Yeah discussing honesty seems pointless in real life considering a much lower bar… avoiding writing provable factual lies on the record… is often not even satisfied by large swathes on the population. Who often get away without any noticeable punishment too.
In comparison even a deceiver that says a dozen half truths an hour, without any outright factual lies, seems like a paragon of virtue.
Try going outside and attempt to honestly express your opinion of the current President or Israel or immigrants or ${current_political_thing}. Maybe you live in a political monoculture, but most places are not.
Are the majority of people who make these types of complaints thin-skinned right-wingers? Also yes.
In my experience, people who actually experience intimidation for their views, like you know, the view that being gay is fine actually, don't go around making these types of complaints. They're out protesting and fighting.
Well, there's currently this little conflict going on that had the president call on the National Guard. And a certain governor apparently sided with the rioters and decided to... sue?
... and reading this probably just made steam come out of your ears and think I'm an enemy? Well, there's your war zone ;)
I think that's true of most marketing. The bigger the lie the more shouting has to be done. Peter Thiel mentions that monopoly companies often have the most 'sales' in order to seem competitive. And conversely small competitive companies want to seem large and stable. A bag of lettuce won't have 'healthy' all over the packaging because that's self evident but a bottle or can sugary drink will have all sorts of claims about vitamins there is even a brand called Vitamin Water.
To briefly summarize (and sanitize), just because someone puts a guarantee on the box doesn't mean they'll stand by it. The guarantee on the box makes you feel warm and toasty, and that's what you bought -- the warm feelings. But if you have a quality product, you don't need to advertise the guarantee... the product is good enough on it's own.
Similarly the -refund, no questions asked- even if its honored by merchants plays on a psychological effect where most people wont ask for a refund (even if they dont use the product) unless its really broken/whatever
My father has been a Leatherman guy for as long as I can remember. We were at a gun show or trade fair many years ago, and leatherman had a stall there. They had a guy manning a service station, and the idea was you bring you multitool and they'll oil it, sharpen the blades, tighten screws etc. All free of course.
So my dad sends me with his leatherman to stand in the queue at this stall, while he goes to enjoy the rest of the expo. Eventually my turn comes up, I hand over my dad's multitool and the gentleman gets to work servicing it. He beckons to the person behind me, to find out what he wants. This guy walks up and dumps a heap of parts on the bench. His multitool was in literal pieces. It fell off his belt while at speed on a motorcycle or something.
The Leatherman Man put down my dad's tool, scraped the heap of scrap off the bench into a bin, reached for a shelf behind him and pulled off a brand new multitool and gave it to this guy, and waved him off.
This to me was the most powerful expression of "we got u" I've ever seen from a company, and they don't even put "no questions asked" on the box!
there was a time when apple wasnt a big shot where going to a genius bar felt like this, like your mac could be out of warranty technically but some guy could go above and beyond to try and fix it.
great customer service is a great hack for retention
In general, one's own words are the cheapest, and thus least reliable, form of signaling. If you call yourself "Honest Ed", it's pretty suspicious; if others unironically give you a moniker "Honest Ed", it's high praise.
Understatement is something only the renowned can afford; those who suck (or swindle) have to resort to overstatement and seek gullible audience.
> I’m suspicious whenever someone says, “I’m an (adjective) (noun).” Why did you need to say, “I’m a great tennis player,” “I’m a deep thinker,” or “I’m a generous person”? Instead, why not simply play tennis, regardless of how great you are? Or think as deeply as you want? Or be generous?
Which is why the whole "identification" fad is bullshit. Why bother identifying as a singer if you cannot sing?
Just a continuation of this postmodern delusion that puts the cart before the horse and elevates language and symbols about reality over reality itself.
Most of the time, you don't have to walk the walk though. With the sports example, you can drop being great at it while talking to people at a bar or dinner party or online as you can't be asked to prove it right then and there. If you claim to be a good singer, you can pretty much do that at any time so that's a bit harder.
Sure, just as soon as you show me the proof of existence of "thoughts" and that you exist as something other than an illusion in my mind.
