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You could even say that overconfidence in abilities and knowledge outside of core expertise is the critical flaw of today's entire tech industry.

sympil 2y ago
As a great example of this read Paul Graham’s essays that aren’t anout his core expertise.
- haliskerbas 2y ago
  But every successful SV founder and or VC is not only a tech genius but also a geopolitical and socioeconomic expert! That’s why they make war companies, cozy up to politicians, and talk about how woke is ruining the world. /s
  - roenxi 2y ago
    In fairness, 'geopolitical experts' may not really exist. There are a range of people who make up interesting stories to a greater or lesser extent but all seem to be serially misinformed. Some things are too complicated to have expertise in. Indeed, while the existence of socioeconomic experts seems more likely we don't have any way of reliably identifying them. The people who actually end up making social or economic policy seem to be winging it by picking the policy that most benefits wealthy people and/or established asset owners. It is barely possible to blink twice without stumbling over a policy disaster.
    - benzible 2y ago
      So, you think the system is genuinely trying to identify expertise to achieve equitable outcomes, and just happening to fail at it? Rather than policy being shaped by personal networks and existing power structures that tend to benefit themselves?
      - roenxi 2y ago
        I think the system has been carefully configured to benefit wealthy people and/or established asset owners. But the reason that there is no effective resistance to that is because identifying generalist socioeconomic experts is practically impossible.
    - rl3 2y ago
      >In fairness, 'geopolitical experts' may not really exist. Except for, I don't know, the many thousands of people who work at various government agencies (diplomatic, intelligence) or even private sector policy circles whose job it is to literally be geopolitical experts in a given area.
      - saithound 2y ago
        There are thousands of gamblers whose job is to literally predict the tumbling random number generators in the slot machines they play, and will be rewarded with thousands of dollars if they do a good job. They are not experts. As said above, some things are too complicated to have expertise in. It's plausible that geopolitics may work the same way, with the ones who get lucky mistaken for actual experts.
        chmod775 2y ago
        Absolute rubbish. There's lots of factual information here you can know and use to make informed "guesses" (if you will). People like Musk, who are often absolutely clueless about countries' political situations, their people, their makeup, their relationships and agreements with neighboring countries, as well as their history and geography, are obviously going to be terrible at predicting outcomes compared to someone who actually has deep knowledge of these things. Also we seem to be using the term "geopolitics" a bit loosely in this thread. Maybe we could inform ourselves what the term we are using even means before we discount that anyone could have expertise in it[1]. I don't think people here meant to narrow it down to just that. What we really seem to concern ourselves with here is international relations theory and political sciences in general. Now whether most politicians should also be considered experts in these areas is another matter. From my personal experience, I'd say most are not. People generally don't elect politicians for being experts - they elect politicians for representing their uninformed opinions. There seems to be only a weak overlap between being competent at the actual job and the ability to be elected into it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geopolitics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geopolitics
        roenxi 2y ago
    - thiago_fm 2y ago
      That's so wrong in so many levels, also cynical. If the world worked by what you described, we would have been already obliterated ourselves a long time ago, or mass-enslavery would have happened. It didn't. Geopolitics can be studied and learned, and is something that diplomats heavily rely upon. Of course, those geopolitical strategies can play in certain ways we don't foresee, as on the other side we also have an actor that is free to do what they want. But for instance, if you give Mexico a very good trade agreement as a strong country like the US, it's very likely that they will work with you on your special requests.
