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Whenever you see someone who you believe to be an idiot succeeding, it usually means they're really good at the game and you don't even understand what the game

Whenever you see someone who you believe to be an idiot succeeding, it usually means they're really good at the game and you don't even understand what the game is.

aaronbrethorst 6y ago
Or their family donated enough money to an Ivy to have a building named after them.
- virgilp 6y ago
  That's not "succeding" though. I like to give Trump as an example: everyone loves to blast him for being an idiot. Is he a good president? No. Is he good at the game, but most people totally miss what his game is? I claim, yes. It's unfortunate that he managed to play the US election system for his own purposes, but that doesn't mean he's just incompetent at everything. E.g. he's a rather good populist - that may not be a quality you like, but at that particular game he's not at all bad.
  - mewpmewp2 6y ago
    Which leads to the following: How do you measure if someone is a good president? What measurements do you use to claim Trump is not a good president? Surely it can't be approval ratings since you can't expect public to understand nuances behind the decisions and what the president actually has to be doing? It can't be just GDP because GDP might have been going up anyway? It can't be what the president is saying in public and how many of those facts are wrong since this doesn't mean what actual decisions the president is making.
    - thdrdt 6y ago
      Aren't there universal measurements for leaders/counties? For example the Bible has a lot of wisdom like: 'If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand.' This was already written some 2000 years ago and has been proven true over time. So I would argue you could measure the amount of unity a leader tries to create.
      - bergstromm466 6y ago
        > So I would argue you could measure the amount of unity a leader tries to create. That’s a nice one. Yet do you think then Hitler might be a good leader? (not a joke). He united the white German population in a time of great economic disarray - in both Germany and Europe. Maybe we should measure unity and cooperation with other countries? Global solidarity
        thdrdt 6y ago
        You have got a good point but I doubt it is true because a lot of Germans were against Hitler. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_resistance_to_Nazism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_resistance_to_Nazism
        heavenlyblue 6y ago
        > He united the white German population in a time of great economic disarray Rather, he united the country because it was in an economic disarray :)
    - TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
      Some combination of GINI, average life expectancy, number of bankruptcies, business closures, unemployment, changes in all-cause mortality, median household debt, disposable income, educational attainment, and so on. If you look at a basket of well-being measures as opposed to raw GDP it's hard to argue that Trump has done a good job. Of course Covid has had a big effect. But there were many policy options for handling that, and Trump - and his far-right equivalents in other countries - reliably picked some of the least effective ones.
      - splintercell 6y ago
        Never met a person on the right who considered GINI index as a good measure. Regarding bankruptcies, unemployment, household debt Etc, Obama's first term would show really low score on these things, presuming that's all he had, almost none of it was caused by the actions taken by him during his presidency.
      - iateanapple 6y ago
        > If you look at a basket of well-being measures as opposed to raw GDP it's hard to argue It is too soon to argue any of those measures. You can’t take a single moment in time in the middle of a crisis to judge.
    - michaelt 6y ago
      > What measurements do you use to claim Trump is not a good president? Number of his supporters arguing that objectively there's no such thing as a good president :-p
      - iateanapple 6y ago
        > Number of his supporters arguing that objectively there's no such thing as a good president :-p That’s probably a bad metric because his supporters love him. It’s the swing voters making those kinds of comments because they want to vote for him but he’s done some dodgy things.
- vecter 6y ago
  He said success, not wealth. Yes, obviously someone inheriting their parents' billion dollar business is wealthy, but I wouldn't consider them successful unless they've done something on their own.
  - boffinism 6y ago
    No, but starting with wealth makes it much easier to succeed at other things.
  - close04 6y ago
    I like to think of this example [0] when I have the feeling that I got to where I am all by myself, and forget how many and how much others have worked to "build my boat", and how much luck was involved at every step. [0] https://digitalsynopsis.com/inspiration/privileged-kids-on-a-plate-pencilsword-toby-morris/ https://digitalsynopsis.com/inspiration/privileged-kids-on-a...
    - bergstromm466 6y ago
      That was great!
