Discussion
Sometimes powerful people just do dumb shit
lmm: And how does the price Musk paid for Twitter look now? Sure, maybe it was really a dumb move and he just got lucky. But he's been lucky a hell of a lot.
margalabargala: Terrible. Twitter is just now back to the valuation he bought it for, four years and lots of inflation later.If the best you can do with $44B is break even after 4 years that is a piss poor investment.
sfink: I kind of feel like people know how to human, and how the humans around them human, but someone they've never met but only heard about or seen on TV or in meme posts? No clue at all.Sure, we know the hotshot CEO of COMPANY_NAME_HERE has to put on his pants one leg at a time, but the similarity ends there. They're different, they won't fall for the stupid tricks we fall for. They don't have trouble getting out of bed or ever worry about what their kids are up to. They have CEO spouses that don't ask them to take out the trash or think about which yogurt to buy.On the flip side, if they do something bad, that's because they're evil. A deep dark evil totally unlike the banal lameness of the people around us. They don't do stupid shit when someone jerks their chain and they get all worked up. Why would they, they're surrounded by money and other powerful people and have servants feeding them brilliant insights all day long. Everything they do is planned and calculated and they think through the damage they're doing to people in excruciating detail.There's only one species of humans on Earth, and we're all dumb as shit.
mitthrowaway2: If they're not special, why do we have to pay them so much just to get out of bed?
tw04: Absolutely horrible? He absolutely lost his ass on the purchase and is one election away from fraud charges.I guess congrats you bought Twitter and then spent half a billion dollars just so you could temporarily dismantle the regulators who were preventing you from committing open fraud?Or, you know, if you did manage to permanently dismantle the regulators it means you’ve destroyed your primary source of revenue.
WatchDog: He bailed out his Twitter investors by having xAi purchase Twitter, then he bailed out his xAi investors by having SpaceX purchase xAi, and how he is trying to bail out SpaceX by having the index funds be forced to purchase SpaceX.
tw04: > Sure, we know the hotshot CEO of COMPANY_NAME_HERE has to put on his pants one leg at a time, but the similarity ends there.That’s probably because we know consciously or subconsciously that in order to get and maintain a position of power at a multibillion dollar firm the person either never had a moral compass or quickly had to find ways to justify ignoring or compromising it.Any one of us who has worked for one of those companies is pretty confident the person running it views other humans not in the way you describe, but as numbers in a spreadsheet who can either justify their continued employment by other numbers in a spreadsheet or not.Most of us can’t imagine viewing and treating our fellow humans that way.
vjk800: "The Wire" TV show portrays these things well. In it, the powerful people often have the least clue about anything. They are just playing the game and often winning by sheer luck. They also often do fuck up, but because they are powerful, are able to get other people to take the hit for them or build a narrative that hides the fuck up.The older I get, the more I think that this TV show is actually the most realistic portrayal of how the real world works there is.
IIAOPSW: Something I've learned is that in a certain social strata when people do audaciously stupid, its rarely because they lack the common sense to have covered their tracks. Its because they've learned they don't have to. No one is working hard to try and catch them, and even if by some miracle someone does (and people believe them), no government or regulatory body is really interested in punishing them anyway.This broadly goes for non-criminal acts too. Sometimes powerful people do seemingly dumb things because they are only dumb in the context of the incentive structures if one of us tried to do it. In their context, it would be stupid not to egregiously take advantage.
ejoso: How to say you play 4D chess…
eastof: You are still falling for the evil genius trap. The truth is all of us treat our fellow humans this way, see Singer's drowning child. We're simply not wired to care as much about even large groups of people when they are not people we regularly interact with.
bestconncomp: "Don't trust leaders to always be right. I worked to create a leader in this book who would be really an attractive, charismatic person for all the good reasons not for any bad reasons. Then power comes to him, he makes decisions. Some of his decisions made for millions of people, millions upon millions of people. Don't work out too well. I think that our society was formed on a distrust for government. We seem to have lost our distrust for government." - Frank Herbert on DUNEFrank Herbert's Dune is widely recognized, including by scholars and commentators, as a work heavily influenced by Middle Eastern history, Islamic culture, and the geopolitical dynamics of oil. The desert planet Arrakis, with its precious resource "spice," directly mirrors the significance of oil, while the Fremen culture is deeply inspired by Arabic traditions.
