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>one's chosen enemies must be simultaneously terrifyingly powerful and incompetent dunces I've got some bad news for you.

pcstl 15d ago
I really don't find it coherent to call someone who you keep consistently losing to stupid.
- conception 15d ago
  Stupidity has always been terrifyingly powerful.
  - ben_w 15d ago
    Not really. Things can look stupid when we don't understand them, but there has to be some intelligence somewhere at some point even if the arrival of wealth then suffocates it with sycophants. If Musk or Trump or GWB were all *merely* the idiots they're often mocked as being, chances are we'd never have even heard of them. They almost certainly weren't even "merely average". Now, stupidity that arrives after the bank balance reads a billion dollars, that's terrifyingly powerful.
    - applfanboysbgon 15d ago
      1. Trump was born wealthy. There was no "arrival of wealth" that smothered the intelligence you suppose he might have used to earn the wealth, because he didn't earn it. 2. You don't understand. Trump is successful because of his stupidity, selfishness, and vile behaviour. Not despite it. In 2016, the Republican primary field had 20 or so candidates on a wide range of reasonableness. Trump crushed them all, because he most represents the average Republican voter. If he were more intelligent, or if he cared more about anyone other than himself, they would not have voted for him. His arrogance, lack of intelligence and morals is quite literally his strength because it's what makes him so relateable to the American masses.
      - edgyquant 15d ago
        There are two possibilities. One is that half the country are total idiots and the people leading them, and leading the country, are also total idiots who only got into power because half the country are, again, complete idiots below average intelligence. The other is that you are in a bubble and have been convinced that the leadership of the world’s premier superpower are below average intelligence, along with 70-80 million voters. The former is not something an intelligent person would believe, you have thrown out serious analysis for political theatre and memes and should rethink how you view the world. Now stop to consider that maybe actually half the country has a totally different worldview, and that their leadership, having reshaped global politics, is actually full of intelligent people who are cold and calculating. I know it’s harder to stomach, but just consider it for a moment.
        duk3luk3 15d ago
        This is simply a false dichotomy. Being propagandized into extremism does not require anyone to be a total idiot. Everyone is susceptible to propaganda and populism.
        ben_w 15d ago
        FWIW, I'd count that as a subset of "maybe actually half the country has a totally different worldview". Subset, propaganda is not strictly required for most of it, only for why e.g. Jan 6 didn't disqualify him.
        Danox 15d ago
        Someone like Trump isn’t the first rise to the top of the country and be a con man or be as mad as a hatter in the end… He will not be remembered for his brain power. I think he will be remembered for the decline and the loss of influence by America across the world that will be his legacy.
        ben_w 15d ago
        > below average intelligence, along with 70-80 million voters Given what words mean, approximately 122.3 million US citizens eligible to vote ought to be below average. When you say bubble, I'm inclined to agree, though for reasons that I suspect are uncooth to say out loud: we here are a bubble of smart people, so to us normal looks dumb.
    - marcosdumay 15d ago
      All those people were born rich, with no chance of losing their money. Instead, the smarter rich people stay out of the press. And the only reason we hear about them is because they were always very stupid.
      - ben_w 15d ago
