4 ms·

Can I coin some new relevant word(s) for 2025: Billionaire's disease / billionaireitis / ventureitis Basically same as Nobel disease / nobelitis, but applied t

Can I coin some new relevant word(s) for 2025: Billionaire's disease / billionaireitis / ventureitis Basically same as Nobel disease / nobelitis, but applied to wealthy (often tech) billionaires. Where after a certain amount of success in a quite narrow field, they start to push broad and wide-reaching ideas, which go far, far beyond their expertise. I'm not going to name names, but there are plenty of such billionaires out there, some getting far too much media time. Some even showing signs of advanced brain rot due to the media they consume.

triyambakam 2y ago
Gates is definitely one
- threeseed 2y ago
  Gates comes from a highly technical, engineering background and has spent over a decade largely full time on his philanthropic work. So I would definitely not put him in the same category as most other billionaires.
  - mmmBacon 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - threeseed 2y ago
      Not that it has any relevance to his expertise. He wasn’t on the island at all: https://www.reuters.com/article/world/false-claim-bill-gates-traveled-to-epsteins-island-multiple-times-idUSKBN22R2BM/ https://www.reuters.com/article/world/false-claim-bill-gates...
    - Der_Einzige 2y ago
      So was Trump, and trump clearly knew about Epstein's "preference for girls, especially of the young kind" circa the 2001 vanity fair article where he was quoted saying that.
vundercind 2y ago
I've heard "engineer brain" for a similar phenomenon, and since the main examples now are tech billionaires...
- blitzar 2y ago
  I have to push back against the misuse and abuse of the word "engineer".
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
prawn 2y ago
I assume the principle operates at lower levels too, and is just more noticeable with extremes of riches and fame? The person that first made me wonder about all this was Clive Palmer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clive_Palmer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clive_Palmer
BLKNSLVR 2y ago
The Prince Effect "Prince has been living in Prince-world for a number of years now" (possibly misphrasing of a sentence from Kevin Smith's recollection of his experience working for Prince). Sycophantitis. For which the treatment is a Messianectomy.
m463 2y ago
I've thought of something similar, maybe call it "techbro poverty" It's sort of like chesterton's fence + branding + fashion + stupid optimization giving us dystopian product design that any normal engineer understands is stupid. There are lots of examples of this: - remote controls with terrible play pause skip buttons, but big oversized dedicated buttons for some product they want you to use. - cars with no dashboard, no dedicated buttons, no turn signal stalks and everything on the touchscreen - laptops with no ports and terrible flat, unsculpted keyboards. - phones with no dedicated buttons, or buttons you can only dedicate to payment systems I'm sure there are tons more of these.
ekianjo 2y ago
> far beyond their expertise if COVID19 taught us anything is that 'experts' have no clue what they are talking about
- threeseed 2y ago
  And the best thing about comments like this is that because ‘experts’ in this situation includes thousands of people it only takes a mistake from a handful for this statement to be seen as accurate by the lay person. It’s like arguing that ‘experts’ in IT have no clue what they are doing because of a mistake made by IBM failing to deliver a government contract.
  - ekianjo 2y ago
    No, it's not like one expert was wrong, they were just literally wrong over and over about everything - it was pseudo science galore all the way. But people have short memories.
xeonmc 2y ago
Musknitis
alganet 2y ago
Money-infused pseudopolymathitis.

triyambakam 2y ago

Gates is definitely one

threeseed 2y ago
Gates comes from a highly technical, engineering background and has spent over a decade largely full time on his philanthropic work. So I would definitely not put him in the same category as most other billionaires.
- mmmBacon 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - threeseed 2y ago
    Not that it has any relevance to his expertise. He wasn’t on the island at all: https://www.reuters.com/article/world/false-claim-bill-gates-traveled-to-epsteins-island-multiple-times-idUSKBN22R2BM/ https://www.reuters.com/article/world/false-claim-bill-gates...
  - Der_Einzige 2y ago
    So was Trump, and trump clearly knew about Epstein's "preference for girls, especially of the young kind" circa the 2001 vanity fair article where he was quoted saying that.

vundercind 2y ago

I've heard "engineer brain" for a similar phenomenon, and since the main examples now are tech billionaires...

blitzar 2y ago
I have to push back against the misuse and abuse of the word "engineer".

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

prawn 2y ago

I assume the principle operates at lower levels too, and is just more noticeable with extremes of riches and fame? The person that first made me wonder about all this was Clive Palmer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clive_Palmer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clive_Palmer

BLKNSLVR 2y ago

The Prince Effect "Prince has been living in Prince-world for a number of years now" (possibly misphrasing of a sentence from Kevin Smith's recollection of his experience working for Prince). Sycophantitis. For which the treatment is a Messianectomy.

m463 2y ago

I've thought of something similar, maybe call it "techbro poverty" It's sort of like chesterton's fence + branding + fashion + stupid optimization giving us dystopian product design that any normal engineer understands is stupid. There are lots of examples of this: - remote controls with terrible play pause skip buttons, but big oversized dedicated buttons for some product they want you to use. - cars with no dashboard, no dedicated buttons, no turn signal stalks and everything on the touchscreen - laptops with no ports and terrible flat, unsculpted keyboards. - phones with no dedicated buttons, or buttons you can only dedicate to payment systems I'm sure there are tons more of these.

ekianjo 2y ago

> far beyond their expertise if COVID19 taught us anything is that 'experts' have no clue what they are talking about

threeseed 2y ago
And the best thing about comments like this is that because ‘experts’ in this situation includes thousands of people it only takes a mistake from a handful for this statement to be seen as accurate by the lay person. It’s like arguing that ‘experts’ in IT have no clue what they are doing because of a mistake made by IBM failing to deliver a government contract.
- ekianjo 2y ago
  No, it's not like one expert was wrong, they were just literally wrong over and over about everything - it was pseudo science galore all the way. But people have short memories.

xeonmc 2y ago

Musknitis

alganet 2y ago

Money-infused pseudopolymathitis.