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I suspect this is the real problem. Stupid people with money can look like they are clever because the layer of people immediately underneath them actually wie

by gw98 4y ago

I suspect this is the real problem. Stupid people with money can look like they are clever because the layer of people immediately underneath them actually wields the clue stick. Stupid people with no money look stupid because they can't afford the layer of clever people underneath them. Clever people are either abstracting the liability via stupid person in the layer above them or don't need that kind of shit in their lives and are just getting on with designing and building products with the other clever people around them. Edit: I'd just like to note that I am recognising the work that Tesla and SpaceX engineers and staff do which the PR baboon up the top somehow gets credit for every time.

joshstrange 4y ago
Yep, it's a whole class of equating X thing with being "virtuous" (or similar). Your height, your sex, your weight, your hairline, your income/savings, etc. It's uncomfortable to talk about or admit but people regularly take controllable (or uncontrollable) traits and assign value to them even though it doesn't have any actual bearing. "Oh that billionaire did something that seems odd/crazy to me? Well he must know something I don't else how would be be a billionaire!" - Yeah, that's not how things work. What's the line? "Past performance is not indicative of future results", paraphrasing it: "Past advantages are not indicative of future results". Very, very few "self-made million/billionaires" are anything of the sort. I'm not saying their lives have never been hard or that they have never worked hard at something but I think you'd find that, at scale, most people would succeed if put into that position (from birth, which is why this is near-impossible to prove).
- gw98 4y ago
  Indeed. My father said it this way, rather well: there are many more failed assholes than successful assholes. Do not attribute success to being an asshole. Incidentally he was a failed asshole. All his staff deserted him and watched his business burn to the ground. Perhaps ironically a big fan of Musk too.
  - selcuka 4y ago
    > Indeed. My father said it this way, rather well: there are many more failed assholes than successful assholes. Do not attribute success to being an asshole. I don't know. There are also many more failed nice people than successful nice people. We don't have hard stats, so the success/failure ratio for assholes could actually be higher.
    - gw98 4y ago
      That’s why I’m an asshole/nice centrist :)
- fallingknife 4y ago
  > most people would succeed if put into that position (from birth, which is why this is near-impossible to prove). It's actually very easy to disprove. There are 22 million millionaires in the US. There are 720 billionaires. That gives you a 0.003% chance of going from millionaire tier to billionaire.
  - joshstrange 4y ago
    I don't believe that actually is what I was talking about or that you can use those numbers in the way you are. Your success in life is made up of a lot of different and hard to quantify or even qualify things. I'm talking about being able to go back in time knowing what X person has accomplished and replacing them with Y number of people doing different "runs through life". I'm postulating that the majority of them would end up in very similar positions at the end. Also it's impossible since even if we had the ability to do this (outside a simulation... maybe) the ethics of it are all wrong. Heck if you could actually simulate it there would still be ethical ramifications. If you can simulate full human consciousness how can you ever, ethically, turn off the machine or subject people to even simulated pain/poverty/sickness/etc? I digress. Those numbers don't indicate your chance of going from millionaire to billionaire. How many of those millionaires became millionaires later in life instead of being born one? How many of those billionaires started as millionaires? You'd need instead a study of hundreds of billionaires that started as millionaires then compare them the the number of "peer millionaires" that were born around the same time. Even so it's the "experiment" I'm proposing. Maybe I should have left millionaires out of it completely because even though we throw around things like "millionaires/billionaire" they are very different. You can be a millionaire from your 401K, your 401K will never make you a billionaire (unless inflation really gets out of hand). For myself it's very easy to look at all the advantages I've had in life and see how they led to the "success" I have today. I have/have had friends/coworkers who I perceive as being just as hard working, just as smart, etc as me who aren't doing as well due to not having the same advantages, I see the opposite as well.
    - triceratops 4y ago
      > You can be a millionaire from your 401K, your 401K will never make you a billionaire Fun fact: Peter Thiel's IRA made him a billionaire.
- mistermann 4y ago
