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PaperclipPerfector  24d ago (text post)   32063 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 10, 2025

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Other possibility is that it is not a new personality trait, only its magnitude has increased lately: Musk has had a documented habit of pushing not exactly reality based visions when he has been able to get away with it

I think this is correct. Musk can simultaneously be a narcissistic bullshitter and a highly capable manufacturing CEO. Delusional overconfidence can be a benefit in certain endeavors because even if you fall short of unrealistic expectations you may still exceed what was conventionally thought possible and you may stick with projects when less demented determined people would have called it quits. On the other hand, it can also lead you to throw away time, money, and effort on unrealistic projects that go nowhere because no amount of force of will can overcome the technical problems.

It can also lead you to repeatedly fall for obvious nonsense because you think you're too smart to be wrong, and none of your retinue dares correct you.

This was basically Bad Blood's take on how Theranos happened. Young, demented girl looks out at all her SV heroes faking it till they make it. Wants to do the same thing but is too young and demented to realize it's one thing to say that for a digital widget and another to apply it to a much more unforgiving domain.

It has come to mind before with Elon, like when I heard him talking about cutting $2 trillion.

It can also lead you to repeatedly fall for obvious nonsense because you think you're too smart to be wrong, and none of your retinue dares correct you.

I also think there can be a malign feedback loop here, where if you start being right more often than not you start disregarding advice and overfitting being correct most of the time to being correct 100% of the time and if you start doing this and it pays off (because you're smart) then soon you can get into a sort of death spiral where you just double down on anything and never update your "I am literally never wrong" priors because you had a good run in an area where you are genuinely talented.

It can also lead you to repeatedly fall for obvious nonsense because you think you're too smart to be wrong, and none of your retinue dares correct you.

I've noticed that the best salesmen I know are often the people most easily sold. My friends who are exceedingly talented medical device or insurance salesmen are the same guys getting talked into timeshares or undercoats or whatever.

I agree.

I once had a salesman friend get into my industry and arrange a meeting with me to spruik a very average product that I knew was very average. I couldn't believe how strongly he seemed to believe in the product. I'd known this guy for about 20 years since childhood. He absolutely believed the bullshit that he was spouting about the peddled garbage being the best in the field.

spruik, what a useful word! I'd never heard that one before.

You're right it is. It has real low brow used car salesman or carnival barker vibes.

Man, the Chaser takes me back a bit. There are a lot of good teenage memories watching those guys.

Sure, because often those are the people who believe in themselves the most, and that means both believing (in fate) and believing in themselves, which both make falling for scams more likely.

Exactly. The quality of belief is the common thing.

I have friend who worked at Twitter - he recently quit because Elon just wouldn’t listen to any feedback regarding improvements to processes he was supervising and so he felt it wasn’t worth wasting his time.

I get the feeling that Elon doesn’t listen to feedback in general so that can be helpful in areas he has savant level skill (rocket engine manufacturing) and not helpful where he his instincts steer him wrong (running an ad supported social media company).

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