How about the existence of numbers? The proof of 1+1=2? We humans have words for lots of things that only exist as abstract concepts without a physical embodiment.
Identity is one more of those and it's trivial to understand its application to real people.
> semantic drift and inaccurate (or even lacking) definitions for the word "god," which is probably better understood in modern English as "mind" or "mental construct" or "the abstract" (as contrasted with the "concrete" or physical body a la Descartes, in a similar fashion to the distinction between the rarefied air of mathematical models, and the hard reality of physical law). [0]
Right. We have that thoughts exist only if identities exist; identities exist only if gods exist; and that gods are made out of the same mind-stuff as mathematics, thought, and abstraction.
In fact it sounds like your position is tantamount to saying that gods exist if and only if identities exist, which was to be demonstrated.
One wonders why one regards such viewpoints as "secular" (or even, scientific!) when they still bear the hallmarks of what was once regarded as "spiritual" or metaphysical thought.
I think most people get taken advantage of at a car dealership because they don't understand that they must do their homework on what the value is of the vehicle they're interested in, understand the financing, knowing what the extended warranty is worth and always walk away from pressure salesmanship.
If something is confusing, have them print out an offer on the vehicle and take it to someone for help. If they don't want to do that, walk! If the buyer remembers the dealership wants to make as much money as they can, then it's you against them. Since this is a given, what's on paper counts.
They do, seriously it is very common with male interactions. I have seen it first hand with tennis, golf, chess, and bowling. With golf easily being the most common
I find it helpful to tell people who I know only dabble in eg chess that I am "pretty good at chess" when they do not have enough context on things like Elo and FIDE ratings to be able to understand comparisons like that. Of course, if someone knows what Elo is or is an active chess player then I will more humbly just tell them I am only like 1600 on lichess.
I don't think this is necessarily bad. Compared to people who only dabble in things, someone who spends a decent amount of time on something actually is "pretty good" at it even though they might not be top tier to people within that same culture.
I think there is some popular (dan luu?) blog about this. You can actually pretty easily be in the top 1% of skill or knowledge on something, and while that doesn't make you a world expert by any means, it does kinda make you an expert to an average person. My 1600 rating is very good within the pool of people who know what chess is and can play it, even though it's not impressive at all for people who actively play chess.
Chess? Can't you just ask for their ELO? Or some proxy like chess.com rating? If you're good you must have played a lot of games. If you did, you got some number to back it up.
Tennis is competitive though and unlike golf there’s no form of handicap. When it comes to pick up tennis, it’s not fun playing against someone way below or way above your level. I refer to myself as mediocre at tennis so I can play against people who are around my level. People who are good refer to themselves as being good so that everyone enjoys themselves (and improves) on a court.
The difference between good and mediocre is significant. To the point that I cannot return a good tennis player’s serves. The difference between mediocre and post beginner is just as significant.
Having played both tennis and golf, I agree. It's a lot harder to play social tennis than social golf.
Two nice things about golf - the handicap system let's two players of different level engage in fun competition. (Yes, handicaps can be manipulated, but for the most part aren't. )
Second a very good player can play with a bad player, and both can have fun. The social factor is more important to the fun, and I've enjoyed tight games with people with hugely disparate handicaps.
With tennis I always want to play either someone just a little bit better than me. Someone who can help me get a bit better all the time. My enjoyment of the game depends a lot on their performance.
How do you overcome a wrong observation of a local maximum though (e.g. in your club maybe)?
I only experienced something like this once, late 90s. We thought of ourselves as pretty ok StarCraft players until we got some visitor to a lan party who basically demolished everyone. This was pre-ladder iirc so you only played a handful of games online.
In golf the handicap system is "global". Each player has a handicap index, which then translates into a course handicap. It's not perfect (different players have different strengths and weaknesses, which means some courses "suit" a game more than others) but generally the system is at least reasonably accurate.
Tennis of course is harder. You can only be as good as the people you are playing with.
Some of the worst behavior ive seen in my life has been done by devout catholics. who themselves cant see the consequences of their actions. and im not knocking religion, i just had to live alot of life to start being alarmed by outspoken moralists.