  > Yep, it's a whole class of equating X thing with being "virtuous" (or similar). Your height, your sex, your weight, your hairline, your income/savings, etc. It's uncomfortable to talk about or admit but people regularly take controllable (or uncontrollable) traits and assign value to them even though it doesn't have any actual bearing. Reality can be hallucinated in either direction. What it actually "is" here, is unknown. But the mind seems to abhor a vacuum so secretly fills it with simulated data. Presumably this had some historic evolutionary benefit, but whether it is still a benefit in 2022 seems questionable.
jackmott42 4y ago
It would be a remarkable bit of luck that Elon stumbled into both Tesla and SpaceX, took on the role of lead rocket designer at spaceX, built both companies into unlikely leaders in their industry with powerful people trying to crush them all the way, while being a total idiot. A similar but more charitable theory is that Elon is very good at leading a company to build actual hardware that has to solve hard physics problems. At twitter the primary challenge is managing people, and he is autistic and has no idea how to do this. He has no idea how normal people experience or use twitter, no idea how his tweets are felt by people, no idea how his employees feel about him etc. all of these are things that don't matter when building a rocket or a car, while understanding people and politics is the ONLY thing that matters at twitter.
- gw98 4y ago
  This is true. The answer is actually that he's a liar / marketer. Colonise Mars? It's never going to happen. But you'll win defence and commercial contracts on the way as a side effect. Saving the future with electric cars? It's never going to happen. But you'll sell a lot of luxury cars as a side effect. Saving free speech with Twitter? It's never going to happen. But you'll pacify the SEC dogs snarling at your door after you fucked up. His pitch is changing the world. His reality is not really improving it measurably.
  - kristianc 4y ago
    > This is true. The answer is actually that he's a liar / marketer. People who have a hard time understanding and empathising with other people tend to make extraordinarily bad marketers, actually.
    - gw98 4y ago
      He's learning that right now.
- joshstrange 4y ago
  > It would be a remarkable bit of luck that Elon stumbled into both Tesla and SpaceX, took on the role of lead rocket designer at spaceX If Elon can understand even half of how "his" rockets work I'd eat my hat. I'm not talking about in layman's terms, I'm talking about the actual science that goes into it. Same deal with car design. I'll give Elon props for having a vision and pushing it forward but let's not say ridiculous things like "lead rocket designer at spaceX". That's like thinking Tim Cook could write a line of Swift if his life depended on it or that Zuck knows more than a surface level of how FB's tech works. I don't exactly begrudge them for that (I won't get into profit sharing, or the lack there of at most companies) but let's not pretend that Elon is himself coming up with revolutionary ideas. Putting his money behind this is laudable, at some level, but he didn't invent these things any more than Steve Jobs "invented" the iPhone. We here on HN should know better than most how "worthless" an idea is on it's own. It's about execution. And Elon gets props for his execution (in this case hiring people who did the real work) but he shouldn't get all the credit for the work of the actual engineers.
nyokodo 4y ago
> Stupid people with money can look like they are clever I get it, some people hate Elon’s guts and equally hate Elon fans. I also think that it’s pretty well established that he has a range of character flaws that really hurt him and threaten his future success. However, anyone who insinuates that Elon is stupid needs to establish how a genuinely stupid person could found two successful dot coms and then hire all the brilliant engineers that have made his subsequent companies so successful against such odds and become the world’s richest person. Luck and debatable opinions about his alleged wealthy upbringing cannot explain this. Even assuming all the highly debatable opinions about his technical contributions any reasonable observer must admit he is at least a genius at hiring the right people to achieve his vision and then avoiding getting in their way enough to make enormous inroads and sell it all brilliantly. I am far from an Elon fan but I couldn’t hope to achieve 5% of what he has.
- gw98 4y ago
  Honestly, why couldn't you achieve it? Your point is self-deprecating. I couldn't because my goals and ethics do not align with the same outcome not because it's impossible.
  - aerostable_slug 4y ago
    No, it's because you weren't as smart. Sorry, but if you were, you'd be the richest person in the world, goals and ethics be damned.
    - gw98 4y ago
      Why would I want to be the richest person in the world? Sounds like a load of hassle which would compete with the things I value. None of my family even know what my financial situation is! Nto even the kids.
  - muskta05196519 4y ago
    Sure, dude. You're just as smart and capable as the world's most successful entrepreneur, but you're just a little too ethical to lower yourself to his level. This is pure faerie-dust self-aggrandizement. If you want to make these assertions, you can prove them. No one else is stopping you, after all.

