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“It is not something I think about a lot, for fairly obvious reasons, but I would like to believe that, if I won a Nobel Prize, I would have enough self-control
by kgwgk 7y ago
“It is not something I think about a lot, for fairly obvious reasons, but I would like to believe that, if I won a Nobel Prize, I would have enough self-control never to mention it to anyone. Not because I am not desperate for approval and prestige! Certainly, absolutely, I would want everyone I ever met to know that I had won a Nobel Prize. I just mean that it would be so much more satisfying (for me) if they found out on their own. Like I would have normal chats with them about the weather every day, and then one day they would say “oh hey someone told me the other day that you had a Nobel Prize, I didn’t know that, that’s amazing, why didn’t you tell me!” And I’d be like “oh that old thing, yeah, it’s not really a big deal, I never think about it.” Look, I do not know if I could pull it off. Would I occasionally drop cryptic references to Stockholm to try to help them along? Sure, of course, I am only human. But I really do think that I’d mostly be able to delay gratification, because when they did figure it out it would be extra sweet.
“On the other hand, in addition to never winning a Nobel Prize, I have never been to Burning Man, and it’s possible that if I spent a week in the desert with weirdly dressed strangers almost all of whom are either tech founders or hedge fund managers, I might just end up wearing my Nobel medal around and taking “Alfred” as my playa name. I assume Burning Man is mostly a weird form of charades where everyone dresses up as a hippie and tries to get you to guess what app they invented. I don’t know. All of this feels far enough removed from my actual experience that I am kind of groping in the dark here.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-09-05/goldman-wants-to-be-cool-again https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-09-05/goldma...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- H8crilA 7y agoFrom my experience it is usually not so easy to tell that someone is wealthy/influential, not least because of the unusual clothing often including face masks. Except for models which may be wearing incredibly detailed and beautiful costumes that just amplify their hotness. For example - this year Ray Dalio was on Burning Man, whom I admire a lot, and I have no idea if I bumped into him or not by accident (probably not due to the scale of the event). On the playa he'd mostly look like a generic Caucasian old man.
- dclusin 7y agoI think the point of Matt's column was to point out that it's a bit odd to slip it into every interaction at a place such as burning man, where it doesn't really add any context.
- kgwgk 7y ago> this year Ray Dalio was on Burning Man, ..., and I have no idea if I bumped into him or not by accident Do every generic Caucasian old man dress like this there? https://mobile.twitter.com/RayDalio/status/1168571413726408704 https://mobile.twitter.com/RayDalio/status/11685714137264087...
- freewilly1040 7y agoThat outfit is very ordinary at Burning Man
- foldingmoney 7y ago>Except for models which may be wearing incredibly detailed and beautiful costumes that just amplify their hotness. For example - this year Ray Dalio was on Burning Man That reads oddly.
- winchling 7y agoThis misses that it might be a rarified form of egotism to privately reject great prizes such as Nobels, knighthoods, and Oscars in the knowledge that this voluntary refusal will probably become public knowledge, sooner or later.