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Careless People

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Re: Careless People

#261

Post by conductr »

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #9

> There's Zuck, whose underlings let him win at board-games like Settlers of Catan because he's a manbaby who can't lose (and who accuses Wynn-Williams of cheating when she fails to throw a game of Ticket to Ride while they're flying in his private jet). Why does this seem to be a recurring pattern among the modern ultrawealthy? Does anyone who fails to bend over backwards for them just end up getting exiled? Have th…

It’s more so related to power. Once you’ve acquired enough power, it consumes most people. They don’t like having their power challenged or put in a weakened state. Many of these people are acquiring power via some form or their “genius”. Technical wunderkind, military strategy genius, etc. So that drives their ego. But, they probably know they’re not actually a genius and plenty of people could have done what they did but they got lucky. So they end up getting defensive and insecure when anything challenges their power, risks to expose their genius as a fraud, etc. They’re operating on a mental house of cards and are volatile due to it. For regular people, they seem to be triggered by small things like losing a card game but it’s probably just that, a trigger that unleashed a wave of pent up insecurity.

Re: Careless People

#262

Post by viraptor »

sokoloff wrote: post #190
lordnacho wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've won the lottery, but you don't want to acknowledge that you won the lottery. You want to feel they you deserve your position through hard work and talent. You're living in a society where people are credulous, to some degree they believe that hard work and talent are related to success. So what will happen? Everyone you hire ends up patting you on the back, telling you what a great guy you are.

> to some degree they believe that hard work and talent are related to success Does anyone actually believe that hard work and talent are either zero or negatively correlated to success? I don't think the correlation is 1.0, but I firmly believe that it's positive for both.

But negative, but success is correlated to success so much that at some point work and talent are irrelevant. Let's say Zuck has an idea to make something. He has enough people around him discussing ideas that he can basically pick one he likes and it's already pre-filtered. Then he can give it to basically anytime he chooses, with arbitrary skills threshold and resource allocation. Then he's got a whole support network to make it work. And if it falls? A loss of a few millions means nothing to him and he can try again.

Every step of that is inaccessible to someone hardworking and talented. So let's say you got lucky once or was born with wealth available to you - you can skip the whole talent and work thing.

Re: Careless People

#263

Post by apercu »

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #9

> There's Zuck, whose underlings let him win at board-games like Settlers of Catan because he's a manbaby who can't lose (and who accuses Wynn-Williams of cheating when she fails to throw a game of Ticket to Ride while they're flying in his private jet). Why does this seem to be a recurring pattern among the modern ultrawealthy? Does anyone who fails to bend over backwards for them just end up getting exiled? Have th…

> Why does this seem to be a recurring pattern among the modern ultrawealthy?

Who says it's limited to the ultra wealthy? My network has a lot of people who have net worths of under $5-6 million USD and a lot of them are highly insecure.

I've witnessed several of them going out of their way to tear down people who are fitter or more attractive than them as well.

Look at the manbaby actions through that lens and you might get some insight.

Re: Careless People

#264

Post by ubermonkey »

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #9

> There's Zuck, whose underlings let him win at board-games like Settlers of Catan because he's a manbaby who can't lose (and who accuses Wynn-Williams of cheating when she fails to throw a game of Ticket to Ride while they're flying in his private jet). Why does this seem to be a recurring pattern among the modern ultrawealthy? Does anyone who fails to bend over backwards for them just end up getting exiled? Have th…

The game thing is just the tip of the iceberg.

There's lots of talk in the entertainment world, from the long-term famous, about how money and fame tend to be fundamentally warping. Bill Murray said to Pete Davidson that, once it happens, nearly everyone is an asshole for about two years. People fawn all over you; they do things for you. They give you things for free. You can get things normal people can't get. If you're making a few million a year, you have economic power beyond nearly everyone you've ever known. At a certain level, travel is a whim, not a slog through TSA and airport lines. And you lose the ability to deal with pushback of any kind.

The smart ones -- the ones with some capacity for self-awareness -- course-correct. The others don't.

But in Hollywood, one assumes, the bubble is far less perfect than the one around someone like Zuck, whose power over Facebook is absolute and inviolate, and who has money and power beyond almost every other person on the planet. So there's only a very small chance of any course-correction, and thus he stays an asshole, and that assholery extends to insisting that he win at trivial board games.

