4 ms·

regarding the Obama clip, i'm impressed Obama can talk so clearly about how airBnB works, for someone who lives in a bubble of security and probably never think

by ptaffs 11y ago

regarding the Obama clip, i'm impressed Obama can talk so clearly about how airBnB works, for someone who lives in a bubble of security and probably never thinks about where he's going to stay when he goes on holiday, he can describe very well the social reputation components of airBnB.

paul 11y ago
Yeah, I was super impressed as well. Obama understands AirBnb better than many people in tech do.
ntumlin 11y ago
Presidents are extremely smart and can quickly pick up on topics. Combine this with advisers giving you a detailed run down and you get this.
- iamcurious 11y ago
  >Presidents are extremely smart Interesting. Is there a part of the democatic process that guarantees electing extremely smart people?
  - knd775 11y ago
    IMO doing well in debates requires the ability to think very quickly.
    - bhaumik 11y ago
      Not necessarily. https://twitter.com/patel0phone/status/705587706517184515 https://twitter.com/patel0phone/status/705587706517184515
  - ntumlin 11y ago
    Is there a president you can think of that wasn't a genius? Being president requires you to manage so many different things; it couldn't be done by someone who wasn't smart.
    - EGreg 11y ago
      I have heard from a couple friends that George W Bush was smart, just bad in front of a camera. To be honest, though, my own radar from seeing him all those times - from heuristics and deduction - said he was actually not very intelligent in many areas that other presidents were intelligent in. I think his social intelligence was much higher than Gore's and Kerry's, though.
      - munificent 11y ago
        I'll just leave this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvknGT8W5jA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvknGT8W5jA I think Dubya talked down to avoid alienating a voters suspicious of intelligent people.
      - Double_Cast 11y ago
        I've heard it hypothesized that Bush had early dementia. If you watch videos of his younger days, he spoke articulately. During his presidency, he kinda stuttered.
        EGreg 11y ago
        They also thought he was an alcohol syndrome baby
  - nostrademons 11y ago
    To appeal to a broad segment of the electorate, you need to a.) be able to predict what will be important to a large number of diverse groups and b.) be able to analyze & synthesize that into a platform & message that will bring them over to your side. The combination of both is a very rare skill that correlates well with intelligence. Note that it requires both emotional & analytical intelligence: you need to understand what motivates people, and you also need to understand the numbers & segmentation well enough to make sure that you're empathizing with the right group of people. CEO, BTW, requires a similar skillset. I used to think that CEO was a do-nothing role that you got through political favors, and maybe in a couple dysfunctional companies that's still the case. But in a functioning, market-leading company, being CEO requires that you first understand many different perspectives, and that you can synthesize those into a course of action that avoids pissing off any one core constituency too much.
  - derefr 11y ago
    A lot of the research around the evolution of intelligence suggests that some large part of what we think of as intelligence is inherently intertwined with the ability to socially signal, prevaricate, and negotiate: to assert social dominance of a group through out-thinking rivals and being better at swaying the majority against those rivals. (Thus why sarcasm is considered inherently witty, exactly to the extent that it's subtle enough to trip up some people but not all.) If you take the dual roles that a President embodies: that of "managed to out-politician every other politician"; and that of "is believed by the technocrats of their party to be capable of negotiating foreign policy, trade agreements, and military conflicts"—you end up with a fair proxy for that particular 'evolutionary' measure of intelligence.
  - jlarocco 11y ago
    It makes more sense looking at it the other way. It would be difficult for an unintelligent person to get that far without screwing up and making a bunch of mistakes.
- rattray 11y ago
  > Presidents are I'm not sure if you mean to refer to only American Presidents or national Presidents globally, but there can be a wide range of them, as far as I can tell. Unless you've looked and found that leaders of even the most far-flung of nations are as described?
frik 11y ago
The guys who write the speeches are called speechwriter, in case you never heard about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speechwriter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speechwriter On that very page a picture description reads "U.S. President Barack Obama and aides Carol Browner, David Axelrod and Jon Favreau working on a speech (...)".

by ptaffs 11y ago

paul 11y ago

Yeah, I was super impressed as well. Obama understands AirBnb better than many people in tech do.

ntumlin 11y ago

Presidents are extremely smart and can quickly pick up on topics. Combine this with advisers giving you a detailed run down and you get this.

iamcurious 11y ago
>Presidents are extremely smart Interesting. Is there a part of the democatic process that guarantees electing extremely smart people?
- knd775 11y ago
  IMO doing well in debates requires the ability to think very quickly.
  - bhaumik 11y ago
    Not necessarily. https://twitter.com/patel0phone/status/705587706517184515 https://twitter.com/patel0phone/status/705587706517184515
- ntumlin 11y ago
  Is there a president you can think of that wasn't a genius? Being president requires you to manage so many different things; it couldn't be done by someone who wasn't smart.
  - EGreg 11y ago
    I have heard from a couple friends that George W Bush was smart, just bad in front of a camera. To be honest, though, my own radar from seeing him all those times - from heuristics and deduction - said he was actually not very intelligent in many areas that other presidents were intelligent in. I think his social intelligence was much higher than Gore's and Kerry's, though.
    - munificent 11y ago
      I'll just leave this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvknGT8W5jA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvknGT8W5jA I think Dubya talked down to avoid alienating a voters suspicious of intelligent people.
    - Double_Cast 11y ago
      I've heard it hypothesized that Bush had early dementia. If you watch videos of his younger days, he spoke articulately. During his presidency, he kinda stuttered.
      - EGreg 11y ago
        They also thought he was an alcohol syndrome baby
- nostrademons 11y ago
  To appeal to a broad segment of the electorate, you need to a.) be able to predict what will be important to a large number of diverse groups and b.) be able to analyze & synthesize that into a platform & message that will bring them over to your side. The combination of both is a very rare skill that correlates well with intelligence. Note that it requires both emotional & analytical intelligence: you need to understand what motivates people, and you also need to understand the numbers & segmentation well enough to make sure that you're empathizing with the right group of people. CEO, BTW, requires a similar skillset. I used to think that CEO was a do-nothing role that you got through political favors, and maybe in a couple dysfunctional companies that's still the case. But in a functioning, market-leading company, being CEO requires that you first understand many different perspectives, and that you can synthesize those into a course of action that avoids pissing off any one core constituency too much.
- derefr 11y ago
  A lot of the research around the evolution of intelligence suggests that some large part of what we think of as intelligence is inherently intertwined with the ability to socially signal, prevaricate, and negotiate: to assert social dominance of a group through out-thinking rivals and being better at swaying the majority against those rivals. (Thus why sarcasm is considered inherently witty, exactly to the extent that it's subtle enough to trip up some people but not all.) If you take the dual roles that a President embodies: that of "managed to out-politician every other politician"; and that of "is believed by the technocrats of their party to be capable of negotiating foreign policy, trade agreements, and military conflicts"—you end up with a fair proxy for that particular 'evolutionary' measure of intelligence.
- jlarocco 11y ago
  It makes more sense looking at it the other way. It would be difficult for an unintelligent person to get that far without screwing up and making a bunch of mistakes.
rattray 11y ago
> Presidents are I'm not sure if you mean to refer to only American Presidents or national Presidents globally, but there can be a wide range of them, as far as I can tell. Unless you've looked and found that leaders of even the most far-flung of nations are as described?

frik 11y ago

The guys who write the speeches are called speechwriter, in case you never heard about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speechwriter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speechwriter On that very page a picture description reads "U.S. President Barack Obama and aides Carol Browner, David Axelrod and Jon Favreau working on a speech (...)".