I agree with the thesis but i dont agree about elon buying twitter. That was really messy, but it was clear later on that he did it to manipulate the election for trump, and that bet paid off amazongly well for him in hindsight. Not only did twitter turn out to be ceitical in spreading misinformation (how many morons didnt vote for harris because they thought shed start a war in the middle east) but that then also gave him crazy access to the government. It fell out later, but it was probably the most effective 40bil anyone today could hope to spend
Sometimes powerful people just do dumb shit
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Re: Sometimes powerful people just do dumb shit
#62The 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.
Recently an xAI recruiter reached out to me for a position at xAI. They mentioned that they had been impressed by my GitHub profile and wanted to fast track me to an interview.
Fun fact: I have not a single repository on my GitHub.
I think the position was about creating training data and realistic coding scenarios or something.
Re: Sometimes powerful people just do dumb shit
#63I suspect sycophancy has a lot to do with things . People with power attract those who want their favour and/or money who will align themselves to please the powerful rather than steer them to their best selves. Furthermore as the sycophants accumulate the genuine voices likely begin to sound out of place, like their _against_ the individual. Ironically paranoia gets deployed in the wrong direction to push out the true voices.
I worry this fate will become more common. Everyone can hit up an artificial sycophant at will who they've been told is super intelligent and yet claims their ideas are full of deep insight.
Re: Sometimes powerful people just do dumb shit
#64While the premise is good and explains a lot of failures, I the Musk example is misplaced.
Musk bought Twitter. And then he succeeded - Trump became elected and he became his right hand. Is it, for Musk, a failure?
Sure, it is not 4D chess. It is just "some people lie as a tool to get their goals".
The same way when politicians introduce surveillance to "protect children" and it makes children less, it is not a failure. It is a win - more control, and more fuel for further campaigns.
Re: Sometimes powerful people just do dumb shit
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Absolutely horrible? He absolutely lost his ass on the purchase and is one election away from fraud charges. I guess congrats you bought Twitter and then spent half a billion dollars just so you could temporarily dismantle the regulators who were preventing you from committing open fraud? Or, you know, if you did manage to permanently dismantle the regulators it means you’ve destroyed your primary source of revenue.
> is one election away from fraud charges. Nothing in my lifetime of experience in the US so far, or in the demeanor of the "opposition" party suggests he'll face real consequences for this.
"One election away from more fraud". Not fraud charges.
Re: Sometimes powerful people just do dumb shit
#66The post cleverly and preemptively disparages people who "show up in a thread and claim that everything is part of a larger plan". Posting a picture of Napoleon is cute, but does not prove anything. Those were different times. - The Iran attack plans go back a long way. Netanyahu tried the same during the Obama administration and was rejected. There are Brookings Institute papers that outline all countries that need…
Your post is great example of 4D chess arguments. They seem believable at first glance but if you look deeper they either don't make sense (like vice president taking role of a clown to lower support of an ally) or are distraction (the Iran attack plans argument - lots of people predicted Hormuz problem, previous plans doesn't matter much here).
Re: Sometimes powerful people just do dumb shit
#67I 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*.
The danger of pastiche.
Re: Sometimes powerful people just do dumb shit
#68Sometimes 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.
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.
Re: Sometimes powerful people just do dumb shit
#69I thinknm we are missing one scenario - sometimes with their practically unlimited money they just buy something to destroy it
Re: Sometimes powerful people just do dumb shit
#70I 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.
I think the belief was probably taking Moscow and forcing a treaty.