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Conversely, it seems, only the world's richest are some of the world's smartest https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/ https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/
by ArtWomb 7y ago
Conversely, it seems, only the world's richest are some of the world's smartest
https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/ https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/
- paganel 7y agoNot so sure about that. Apart from George Soros I don’t know of any multi-billionaire with whom you could have an interesting conversation about the pre-Socratics, the whys and whens Antiquity “fell” (my bet is on the early 600s in the time of Heraclius) or how interesting some of the Huguenots were when they were writing about killing tyrants. Most of the billionaires are rightfully more interested in expanding or at least keeping their wealth, and that is orthogonal with knowing and talking about really interesting stuff. But that is old news already, Plato had written about it ~2,400 years ago.
- tomp 7y agoYou've just highlighted some historical facts. There's people (e.g. myself) that find most history profoundly boring, and instead are interested by future, politics, psychology. The conversation between Peter Thiel and Eric Weinstein on the latter's podcast was extremely profoundly interesting and hugely elevated Thiel as a deep thinker in my mind. Just an example.
- orbifold 7y agoThe smartest people I know are mathematicians or physicists most of them couldn’t care less about any of the historical narratives you‘ve just mentioned.
- paganel 7y agoMaths and physics is just “techne” stuff, it has been here for ~13 billion years, they’ll probably still “be” here for another 13 billion years after we’re gone, while on the other hand humans are a lot more interesting. Again, read your Plato or start getting to know more interesting people, not only “technicians”.
- homonculus1 7y agoThe owner of that publication is conspicuously absent...