Re: Careless People

#265

Post by palata »

KeithBrink wrote: post #156
TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #9

> There's Zuck, whose underlings let him win at board-games like Settlers of Catan because he's a manbaby who can't lose (and who accuses Wynn-Williams of cheating when she fails to throw a game of Ticket to Ride while they're flying in his private jet). Why does this seem to be a recurring pattern among the modern ultrawealthy? Does anyone who fails to bend over backwards for them just end up getting exiled? Have th…

I was interested in this anecdote about the board games, but it seems like there's at least some dispute about how true or inflated this story is: https://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerberg-board-game-c... I think it's easy to believe a narrative like this about someone generally disliked, but the reality about basically everyone is that we have good moments and bad moments. People that are famous are constantly…

Sure, one single anecdote doesn't say much.

But at this point it would be hard to say that Zuck is not a toxic individual. Not everyone is toxic.

Re: Careless People

#266

Post by apercu »

sokoloff wrote: post #190
lordnacho wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've won the lottery, but you don't want to acknowledge that you won the lottery. You want to feel they you deserve your position through hard work and talent. You're living in a society where people are credulous, to some degree they believe that hard work and talent are related to success. So what will happen? Everyone you hire ends up patting you on the back, telling you what a great guy you are.

> to some degree they believe that hard work and talent are related to success Does anyone actually believe that hard work and talent are either zero or negatively correlated to success? I don't think the correlation is 1.0, but I firmly believe that it's positive for both.

I think you can certainly make some of your own luck via hard work, but there is a difference between actually making on your own, and starting on 3rd base.

Re: Careless People

#267

Post by nartho »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #248
TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #9

> There's Zuck, whose underlings let him win at board-games like Settlers of Catan because he's a manbaby who can't lose (and who accuses Wynn-Williams of cheating when she fails to throw a game of Ticket to Ride while they're flying in his private jet). Why does this seem to be a recurring pattern among the modern ultrawealthy? Does anyone who fails to bend over backwards for them just end up getting exiled? Have th…

I know a number of wealthy folks, many of them, actually really decent people. They deserve their wealth, and I have no issues with it. They tend to have somewhat different value systems than I do, but we get along, anyway. I have learned that one word they pretty much never hear, is "No." Even the very best of them, gets used to having every whacked-out fever dream their Id squeezes out, treated like God's Word. Peo…

How wealthy are the wealthy folks you know ? a quant or faang principal engineer making 1.5-2 million/year is wealthy and worked hard to get there (although, luck is still a big part of it) yet they're much closer in wealth than a fast food employee than they are to the super rich. Someone who has accumulated 50 millions of assets is wealthy, yet they'll never afford a super yacht or the lifestyle that billionaires can afford.

Re: Careless People

#268

Post by apercu »

remus wrote: post #212
sokoloff wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> to some degree they believe that hard work and talent are related to success Does anyone actually believe that hard work and talent are either zero or negatively correlated to success? I don't think the correlation is 1.0, but I firmly believe that it's positive for both.

I suspect talent and hard work are pretty well correlated with becoming wealthy (say >$10m), but I think you then need a big injection of luck to take you from wealthy to ultra wealthy.

> I suspect talent and hard work are pretty well correlated with becoming wealthy (say >$10m)

Statistically, no.

Re: Careless People

#270

Post by 542354234235 »

pjc50 wrote: post #129
laserlight wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this insecure I agree that such an event would demonstrate insecurity. I would also argue that past elites were not “that insecure”, because they put their lives at risk by waging wars. Of course, later elites figured out ways to address the downsides.

There's a frame question in this, and the history of duelling. Is your image, or self-image, in matters of honor or social status more important than your life? Is it secure or insecure to risk your life simply because of an insult? To what extent does "security" in this context boil down to the capacity for violence, rather than anything else?

But duels were instituted primarily to curb vendettas, deadly street brawls, and retaliatory assassinations that aristocrats regularly engaged in. At least with a duel, the violence was limited to one death and a settlement to the honor of all involved. It was in improvement to the situation they were facing at the time.

But the idea of honor itself was a necessity for most of history, when there was no central government to enforce contracts, punish violence, etc. Your reputation was one of the only protections you had. Whether your family was known to exact revenge to those that wronged you or as weak pushovers would affect someone’s decision to kill one of you, steal your things, or make a deal with you and keep everything for themselves.

You had to show that anything someone could gain at your expense would be outweighed by your commitment to take more back in revenge.

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