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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

#111

Post by ekianjo »

Arainach wrote: post #51
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.

> country the size of Russia

density of population is not equal to land mass, you know

Re: Sometimes powerful people just do dumb shit

#112

Post by ZeroGravitas »

ljsprague wrote: post #96
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I though the 4D chess explanation was that he bought it (was forced to buy it by courts) because he was entering politics and wanted to be able to ensure the deaths of half a million children in Africa: https://www.impactcounter.com/dashboard?view=table&sort=inte... It looks like he succeeded wildly at that.

[flagged]

Straight to the white nationalist racists to back him up, this guy gets where Musk is coming from and approves.

Citing this guy:

> Steven Sailer is an American far-right writer and blogger.[1][2] He is a columnist for Taki's Magazine and VDARE, a website associated with white supremacy.[3][4][5] Earlier writing by Sailer appeared in some mainstream outlets, and his writings have been described as prefiguring Trumpism.[2] Sailer popularized the term "human biodiversity" for a right-wing audience in the 1990s as a euphemism for scientific racism.[2][6]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Sailer

On this site:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unz_Review

> The Unz Review is an American website and blog founded and edited by Ron Unz, an American far-right activist and Holocaust denier. It is known for its publication of far-right, conspiracy theory, white nationalist, and antisemitic writings.[1]

Re: Sometimes powerful people just do dumb shit

#113

Post by zarzavat »

fluoridation wrote: post #89
WatchDog wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 posit…

>yes, it does feel like the idpol witch hunts have died down a bit since. You don't seriously believe that was because of the Twitter purchase and not due to a coinciding social shift, do you?

After the Musk acquisition, the identity politics ultras quickly moved to mastodon and bluesky. Regular people were slower to move if at all because of switching friction.

Social media is an amplifier: most of the users are passive consumers or retweeters, and only a smaller minority drive the conversation.

Traditional media also loves to get stories from social media in order to "get the pulse" of society and because journalists are lazy and desperate for narratives. A relatively small social movement can therefore use social media to catapult its message onto traditional media and thus onto society at large.

By isolating themselves from the amplifier, the identity politics ultras were no longer able to push their political message (and witch hunts) to such a large audience, the message stayed confined in spaces that were basically invisible to the average person, and the message faded away.

Yes it wasn't just because of the Musk purchase, but it was definitely a factor.

Re: Sometimes powerful people just do dumb shit

#114

Post by eesmith »

TonyStr wrote: post #106

The main goal of Napoleon's invasion of Russia was to beat their military in a decisive battle long before reaching Moscow, forcing Alexander to comply with the continental system - a European trade embargo created by Napoleon to weaken the British Empire who have been hostile toward France since long before the French revolution. Alexander signed this trade embargo during the treaty of Tilsit of 1807, and had been b…

> The 400,000 dead soldiers died mostly to disease.

I believe that in every major war of the 1800s, more soldiers died from disease than from combat.

Consider the War of 1812. "fully three-quarters of the war deaths resulted from disease, most commonly typhoid fever, pneumonia, malaria, measles, typhus, smallpox and diarrhea" - https://www.nps.gov/articles/military-medicine.htm

Consider the Crimean War. "death by disease exceeded the sum of "killed in action" or "died of wounds"" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_War

Consider the US Civil War. "Of the nearly 700,000 soldiers who died in the Civil War, nearly two thirds or 467,000 died from sickness and disease." - https://www.nps.gov/gett/learn/education/a-nation-at-war-tra...

Oh, hey - in the Franco-Prussian War more soldiers died of combat than from disease (for the Germans, 28,000 battle deaths vs 12,000 by disease, and for the French, 77,000 battle deaths vs 45,000 by disease) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-Prussian_War , so I was wrong! Though those numbers exclude "162,000 German[ civilian deaths] in a smallpox epidemic spread by French POWs" and "450,000 French civilians dead from war-related famine and disease".

