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>One problem with the British upperclass, is that they tend to be educated at private schools like Eton, where they primarily learn confidence. Not limited to

>One problem with the British upperclass, is that they tend to be educated at private schools like Eton, where they primarily learn confidence. Not limited to the British upper class. It's astounding how far someone can go in life by simply being confident, charismatic, and articulate (and tall) despite being completely full of shit.

mcv 7y ago
And from what I understand, those are exactly the skills they teach you at schools like Eton. Well, maybe not being tall, but certainly the other ones. I think the world would do well to try to inoculate itself against this sort of superficial confidence. It's way too effective, with frequently harmful results.
- intuitionist 7y ago
  As basketball analysts like to say, you can’t teach height.
  - sandworm101 7y ago
    But eton does teach kids to stand up strait.
  - Brian_K_White 7y ago
    You can teach the appearance, use, and effect of height. It's dumb that people are picking on that word out of the overall comment like it was some kind of mistake. The comment was about the nature of the appearance of competence, and height is one element that has an effect on how people perceive another person, and there are countless teachable things about that.
- celticninja 7y ago
  As examples please see Elizabeth Holmes/Theranos or Adam Neumann/WeWork neither of whom were Eton educated. I don't think it is an issue just with people educated in certain schools.
  - adventured 7y ago
    The school is quite important depending on the fraud being perpetrated. Holmes doesn't get nearly so far without the Stanford (or equivalent) tag on every propaganda puff piece the media wrote to promote her. Elizabeth Holmes, genius dropout of Marshall University - it just doesn't raise a billion dollars in venture capital quite the same way (even with her connections to people like Draper). She was sold as the next Bill Gates (or Zuckerberg), and the next Bill Gates must drop out of a prestigious school too, because she's so brilliant and her mission is so important she must be getting on to The Big Thing. Even Stanford could not contain her. The elite school is required to sell that fraud. WeWork by comparison is an actual company with actual revenue ($3 billion for 2019 perhaps). It's just not worth anywhere near what the pumped up VC numbers were attempting to keep inflated. Maybe in liquidation its worth $500m, maybe it's worth $3b. Theranos was not a real company, it had no real products (going by the book Bad Blood), it had no consequential sales. Neumann was selling a different sort of fiction than Holmes (both were fiction mind you).
    - celticninja 7y ago
      Both of them achieved their inflated valuation through a cult of personality of the leader. That's the same thing we see with Trump and BoJo in the UK
blaser-waffle 7y ago
This is not limited to the UK
shantly 7y ago
> Not limited to the British upper class. It's astounding how far someone can go in life by simply being confident, charismatic, and articulate (and tall) despite being completely full of shit. I've gotten a similar vibe from a lot of graduates of prestigious US schools. Very confident, fairly confrontational style of conversation. I'd actually kinda like it if I hadn't learned through feedback and midwesterness to do basically the exact opposite. I'd guess it's especially strong in those who've been through seminar-style prep schools (which is most of the "good" ones, as I understand it) before going to university.
baud147258 7y ago
> It's astounding how far someone can go in life by simply being confident, charismatic, and articulate (and tall) That's funny how much it describe my brother, even if he's not upper class and went to a not particularly prestigious school (called ESTP). In his case, he was already quite confident and charismatic before leaving high school. > despite being completely full of shit he's not completely full of shit, but I wouldn't in a thousand years work for him.

mcv 7y ago

And from what I understand, those are exactly the skills they teach you at schools like Eton. Well, maybe not being tall, but certainly the other ones. I think the world would do well to try to inoculate itself against this sort of superficial confidence. It's way too effective, with frequently harmful results.

intuitionist 7y ago
As basketball analysts like to say, you can’t teach height.
- sandworm101 7y ago
  But eton does teach kids to stand up strait.
- Brian_K_White 7y ago
  You can teach the appearance, use, and effect of height. It's dumb that people are picking on that word out of the overall comment like it was some kind of mistake. The comment was about the nature of the appearance of competence, and height is one element that has an effect on how people perceive another person, and there are countless teachable things about that.
celticninja 7y ago
As examples please see Elizabeth Holmes/Theranos or Adam Neumann/WeWork neither of whom were Eton educated. I don't think it is an issue just with people educated in certain schools.
- adventured 7y ago
  The school is quite important depending on the fraud being perpetrated. Holmes doesn't get nearly so far without the Stanford (or equivalent) tag on every propaganda puff piece the media wrote to promote her. Elizabeth Holmes, genius dropout of Marshall University - it just doesn't raise a billion dollars in venture capital quite the same way (even with her connections to people like Draper). She was sold as the next Bill Gates (or Zuckerberg), and the next Bill Gates must drop out of a prestigious school too, because she's so brilliant and her mission is so important she must be getting on to The Big Thing. Even Stanford could not contain her. The elite school is required to sell that fraud. WeWork by comparison is an actual company with actual revenue ($3 billion for 2019 perhaps). It's just not worth anywhere near what the pumped up VC numbers were attempting to keep inflated. Maybe in liquidation its worth $500m, maybe it's worth $3b. Theranos was not a real company, it had no real products (going by the book Bad Blood), it had no consequential sales. Neumann was selling a different sort of fiction than Holmes (both were fiction mind you).
  - celticninja 7y ago
    Both of them achieved their inflated valuation through a cult of personality of the leader. That's the same thing we see with Trump and BoJo in the UK

blaser-waffle 7y ago

This is not limited to the UK

shantly 7y ago

> Not limited to the British upper class. It's astounding how far someone can go in life by simply being confident, charismatic, and articulate (and tall) despite being completely full of shit. I've gotten a similar vibe from a lot of graduates of prestigious US schools. Very confident, fairly confrontational style of conversation. I'd actually kinda like it if I hadn't learned through feedback and midwesterness to do basically the exact opposite. I'd guess it's especially strong in those who've been through seminar-style prep schools (which is most of the "good" ones, as I understand it) before going to university.

baud147258 7y ago

> It's astounding how far someone can go in life by simply being confident, charismatic, and articulate (and tall) That's funny how much it describe my brother, even if he's not upper class and went to a not particularly prestigious school (called ESTP). In his case, he was already quite confident and charismatic before leaving high school. > despite being completely full of shit he's not completely full of shit, but I wouldn't in a thousand years work for him.