        There's "rich", and there's "enough money to rot your brain". I can believe Trump started with the latter, but the other two were less than that. IIRC GWB was "just" a multimillionaire even when he became president, about the same as Musk when Zip2 got sold. The only reason we hear about Musk is because the gamble on PayPal gave him enough to then roll the dice again on a few more things, of which SpaceX and Tesla kinda actually worked. Though with Tesla, their lifetime profits being ~= lifetime government subsidies to them and their consumers, by "worked" I mean "you can buy them and drive them" rather than it being a genuine business opportunity. While this is a dick move, when the question is "is he smart?", it's still a positive result.
- throawayonthe 15d ago
  you're likely working under an assumption of meritocracy/overvaluing of kinds of intelligence
- colordrops 15d ago
  Because it's not a single data point, intelligence is a wide surface area where you can be smart in some areas and stupid in others. Furthermore whether you are being intelligent is relative to ideals and goals, and not everyone has the same ones.
  - pcstl 15d ago
    "Capability to achieve goals" seems to be fairly independent of goals.
    - colordrops 15d ago
      "Capability to achieve goals" is not synonymous with intelligence.
      - pcstl 15d ago
        I find it difficult to imagine an intelligent person who finds it hard to get what they want. The trope of the oblivious genius who is incredibly competent in a single field of inquiry but completely unable to handle day-to-day life is more a creation of media than how reality works.
        colordrops 15d ago
        Intelligent people don't deal in tropes.
        pcstl 14d ago
        Indeed.
- Pxtl 15d ago
  That's literally the meaning of the statement "the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent". Irrational means stupid. Stupid can win for a very long time, and in the end the "loss" is born mostly by bag-holders.
  - pcstl 15d ago
    This isn't about people who just happened to make it big in a market rally, though. You're talking as if I'm speaking about people who just happened to buy some Bitcoin in 2012 rather than leaders of some of the most successful corporations on Earth. They're not infallible, but modelling them as complete idiots that just happened to get lucky is also... Not really consistent with reality, as far as I can tell. These people might not be good people, but they're good at playing a certain kind of game.
deleted 15d ago
[deleted]
pocksuppet 15d ago
At first I thought you were referring to Umberto Eco's laws of fascism: "Fascist societies rhetorically cast their enemies as at the same time too strong and too weak." but it's subtly different, because incompetence is not weakness.
- Calazon 15d ago
  I read it as suggesting that AI models are simultaneously terrifyingly powerful and incompetent dunces.
  - devindotcom 15d ago
    no, it's the current administration, among others like musk.
    - Calazon 15d ago
      That is also very fair.
- devindotcom 15d ago
  heh, no. Eco is referring to how the white house casts groups like academics, immigrants, socialists, and trans people.
- pcstl 15d ago
  It is weakness in the long-term. It's pretty clear in how people talk about billionaires: They must somehow conclude that the people most successful within a system that rewards certain things are not competent because the things the system rewards are not what they think the system should reward (it is fine to believe the system rewards the wrong things, but people walk straight into denying that those people have skill even within the system, or they claim that skill within the bounds of the system does not reflect any "real" skill - totally ignoring that elites tend to stay elites even through, say, Communist uprisings). Hence how someone can say that Musk is "dumb" with a straight face.
  - 15d ago