    - abrookewood 6y ago
      That comic is brilliant.
  - pydry 6y ago
    It's often not all that hard to disguise one as the other. I worked for a guy once who was drowning in family wealth and all he had to show for it was a failing business. After years of losses that almost nobody else would have been able (or willing) to sustain he made it into a moderate success. Outwardly, at face value, he's doing pretty well, until you count the decade of losses which nobody talks about. Another friend is a moderately renowned documentary maker. Again, facilitated by family wealth. Outwardly, the appearance is of being successful, which cost a fair chunk of family wealth. I think in both cases, family wealth drove something akin to an obsession to appear successful, which they largely achieved and nobody mentions the uncomfortable facts about how they got there in polite company.
- haecceity 6y ago
  Sounds like they're pretty good at the game.
- koonsolo 6y ago
  Passing on wealth to your children is part of the game. Or did you think the game ends after 1 generation?
  - im3w1l 6y ago
    Now you are moving the goalposts from singular they are good at the game, to their family as a collective is good at the game. A statement perfectly compatible with that particular family member being an idiot.
    - fnord123 6y ago
      Idiot usually means someone who doesn't know basic facts or has trouble anticipating consequences for their actions. But I think part of GPs comment was to note that the concept of idiot needs to be readdressed. For example, if your hypothetical person has a family network (just another tool; but a v. good one!) that helps them, then they choose to either stick with their family or try to strike out on their own. We're already discussing the situation where they have chosen to leverage their family network.
      - Traster 6y ago
        I have never, ever, once in my life ever heard anyone say "Isn't that person smart, they managed to get their dad to give them a job"
        fnord123 6y ago
        And maybe one could respect people who go their own way to get out of their family's shadow so they can be seen as making it on their own. But if that's not the game then both people are 'idiots' (in this thought experiment).
    - splintercell 6y ago
      Success is not guaranteed just because someone was sent to an Ivy League school by his rich parents. This is the blank slate fallacy where people believe (for political correctness reasons) that any kid had same chance of success if he was given the same opportunity as the success of kids.
- koheripbal 6y ago
  I think you just proved his point. Going to an ivy league school does not make you successful. There are many many unemployed useless Stanford, MIT, Harvard graduates in this world.
  - brenden2 6y ago
    That's true, but a lot of people think the school you attend matters. For example, in the context of hiring, if you have 2 otherwise candidates but you can only choose one, most people would choose the person who went to Stanford over the guy who taught himself to code or attended a lesser respected school (in most cases). Some companies are stupid enough to only hire people from fancy schools. I think Google did something like this for a while, but thankfully they stopped. Thus, attending a fancy school is a big advantage if you've got the money or have another way to get in.
    - jcadam 6y ago
      Yep, I've seen more than a few job postings over the years stating some version of "Must hold a degree from a Top 10 school." Who would want to work with a bunch of elitist jerks, anyway?
  - 77pt77 6y ago
    > There are many many unemployed useless Stanford, MIT, Harvard graduates in this world. Is this really true? All the statistics I've read suggest otherwise.
    - 1bc29b36f623ba8 6y ago
      Well, there is a lot of graduates from those universities to begin with, so it's only logical that there is a certain amount of useless graduates that end up unemployed. The same logic applies to the rest of humanity. The real question is whether those graduates are more likely to be useless and unemployed than people who did not graduate from the same universities.
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  It means that not only do they have a business idea (or stole one), but they have the network and (financial) risk buffer to develop it into a business. One thing to keep in mind is that the majority of businesses and products fail. Remember survivorship bias. For every successful Netflix there are a dozen failed movie streaming services. Anyone who has had a few weeks worth of software engineering can produce a Twitter clone, but none have been successful.
  - Kye 6y ago
    Mastodon does okay. It's not as big as Twitter, but people who stick with it are happy with what they have. All it did was flip the model: interconnected, community-funded instances instead of one big, expensive to run silo.
jes5199 6y ago
Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, Elon Musk
ketzo 6y ago
Damn, this is the kind of quote you see on a title card in a movie about gambling. Nice.
0d9eooo 6y ago
Or maybe you just don't want to play the game anymore.
- sunaurus 6y ago