by gw98 4y ago

joshstrange 4y ago

Yep, it's a whole class of equating X thing with being "virtuous" (or similar). Your height, your sex, your weight, your hairline, your income/savings, etc. It's uncomfortable to talk about or admit but people regularly take controllable (or uncontrollable) traits and assign value to them even though it doesn't have any actual bearing. "Oh that billionaire did something that seems odd/crazy to me? Well he must know something I don't else how would be be a billionaire!" - Yeah, that's not how things work. What's the line? "Past performance is not indicative of future results", paraphrasing it: "Past advantages are not indicative of future results". Very, very few "self-made million/billionaires" are anything of the sort. I'm not saying their lives have never been hard or that they have never worked hard at something but I think you'd find that, at scale, most people would succeed if put into that position (from birth, which is why this is near-impossible to prove).

gw98 4y ago
Indeed. My father said it this way, rather well: there are many more failed assholes than successful assholes. Do not attribute success to being an asshole. Incidentally he was a failed asshole. All his staff deserted him and watched his business burn to the ground. Perhaps ironically a big fan of Musk too.
- selcuka 4y ago
  > Indeed. My father said it this way, rather well: there are many more failed assholes than successful assholes. Do not attribute success to being an asshole. I don't know. There are also many more failed nice people than successful nice people. We don't have hard stats, so the success/failure ratio for assholes could actually be higher.
  - gw98 4y ago
    That’s why I’m an asshole/nice centrist :)
fallingknife 4y ago
> most people would succeed if put into that position (from birth, which is why this is near-impossible to prove). It's actually very easy to disprove. There are 22 million millionaires in the US. There are 720 billionaires. That gives you a 0.003% chance of going from millionaire tier to billionaire.
- joshstrange 4y ago
  I don't believe that actually is what I was talking about or that you can use those numbers in the way you are. Your success in life is made up of a lot of different and hard to quantify or even qualify things. I'm talking about being able to go back in time knowing what X person has accomplished and replacing them with Y number of people doing different "runs through life". I'm postulating that the majority of them would end up in very similar positions at the end. Also it's impossible since even if we had the ability to do this (outside a simulation... maybe) the ethics of it are all wrong. Heck if you could actually simulate it there would still be ethical ramifications. If you can simulate full human consciousness how can you ever, ethically, turn off the machine or subject people to even simulated pain/poverty/sickness/etc? I digress. Those numbers don't indicate your chance of going from millionaire to billionaire. How many of those millionaires became millionaires later in life instead of being born one? How many of those billionaires started as millionaires? You'd need instead a study of hundreds of billionaires that started as millionaires then compare them the the number of "peer millionaires" that were born around the same time. Even so it's the "experiment" I'm proposing. Maybe I should have left millionaires out of it completely because even though we throw around things like "millionaires/billionaire" they are very different. You can be a millionaire from your 401K, your 401K will never make you a billionaire (unless inflation really gets out of hand). For myself it's very easy to look at all the advantages I've had in life and see how they led to the "success" I have today. I have/have had friends/coworkers who I perceive as being just as hard working, just as smart, etc as me who aren't doing as well due to not having the same advantages, I see the opposite as well.
  - triceratops 4y ago
    > You can be a millionaire from your 401K, your 401K will never make you a billionaire Fun fact: Peter Thiel's IRA made him a billionaire.
mistermann 4y ago
> Yep, it's a whole class of equating X thing with being "virtuous" (or similar). Your height, your sex, your weight, your hairline, your income/savings, etc. It's uncomfortable to talk about or admit but people regularly take controllable (or uncontrollable) traits and assign value to them even though it doesn't have any actual bearing. Reality can be hallucinated in either direction. What it actually "is" here, is unknown. But the mind seems to abhor a vacuum so secretly fills it with simulated data. Presumably this had some historic evolutionary benefit, but whether it is still a benefit in 2022 seems questionable.