    - unsupp0rted 2y ago
      I thought Peter Zeihan was a geopolitical expert until he started talking about things I lived through, with complete ignorance of the basics. It's not that his take was wrong, it's that his basic underlying assumptions were all wildly different from reality on the ground.
      - ANewFormation 2y ago
        Any sort of geopolitical expert is generally going to be labeled as such because he works in the domain at a reasonably high level. The problem with that is that when at such a level, political factors start to come into play. The net effect is that in any conflict, the winning side will have competent and qualified expert geopolitical analyses, while the losing side will have propagandists. So the geopolitical expert is, at best, a liminal species.
      - 400thecat 2y ago
        do you have some examples? I came to the exact same conclusion
    - rbGasf 2y ago
      They may exist, but the real expertise is mostly kept non-public. Regarding the Ukraine war, both pro-Russian and pro-American public pundits never mentioned economic and real strategic issues apart from NATO membership for almost 2.5 years. Then Lindsey Graham outright mentioned the mineral wealth and it became a topic, though not a prominent one. Access to the Caspian Sea via the Volga-Don canal and the Sea of Azov is never mentioned. Even though there are age old Rand corporation papers that demand more US influence in that region. The best public pundits get personalities and some of the political history correct (and are entertaining), but it is always a game of omission on both sides.
- rhubarbtree 2y ago
  I think that’s unfair unless you give specific examples and clear evidence he’s wrong. I disagree with PG on economics and politics, but much of his writing on that is subjective.
  - redcobra762 2y ago
    “Clear evidence he’s wrong” Good science is dead, isn’t it?
    - rhubarbtree 2y ago
      I don't think that's a snark, but I don't understand.
  - sympil 2y ago
    He recently said that evil people can’t survive long as founders of tech companies because they need smart people to work for them and smart people can work anywhere. There are lots of other examples. Especially read his recent tweets/essays that aren’t about his area of expertise.
    - marcosdumay 2y ago
      I'd argue that subject is one of his core competencies.
    - rhubarbtree 2y ago
      Do you have a link to him saying that, please? I want to see the context and whether this was absolute. Was it "few evil founders can be successful?" We might also want to delve into what "evil" means here. Presumably he's talking about evil in the way that they treat their employees? As sibling says, that's his core expertise, so not quite relevant.
      - sympil 2y ago
        Look it up yourself. Paul Graham does not have a core competency regarding what smart people are or are not willing to do. That would be sociology or psychology or economics. https://bsky.app/profile/isilanor.bsky.social/post/3ldx24kvcls2k https://bsky.app/profile/isilanor.bsky.social/post/3ldx24kvc...
ponty_rick 2y ago
With the crowdstrike outage earlier last year it was incredible how many hidden security and kernel "experts" came out crawling from the woodwork, questioning why anything needs to run in the kernel and predicting the company's demise.
- milkshakes 2y ago
  the experts were correct. in 2024 there are now OS APIs that provide the same observability and control with much less risk involved.
  - ta1243 2y ago
    And yet crowdstrike's stock price is still 28% up on where it was 12 month ago, 46% up on 6 months ago after their crash. Sibling is right, that type of product is nothing to do with actually preventing problems, its to do with outsourcing personal risk. Same as SAAS. Nobody got fired when office 365 was down for the second day in a year, but have a 5 minute outage on your on-prem kit after 5 years and there's nasty questions to answer.
  - ponty_rick 2y ago
    Pretty sure every vendor uses the kernel. There must be a reason behind none of them exclusively using the APIs.
    - milkshakes 2y ago
      yeah, it's money.
- lmm 2y ago
  They were correct that there is no need for it to run in the kernel. They were incorrect in thinking this would affect the company's future, because of course the sales of their product have nothing to do with its technical merit.
  - spydum 2y ago