  I think this is sadly very true - trying to actually be a kind person really limits how well you can play "the game". There's no good solution to this either - if there was more kindness in the world, then that would just create even more opportunities for the people playing the game to get ahead, because they would have more victims to exploit.
  - draugadrotten 6y ago
    One of the key solutions is that good people must reward other good people. Nurture the young good ones. Reward the good behaviour.
  - Maxion 6y ago
    One key thing about the game is the definition of "being ahead", and in a way, the meaning you want your life to have. If the definition of being ahead is to work in upper management, or at trendy FAANG making a large amount of money then you are kind-of forced to play the game in order to "get ahead". However, if your version of getting ahead is to have a loving family, or to spend time on the hobbies you like or traveling or <insert other non-monetary thing here> then you can (and sometimes even have to) spend less effort on the game. I'm still working on finding my balance, but I've learned that I enjoy life much more when I'm doing something where I can spend less time playing the game, even if that comes with a large decrease in income and "prestige".
    - lotsofpulp 6y ago
      > I'm still working on finding my balance, but I've learned that I enjoy life much more when I'm doing something where I can spend less time playing the game, even if that comes with a large decrease in income and "prestige". Unfortunately in the US, if you don’t play the game, you have greatly reduced access to healthcare, which is a huge incentive to play the game especially if you have kids.
taneq 6y ago
Or they took more risks than you and it paid off. Or they just happened to be in the right place at the right time. Or...
- koheripbal 6y ago
  Over the course of your entire life, the statistical expected values of the "gambles" tend to net out.
  - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    And over the course of the population there are going to be a lot of outliers (both winners and losers).
  - cxr 6y ago
    If You Say Something Is "Likely," How Likely Do People Think It Is? https://hbr.org/2018/07/if-you-say-something-is-likely-how-likely-do-people-think-it-is https://hbr.org/2018/07/if-you-say-something-is-likely-how-l... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17457000 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17457000
  - vharuck 6y ago
    That assumes independent events. But "failing" early (weak social network, poverty, lost a lot on the first big gamble) have a large effect on the size and risk of the next gamble.
nsgi 6y ago
So Trump is really good at the political game, for instance?
- fwr 6y ago
  Is there a more powerful political position he could have?
  - jeltz 6y ago
    Yes, he could be a president with reliable support from the senate and the house. But that said he still managed to reach very far.
    - ByteJockey 6y ago
      Is that an option these days? When was the last time that existed? 2010?
      - disgruntledphd2 6y ago
        It seems to me (as an outside observer), that this normally happens for the two years after a new President is elected. Normally they don't get 60 in the Senate though, which means that the system is working at intended (you need to stay consistently popular for 6+ years to start swinging the Senate).
    - mcv 6y ago
      He has extremely reliable support from the senate. They did everything they could to shield him from accountability during the impeachment process and prevented him from getting a fair trial. That's more than the senate has ever done for any other president.
- Bootvis 6y ago
  He did become President of the USA so I think the answer is yes.
mewpmewp2 6y ago
Is Donald Trump a good example?
- koheripbal 6y ago
  No. Because there are too many emotions for people to think clearly.
beefield 6y ago
Or maybe you do, but simply refuse to play the game due to ethical and moral grounds.
- koheripbal 6y ago
  I don't see how that applies here. There are lots of ways to make high income that have no ethical dilemmas.
  - pogorniy 6y ago
    Name 3
  - Kye 6y ago
    There's a nonprofit that researches this: https://80000hours.org/ https://80000hours.org/
  - beefield 6y ago
    People with high incomes from sources with no ethical dilemmas may also think that there are successful idiots. And not only because they do not understand the game the idiot is playing.
- pas 6y ago
  There are games you can't really opt out. Like politics. Whoever wins will have control over you. (So people are highly motivated to play it.)
cowsandmilk 6y ago
And sometimes that game is rack up lots of debt. I’m only in my mid-30s but I’ve already seen multiple occasions of people being swindled by someone they thought was a multimillionaire in lending them $10,000. If you can’t understand where someone’s wealth cane from, there’s a chance it doesn’t exist.
thdrdt 6y ago
