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Tim Dillon said summarized it pretty well - can't remember or find the exact quote. Something to the effect of: "Look around at all these things I have - how c

Tim Dillon said summarized it pretty well - can't remember or find the exact quote. Something to the effect of: "Look around at all these things I have - how could I be wrong when I have so much?" And that's how you get the Andreessen's and Musk's of the world stating these nonsensical things as truth. In their minds, financial success is the ultimate yardstick. The fact that they have so much wealth is a testament that their way of thinking is always right. You don't need to look very hard to see this is what they really believe. Elon has done extremely silly things like claiming he was the best Path of Exile player in the world because he paid several people grind his account to a high-level. Having enough money to pay someone to play the game for you, is the same as being good at the game, in his mind.

jasondigitized 6mo ago
[dead]
coldtea 6mo ago
Also doesn't help that wealth means they can own newspapers or social media to promote their shitty takes as gospel, and have armies of regular Joe fanbois, that kiss their ass and tell us how wise they are...
visarga 6mo ago
> In their minds, financial success is the ultimate yardstick. In a loopy recursive way, it is. Cost gates what we can do and become. Paying back your costs to extend your runway is the working principle behind biology, economy and technology. I am not saying rich people are always right, just that cost is not so irrelevant to everything else. I personally think cost satisfaction explains multiple levels, from biology up. Related to introspection - it certainly has a cost for doing it, and a cost for not doing it. Going happy go lucky is not necessarily optimal, experience was expensive to gain, not using it at all is a big loss. Being paralyzed by rumination is also not optimal, we have to act in time, we can't delay and if we do, it comes out differently.
- mayneack 6mo ago
  That may or may not be true in aggregate, but for extreme outliers it's impossible to separate from survivorship bias. Are Musk and Andreeson really the most skilled entrepreneurs in the world or are they just good enough for luck to propel them to stratospheric success?
  - AndrewKemendo 6mo ago
    They’re just the most ruthless If you look at the entire entirety of understood history of biology: The most ruthless always wins That is to say if I go into a village and kill all the adults and teenagers and steal all the kids who are scared to be killed by me, then I will win in the probably two successive generations that I’ve been able to successfully brainwashing into thinking I’m some kind of God. That is until somebody kills me and then takes over the structure. For example there are no dictatorships that last past the third generation That is literally and unambiguously how all life operates There are intermediary cooperation periods. But if you look at the aggregate time periods including how galaxies form it’s all straight up brute force consumption
    - Zigurd 6mo ago
      That's not how humans came to populate areas that previously were dominated by predators who would be obviously deadly to individual humans. Cooperation and planning are what made physically weak humans dominant. That cooperation and planning developed and flourished without authoritarian structures.
      - svachalek 6mo ago
        Tribal chiefs are not authoritarians? Because basically every Stone Age village has one.
        Zigurd 6mo ago
        Read some Charles Mann. Tribal leaders if they can really be described as leaders had to work with consensus and cooperation. Modern society is much more coercive.
lordnacho 6mo ago
What I took from the video game thing is that he thought he could fool people. It's very obvious to gamers when someone hasn't played, it actually doesn't matter whether you have high level gear. There's things you can't buy with money, and respect is one of them. He fundamentally doesn't understand how status works. He could, for free, just put out a video where he says "look at me, I'm a busy CEO, but I play this game even though I'm bad at it". People would think positively about that.
- irishcoffee 6mo ago
  This is made even more interesting by the fact that musk was caught misrepresenting himself playing the computer game Diablo in the not-so-distant past. IIRC he was either buying accounts or paying someone else to stream on his behalf. [0] [0]https://fortune.com/2025/01/20/elon-musk-video-games-scandal-path-of-exile-asmongold-quin/ https://fortune.com/2025/01/20/elon-musk-video-games-scandal...
  - steveklabnik 6mo ago
    Also in sort of stark contrast to the "here's my elden ring build", which was pretty incoherent, and so was believed to be actually his.
    - irishcoffee 6mo ago
      As a complete aside, I beat that game along with the DLC, lvl 170 (scadu 19), all by myself, and it was by far the biggest gaming accomplishment of my life. People who lie about things like that make me sad. It's actually a hard thing to do. Waste of time? Absolutely.
jorblumesea 6mo ago
I really don't think he thought it was equivalent, he was just larping and thought he could trick people.
longislandguido 6mo ago
> The fact that they have so much wealth is a testament that their way of thinking is always right. At least wealth is a quantifiable measure of success in our society. In contrast, many posters on HN think they're always right (it's notorious for it) with no qualifications whatsoever. This discussion is a sea of jealously and a perfect example.