> Some of the worst behavior ive seen in my life has been done by devout catholics.
Those same "devout Catholics" can also be found identifying as secular "progressives" or whatever other word is trendy and evokes implications of moral superiority and righteousness. The religions and pantheons may differ but the core psychological mechanisms are the same.
The devout Catholic knows all the canned responses and hymns by rote, but only when the priest is there to prompt him; he forgets his moral code the second he has stood up from the pews.
Analogously the secular progressive will eagerly output all the tokens expected of a "good person" when adequately prompted with contemporary inclusive language; yet they don't appear to be able to keep to their principles in other environments when they aren't being supplied with the exact same context and tokens.
> What a wildly random series of sentences that never bother making an actual point.
What a dismissive and lazy thought terminating cliche with literally zero informational content whatsoever.
> Personally, while I'd rather people be good, I'll settle for them pretending really hard.
The point is people don't even pretend. They receive a prompt then parrot the response by rote which is never understood and then immediately forgotten; by the time all the lip service has been paid and all the tokens emitted they don't even know what it is they're supposed to pretend to do.
You'll noticed I already addressed that. There are a number of virtuous actions you can perform. One of those is "emitting the right tokens" in the right context. Can we argue that other things are more virtuous? Easily. Does the existence of more virtuous actions make these actions nonvirtuous? Of course not.
⁵And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the
hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the
synagogues and in the corners of the streets,
that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you,
They have their reward. [...] ⁷But when ye pray, use
not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think
that they shall be heard for their much speaking. [0]
> Does the existence of more virtuous actions make these actions nonvirtuous? Of course not.
It's less to do with there being more virtuous actions than "vain repetitions" and the parroting of empty words, more to do with the fact that such signaling in the "corners of the streets" is already completely devoid of any virtue other than the immediate (and only) "reward" of merely being seen as virtuous.
> Saying the right thing is a good start.
So this is an argument in favor of calling one's self a "deep thinker" or "a good person" or "authentic" as mentioned in TFA? I mean, these are probably among the "right things" one can say about themselves, so why not start there?
I find often with progressives not that those people are constantly trying to "signal" they support or stand with some people, but rather that they themselves are of some minority and therefore want to surround themselves in places where they're actively accepted.
Like, gay people aren't going to gay bars and drag shows to signal how woke and cool they are. They're going there because that's where they can be them, and that's where they're gonna have fun.
Or, when it comes to identity groups that they're not a part of, there's usually some overlap. Like a lot of the sort of underground gay scene and the black communities go hand and hand, and you'll see the adoption and flow of things like language and culture between them.
I've noticed this with movies. If a movie is being advertised a lot, it's usually a bad movie. Why else are they trying so hard?
The opposite happened with the Matrix. I think I saw 1 bus stop poster for it, and didn't know what it was until multiple people at work said, "you have to see it!" Too bad they never made a sequel.
You might just not like big-budget movies - there's definitely a correlation between the size of the budget and a lack of novelty. Take a look at Wikipedia's list of most expensive films, almost every single one on there is a big franchise film - often late in the franchise too. I think the first one on there that isn't based on previous material is Avatar at #41 and I think the only other is Tenet at #62.
This makes sense - if you're funding a movie you want a return on your investment. You could make 20 risky $10m movies or one that's $200m which has to succeed or else. When you put your money into the $200m movie you want to make sure it's as inoffensive as possible and appeals to as wide an audience as possible, so you want a franchise that's proven to pump out hits in the past (or a director who does the same, like Cameron for Avatar and Nolan for Tenet).
I guess it depends on your definition of a lot. There are plenty of 100 million+ net worth people that have a good moral compass in my experience. Typically these are family business owners or what we'd call owner-operators.
Edit: I'd even argue the general idea of capitalism is virtuous by default.
1) I provide something others find useful
2) I invest (providing capital for others to do 1)
> I'd even argue the general idea of capitalism is virtuous by default.