Today information is so easy to get that a lot of people think they know everything about every subject. But, like you said, reading the rules of the game does not mean you know how to play. When a company like Netflix launches a new product it is possible they thought about this with different teams for a long time. Then it's very naive to comment on the internet to say they are wrong and made a stupid mistake.
- TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
  No, it isn't. Anyone who has been involved in corporate decision making knows that different teams thinking for a long time is absolutely no guarantee of a successful outcome - or even of a barely functional one. Companies make stupid mistakes all the time. When you're in the trenches there's a certain amount of group think, and issues that may be obvious to outsiders may be invisible and/or suppressed by internal politics. Of course Internet comments may be naive and wrong for other reasons. But that's a different question.
  - thdrdt 6y ago
    > different teams thinking for a long time is absolutely no guarantee of a successful outcome Of course it is no guarantee for success. But an outsider has absolutely no clue about what was discussed and what the politics were. So I think it is naive to make comments like "this is never going to work", or "removing the headphone jack will bring Apple down".
- red_admiral 6y ago
  To take a recent example: when a company like TripleByte launches a new product - namely that key parts of all profiles will suddenly be public - they might have thought about this with different teams for a long time too, but commenters on the internet said they were wrong and eventually they admitted that they made a stupid mistake. Netflix's plan paid off. TripleByte's didn't. Apples and Oranges, I know, but how do you tell the two apart without hindsight?
  - Veen 6y ago
risyachka 6y ago
And in lots of cases you don't need to be smart to build a successful business - time and place often matter the most. Speaking here of my own experience. So yeah, often idiots can be super rich and its absolutely ok. Also you can be a genius going something without resources and connections, so there are millions of reasons why you can be way smarter than the rich guy on top while you are not rich at all.
- eNTi 6y ago
  Alan Turing comes to mind.
raducu 6y ago
Also, "idiots" can understand other "idiots" better, thus being able to make money. Making money is not a function of pure "intelect", but being able to predict what others need and being able to meet those needs. You can be Einstein smart and not business smart.
growlist 6y ago
or, the people playing the game and the rules of the game are so utterly moronic and worthless that it defies belief, e.g., celebrity culture.
- WJW 6y ago
  This seems a clear example of the parent comment though. You don't see the value in it and that's fine. Other people enjoy an endless parade of almost free entertainment that they find more interesting than the usual drudgery of life. Even the Romans knew you only needed to supply bread and games to keep the people pacified. Celebrity culture is just a modernized and less directly violent form of "games". The game modern celebrities are playing is apparently completely invisible to you?
  - Kye 6y ago
    It's the same mindset that goes into dismissing pop music as low effort drivel. It actually takes an incredible amount of skill from a bunch of people at the top of their games to make a pop hit.
watwut 6y ago
And other times you understand the game and it adds to your distaste. Like for example, success of Jared Kushner .
screye 6y ago
> really good at the game Called being born rich. Plenty of idiots succeed because success was granted to them the day they were born. ____________ Also, a lot of times when you see an idiot succeeding, the idiot is a face for people to criticize while the master minds go about doing their magic, unseen.
- AbrahamParangi 6y ago
  Being rich isn't the same as succeeding.
  - koheripbal 6y ago
    No, but there's definitely a correlation, on average.
  - screye 6y ago
    In this context, most commenters are implying society's perception of success which is intimately tied to money. If the definition of success is completely left to a person's own devices, the whole argument of the "game" falls apart too. Since there is no game to play.
- tcgv 6y ago
  There are also plenty of people who weren't born rich, played the game well, and "made it". Probably not as much as those who were born rich and got a head start.
  - typon 6y ago
    By "plenty" you mean roughly < 5% of the population. [1] https://thumbor.forbes.com/thumbor/960x0/https%3A%2F%2Fblogs-images.forbes.com%2Faparnamathur%2Ffiles%2F2018%2F07%2FUS-inc.-mobility.jpg https://thumbor.forbes.com/thumbor/960x0/https%3A%2F%2Fblogs...
Paperweight 6y ago
Life is a series of realizations that you were playing the wrong game.
blaser-waffle 6y ago
Tons of responses and no one has thrown out a link to the Ribbonfarm article about the Gervais Principle. https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/ https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-... Don't take it too seriously, but there is also many kernels of truth in there.
- kgin 6y ago
  At first I thought this would just be a cynical joke, but there are a lot of super interesting points in there. Thank you.

