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One would assume that SpaceX engineers would be smarter than the average person, but based on the details of this story he doesn’t sound very bright at all.
by blunte 6y ago
One would assume that SpaceX engineers would be smarter than the average person, but based on the details of this story he doesn’t sound very bright at all.
- 4gotunameagain 6y agoWell intellect can be broad or narrow too. source: I can be very smart and incredibly stupid too
- inglor_cz 6y agoTo be a successful white collar criminal, you need to be cunning more than smart. These are very different qualities.
- dylan604 6y agoAnd have a good attorney.
- polytely 6y agoI've slowly come to the realisation that the majority of very smart people are only smart in the field they work in.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- numpad0 6y agoMaybe the majority of well paid people are paid for their behavioral predictability than ingenuities...
- TeMPOraL 6y agoThat's generally the case for everything in our lives, though. Part of what keeps civilization going is minimizing variance / maximizing predictability of people. In modern societies, we try to keep unpredictable people away from anything important. In the most extreme cases, we lock them up in prisons and mental hospitals. In less extreme cases, we gatekeep: for example, you have to go through a psychological evaluation to get your pilot's license, driver's license, to be allowed to own a firearm, or be employed in certain positions. Degree of such gatekeeping is usually proportional to the damage wrong behavior can cause. And then in general, we have laws and cultures and social customs that slowly grind us into shape, every day of our lives, making us ever so slightly more similar to each other with every interaction, so that we can predict each others' behaviors and cooperate effectively. (I bring this up sometimes in context of AI/ML, where I complain that modern ML is made of black boxes with unpredictable failure modes. The usual reply is, "but humans are black boxes too!". Well, they aren't completely opaque - thanks to shared hardware architecture and "theory of mind", and to the degree it's not enough, society ensures predictability is maximized.)
- teatree 6y agoI had never thought about society this way. Thanks for this insight.
- mlyle 6y ago> for example, you have to go through a psychological evaluation to get your pilot's license, driver's license Where? Wasn't required for me to fly or drive... > to be allowed to own a firearm, Not true even of a lot of restrictive jurisdictions. (even the UK). > or be employed in certain positions Sometimes this is true of being e.g. law enforcement or somewhere that requires a security clearance. But not very common.
- germinalphrase 6y agoIn the olden days, they called it hubris, and it was a sin against the gods.
- dehrmann 6y agoAnd often surprisingly below average in everything else.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- lazyweb 6y agoGreed often outweighs any smarts.
- c3534l 6y agoSmart people can be pretty stupid.
- mannykannot 6y agoOne should not base one's opinion of SpaceX engineers on this one example.
- cma 6y agoAs another data point, Musk is chief engineer, and also involved in securities fraud in other roles ("going private $420").
- frakkingcylons 6y agoI'd also assume that they wouldn't have the free time for insider trading schemes.
- matz1 6y agoJust because one is smart in rocket engineering doesn't mean they also smart in other field. Nobody can be smart at everything.
- paulpauper 6y agoSmart, well-accomplished millionaires fell for Madoff scam