I wouldn't, in my opinion:
Capitalism incentivizes selfishness at the detriment of others that are "playing the [capitalism] game" or anti-competitive practices. It also pushes people to hoard resources - think Tragedy of the Commons or anti-competitive practices in general. The incentive is to reduce the amount of resources available to competition while increasing your holdings, allowing you to repeat the loop but with higher chances of success.
Providing something others find useful seems like a lucky side effect that often isn't even true, there's a lot of industries who have no intention of providing something useful (like stock trading, short trading especially). Most companies are trying to reduce costs as much as possible, reducing the usefulness of their product/service to the lowest point that people will still pay for.
But I agree with your other points - just because capitalism breeds selfishness it doesn't mean all parties are going to the extremes.
You can't be totally selfish and function in a capitalist society though. To obtain capital at some level you have to provide something that someone else wants.
> It also pushes people to hoard
you don't get really rich by hoarding. you get rich by investing in others.
> short trading especially
no. short trading is the least greedy form of investment. your gains are hard capped and your downside risk is unbounded. long trading has unbounded upside and hard capped downside. if you are shorting aside from exceptionally weird cases, you are acting on information you perceive that other people dont see (like you think the CEO is defrauding the public) and you are praying to god nobody bails out the company.
This is obviously not directly related to the original article, but I don't understand what you mean when you say stock trading isn't useful. Do you mean brokers aren't useful? I don't understand how this could be the case when many people want to own stocks (one major reason being that they want to be able to draw on capital gains to provide income in retirement, either personally or institutionally as part of a pension).
This is _not_ my personal opinion but I think people would argue it doesn't produce anything. If you hold that making money isn't inherently useful a lot of businesses don't make sense. Brokers are just trading abstracted pieces of companies around whose value is subjective. I've heard it described as Pokemon cards for adults.
I'd argue that most people don't "want to own stocks". What they want is (to go from your example) "to have a comfortable life even when they're not working anymore". They just want stocks because that's an available mechanism to achieve that. Similarly people don't want to sit in cramped airline seats, but there aren't available alternatives in many cases.
Capitalism prioritizes making money, not satisfying people's needs and wants.
I knew a tech founder once who spent an hour lecturing us (his employees) on business ethics. He'd even written a little red book (like Mao) to codify his thoughts on how we should all behave.
Fast forward a few years and the guy flees the US after being charged with securities fraud. Spends the rest of his life living on his millions in a foreign country with no US extradition treaty.
Not to be that guy but this just isn’t a helpful heuristic and I think the author fundamentally misunderstands introductions. The point of self identifying with some operating principle (value-add) isn’t about guaranteeing it to be true, it’s a social contract that A: indicates your priorities and B: offers a short-circuit to credibility.
Just because you state yourself as value-add doesn’t mean I am going to believe you are a value-add, it indicates that being value-add is your priority, so if I need to call on my investors for something I might go to you first, and if you fail to be a value add then you discredit literally your entire existence in my professional network.
This is why “introduce yourself” is such a valuable question. It reveals how a person views themself in a context. Do they jump into titles? Achievements? Their operating principles? Their failures? Their insecurities?
> This is why “introduce yourself” is such a valuable question. It reveals how a person views themself in a context. Do they jump into titles? Achievements? Their operating principles? Their failures? Their insecurities?
An old standby I love that is familiar, warm, emphasizes respect and consent, and plays well with individuals or a group:
What was the point of this blog post? To re-use the shit metaphor, to the author of this blog post: Shit or get off the pot. I have a general disdain for these types of post where the author has to know that the very first thing every reader would do is google around to try to figure out exactly who he's talking about (in this case, the psychopathic VC). I.e. leave plenty of details where a determined searcher can figure out the subject of the post, but without naming names. IMO, if you're going to go that far, you should either name names or shut up.
Secondly, the only other takeaway I got from this post is "beware of narcissistic psychopaths, especially in the VC world." Yeah, and water is wet.
VC industry likes to mention that there are bad actors without actually mentioning the bad actors. It's a faux pas to actually name and shame. The industry happens to be small enough and super relationship-driven so, for better or worse, observing the faux pas matters.