Whenever you see someone who you believe to be an idiot succeeding, it usually means they're really good at the game and you don't even understand what the game is.

aaronbrethorst 6y ago

Or their family donated enough money to an Ivy to have a building named after them.

virgilp 6y ago
That's not "succeding" though. I like to give Trump as an example: everyone loves to blast him for being an idiot. Is he a good president? No. Is he good at the game, but most people totally miss what his game is? I claim, yes. It's unfortunate that he managed to play the US election system for his own purposes, but that doesn't mean he's just incompetent at everything. E.g. he's a rather good populist - that may not be a quality you like, but at that particular game he's not at all bad.
- mewpmewp2 6y ago
  Which leads to the following: How do you measure if someone is a good president? What measurements do you use to claim Trump is not a good president? Surely it can't be approval ratings since you can't expect public to understand nuances behind the decisions and what the president actually has to be doing? It can't be just GDP because GDP might have been going up anyway? It can't be what the president is saying in public and how many of those facts are wrong since this doesn't mean what actual decisions the president is making.
  - thdrdt 6y ago
    Aren't there universal measurements for leaders/counties? For example the Bible has a lot of wisdom like: 'If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand.' This was already written some 2000 years ago and has been proven true over time. So I would argue you could measure the amount of unity a leader tries to create.
    - bergstromm466 6y ago
      > So I would argue you could measure the amount of unity a leader tries to create. That’s a nice one. Yet do you think then Hitler might be a good leader? (not a joke). He united the white German population in a time of great economic disarray - in both Germany and Europe. Maybe we should measure unity and cooperation with other countries? Global solidarity
      - thdrdt 6y ago
        You have got a good point but I doubt it is true because a lot of Germans were against Hitler. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_resistance_to_Nazism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_resistance_to_Nazism
      - heavenlyblue 6y ago
        > He united the white German population in a time of great economic disarray Rather, he united the country because it was in an economic disarray :)
  - TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
    Some combination of GINI, average life expectancy, number of bankruptcies, business closures, unemployment, changes in all-cause mortality, median household debt, disposable income, educational attainment, and so on. If you look at a basket of well-being measures as opposed to raw GDP it's hard to argue that Trump has done a good job. Of course Covid has had a big effect. But there were many policy options for handling that, and Trump - and his far-right equivalents in other countries - reliably picked some of the least effective ones.
    - splintercell 6y ago
      Never met a person on the right who considered GINI index as a good measure. Regarding bankruptcies, unemployment, household debt Etc, Obama's first term would show really low score on these things, presuming that's all he had, almost none of it was caused by the actions taken by him during his presidency.
    - iateanapple 6y ago
      > If you look at a basket of well-being measures as opposed to raw GDP it's hard to argue It is too soon to argue any of those measures. You can’t take a single moment in time in the middle of a crisis to judge.
  - michaelt 6y ago
    > What measurements do you use to claim Trump is not a good president? Number of his supporters arguing that objectively there's no such thing as a good president :-p
    - iateanapple 6y ago
      > Number of his supporters arguing that objectively there's no such thing as a good president :-p That’s probably a bad metric because his supporters love him. It’s the swing voters making those kinds of comments because they want to vote for him but he’s done some dodgy things.
vecter 6y ago
He said success, not wealth. Yes, obviously someone inheriting their parents' billion dollar business is wealthy, but I wouldn't consider them successful unless they've done something on their own.
- boffinism 6y ago
  No, but starting with wealth makes it much easier to succeed at other things.
- close04 6y ago
  I like to think of this example [0] when I have the feeling that I got to where I am all by myself, and forget how many and how much others have worked to "build my boat", and how much luck was involved at every step. [0] https://digitalsynopsis.com/inspiration/privileged-kids-on-a-plate-pencilsword-toby-morris/ https://digitalsynopsis.com/inspiration/privileged-kids-on-a...
