> That's kind of the point No, you've mistaken excuses for profundity. > if you think there's some group of people somewhere that has some reliable method of

> That's kind of the point No, you've mistaken excuses for profundity. > if you think there's some group of people somewhere that has some reliable method of excluding people who act in irrational and self-destructive ways Yes, successful people, for many any definition of succesful that you respect. If one is successful, one clearly wasn't meaningfully self-destructive. If one is self-destructive, one expects to be systematically less successful. On average, in expectation, and with time lag. This isn't an observational trend, it's a definitional link. Let's be concrete: if a professor makes a great discovery and then Cipola writes them off as stupid because he sees them struggling to tie their shoes, Cipola's model of stupidity is invalidated by the reality of the professor's useful contribution to society. I've seen this happen. > The usual response is to assume some sort of nefarious plan. Cibola blamed the failure of his model on chance. He could also have chosen to blame it on conspiracy. He would still be wrong -- it's just a poor model. > Not recognizing [self-destruction] is a cognitive blind spot that people who don't do those sorts of things tend to have have. Sure, but this guy has enshrined Fundamental Attribution Error into a philosophy. It's not a blind spot, it's a blindfold.