I cannot think of a selfish upside to broadcasting who the alleged bad actors are.
But I can think of selfish downside to doing so. Retaliation and discrediting, by someone you already know is underhanded. Also, you don't want to be known as someone who might violate a confidence, or air industry dirty laundry. Also, when someone Web searches your name, you don't want some scandal headline to come up.
I can also think of selfish reason to say that there are bad actors, without naming them: "Of course, we're good ones, just warning you, because we're looking out for you."
Eh. I’m not really into “hard and fast” rules. In most cases, there’s no reason to mention personal assets, but sometimes, it’s useful. Same goes for personal weaknesses.
Whatever I say, I mean; whether making a commitment, giving a compliment, or telling someone that I may be good (or bad) at something, so they can make their own mind up.
I do feel that it’s important to back up what I say. That’s a big reason that I’m so open.
Isn't it the symptom of current time - you have to blatantly self promote yourself? Or is it still easier to let your work speak for you instead of noisy self promotion?
I hope you're joking. You can spend years developing ground-breaking shit in the dark and no one will ever know you exist. You might attract a miniscule following of people who recognize the value of what you're creating, but they won't evangelize for you.
This reminds me of the observation that you shouldn't buy a car from a dealer who calls himself Honest Ed.
Because honest people just go around being honest, they don't go around broadcasting honesty.
Honest Achmed, on the other hand—I hear he issues only the most legitimate of certificates from his Used Cars and Certificates Emporium!
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=647959
Yeah discussing honesty seems pointless in real life considering a much lower bar… avoiding writing provable factual lies on the record… is often not even satisfied by large swathes on the population. Who often get away without any noticeable punishment too.
In comparison even a deceiver that says a dozen half truths an hour, without any outright factual lies, seems like a paragon of virtue.
Or how countries with "democratic" in the name invariably are not.
And few countries are as split into two warring camps as the United States of America.
It's kind of funny: the land of the free is seemingly too brainwashed to take a joke.
Where’s the war? I must not be in a conflict zone
Try going outside and attempt to honestly express your opinion of the current President or Israel or immigrants or ${current_political_thing}. Maybe you live in a political monoculture, but most places are not.
Mate, people yelling insults at you in public in regards to your political opinions is practically the definition of a functioning democracy.
Not if it uses fear and intimidation as a tactic.
Are you technically correct? Yes.
Are the majority of people who make these types of complaints thin-skinned right-wingers? Also yes.
In my experience, people who actually experience intimidation for their views, like you know, the view that being gay is fine actually, don't go around making these types of complaints. They're out protesting and fighting.
150 years ago the us decimated its population with a war.
Well, there's currently this little conflict going on that had the president call on the National Guard. And a certain governor apparently sided with the rioters and decided to... sue?
... and reading this probably just made steam come out of your ears and think I'm an enemy? Well, there's your war zone ;)
I think that's true of most marketing. The bigger the lie the more shouting has to be done. Peter Thiel mentions that monopoly companies often have the most 'sales' in order to seem competitive. And conversely small competitive companies want to seem large and stable. A bag of lettuce won't have 'healthy' all over the packaging because that's self evident but a bottle or can sugary drink will have all sorts of claims about vitamins there is even a brand called Vitamin Water.
Honey Nut Cheerios Heart Healthy Breakfast Cereal. Vitamin Water. Green Hydrogen. Clean Diesel. Patriot Act.
Double Speak
How did I forget the biggest lie of all time: 'Open' AI
That reminds me of the Guarantee scene from the movie Tommy Boy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEB7WbTTlu4
To briefly summarize (and sanitize), just because someone puts a guarantee on the box doesn't mean they'll stand by it. The guarantee on the box makes you feel warm and toasty, and that's what you bought -- the warm feelings. But if you have a quality product, you don't need to advertise the guarantee... the product is good enough on it's own.
(or something like that...)