jackmott42 4y ago

It would be a remarkable bit of luck that Elon stumbled into both Tesla and SpaceX, took on the role of lead rocket designer at spaceX, built both companies into unlikely leaders in their industry with powerful people trying to crush them all the way, while being a total idiot. A similar but more charitable theory is that Elon is very good at leading a company to build actual hardware that has to solve hard physics problems. At twitter the primary challenge is managing people, and he is autistic and has no idea how to do this. He has no idea how normal people experience or use twitter, no idea how his tweets are felt by people, no idea how his employees feel about him etc. all of these are things that don't matter when building a rocket or a car, while understanding people and politics is the ONLY thing that matters at twitter.

gw98 4y ago
This is true. The answer is actually that he's a liar / marketer. Colonise Mars? It's never going to happen. But you'll win defence and commercial contracts on the way as a side effect. Saving the future with electric cars? It's never going to happen. But you'll sell a lot of luxury cars as a side effect. Saving free speech with Twitter? It's never going to happen. But you'll pacify the SEC dogs snarling at your door after you fucked up. His pitch is changing the world. His reality is not really improving it measurably.
- kristianc 4y ago
  > This is true. The answer is actually that he's a liar / marketer. People who have a hard time understanding and empathising with other people tend to make extraordinarily bad marketers, actually.
  - gw98 4y ago
    He's learning that right now.
joshstrange 4y ago
> It would be a remarkable bit of luck that Elon stumbled into both Tesla and SpaceX, took on the role of lead rocket designer at spaceX If Elon can understand even half of how "his" rockets work I'd eat my hat. I'm not talking about in layman's terms, I'm talking about the actual science that goes into it. Same deal with car design. I'll give Elon props for having a vision and pushing it forward but let's not say ridiculous things like "lead rocket designer at spaceX". That's like thinking Tim Cook could write a line of Swift if his life depended on it or that Zuck knows more than a surface level of how FB's tech works. I don't exactly begrudge them for that (I won't get into profit sharing, or the lack there of at most companies) but let's not pretend that Elon is himself coming up with revolutionary ideas. Putting his money behind this is laudable, at some level, but he didn't invent these things any more than Steve Jobs "invented" the iPhone. We here on HN should know better than most how "worthless" an idea is on it's own. It's about execution. And Elon gets props for his execution (in this case hiring people who did the real work) but he shouldn't get all the credit for the work of the actual engineers.

nyokodo 4y ago

> Stupid people with money can look like they are clever I get it, some people hate Elon’s guts and equally hate Elon fans. I also think that it’s pretty well established that he has a range of character flaws that really hurt him and threaten his future success. However, anyone who insinuates that Elon is stupid needs to establish how a genuinely stupid person could found two successful dot coms and then hire all the brilliant engineers that have made his subsequent companies so successful against such odds and become the world’s richest person. Luck and debatable opinions about his alleged wealthy upbringing cannot explain this. Even assuming all the highly debatable opinions about his technical contributions any reasonable observer must admit he is at least a genius at hiring the right people to achieve his vision and then avoiding getting in their way enough to make enormous inroads and sell it all brilliantly. I am far from an Elon fan but I couldn’t hope to achieve 5% of what he has.

gw98 4y ago
Honestly, why couldn't you achieve it? Your point is self-deprecating. I couldn't because my goals and ethics do not align with the same outcome not because it's impossible.
- aerostable_slug 4y ago
  No, it's because you weren't as smart. Sorry, but if you were, you'd be the richest person in the world, goals and ethics be damned.
  - gw98 4y ago
    Why would I want to be the richest person in the world? Sounds like a load of hassle which would compete with the things I value. None of my family even know what my financial situation is! Nto even the kids.
- muskta05196519 4y ago
  Sure, dude. You're just as smart and capable as the world's most successful entrepreneur, but you're just a little too ethical to lower yourself to his level. This is pure faerie-dust self-aggrandizement. If you want to make these assertions, you can prove them. No one else is stopping you, after all.