6 ms·
Thiel is smarter than nearly everyone posting here at HackerNews. Ideally, this fact would cause people to pause and reflect.
by carsongross 10y ago
Thiel is smarter than nearly everyone posting here at HackerNews.
Ideally, this fact would cause people to pause and reflect.
- smt88 10y agoDoes being "smart" (however you define it) mean that you know the best way to govern? Does it mean you know how to make it happen in the real world? Does it mean you can pull together all the moving parts of a republic to turn ideas into policies? If so, the smartest world leaders would be the best, wouldn't they? I think Vladimir Putin is one of the smartest world leaders currently. Barack Obama probably is, and it would be contradictory for someone to argue that both he and Peter Thiel are correct about how the US should be governed. Elizabeth Warren and Karl Rove are also both seemingly very intelligent. Someone took a stab[1][2] at assessing and ranking the smartest presidents, and they're ideologically mixed (from Roosevelt to Reagan). 1. http://www.eoht.info/page/Dean+Simonton http://www.eoht.info/page/Dean+Simonton 2. http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jcampbel/documents/SimontonPresIQ2006.pdf http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jcampbel/documents/SimontonPres...
- carsongross 10y agoDoes being "smart" (however you define it) mean that you know the best way to govern? I suspect there is an inverse relationship.
- yedava 10y agoBeing smart in one area doesn't mean you are smart in other areas. People compartmentalize all the time.
- mikeash 10y agoThere are smarter people than any of us who support nearly every political position. One more dude supporting somebody hardly makes a difference in terms of that. You should always pause and reflect on your views from time to time, not just when some random smart guy reveals views that don't match yours.