lqet: > But none of that stopped him from making one of the dumbest decisions any leader has ever made, because he was arrogant, because he’d gotten away with so much for so long that he confused his luck for a systemHitler did not start as a particularly religious politician. But after escaping multiple assassination attempts by sheer luck, he was more and more convinced that he was actually chosen by God.> There’s a particular kind of person who can’t accept that story at face value, and you’ve met them. I am absolutely sure of it. They show up in every comment section and reply thread where someone powerful does something that looks, on its face, like a mistake - and their argument always runs the same way: you don’t understand, this is actually part of a larger plan, there’s a strategy here that you and I can’t see because we’re not operating at that annointed and elevated level…This kind of thinking becomes a major problem if it creeps into the mind of the powerful person's advisors.
sfink: That's a good question, and although I think I have a good answer, I fear it would be too much of a tangent to speculate on here.
taffydavid: Elons robot obsession is probably more 4d chess / hidden plan theory. At a time when Tesla sales are flagging in Europe despite an enormous surge in overall EV sales due to yet another energy crisis, he's turning Tesla factories into humanoid robot factories to make a robot that doesn't yet work that nobody asked for. I'm sure lots of Tesla fan boys will pay 20k for a robot butler, but an EV fills a need for the average family and an incompetent bipedal Roomba really does not. They should be focused on PR, it's such a short step from where they are now back to being on top of the EV market.
qznc: For my mental model how White House politics work, this article was very influential: https://www.thewrap.com/obama-aides-say-veep-accurate-west-w...> “The funny thing about ‘Veep’ is, we as people who worked in the White House always get asked, okay, what’s the most real? Is it ‘House of Cards? Is it ‘West Wing’? And the answer is, it’s ‘Veep.’ Because you guys nail the fragility of the egos, and the, like, day-to-day idiocy of the decision-making,” Vietor said.Same vibe as "conspiracy theorists are optimists because they believe there is a great plan."
muglug: All gossip I hear about the extremely powerful leads me to believe that they’d be utterly unable to organise any sort of conspiracy themselves.Most haven’t touched Google Calendar in a decade. They can’t call anyone without their assistant typing in the number first.
sfink: > That’s probably because we know consciously or subconsciously that in order to get and maintain a position of power at a multibillion dollar firm the person either never had a moral compass or quickly had to find ways to justify ignoring or compromising it.Maybe. But I suspect that we tend to view those people that way because they play the I Am A Special Human game in public, especially around those they want to impress / are afraid of, and they really aren't very different from the rest of us at any time. We do the same shit when we're around people we want to impress / are afraid of.I do agree that the situations such people are in will influence them. They'll have to get used to making decisions that make a big impact on a lot of people's lives, and they'll start thinking that such things are more normal than you and I ever will. I just don't think it changes them all that much.> Any one of us who has worked for one of those companies is pretty confident the person running it views other humans not in the way you describe, but as numbers in a spreadsheet who can either justify their continued employment by other numbers in a spreadsheet or not.Okay. But I would do the same, and I'm farther from being a CEO than anyone I know. I can afford to care. If I were thrust into such a position, I would have to squash that caring in order to not cause a great deal of harm to those people I care about. Don't let a doctor operate on his/her own children.But get me and the CEO sitting in comfy chairs and shooting the shit after work, and I don't think there'll be much of a difference between us. My jokes will be a little funnier, and he'll be more confident and less awkward. But that's just me, not blue CEO blood.Tell you what. Give me a billion or two dollars and I'll go to a billionaire's hangout. I bet they'll make the same stupid wisecracks, talk about basically the same crap the rest of us do, and get indigestion from eating the too-rich food.I don't exactly disagree with you. Power changes people. It is tempting and easier to become amoral and accustomed to some pretty messed up stuff. It just doesn't change everything about them. In particular, they have the same dysfunctional thought patterns, they make the same sort of cognitive errors, they struggle with the same shit.> Most of us can’t imagine viewing and treating our fellow humans that way.I can.Perhaps it's not that I have a higher opinion of the CEO/billionaire class, it's that I have a lower opinion of all of us. Nazis were not uniquely evil. I think that's become even more obviously true of late. (Did I just invoke Godwin's Law? So be it.)
