into humanoid robot factories to make a robot that doesn't yet work that nobody asked for. I'm sure lots of Tesla fan boys will pay 20k for a robot butler, but an EV fills a need for the average family and an incompetent bipedal Roomba really does not. They should be focused on PR, it's such a short step from where they are now back to being on top of the EV market.

Re: Sometimes powerful people just do dumb shit

#23

Post by sfink »

mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #10
sfink wrote: post #4

I kind of feel like people know how to human, and how the humans around them human, but someone they've never met but only heard about or seen on TV or in meme posts? No clue at all. Sure, we know the hotshot CEO of COMPANY_NAME_HERE has to put on his pants one leg at a time, but the similarity ends there. They're different, they won't fall for the stupid tricks we fall for. They don't have trouble getting out of bed…

If they're not special, why do we have to pay them so much just to get out of bed?

That's a good question, and although I think I have a good answer, I fear it would be too much of a tangent to speculate on here.

Re: Sometimes powerful people just do dumb shit

#25

Post by bestconncomp »

vjk800 wrote: post #15

"The Wire" TV show portrays these things well. In it, the powerful people often have the least clue about anything. They are just playing the game and often winning by sheer luck. They also often do fuck up, but because they are powerful, are able to get other people to take the hit for them or build a narrative that hides the fuck up. The older I get, the more I think that this TV show is actually the most realistic…

[dead]

Re: Sometimes powerful people just do dumb shit

#26

Post by ozim »

IIAOPSW wrote: post #14

Something I've learned is that in a certain social strata when people do audaciously stupid, its rarely because they lack the common sense to have covered their tracks. Its because they've learned they don't have to. No one is working hard to try and catch them, and even if by some miracle someone does (and people believe them), no government or regulatory body is really interested in punishing them anyway. This broa…

Conversely I didn’t understand incentives for junkies to steal bikes to sell those only for 10 or 20 bucks.

My incentive structure is nowhere near to theirs. It took a lot of mental effort and empathy for me to grasp what kind of environment they navigate in life to steal my bike I bought for $200.

So I also lack understanding of being a millionaire or a billionaire but I definitely lack empathy for those people.

Re: Sometimes powerful people just do dumb shit

#27

Post by jamauro »

sfink wrote: post #23
mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they're not special, why do we have to pay them so much just to get out of bed?

That's a good question, and although I think I have a good answer, I fear it would be too much of a tangent to speculate on here.

If we're not speculating, what are we even doing here?

Re: Sometimes powerful people just do dumb shit

#28

Post by florkbork »

I disagree with the parts about Trump: he does know what he is doing. Not because it's a well crafted plan of 4D chess, but because he's deeply anxious/insecure and "lie with grandiosity" is a learned survival mechanism to protect his feelings from reality.

It's like expecting a fish to stop swimming - it feels like it's suffocating, it's going to panic and do everything it can to get back into the water, get moving again. The fish isn't playing 4d chess, it's just flipping all over the place until it feels safe again, and then probably forget all of the chaos minutes later.

How much this is applicable to the other examples - Musk, Napoleon - unclear. But saying they do "stupid" things without looking at why they might do stupid things is reductionist/overly simple/can PROBABLY be answered with psychology in most cases.

Re: Sometimes powerful people just do dumb shit

#29

Post by riffraff »

csallen wrote: post #19

The challenge with the world is that it requires nuance, ad hoc thinking, and effortful thinking. The human brain doesn't like putting effort into thinking. It's uncomfortable. It's easier for us to just have one rule, one heuristic, that we can simply apply to many similar situations. This is why ideology exists and is so powerful. You can always find people chanting the same phrase or slogan, over and over, regardl…

Yeah I don't buy that xAI story, musk would have gotten a popular ai lab even without Twitter if he wanted.

Except.. his ai lab is not popular. It has zero value and people only use it because it's on Twitter and they don't pay for it.

The fact that he had to merge it with a successful unrelated company tells you all you need to know.

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