- nkrisc 6mo ago
  There is obviously some minimum level of competence and intelligence required to be wealthy (not losing all of it), but for many becoming fabulously wealthy is as much a matter of circumstance than anything else. I would guess most people here would also be billionaires if they had the same opportunities and circumstances as Musk.
  - array_key_first 6mo ago
    I don't think there's a minimum level of competence even. You can get very wealthy by sheer luck and timing. Also, a lot of wealthly people aren't stupid like we think. They're evil, which is different. And being evil is actually pretty good for being wealthy. Most people are encumbered by their morality. Evil people are not, so they can do much more.
  - deleted 6mo ago
    [deleted]
  - raddan 6mo ago
    This reminds of me the following wonderful Numberphile video [1] where they compare the success of billionares to gas molecules: "everybody is just bumping around randomly but the one person that, you know, that became a billionare or something--they wrote their autobiography 'how I got here, all the great decisions I made to beat everybody'... It was just random." I've always wondered whether it would be possible to compute the expected number of billionaires with a model like this. If the number is higher than the expectation, well ok, some fraction of them are consciously steering themselves into billionaire-hood. Otherwise, it's probably dumb luck. It's a fun null hypothesis. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvwgdrC8vlE&t=57s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvwgdrC8vlE&t=57s
bko 6mo ago
You say financial success as though it is completely independent of pretty much everything. "How could I be wrong, look how handsome I am" To create great wealth in a vibrant capitalist society you have to have some model about the world you can exploit. It can be a better rocket design, some insight into human psychology that can help you raise money, or something else. Some people fall ass backwards into money through luck, but that's rare, and people with great wealth don't have that luxury because they would squander it away and won't be able to grow what they have been given. At any extreme, you have to have both luck and skill. The best athletes are both incredibly gifted and incredibly hard working They could be wrong on some things but to pretend they don't have a somewhat functional world model that is different enough from the consensus that it allows them to exploit it for great wealth is just naive. I think the flip side would be "if you're so smart, why aren't you rich?" I prefer why aren't you happy myself, but sure, random person commenting on the internet about how the wealthiest people in the world don't know anything about the world, why haven't you exploited your superior knowledge relative to said billionaire to amass great wealth for yourself?
- rhines 6mo ago
  The greatest philosophers are rarely the wealthiest people. Wealth generally comes from being presented with opportunities, putting in the work to make the most of those opportunities, and being lucky enough that they end up being good. Intelligence can be an asset here, but bigger assets are knowing people already in positions of power, already having resources you can leverage, and being willing sacrifice years of your life in pursuit of wealth. Those factors don't require you to be well reasoned, logical, or intelligent.
- gentoo 6mo ago
  I think the answer for most people is one of "I wasn't dealt the right hand of cards by fate" and/or "I don't want to spend my life acting like a sociopath and exploiting others for a small chance at great wealth."
- ghywertelling 6mo ago
  I think Marc might be referring to "navel gazing". If introspection is so important, we wouldn't need to do experiments to figure out what is reality. He could be advocating for Empiricism. You will find quotes like "If unsure, take a decision and make it right later. Don't get trapped in analysis paralysis". Basically two camps are fighting here : those who think reality can be figured out by thinking alone. and those who think we need to get out there and collect data and analyse it. I am personally biased toward Radical Conversatism. Paul Dirac (1902–1984) was a British theoretical physicist and mathematician whose work on the Dirac equation (1928), which merged quantum mechanics with special relativity, predicted the existence of antimatter, specifically the positron. His approach to this discovery was deeply rooted in a mathematical philosophy that valued elegance, consistency, and a belief that nature is fundamentally mathematical, often placing him ahead of experimental validation. Radical conservatism in physics, often associated with John Archibald Wheeler, is a philosophical approach that adheres strictly to established, successful principles—like quantum mechanics or general relativity—while pushing them to extreme, unexpected logical conclusions. It involves modifying as few laws as possible (conservative) while daringly following the math to radical insights.
b00ty4breakfast 6mo ago
that's pretty rich coming from Tim "They're paying me enough to ignore slavery" Dillon.
overfeed 6mo ago
> Having enough money to pay someone to play the game for you, is the same as being good at the game, in his mind. It's worse than that: he thinks the point of playing games is to be number 1 in the world.