Re: Sometimes powerful people just do dumb shit

#115

Post by pas »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #75
wood_spirit wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Through a modern lenses and with hindsight and memes that follow from napoleons failed attempt we can say flippant things like this and say napoleon wasn’t a genius. But students of history and future generals will obviously investigate the facts and see things through the lenses and circumstances of the time rather than from the seat or the internet commentator.

but they have already, rhetorically, dealt with anyone that might come with some sort of context that does not agree with their conclusion: >There’s a particular kind of person who can’t accept that story at face value, and you’ve met them. I am absolutely sure of it. They show up in every comment section and reply thread where someone powerful does something that looks, on its face, like a mistake - and their argume…

the larger plan people are not the historians, IMHO that's clearly a description of people who spent a bit too much time reading about conspiracy theories (and generally are too partisanal)

but yes, including this snark seems unnecessary

Re: Sometimes powerful people just do dumb shit

#116

Post by Atatator »

lukan wrote: post #88
Arainach wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The main parts that mattered were the european ones. And usually, capturing the enemies capital equals victory and Napoleon did capture Moscow. The russians just decided to keep the fight going, despite the chance that their capital burns down, which it did (allegedly on purpose to drive Napoleon out). In general, Napoleon did not think the russians would use scorched earth tactics, meaning burning their own land, vi…

> usually, capturing the enemies capital equals victory and Napoleon did capture Moscow.

Too bad the capital was Saint Petersburg at that time.

Re: Sometimes powerful people just do dumb shit

#117

Post by pas »

spiderfarmer wrote: post #100
NoPicklez wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All due respect I don't really care much about Musk, but my point is that a powerful person can have a done a good thing and a dumb thing over the course of their career. The dumb thing doesn't nullify the fact they did a good thing. As the article presents, Napoleon is considered one of the great military commanders in history. But he also did some pretty dumb shit leading the many deaths.

Nullification doesn't work when you're mixing up competence with character. Good versus evil is one axis. Smart versus dumb is another. Someone can be smart and still be rotten. Someone can make money and still be a fraud morally. But here, the myth of him as some singular genius falls apart the moment you look at how much of his reputation is built on other people’s work, lucky timing, and high-stakes gambling dress…

people's character also changes over time, and everyone's work is built on other people's (of course usually people try to make sure those people are credited correctly)

he is more of an extremely driven and singularly lucky workaholic asshole with sufficient capacity to cram a lot of technical details (or drugs) into his head, which impressed and motivated technical staff (and investors), who then morphed into this Nazi creep as he got more populare he simply began to ignore negative feedback more and more (and obviously got addicted to the far-right echochamber)

Re: Sometimes powerful people just do dumb shit

#118

Post by [deleted] »

throwawayqqq11 wrote: post #110
ljsprague wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Your overly simplistic graph about population growth omits steady falling birth rates and more importantly, why they are falling. But why should i explain when your mind is occupied with africa when mentioned in a side note and that it comes with an article opening like this > To understand what’s at stake regarding the Mediterranean ... occupied with africa and implying harmful migration without ever basing it. But…

[deleted]

Re: Sometimes powerful people just do dumb shit

#119

Post by [deleted] »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #112
ljsprague wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Straight to the white nationalist racists to back him up, this guy gets where Musk is coming from and approves. Citing this guy: > Steven Sailer is an American far-right writer and blogger.[1][2] He is a columnist for Taki's Magazine and VDARE, a website associated with white supremacy.[3][4][5] Earlier writing by Sailer appeared in some mainstream outlets, and his writings have been described as prefiguring Trumpism…

[deleted]

Re: Sometimes powerful people just do dumb shit

#120

Post by TeMPOraL »

Atatator wrote: post #116
lukan wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main parts that mattered were the european ones. And usually, capturing the enemies capital equals victory and Napoleon did capture Moscow. The russians just decided to keep the fight going, despite the chance that their capital burns down, which it did (allegedly on purpose to drive Napoleon out). In general, Napoleon did not think the russians would use scorched earth tactics, meaning burning their own land, vi…

> usually, capturing the enemies capital equals victory and Napoleon did capture Moscow. Too bad the capital was Saint Petersburg at that time.

That's why you should never trust a time traveler. They probably know as much about your time as you about theirs.
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