  - bergstromm466 6y ago
    That was great!
  - abrookewood 6y ago
    That comic is brilliant.
- pydry 6y ago
  It's often not all that hard to disguise one as the other. I worked for a guy once who was drowning in family wealth and all he had to show for it was a failing business. After years of losses that almost nobody else would have been able (or willing) to sustain he made it into a moderate success. Outwardly, at face value, he's doing pretty well, until you count the decade of losses which nobody talks about. Another friend is a moderately renowned documentary maker. Again, facilitated by family wealth. Outwardly, the appearance is of being successful, which cost a fair chunk of family wealth. I think in both cases, family wealth drove something akin to an obsession to appear successful, which they largely achieved and nobody mentions the uncomfortable facts about how they got there in polite company.
haecceity 6y ago
Sounds like they're pretty good at the game.
koonsolo 6y ago
Passing on wealth to your children is part of the game. Or did you think the game ends after 1 generation?
- im3w1l 6y ago
  Now you are moving the goalposts from singular they are good at the game, to their family as a collective is good at the game. A statement perfectly compatible with that particular family member being an idiot.
  - fnord123 6y ago
    Idiot usually means someone who doesn't know basic facts or has trouble anticipating consequences for their actions. But I think part of GPs comment was to note that the concept of idiot needs to be readdressed. For example, if your hypothetical person has a family network (just another tool; but a v. good one!) that helps them, then they choose to either stick with their family or try to strike out on their own. We're already discussing the situation where they have chosen to leverage their family network.
    - Traster 6y ago
      I have never, ever, once in my life ever heard anyone say "Isn't that person smart, they managed to get their dad to give them a job"
      - fnord123 6y ago
        And maybe one could respect people who go their own way to get out of their family's shadow so they can be seen as making it on their own. But if that's not the game then both people are 'idiots' (in this thought experiment).
  - splintercell 6y ago
    Success is not guaranteed just because someone was sent to an Ivy League school by his rich parents. This is the blank slate fallacy where people believe (for political correctness reasons) that any kid had same chance of success if he was given the same opportunity as the success of kids.
koheripbal 6y ago
I think you just proved his point. Going to an ivy league school does not make you successful. There are many many unemployed useless Stanford, MIT, Harvard graduates in this world.
- brenden2 6y ago
  That's true, but a lot of people think the school you attend matters. For example, in the context of hiring, if you have 2 otherwise candidates but you can only choose one, most people would choose the person who went to Stanford over the guy who taught himself to code or attended a lesser respected school (in most cases). Some companies are stupid enough to only hire people from fancy schools. I think Google did something like this for a while, but thankfully they stopped. Thus, attending a fancy school is a big advantage if you've got the money or have another way to get in.
  - jcadam 6y ago
    Yep, I've seen more than a few job postings over the years stating some version of "Must hold a degree from a Top 10 school." Who would want to work with a bunch of elitist jerks, anyway?
- 77pt77 6y ago
  > There are many many unemployed useless Stanford, MIT, Harvard graduates in this world. Is this really true? All the statistics I've read suggest otherwise.
  - 1bc29b36f623ba8 6y ago
    Well, there is a lot of graduates from those universities to begin with, so it's only logical that there is a certain amount of useless graduates that end up unemployed. The same logic applies to the rest of humanity. The real question is whether those graduates are more likely to be useless and unemployed than people who did not graduate from the same universities.
Cthulhu_ 6y ago
It means that not only do they have a business idea (or stole one), but they have the network and (financial) risk buffer to develop it into a business. One thing to keep in mind is that the majority of businesses and products fail. Remember survivorship bias. For every successful Netflix there are a dozen failed movie streaming services. Anyone who has had a few weeks worth of software engineering can produce a Twitter clone, but none have been successful.
- Kye 6y ago
  Mastodon does okay. It's not as big as Twitter, but people who stick with it are happy with what they have. All it did was flip the model: interconnected, community-funded instances instead of one big, expensive to run silo.