jasondigitized 6mo ago

[dead]

coldtea 6mo ago

Also doesn't help that wealth means they can own newspapers or social media to promote their shitty takes as gospel, and have armies of regular Joe fanbois, that kiss their ass and tell us how wise they are...

visarga 6mo ago

> In their minds, financial success is the ultimate yardstick. In a loopy recursive way, it is. Cost gates what we can do and become. Paying back your costs to extend your runway is the working principle behind biology, economy and technology. I am not saying rich people are always right, just that cost is not so irrelevant to everything else. I personally think cost satisfaction explains multiple levels, from biology up. Related to introspection - it certainly has a cost for doing it, and a cost for not doing it. Going happy go lucky is not necessarily optimal, experience was expensive to gain, not using it at all is a big loss. Being paralyzed by rumination is also not optimal, we have to act in time, we can't delay and if we do, it comes out differently.

mayneack 6mo ago
That may or may not be true in aggregate, but for extreme outliers it's impossible to separate from survivorship bias. Are Musk and Andreeson really the most skilled entrepreneurs in the world or are they just good enough for luck to propel them to stratospheric success?
- AndrewKemendo 6mo ago
  They’re just the most ruthless If you look at the entire entirety of understood history of biology: The most ruthless always wins That is to say if I go into a village and kill all the adults and teenagers and steal all the kids who are scared to be killed by me, then I will win in the probably two successive generations that I’ve been able to successfully brainwashing into thinking I’m some kind of God. That is until somebody kills me and then takes over the structure. For example there are no dictatorships that last past the third generation That is literally and unambiguously how all life operates There are intermediary cooperation periods. But if you look at the aggregate time periods including how galaxies form it’s all straight up brute force consumption
  - Zigurd 6mo ago
    That's not how humans came to populate areas that previously were dominated by predators who would be obviously deadly to individual humans. Cooperation and planning are what made physically weak humans dominant. That cooperation and planning developed and flourished without authoritarian structures.
    - svachalek 6mo ago
      Tribal chiefs are not authoritarians? Because basically every Stone Age village has one.
      - Zigurd 6mo ago
        Read some Charles Mann. Tribal leaders if they can really be described as leaders had to work with consensus and cooperation. Modern society is much more coercive.

lordnacho 6mo ago

What I took from the video game thing is that he thought he could fool people. It's very obvious to gamers when someone hasn't played, it actually doesn't matter whether you have high level gear. There's things you can't buy with money, and respect is one of them. He fundamentally doesn't understand how status works. He could, for free, just put out a video where he says "look at me, I'm a busy CEO, but I play this game even though I'm bad at it". People would think positively about that.

irishcoffee 6mo ago
This is made even more interesting by the fact that musk was caught misrepresenting himself playing the computer game Diablo in the not-so-distant past. IIRC he was either buying accounts or paying someone else to stream on his behalf. [0] [0]https://fortune.com/2025/01/20/elon-musk-video-games-scandal-path-of-exile-asmongold-quin/ https://fortune.com/2025/01/20/elon-musk-video-games-scandal...
- steveklabnik 6mo ago
  Also in sort of stark contrast to the "here's my elden ring build", which was pretty incoherent, and so was believed to be actually his.
  - irishcoffee 6mo ago
    As a complete aside, I beat that game along with the DLC, lvl 170 (scadu 19), all by myself, and it was by far the biggest gaming accomplishment of my life. People who lie about things like that make me sad. It's actually a hard thing to do. Waste of time? Absolutely.

jorblumesea 6mo ago

I really don't think he thought it was equivalent, he was just larping and thought he could trick people.

longislandguido 6mo ago

> The fact that they have so much wealth is a testament that their way of thinking is always right. At least wealth is a quantifiable measure of success in our society. In contrast, many posters on HN think they're always right (it's notorious for it) with no qualifications whatsoever. This discussion is a sea of jealously and a perfect example.

