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I don't entirely disagree with what you mentioned but I believe it paints only part of the picture and heading to the next level of abstraction is necessary. T
by Bakary 4y ago
I don't entirely disagree with what you mentioned but I believe it paints only part of the picture and heading to the next level of abstraction is necessary.
Tautologically, a wealthy or high status person will know quite a bit about how wealth and power affects life. They will have insights on parts of human nature that poorer people might not encounter. There's clearly value in listening to this with an open mind.
However, even for those involved in high-level industries, that does not mean they do not have their own brand of myopic philosophizing and puffery. A large portion of their views on life is just as predictable as that of the small time hustler, and just as informed by their material conditions and cultural sphere, even if richer people have more of an opportunity to exist as individuals. There is this semi-aware understanding that wealthy people have to talk about Big Things, and the way they talk about Big Things inevitably leads to the 'architect' viewpoint and controlling the poor. I cracked a smile at the 'subliminal eugenics initiatives' because it's so representative of this mindset.
Every once in a while, you get a reminder of this. A high-level fund might fail all of a sudden, a billionaire might make a lethal decision that clearly lacks perspective or understanding of reality, or it can be something as innocuous as releasing a fairly pedestrian reading list. All sorts of hints that they are not superhuman but merely boosted along by snowballing feedback effects.
But since there is a culture of speaking in hushed tones about this, a range of complex emotions and fantasies when it comes to wealth and power, a nuclear grade sense of the halo effect, that we end up with OP thinking that yachts are filled with incredible insights 24/7 compared to the otherwise intellectually empty world of the non-elite, or yourself portraying the wealthy as divine enough that merely being in their presence is already an achievement on its own that must be accompanied with extra submissiveness and humility.
You get a minor taste of this on HN itself. Since the atmosphere is a mixture of wealthy, wealth-adjacent, and normal, the HN reader will not just look at the specific brand of articles that do well here but will also be self-aware in doing so: that they are supposed to talk and make connections about history, art, science, politics in a certain way, and cultivate this sense of being above the fray of the masses.