jes5199 6y ago

Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, Elon Musk

ketzo 6y ago

Damn, this is the kind of quote you see on a title card in a movie about gambling. Nice.

0d9eooo 6y ago

Or maybe you just don't want to play the game anymore.

sunaurus 6y ago
I think this is sadly very true - trying to actually be a kind person really limits how well you can play "the game". There's no good solution to this either - if there was more kindness in the world, then that would just create even more opportunities for the people playing the game to get ahead, because they would have more victims to exploit.
- draugadrotten 6y ago
  One of the key solutions is that good people must reward other good people. Nurture the young good ones. Reward the good behaviour.
- Maxion 6y ago
  One key thing about the game is the definition of "being ahead", and in a way, the meaning you want your life to have. If the definition of being ahead is to work in upper management, or at trendy FAANG making a large amount of money then you are kind-of forced to play the game in order to "get ahead". However, if your version of getting ahead is to have a loving family, or to spend time on the hobbies you like or traveling or <insert other non-monetary thing here> then you can (and sometimes even have to) spend less effort on the game. I'm still working on finding my balance, but I've learned that I enjoy life much more when I'm doing something where I can spend less time playing the game, even if that comes with a large decrease in income and "prestige".
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    > I'm still working on finding my balance, but I've learned that I enjoy life much more when I'm doing something where I can spend less time playing the game, even if that comes with a large decrease in income and "prestige". Unfortunately in the US, if you don’t play the game, you have greatly reduced access to healthcare, which is a huge incentive to play the game especially if you have kids.

taneq 6y ago

Or they took more risks than you and it paid off. Or they just happened to be in the right place at the right time. Or...

koheripbal 6y ago
Over the course of your entire life, the statistical expected values of the "gambles" tend to net out.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  And over the course of the population there are going to be a lot of outliers (both winners and losers).
- cxr 6y ago
  If You Say Something Is "Likely," How Likely Do People Think It Is? https://hbr.org/2018/07/if-you-say-something-is-likely-how-likely-do-people-think-it-is https://hbr.org/2018/07/if-you-say-something-is-likely-how-l... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17457000 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17457000
- vharuck 6y ago
  That assumes independent events. But "failing" early (weak social network, poverty, lost a lot on the first big gamble) have a large effect on the size and risk of the next gamble.

nsgi 6y ago

So Trump is really good at the political game, for instance?

fwr 6y ago
Is there a more powerful political position he could have?
- jeltz 6y ago
  Yes, he could be a president with reliable support from the senate and the house. But that said he still managed to reach very far.
  - ByteJockey 6y ago
    Is that an option these days? When was the last time that existed? 2010?
    - disgruntledphd2 6y ago
      It seems to me (as an outside observer), that this normally happens for the two years after a new President is elected. Normally they don't get 60 in the Senate though, which means that the system is working at intended (you need to stay consistently popular for 6+ years to start swinging the Senate).
  - mcv 6y ago
    He has extremely reliable support from the senate. They did everything they could to shield him from accountability during the impeachment process and prevented him from getting a fair trial. That's more than the senate has ever done for any other president.
Bootvis 6y ago
He did become President of the USA so I think the answer is yes.

mewpmewp2 6y ago

Is Donald Trump a good example?

koheripbal 6y ago
No. Because there are too many emotions for people to think clearly.

beefield 6y ago

Or maybe you do, but simply refuse to play the game due to ethical and moral grounds.

koheripbal 6y ago
I don't see how that applies here. There are lots of ways to make high income that have no ethical dilemmas.
- pogorniy 6y ago
  Name 3
- Kye 6y ago
  There's a nonprofit that researches this: https://80000hours.org/ https://80000hours.org/
- beefield 6y ago
  People with high incomes from sources with no ethical dilemmas may also think that there are successful idiots. And not only because they do not understand the game the idiot is playing.
pas 6y ago
There are games you can't really opt out. Like politics. Whoever wins will have control over you. (So people are highly motivated to play it.)

cowsandmilk 6y ago

And sometimes that game is rack up lots of debt. I’m only in my mid-30s but I’ve already seen multiple occasions of people being swindled by someone they thought was a multimillionaire in lending them $10,000. If you can’t understand where someone’s wealth cane from, there’s a chance it doesn’t exist.

thdrdt 6y ago

Today information is so easy to get that a lot of people think they know everything about every subject. But, like you said, reading the rules of the game does not mean you know how to play. When a company like Netflix launches a new product it is possible they thought about this with different teams for a long time. Then it's very naive to comment on the internet to say they are wrong and made a stupid mistake.

TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
No, it isn't. Anyone who has been involved in corporate decision making knows that different teams thinking for a long time is absolutely no guarantee of a successful outcome - or even of a barely functional one. Companies make stupid mistakes all the time. When you're in the trenches there's a certain amount of group think, and issues that may be obvious to outsiders may be invisible and/or suppressed by internal politics. Of course Internet comments may be naive and wrong for other reasons. But that's a different question.
- thdrdt 6y ago
  > different teams thinking for a long time is absolutely no guarantee of a successful outcome Of course it is no guarantee for success. But an outsider has absolutely no clue about what was discussed and what the politics were. So I think it is naive to make comments like "this is never going to work", or "removing the headphone jack will bring Apple down".
red_admiral 6y ago
To take a recent example: when a company like TripleByte launches a new product - namely that key parts of all profiles will suddenly be public - they might have thought about this with different teams for a long time too, but commenters on the internet said they were wrong and eventually they admitted that they made a stupid mistake. Netflix's plan paid off. TripleByte's didn't. Apples and Oranges, I know, but how do you tell the two apart without hindsight?
- Veen 6y ago

risyachka 6y ago

And in lots of cases you don't need to be smart to build a successful business - time and place often matter the most. Speaking here of my own experience. So yeah, often idiots can be super rich and its absolutely ok. Also you can be a genius going something without resources and connections, so there are millions of reasons why you can be way smarter than the rich guy on top while you are not rich at all.

eNTi 6y ago
Alan Turing comes to mind.

raducu 6y ago

Also, "idiots" can understand other "idiots" better, thus being able to make money. Making money is not a function of pure "intelect", but being able to predict what others need and being able to meet those needs. You can be Einstein smart and not business smart.

growlist 6y ago

or, the people playing the game and the rules of the game are so utterly moronic and worthless that it defies belief, e.g., celebrity culture.

WJW 6y ago
This seems a clear example of the parent comment though. You don't see the value in it and that's fine. Other people enjoy an endless parade of almost free entertainment that they find more interesting than the usual drudgery of life. Even the Romans knew you only needed to supply bread and games to keep the people pacified. Celebrity culture is just a modernized and less directly violent form of "games". The game modern celebrities are playing is apparently completely invisible to you?
- Kye 6y ago
  It's the same mindset that goes into dismissing pop music as low effort drivel. It actually takes an incredible amount of skill from a bunch of people at the top of their games to make a pop hit.

watwut 6y ago

And other times you understand the game and it adds to your distaste. Like for example, success of Jared Kushner .

screye 6y ago

> really good at the game Called being born rich. Plenty of idiots succeed because success was granted to them the day they were born. ____________ Also, a lot of times when you see an idiot succeeding, the idiot is a face for people to criticize while the master minds go about doing their magic, unseen.

AbrahamParangi 6y ago
Being rich isn't the same as succeeding.
- koheripbal 6y ago
  No, but there's definitely a correlation, on average.
- screye 6y ago
  In this context, most commenters are implying society's perception of success which is intimately tied to money. If the definition of success is completely left to a person's own devices, the whole argument of the "game" falls apart too. Since there is no game to play.
tcgv 6y ago
There are also plenty of people who weren't born rich, played the game well, and "made it". Probably not as much as those who were born rich and got a head start.
- typon 6y ago
  By "plenty" you mean roughly < 5% of the population. [1] https://thumbor.forbes.com/thumbor/960x0/https%3A%2F%2Fblogs-images.forbes.com%2Faparnamathur%2Ffiles%2F2018%2F07%2FUS-inc.-mobility.jpg https://thumbor.forbes.com/thumbor/960x0/https%3A%2F%2Fblogs...

Paperweight 6y ago

Life is a series of realizations that you were playing the wrong game.

blaser-waffle 6y ago

Tons of responses and no one has thrown out a link to the Ribbonfarm article about the Gervais Principle. https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/ https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-... Don't take it too seriously, but there is also many kernels of truth in there.

kgin 6y ago
At first I thought this would just be a cynical joke, but there are a lot of super interesting points in there. Thank you.