Similarly the -refund, no questions asked- even if its honored by merchants plays on a psychological effect where most people wont ask for a refund (even if they dont use the product) unless its really broken/whatever
marketing is the art of manipulation
My father has been a Leatherman guy for as long as I can remember. We were at a gun show or trade fair many years ago, and leatherman had a stall there. They had a guy manning a service station, and the idea was you bring you multitool and they'll oil it, sharpen the blades, tighten screws etc. All free of course.
So my dad sends me with his leatherman to stand in the queue at this stall, while he goes to enjoy the rest of the expo. Eventually my turn comes up, I hand over my dad's multitool and the gentleman gets to work servicing it. He beckons to the person behind me, to find out what he wants. This guy walks up and dumps a heap of parts on the bench. His multitool was in literal pieces. It fell off his belt while at speed on a motorcycle or something.
The Leatherman Man put down my dad's tool, scraped the heap of scrap off the bench into a bin, reached for a shelf behind him and pulled off a brand new multitool and gave it to this guy, and waved him off.
This to me was the most powerful expression of "we got u" I've ever seen from a company, and they don't even put "no questions asked" on the box!
Needless to say I'm now also a Leatherman guy.
there was a time when apple wasnt a big shot where going to a genius bar felt like this, like your mac could be out of warranty technically but some guy could go above and beyond to try and fix it.
great customer service is a great hack for retention
Sounds like people that claim to be religious or mention they are Christian to gain trust, I lived in the Bible Belt and saw that a lot
that's everywhere
In general, one's own words are the cheapest, and thus least reliable, form of signaling. If you call yourself "Honest Ed", it's pretty suspicious; if others unironically give you a moniker "Honest Ed", it's high praise.
Understatement is something only the renowned can afford; those who suck (or swindle) have to resort to overstatement and seek gullible audience.
Sometimes people give the names ironically like calling the NFL lineman Tiny
"Open" AI
> I’m suspicious whenever someone says, “I’m an (adjective) (noun).” Why did you need to say, “I’m a great tennis player,” “I’m a deep thinker,” or “I’m a generous person”? Instead, why not simply play tennis, regardless of how great you are? Or think as deeply as you want? Or be generous?
Which is why the whole "identification" fad is bullshit. Why bother identifying as a singer if you cannot sing?
Just a continuation of this postmodern delusion that puts the cart before the horse and elevates language and symbols about reality over reality itself.
Most of the time, you don't have to walk the walk though. With the sports example, you can drop being great at it while talking to people at a bar or dinner party or online as you can't be asked to prove it right then and there. If you claim to be a good singer, you can pretty much do that at any time so that's a bit harder.
When people talk about their own identity, they very rarely mean something like "great at singing".
I admire your confidence that reality is so easily measured and categorized though.
Personally, as I grow older, I find more and more exceptions to things I once thought of as immutable truth.
No, my point is that the concept of identity is nonsense.
Show me a proof of the existence of an "identity" and I will furnish you proof of the soul and god.
Sure, just as soon as you show me the proof of existence of "thoughts" and that you exist as something other than an illusion in my mind.
How about the existence of numbers? The proof of 1+1=2? We humans have words for lots of things that only exist as abstract concepts without a physical embodiment.
Identity is one more of those and it's trivial to understand its application to real people.
> semantic drift and inaccurate (or even lacking) definitions for the word "god," which is probably better understood in modern English as "mind" or "mental construct" or "the abstract" (as contrasted with the "concrete" or physical body a la Descartes, in a similar fashion to the distinction between the rarefied air of mathematical models, and the hard reality of physical law). [0]
Right. We have that thoughts exist only if identities exist; identities exist only if gods exist; and that gods are made out of the same mind-stuff as mathematics, thought, and abstraction.
In fact it sounds like your position is tantamount to saying that gods exist if and only if identities exist, which was to be demonstrated.
One wonders why one regards such viewpoints as "secular" (or even, scientific!) when they still bear the hallmarks of what was once regarded as "spiritual" or metaphysical thought.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43929408
I think most people get taken advantage of at a car dealership because they don't understand that they must do their homework on what the value is of the vehicle they're interested in, understand the financing, knowing what the extended warranty is worth and always walk away from pressure salesmanship.
