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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

#141

Post by BLKNSLVR »

mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #132
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a lot of competent people prefer calmer life I may not be _that_ competent, but the calmer life is worth sacrificing a fair few dollars for. For each job I've changed, I've gone to a lower paying position, such that I'm currently still on $10k (around 8%) less than I was earning... 5 years ago, two jobs ago, which was probably about the same as the job I left 6 years before that. All previous jobs were worth leavin…

Have you considered being paid $20 million for one year, and then staying home with family for the next ten years? Even after taxes, you'd still have much more of both time and money than a career in, say, air traffic control.

Maybe, if that was even offered as an option. I doubt I'm that competent, however, and just the fact I have that doubt probably excludes me from the possibility.

Re: Sometimes powerful people just do dumb shit

#142

Post by cess11 »

ptsneves wrote: post #139
cess11 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I have no doubt any other western country would do the same if 1000s of their civilian citizens including children were kidnapped and murdered." So this is how you expect the rest of the world to treat the US? Just torture and murder their civilians and erase their homes and culture? The US killed, maimed and displaced many millions of iraqis, should we help the iraqis exterminate the US population?

The US does not set out to capture civilians, while the hamas does. It matters. All the rest of the comment makes no sense in light of that. Also you omitted the part where I said I disagreed with what Israel did. But as a human I believe we are evil like that, and I am really sorry about it.

That's a weird lie. The US mainly targets civilians and irregular troops.

Re: Sometimes powerful people just do dumb shit

#143

Post by mitthrowaway2 »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #141
mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered being paid $20 million for one year, and then staying home with family for the next ten years? Even after taxes, you'd still have much more of both time and money than a career in, say, air traffic control.

Maybe, if that was even offered as an option. I doubt I'm that competent, however, and just the fact I have that doubt probably excludes me from the possibility.

Oh don't worry, even if you fail at the job, you can still receive a golden parachute worth more than your employees will earn in their whole careers.

https://www.manufacturing.net/aerospace/news/21109798/boeing...

Re: Sometimes powerful people just do dumb shit

#144

Post by salawat »

eastof wrote: post #12
tw04 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. That’s probably because we know consciously or subconsciously that in order to get and maintain a position of power at a multibillion dollar firm the person either never had a moral compass or quickly had to find ways to justify ignoring or compromising it. Any one of us who has worked for on…

You are still falling for the evil genius trap. The truth is all of us treat our fellow humans this way, see Singer's drowning child. We're simply not wired to care as much about even large groups of people when they are not people we regularly interact with.

Uh, no. That you believe that is more indicative of your proclivities than anyone else's, and also indicates the people around you are such that haven't challenged you to disabuse you of the notion. It isn't normal. It isn't okay to treat people as just numbers or means to an end, and Dunbar's number is not a license to be a psychopath to people beyond the handful we actively maintain relationships with.

You should treat people empathetically. You should treat the failure to do so by people as something noteworthy and concerning. The fact we as a society seek to optimize for elevating psychopaths for personal gain is part of the problem we've created for ourselves, and to be quite frank, was probably hijacked as early as the founding of the United States into a really problematic, if value creating cornerstone of society that could probably use a good deal of sunlight being shone on it for disinfection and rot clearing purposes.

Re: Sometimes powerful people just do dumb shit

#145

Post by NoGravitas »

pasquinelli wrote: post #55
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.

Capital or the ability to raise capital.

Re: Sometimes powerful people just do dumb shit

#146

Post by fluoridation »

pas wrote: post #117
spiderfarmer wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I've yet to see any evidence of Musk's workaholism or technical know-how.

Re: Sometimes powerful people just do dumb shit

#147

Post by BLKNSLVR »

mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #143
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, if that was even offered as an option. I doubt I'm that competent, however, and just the fact I have that doubt probably excludes me from the possibility.

Oh don't worry, even if you fail at the job, you can still receive a golden parachute worth more than your employees will earn in their whole careers. https://www.manufacturing.net/aerospace/news/21109798/boeing...

I genuinely don't think I'd be able to sleep at night.

It's fucking gross. If a person can live with it, they don't deserve to.

Re: Sometimes powerful people just do dumb shit

#148

Post by ryandrake »

mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #143
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, if that was even offered as an option. I doubt I'm that competent, however, and just the fact I have that doubt probably excludes me from the possibility.

Oh don't worry, even if you fail at the job, you can still receive a golden parachute worth more than your employees will earn in their whole careers. https://www.manufacturing.net/aerospace/news/21109798/boeing...

Hell, I would gladly take any job where "failing upward" was the rule. Do it for a few years, fail, and then move on to the next higher level opportunity.

Most job levels fail downwards, but once you get to a certain level, for whatever reason, nearly everyone fails upwards. I think "director at a FAANG" and "VP at a medium sized company" are about the level where roles start defaulting to failing upward.

Re: Sometimes powerful people just do dumb shit

#149

Post by whamlastxmas »

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*.

TFA feels like a thinly veiled excuse to shit on Elon, I closed it the second I saw his name. It's not surprising he doesn't know what he's talking about

Re: Sometimes powerful people just do dumb shit

#150

Post by scarecrowbob »

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…

It's almost like our material relations to others defines our primary concerns and thus our class interests and thus how we exist among other folks.

But that's just, like, such a 19th century communistic view on things.

We may all be in the same storm but we're not all in the same boats.

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