Ok, here's a "Peter Thiel" secret: The display of confidence today is simply a tool that can be used to motivate, rally, and comfort your followers, for good or

Ok, here's a "Peter Thiel" secret: The display of confidence today is simply a tool that can be used to motivate, rally, and comfort your followers, for good or bad, in a more visceral and emotional way than intellectual argument alone. I believe that most very successful people who display confidence know this, and can correctly interpret other people's displays of confidence as a deliberate use of this tool. This is not an evil thing per se, because this is simply how human motivation works -- if a leader is intellectually sound but always externalizing caveats and risks, verbally or non-verbally, he will be less effective than a leader who is equally intellectually sound but uses all the motivational tools at his disposal.