csallen: The challenge with the world is that it requires nuance, ad hoc thinking, and effortful thinking. The human brain doesn't like putting effort into thinking. It's uncomfortable. It's easier for us to just have one rule, one heuristic, that we can simply apply to many similar situations. This is why ideology exists and is so powerful. You can always find people chanting the same phrase or slogan, over and over, regardless of the circumstance. Because it's easier for them to do that than it is for them to treat every situation as unique and to reason through it from first principles. Hell, sometimes that's just not feasible.In this situation, yeah, sometimes powerful people do dumb shit. And ideologues come by and say, "You just don't understand the 4d chess!"But also, sometimes it's the opposite! And the powerful person does something smart, but that's unclear or unfamiliar to the average person without massive wealth/access/power. And ideologues from the peanut gallery come by and say, "Another powerful person doing stupid stuff!"And of course, the right (but alas more effortful) approach is to evaluate each situation individually, and reason through the factors, and also to wait to see how it turns out, before evaluating.For example, the author evaluations Elon's purchase of Twitter as an irredeemably stupid decision. And I agree, many things about how that went down seem very stupid. But at the same time, dude has launched an AI lab that's gotten tons of press and exposure thanks in large part to X, combined it with his other companies, and is about to IPO for $1.5T+. Maybe you don't like it. Maybe I don't like it. Maybe there's lots to complain about here, but it's difficult to describe this as a "stupid" move.Does that mean he was playing 4D chess? Also, maybe not! Maybe he just lucked into this situation. Maybe he didn't foresee it initially, but figured it out later. Or maybe, much more reasonably, he figured that he has tons of optionality and tons of leeway, so even if he doesn't have a good plan to begin with, he'll likely figure it out. Who knows.It's tough to be a speculator judging from the sidelines with incomplete knowledge. And it's even tougher to avoid allowing our biases and ideologies to compel us to simply shout our beliefs rather than being objective and analytical.
tdeck: > is one election away from fraud charges.Nothing in my lifetime of experience in the US so far, or in the demeanor of the "opposition" party suggests he'll face real consequences for this.
florkbork: I disagree with the parts about Trump: he does know what he is doing. Not because it's a well crafted plan of 4D chess, but because he's deeply anxious/insecure and "lie with grandiosity" is a learned survival mechanism to protect his feelings from reality.It's like expecting a fish to stop swimming - it feels like it's suffocating, it's going to panic and do everything it can to get back into the water, get moving again. The fish isn't playing 4d chess, it's just flipping all over the place until it feels safe again, and then probably forget all of the chaos minutes later.How much this is applicable to the other examples - Musk, Napoleon - unclear. But saying they do "stupid" things without looking at why they might do stupid things is reductionist/overly simple/can PROBABLY be answered with psychology in most cases.
riffraff: I think you have to qualify what you think trump is doing knowingly or not.Lie in every press conference? Sure.Posting an image of himself as Jesus? The guy has dementia.
0xbadcafebee: [delayed]
riffraff: Yeah I don't buy that xAI story, musk would have gotten a popular ai lab even without Twitter if he wanted.Except.. his ai lab is not popular. It has zero value and people only use it because it's on Twitter and they don't pay for it.The fact that he had to merge it with a successful unrelated company tells you all you need to know.
jamauro: If we're not speculating, what are we even doing here?
ozim: Conversely I didn’t understand incentives for junkies to steal bikes to sell those only for 10 or 20 bucks.My incentive structure is nowhere near to theirs. It took a lot of mental effort and empathy for me to grasp what kind of environment they navigate in life to steal my bike I bought for $200.So I also lack understanding of being a millionaire or a billionaire but I definitely lack empathy for those people.
