4 ms·

“ thiel isn't that talented or smart, but he did get hella lucky,” To get and stay where he is you have to be pretty smart. Maybe not in the way you define it

“ thiel isn't that talented or smart, but he did get hella lucky,” To get and stay where he is you have to be pretty smart. Maybe not in the way you define it but most people wouldn’t be able to do what he did. This will get me in trouble but I think the same can be said about Trump. The way he pushed himself into the presidency against resistance from the media and the established parties was pretty phenomenal. You have to be very capable to pull that off and not many people would be able to do the same. Being intelligent doesn’t mean that you do things people view as ethical.

clairity 5y ago
i wasn't claiming thiel was dumb, just that in his case, luck overwhelmed, and that he's not as smart and talented as he'd want the world to believe (that everything he's achieved is solely due to his own brilliance only). trump is, in a way, a good analogue. he also claims rare intelligence, but it's pretty clear he's not smart at all. he happened to be propelled by daddy's wealth, and translated that into infamy via a second-tier reality show that saved him just as he was floundering in real estate, another stroke of luck. along the way, he was bailed out time and again for billions of dollars, something almost no american has the luck to have access to. trump is decidedly not smart, just extremely lucky. sheer statistics say we're bound to have a few trumps; people with extraordinarily dumb luck but little talent otherwise.
- spaetzleesser 5y ago
  You think he could bully his way into becoming president and dominating the republican party by sheer luck? Even if I wanted to I couldn't do it what he did and I doubt you could do it either.
  - clairity 5y ago
    you're right, the universe has deemed you and me to not be as extraordinarily lucky as trump. i get that our primal belief in our own agency creates strong cognitive dissonance against the centrality of chance in our lives. it's almost as if evolutionarily, it doesn't matter to our egos that we often get the causality exactly backwards. esteem rises either way, even under false premises.

clairity 5y ago

i wasn't claiming thiel was dumb, just that in his case, luck overwhelmed, and that he's not as smart and talented as he'd want the world to believe (that everything he's achieved is solely due to his own brilliance only). trump is, in a way, a good analogue. he also claims rare intelligence, but it's pretty clear he's not smart at all. he happened to be propelled by daddy's wealth, and translated that into infamy via a second-tier reality show that saved him just as he was floundering in real estate, another stroke of luck. along the way, he was bailed out time and again for billions of dollars, something almost no american has the luck to have access to. trump is decidedly not smart, just extremely lucky. sheer statistics say we're bound to have a few trumps; people with extraordinarily dumb luck but little talent otherwise.

spaetzleesser 5y ago
You think he could bully his way into becoming president and dominating the republican party by sheer luck? Even if I wanted to I couldn't do it what he did and I doubt you could do it either.
- clairity 5y ago
  you're right, the universe has deemed you and me to not be as extraordinarily lucky as trump. i get that our primal belief in our own agency creates strong cognitive dissonance against the centrality of chance in our lives. it's almost as if evolutionarily, it doesn't matter to our egos that we often get the causality exactly backwards. esteem rises either way, even under false premises.