nkrisc 6mo ago
There is obviously some minimum level of competence and intelligence required to be wealthy (not losing all of it), but for many becoming fabulously wealthy is as much a matter of circumstance than anything else. I would guess most people here would also be billionaires if they had the same opportunities and circumstances as Musk.
- array_key_first 6mo ago
  I don't think there's a minimum level of competence even. You can get very wealthy by sheer luck and timing. Also, a lot of wealthly people aren't stupid like we think. They're evil, which is different. And being evil is actually pretty good for being wealthy. Most people are encumbered by their morality. Evil people are not, so they can do much more.
- deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]
- raddan 6mo ago
  This reminds of me the following wonderful Numberphile video [1] where they compare the success of billionares to gas molecules: "everybody is just bumping around randomly but the one person that, you know, that became a billionare or something--they wrote their autobiography 'how I got here, all the great decisions I made to beat everybody'... It was just random." I've always wondered whether it would be possible to compute the expected number of billionaires with a model like this. If the number is higher than the expectation, well ok, some fraction of them are consciously steering themselves into billionaire-hood. Otherwise, it's probably dumb luck. It's a fun null hypothesis. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvwgdrC8vlE&t=57s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvwgdrC8vlE&t=57s

bko 6mo ago

You say financial success as though it is completely independent of pretty much everything. "How could I be wrong, look how handsome I am" To create great wealth in a vibrant capitalist society you have to have some model about the world you can exploit. It can be a better rocket design, some insight into human psychology that can help you raise money, or something else. Some people fall ass backwards into money through luck, but that's rare, and people with great wealth don't have that luxury because they would squander it away and won't be able to grow what they have been given. At any extreme, you have to have both luck and skill. The best athletes are both incredibly gifted and incredibly hard working They could be wrong on some things but to pretend they don't have a somewhat functional world model that is different enough from the consensus that it allows them to exploit it for great wealth is just naive. I think the flip side would be "if you're so smart, why aren't you rich?" I prefer why aren't you happy myself, but sure, random person commenting on the internet about how the wealthiest people in the world don't know anything about the world, why haven't you exploited your superior knowledge relative to said billionaire to amass great wealth for yourself?

rhines 6mo ago
The greatest philosophers are rarely the wealthiest people. Wealth generally comes from being presented with opportunities, putting in the work to make the most of those opportunities, and being lucky enough that they end up being good. Intelligence can be an asset here, but bigger assets are knowing people already in positions of power, already having resources you can leverage, and being willing sacrifice years of your life in pursuit of wealth. Those factors don't require you to be well reasoned, logical, or intelligent.
gentoo 6mo ago
I think the answer for most people is one of "I wasn't dealt the right hand of cards by fate" and/or "I don't want to spend my life acting like a sociopath and exploiting others for a small chance at great wealth."
ghywertelling 6mo ago
I think Marc might be referring to "navel gazing". If introspection is so important, we wouldn't need to do experiments to figure out what is reality. He could be advocating for Empiricism. You will find quotes like "If unsure, take a decision and make it right later. Don't get trapped in analysis paralysis". Basically two camps are fighting here : those who think reality can be figured out by thinking alone. and those who think we need to get out there and collect data and analyse it. I am personally biased toward Radical Conversatism. Paul Dirac (1902–1984) was a British theoretical physicist and mathematician whose work on the Dirac equation (1928), which merged quantum mechanics with special relativity, predicted the existence of antimatter, specifically the positron. His approach to this discovery was deeply rooted in a mathematical philosophy that valued elegance, consistency, and a belief that nature is fundamentally mathematical, often placing him ahead of experimental validation. Radical conservatism in physics, often associated with John Archibald Wheeler, is a philosophical approach that adheres strictly to established, successful principles—like quantum mechanics or general relativity—while pushing them to extreme, unexpected logical conclusions. It involves modifying as few laws as possible (conservative) while daringly following the math to radical insights.

b00ty4breakfast 6mo ago

that's pretty rich coming from Tim "They're paying me enough to ignore slavery" Dillon.

overfeed 6mo ago

> Having enough money to pay someone to play the game for you, is the same as being good at the game, in his mind. It's worse than that: he thinks the point of playing games is to be number 1 in the world.