khnad10: The post cleverly and preemptively disparages people who "show up in a thread and claim that everything is part of a larger plan". Posting a picture of Napoleon is cute, but does not prove anything. Those were different times.- The Iran attack plans go back a long way. Netanyahu tried the same during the Obama administration and was rejected. There are Brookings Institute papers that outline all countries that need to fall before attacking Iran. The last one was Syria that fell in 2024.- As is evident now, Trump is not MAGA. Vance was an anti-Trumper in 2016 and is the deepest of deep state via his Thiel sponsor. They are just executing the plans.- The "pro-Russia" sentiment of Vance and Trump appears to be a ruse. They want to make the EU pay more but continue the Ukraine war.- Vance's "support" for Orban was fake and achieved the intended goal: people voted for the opposite and $90 billion for Ukraine of EU money is unblocked.- Vance deliberately torpedoed the Pakistan peace talks.- Democrat protests are weak. Hillary Clinton only criticizes the (ostensible) lack of a plan.The plan is to weaken Russia, China and the EU. The latter two are targeted by high energy prices and increased US dependencies in the case of the EU.The problem is not lone commentators pointing all this out. The problem is that there is a concerted effort to blame all of this on Trump and Israel. Blaming Israel was forbidden prior to the Iran war, now it is a mainstream excuse promoted by mainstream media, left and right wing podcasts and almost all Internet commenters.That is a deliberate strategy to distract from long term goals.
mastermage: and the best thing is then the conspiracy theorists do not go after like the realy small set of things that actualy could be called a real conspiracy. Coughs in the trump files ft. epstein.
ggm: I related to this. I think the 4D chess crowd are, like the "I did my own research" crowd projecting a dominance view in the moment, not actually providing a rebuttal.It's the deux ex machina of our times. How can Elon be wrong about invading Moscow. You don't understand but I do
dv_dt: They are just humans, but if they wield more power, more responsibility should be expected of them. Not just for the business they represent, but also for the society they have an outsized influence upon.
mastermage: I would actualy give the not so benefit of the doubt even to powerful people. Everyone does stupid shit all the time.There is however a significant difference in how the fallout of this dumb shit affects people. Powerful people may do dumb shit and then due to the power sweep the consequences away from themselves. While everyone else would have had to face these consequences.And thats the fundamental issue. Too much power allows dumb decisions to stand unchallenged, and removes the possibility for self correction (due to consequences). Which is fundamentally why the power of singular people needs to be limited.
throwawayqqq11: Its calledhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimism_biasand i beg everyone to consider this not just as and individual bias but systemic in elites and decision makers.
gobdovan: > They have CEO spouses that don't ask them to take out the trash or think about which yogurt to buy.From 'Curb your enthusiasm', I've learnt that that's actually the only thing they ever do.
quantummagic: > The guy has dementia.I think you're right, but it isn't as advanced as Joe Biden's was, by the end of his term.
ZeroGravitas: I though the 4D chess explanation was that he bought it (was forced to buy it by courts) because he was entering politics and wanted to be able to ensure the deaths of half a million children in Africa:https://www.impactcounter.com/dashboard?view=table&sort=inte...It looks like he succeeded wildly at that.
gobdovan: One thing I'd highlight is that the mechanism the OP notices in all the actors is a low-cost way of reducing uncertainty.At each step, what does it cost to admit uncertainty or error vs what is gained from doing so? For a powerful person, appearing decisive often has a lower immediate cost than being indecisive. For a committed supporter, doubting the figure they've invested in has social, psychological and identity costs that outweigh any benefit of changing their beliefs.When the local cost of uncertainty is higher than the perceived benefit of being right, people resolve toward certainty.So the phenomenon could be seen as a cost-minimizing collapse where beliefs and actions settle on whatever preserves stability, even if it means denying something real.So: Benefit(belief update) < Cost(belief update) => certainty collapse -> people believe weird shit
nearbuy: In my experience, people of every social strata sometimes do audaciously stupid things, and it's not because they get special treatment. It's often the people who have gotten in trouble the most that do audaciously stupid things the most frequently, despite experiencing past punishment.Your observation matches what we would see if those people you speak of were just stupid for no reason and committed crimes that aren't caught as often. If a crime is only caught 10% of the time, they probably won't get caught the first few times. You can interpret that as them learning they can get away with it, but the person who just does stupid stuff for no reason will do the same thing, it isn't evidence one way or the other.And they'd still be stupid the first time they committed the crime, before they've learned they can get away with it. And if they get convicted eventually, it was still stupid in the end. And if they don't get caught, we usually don't know about it, which makes it hard to argue that it's actually worth it for them to do these seemingly stupid crimes; we know of their failures but not their successes.