pcstl 15d ago

I really don't find it coherent to call someone who you keep consistently losing to stupid.

conception 15d ago
Stupidity has always been terrifyingly powerful.
- ben_w 15d ago
  Not really. Things can look stupid when we don't understand them, but there has to be some intelligence somewhere at some point even if the arrival of wealth then suffocates it with sycophants. If Musk or Trump or GWB were all *merely* the idiots they're often mocked as being, chances are we'd never have even heard of them. They almost certainly weren't even "merely average". Now, stupidity that arrives after the bank balance reads a billion dollars, that's terrifyingly powerful.
  - applfanboysbgon 15d ago
    1. Trump was born wealthy. There was no "arrival of wealth" that smothered the intelligence you suppose he might have used to earn the wealth, because he didn't earn it. 2. You don't understand. Trump is successful because of his stupidity, selfishness, and vile behaviour. Not despite it. In 2016, the Republican primary field had 20 or so candidates on a wide range of reasonableness. Trump crushed them all, because he most represents the average Republican voter. If he were more intelligent, or if he cared more about anyone other than himself, they would not have voted for him. His arrogance, lack of intelligence and morals is quite literally his strength because it's what makes him so relateable to the American masses.
    - edgyquant 15d ago
      There are two possibilities. One is that half the country are total idiots and the people leading them, and leading the country, are also total idiots who only got into power because half the country are, again, complete idiots below average intelligence. The other is that you are in a bubble and have been convinced that the leadership of the world’s premier superpower are below average intelligence, along with 70-80 million voters. The former is not something an intelligent person would believe, you have thrown out serious analysis for political theatre and memes and should rethink how you view the world. Now stop to consider that maybe actually half the country has a totally different worldview, and that their leadership, having reshaped global politics, is actually full of intelligent people who are cold and calculating. I know it’s harder to stomach, but just consider it for a moment.
      - duk3luk3 15d ago
        This is simply a false dichotomy. Being propagandized into extremism does not require anyone to be a total idiot. Everyone is susceptible to propaganda and populism.
        ben_w 15d ago
        FWIW, I'd count that as a subset of "maybe actually half the country has a totally different worldview". Subset, propaganda is not strictly required for most of it, only for why e.g. Jan 6 didn't disqualify him.
      - Danox 15d ago
        Someone like Trump isn’t the first rise to the top of the country and be a con man or be as mad as a hatter in the end… He will not be remembered for his brain power. I think he will be remembered for the decline and the loss of influence by America across the world that will be his legacy.
      - ben_w 15d ago
        > below average intelligence, along with 70-80 million voters Given what words mean, approximately 122.3 million US citizens eligible to vote ought to be below average. When you say bubble, I'm inclined to agree, though for reasons that I suspect are uncooth to say out loud: we here are a bubble of smart people, so to us normal looks dumb.
  - marcosdumay 15d ago
    All those people were born rich, with no chance of losing their money. Instead, the smarter rich people stay out of the press. And the only reason we hear about them is because they were always very stupid.
    - ben_w 15d ago
      There's "rich", and there's "enough money to rot your brain". I can believe Trump started with the latter, but the other two were less than that. IIRC GWB was "just" a multimillionaire even when he became president, about the same as Musk when Zip2 got sold. The only reason we hear about Musk is because the gamble on PayPal gave him enough to then roll the dice again on a few more things, of which SpaceX and Tesla kinda actually worked. Though with Tesla, their lifetime profits being ~= lifetime government subsidies to them and their consumers, by "worked" I mean "you can buy them and drive them" rather than it being a genuine business opportunity. While this is a dick move, when the question is "is he smart?", it's still a positive result.
throawayonthe 15d ago
you're likely working under an assumption of meritocracy/overvaluing of kinds of intelligence
colordrops 15d ago
Because it's not a single data point, intelligence is a wide surface area where you can be smart in some areas and stupid in others. Furthermore whether you are being intelligent is relative to ideals and goals, and not everyone has the same ones.
- pcstl 15d ago
  "Capability to achieve goals" seems to be fairly independent of goals.
  - colordrops 15d ago
    "Capability to achieve goals" is not synonymous with intelligence.
    - pcstl 15d ago
      I find it difficult to imagine an intelligent person who finds it hard to get what they want. The trope of the oblivious genius who is incredibly competent in a single field of inquiry but completely unable to handle day-to-day life is more a creation of media than how reality works.
      - colordrops 15d ago
        Intelligent people don't deal in tropes.
        pcstl 14d ago
        Indeed.
Pxtl 15d ago
That's literally the meaning of the statement "the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent". Irrational means stupid. Stupid can win for a very long time, and in the end the "loss" is born mostly by bag-holders.
- pcstl 15d ago
  This isn't about people who just happened to make it big in a market rally, though. You're talking as if I'm speaking about people who just happened to buy some Bitcoin in 2012 rather than leaders of some of the most successful corporations on Earth. They're not infallible, but modelling them as complete idiots that just happened to get lucky is also... Not really consistent with reality, as far as I can tell. These people might not be good people, but they're good at playing a certain kind of game.

deleted 15d ago

[deleted]

pocksuppet 15d ago

At first I thought you were referring to Umberto Eco's laws of fascism: "Fascist societies rhetorically cast their enemies as at the same time too strong and too weak." but it's subtly different, because incompetence is not weakness.

Calazon 15d ago
I read it as suggesting that AI models are simultaneously terrifyingly powerful and incompetent dunces.
- devindotcom 15d ago
  no, it's the current administration, among others like musk.
  - Calazon 15d ago
    That is also very fair.
devindotcom 15d ago
heh, no. Eco is referring to how the white house casts groups like academics, immigrants, socialists, and trans people.
pcstl 15d ago
It is weakness in the long-term. It's pretty clear in how people talk about billionaires: They must somehow conclude that the people most successful within a system that rewards certain things are not competent because the things the system rewards are not what they think the system should reward (it is fine to believe the system rewards the wrong things, but people walk straight into denying that those people have skill even within the system, or they claim that skill within the bounds of the system does not reflect any "real" skill - totally ignoring that elites tend to stay elites even through, say, Communist uprisings). Hence how someone can say that Musk is "dumb" with a straight face.
- 15d ago