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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

#51

Post by Arainach »

Tinned_Tuna wrote: post #39

I don't think the author read even the Wikipedia page on Napoleon's invasion of Russia? Napoleon _did_ have reasons for attacking Russia, he _did_ prepare logistics. His motives, rationale, and actions are well-documented and widely studied. > watching an unchecked megalomaniac march 685,000 soldiers into a Russian winter without a fur coat in sight Napoleon famously crossed the Neman River in *June*.

If you believe a war with a country the size of Russia will be over within 4 months you might not be a genius.

Re: Sometimes powerful people just do dumb shit

#52

Post by dzikimarian »

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?

I was part of CEO recruitment process (sadly not FAANG-like, so maybe it wasn't "so much"-level yet).

Amount of people who are both seriously willing to take the job(considering pressure) and have necessary skills is not very high. Tbh same is truth for any management job - a lot of competent people prefer calmer life.

Obviously for the very top compensation is bonkers and there's fair share of frauds that ended in the position for various reasons, but if you want someone reasonable pool shrinks quite fast.

Re: Sometimes powerful people just do dumb shit

#54

Post by orleyhuxwell »

'Clever Hans was a horse that appeared to perform arithmetic and other intellectual tasks during exhibitions in Germany in the early 20th century.' - wikipedia

We should be able to hold 2 things in mind at the same time.: a leader (i.e. Elon Musk) can be extremally charismaric (in his specific nerdy way), can have a great talent in filtering ideas that people pitch to him - optimizing for coolness factor. He can even be able to speak about these ideas for hours in captivating maner. A skill in deal-making, getting financed, inspiring people is also real.

At the same time such person can be extremally narcissistic and impulsive + clearly addicted to public drama focused on him or her.

And these character tratis seem to control him, so this person will always choose the 'more power, more news, more controversy' path even when it clearly doesn't make sense.

Add to it a society with a strong cult of personality (a feature of US culture) and some of the lucky reckless charismatic people will get very powerful eventually and also get rewarded for doubling down on their worse decisions.

Re: Sometimes powerful people just do dumb shit

#55

Post by pasquinelli »

NoPicklez wrote: post #49

Sometimes powerful people just do dumb shit, because they're still a human being like all of us. It's easy to look at Musk and say, he's done some dumb shit when his dumb shit makes news. But very few of us have the same type of scrutiny that powerful people have. He's done dumb shit, but he's done a lot of pretty good shit across his lifetime. Nobody is infallible.

but i have to wonder what powerful people actually bring to the table.

Re: Sometimes powerful people just do dumb shit

#56

Post by WatchDog »

zarzavat wrote: post #40
WatchDog wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He bailed out his Twitter investors by having xAi purchase Twitter, then he bailed out his xAi investors by having SpaceX purchase xAi, and how he is trying to bail out SpaceX by having the index funds be forced to purchase SpaceX. Twitter valuation aside, there must be some intangible benefits to the purchase. Lots of influential people use Twitter, he has amplified his reach, and the purchase seems to have moved th…

> the index funds be forced to purchase SpaceX SpaceX is a fantastic company full of the smartest engineers that has brought fast internet to the most remote regions on Earth. Even if it wasn't for index funds, investors would buy the shit out of it. xAI has built an almost-frontier model. It's not Anthropic or OpenAI but it's also not valued like Anthropic or OpenAI either. Twitter is doing OK, despite predictions.…

Elon has made multiple comments in the past about how much keeping SpaceX private, makes it easier to run, and achieve it's goals of colonising Mars.

He has given up on that, he has abandoned the Mars goal, and he is sacrificing the company to the whims of the public markets, just so he can have a payday.

xAi raised $45 billion and Grok loses benchmarks to Chinese(GPU sanctioned) open weight models.

I'm overall positive about the Twitter acquisition, I mean it was terrible financially, and Elon has made a lot of unforced errors in it's management, but yes, it does feel like the idpol witch hunts have died down a bit since.

Re: Sometimes powerful people just do dumb shit

#57

Post by IIAOPSW »

nearbuy wrote: post #42
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…

In my experience, people of every social strata sometimes do audaciously stupid things, and it's not because they get special treatment. It's often the people who have gotten in trouble the most that do audaciously stupid things the most frequently, despite experiencing past punishment. Your observation matches what we would see if those people you speak of were just stupid for no reason and committed crimes that are…

Well rather than our respective anecdotes, I cite page 252-253 of the Knapp Commission Report on Police Corruption in New York (1972).

>It is clear that the risks of severe punishment for corrupt behavior are slight. A dishonest policeman knows that, even if he is caught and convicted, he will probably receive a court reprimand or, at most, a fairly short jail sentence. Considering the vast sums to be made in some plainclothes squads or in narcotics enforcement, the gains from corruption seem far to outweigh the risks. Both William Phillips and Edward Droge said that they assessed the risk of meaningful punishment and determined that they had little to fear.

I've read enough reports of this nature and experienced enough regulators to be really convinced that where you see apparent stupidity you are also likely to see a table like the one on page 250 showing virtually no prosecutions prior to the Commission.

Neither Drodge nor Phillips were wrong in their calculation. I hate to say, your estimate of a 10% chance of getting caught was way too optimistic. Going by the data, it was much much lower than that.

(My axe to grind is not with the police in particular, reports on police corruption just happen to be the most available and easily understandable).

Re: Sometimes powerful people just do dumb shit

#58

Post by actionfromafar »

quantummagic wrote: post #46
riffraff wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you have to qualify what you think trump is doing knowingly or not. Lie in every press conference? Sure. Posting an image of himself as Jesus? The guy has dementia.

> The guy has dementia. I think you're right, but it isn't as advanced as Joe Biden's was, by the end of his term.

Trump is very vigorous, even in dementia! Interesting times ahead.

Re: Sometimes powerful people just do dumb shit

#59

Post by spiderfarmer »

NoPicklez wrote: post #49

Sometimes powerful people just do dumb shit, because they're still a human being like all of us. It's easy to look at Musk and say, he's done some dumb shit when his dumb shit makes news. But very few of us have the same type of scrutiny that powerful people have. He's done dumb shit, but he's done a lot of pretty good shit across his lifetime. Nobody is infallible.

Regular people do dumb shit and embarrass themselves at a barbecue. Powerful people do dumb shit and move markets, wreck products, distort public discourse, and still get a choir singing about their ‘pretty good shit across his lifetime.’ At some point it stops being nuance and starts being unpaid PR.

Re: Sometimes powerful people just do dumb shit

#60

Post by Ekaros »

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?

If everyone actually came together and decided that they are not worth paying what they are paid now the compensation would likely normalize to a few multiples of other roles.

But lot of compensation is just magic money out of air that is stock valuations so the stock holder just gives slice of what they think they made. So as long as they financialised system exist so will extreme compensations.

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