sympil 2y ago

As a great example of this read Paul Graham’s essays that aren’t anout his core expertise.

haliskerbas 2y ago
But every successful SV founder and or VC is not only a tech genius but also a geopolitical and socioeconomic expert! That’s why they make war companies, cozy up to politicians, and talk about how woke is ruining the world. /s
- roenxi 2y ago
  In fairness, 'geopolitical experts' may not really exist. There are a range of people who make up interesting stories to a greater or lesser extent but all seem to be serially misinformed. Some things are too complicated to have expertise in. Indeed, while the existence of socioeconomic experts seems more likely we don't have any way of reliably identifying them. The people who actually end up making social or economic policy seem to be winging it by picking the policy that most benefits wealthy people and/or established asset owners. It is barely possible to blink twice without stumbling over a policy disaster.
  - benzible 2y ago
    So, you think the system is genuinely trying to identify expertise to achieve equitable outcomes, and just happening to fail at it? Rather than policy being shaped by personal networks and existing power structures that tend to benefit themselves?
    - roenxi 2y ago
      I think the system has been carefully configured to benefit wealthy people and/or established asset owners. But the reason that there is no effective resistance to that is because identifying generalist socioeconomic experts is practically impossible.
  - rl3 2y ago
    >In fairness, 'geopolitical experts' may not really exist. Except for, I don't know, the many thousands of people who work at various government agencies (diplomatic, intelligence) or even private sector policy circles whose job it is to literally be geopolitical experts in a given area.
    - saithound 2y ago
      There are thousands of gamblers whose job is to literally predict the tumbling random number generators in the slot machines they play, and will be rewarded with thousands of dollars if they do a good job. They are not experts. As said above, some things are too complicated to have expertise in. It's plausible that geopolitics may work the same way, with the ones who get lucky mistaken for actual experts.
      - chmod775 2y ago
        Absolute rubbish. There's lots of factual information here you can know and use to make informed "guesses" (if you will). People like Musk, who are often absolutely clueless about countries' political situations, their people, their makeup, their relationships and agreements with neighboring countries, as well as their history and geography, are obviously going to be terrible at predicting outcomes compared to someone who actually has deep knowledge of these things. Also we seem to be using the term "geopolitics" a bit loosely in this thread. Maybe we could inform ourselves what the term we are using even means before we discount that anyone could have expertise in it[1]. I don't think people here meant to narrow it down to just that. What we really seem to concern ourselves with here is international relations theory and political sciences in general. Now whether most politicians should also be considered experts in these areas is another matter. From my personal experience, I'd say most are not. People generally don't elect politicians for being experts - they elect politicians for representing their uninformed opinions. There seems to be only a weak overlap between being competent at the actual job and the ability to be elected into it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geopolitics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geopolitics
        roenxi 2y ago
  - thiago_fm 2y ago
    That's so wrong in so many levels, also cynical. If the world worked by what you described, we would have been already obliterated ourselves a long time ago, or mass-enslavery would have happened. It didn't. Geopolitics can be studied and learned, and is something that diplomats heavily rely upon. Of course, those geopolitical strategies can play in certain ways we don't foresee, as on the other side we also have an actor that is free to do what they want. But for instance, if you give Mexico a very good trade agreement as a strong country like the US, it's very likely that they will work with you on your special requests.
  - unsupp0rted 2y ago
    I thought Peter Zeihan was a geopolitical expert until he started talking about things I lived through, with complete ignorance of the basics. It's not that his take was wrong, it's that his basic underlying assumptions were all wildly different from reality on the ground.
    - ANewFormation 2y ago
      Any sort of geopolitical expert is generally going to be labeled as such because he works in the domain at a reasonably high level. The problem with that is that when at such a level, political factors start to come into play. The net effect is that in any conflict, the winning side will have competent and qualified expert geopolitical analyses, while the losing side will have propagandists. So the geopolitical expert is, at best, a liminal species.
    - 400thecat 2y ago
      do you have some examples? I came to the exact same conclusion
  - rbGasf 2y ago
    They may exist, but the real expertise is mostly kept non-public. Regarding the Ukraine war, both pro-Russian and pro-American public pundits never mentioned economic and real strategic issues apart from NATO membership for almost 2.5 years. Then Lindsey Graham outright mentioned the mineral wealth and it became a topic, though not a prominent one. Access to the Caspian Sea via the Volga-Don canal and the Sea of Azov is never mentioned. Even though there are age old Rand corporation papers that demand more US influence in that region. The best public pundits get personalities and some of the political history correct (and are entertaining), but it is always a game of omission on both sides.
rhubarbtree 2y ago
I think that’s unfair unless you give specific examples and clear evidence he’s wrong. I disagree with PG on economics and politics, but much of his writing on that is subjective.
- redcobra762 2y ago
  “Clear evidence he’s wrong” Good science is dead, isn’t it?
  - rhubarbtree 2y ago
    I don't think that's a snark, but I don't understand.
- sympil 2y ago
  He recently said that evil people can’t survive long as founders of tech companies because they need smart people to work for them and smart people can work anywhere. There are lots of other examples. Especially read his recent tweets/essays that aren’t about his area of expertise.
  - marcosdumay 2y ago
    I'd argue that subject is one of his core competencies.
  - rhubarbtree 2y ago
    Do you have a link to him saying that, please? I want to see the context and whether this was absolute. Was it "few evil founders can be successful?" We might also want to delve into what "evil" means here. Presumably he's talking about evil in the way that they treat their employees? As sibling says, that's his core expertise, so not quite relevant.
    - sympil 2y ago
      Look it up yourself. Paul Graham does not have a core competency regarding what smart people are or are not willing to do. That would be sociology or psychology or economics. https://bsky.app/profile/isilanor.bsky.social/post/3ldx24kvcls2k https://bsky.app/profile/isilanor.bsky.social/post/3ldx24kvc...

ponty_rick 2y ago

With the crowdstrike outage earlier last year it was incredible how many hidden security and kernel "experts" came out crawling from the woodwork, questioning why anything needs to run in the kernel and predicting the company's demise.

milkshakes 2y ago
the experts were correct. in 2024 there are now OS APIs that provide the same observability and control with much less risk involved.
- ta1243 2y ago
  And yet crowdstrike's stock price is still 28% up on where it was 12 month ago, 46% up on 6 months ago after their crash. Sibling is right, that type of product is nothing to do with actually preventing problems, its to do with outsourcing personal risk. Same as SAAS. Nobody got fired when office 365 was down for the second day in a year, but have a 5 minute outage on your on-prem kit after 5 years and there's nasty questions to answer.
- ponty_rick 2y ago
  Pretty sure every vendor uses the kernel. There must be a reason behind none of them exclusively using the APIs.
  - milkshakes 2y ago
    yeah, it's money.
lmm 2y ago
They were correct that there is no need for it to run in the kernel. They were incorrect in thinking this would affect the company's future, because of course the sales of their product have nothing to do with its technical merit.
- spydum 2y ago