If something is confusing, have them print out an offer on the vehicle and take it to someone for help. If they don't want to do that, walk! If the buyer remembers the dealership wants to make as much money as they can, then it's you against them. Since this is a given, what's on paper counts.
The more expensive a transaction, the more crap. Houses are worse than cars!
But then if you spend enough more you get into super fancy squads of lawyers territory and a lot more due diligence and contracts.
The sweet spot for scams it:
* rare enough for the average person that they won't do too many in their life, and so it would be high effort to become an expert
* not quite expensive enough that all your potential buyers can lawyer up
Kinda funny that we put up with it. It's not adding value to the economy.
or just call every dealership on the country looking for the ones that randomly need to fill their sales quota that month
I just say "To be honest" when I want to signal I'm about to say something that someone doesn't want to hear or that is slightly inappropriate
The tennis example is weird though. I don't think people who are bad at tennis go around claiming they're great at tennis, do they?
They do, seriously it is very common with male interactions. I have seen it first hand with tennis, golf, chess, and bowling. With golf easily being the most common
I find it helpful to tell people who I know only dabble in eg chess that I am "pretty good at chess" when they do not have enough context on things like Elo and FIDE ratings to be able to understand comparisons like that. Of course, if someone knows what Elo is or is an active chess player then I will more humbly just tell them I am only like 1600 on lichess.
I don't think this is necessarily bad. Compared to people who only dabble in things, someone who spends a decent amount of time on something actually is "pretty good" at it even though they might not be top tier to people within that same culture.
I think there is some popular (dan luu?) blog about this. You can actually pretty easily be in the top 1% of skill or knowledge on something, and while that doesn't make you a world expert by any means, it does kinda make you an expert to an average person. My 1600 rating is very good within the pool of people who know what chess is and can play it, even though it's not impressive at all for people who actively play chess.
Chess? Can't you just ask for their ELO? Or some proxy like chess.com rating? If you're good you must have played a lot of games. If you did, you got some number to back it up.
Dunning Kruger would have us think so.
Also, most people who are good at something let their actions speak.
Tennis is competitive though and unlike golf there’s no form of handicap. When it comes to pick up tennis, it’s not fun playing against someone way below or way above your level. I refer to myself as mediocre at tennis so I can play against people who are around my level. People who are good refer to themselves as being good so that everyone enjoys themselves (and improves) on a court.
The difference between good and mediocre is significant. To the point that I cannot return a good tennis player’s serves. The difference between mediocre and post beginner is just as significant.
Having played both tennis and golf, I agree. It's a lot harder to play social tennis than social golf.
Two nice things about golf - the handicap system let's two players of different level engage in fun competition. (Yes, handicaps can be manipulated, but for the most part aren't. )
Second a very good player can play with a bad player, and both can have fun. The social factor is more important to the fun, and I've enjoyed tight games with people with hugely disparate handicaps.
With tennis I always want to play either someone just a little bit better than me. Someone who can help me get a bit better all the time. My enjoyment of the game depends a lot on their performance.
Both are enjoyable in their own right.
How do you overcome a wrong observation of a local maximum though (e.g. in your club maybe)?
I only experienced something like this once, late 90s. We thought of ourselves as pretty ok StarCraft players until we got some visitor to a lan party who basically demolished everyone. This was pre-ladder iirc so you only played a handful of games online.
In golf the handicap system is "global". Each player has a handicap index, which then translates into a course handicap. It's not perfect (different players have different strengths and weaknesses, which means some courses "suit" a game more than others) but generally the system is at least reasonably accurate.
Tennis of course is harder. You can only be as good as the people you are playing with.
Dunning Kruger is a cognitive bias in overconfident individuals, not a general characteristic found in every person.
There’s a little Dunning-Krueger in all of us. Well, everyone else, but not me, or you, dear reader.
That’s the appeal of Dunning-Krueger. It’s become a blanket label for every moment of ignorance or confident stupidity someone sees in others.
Yup. Anytime someone keeps advertising some trait, its probably a cover up. They might not even be aware of it.
Perhaps they are subconsciously aware of it. That is why they have to go around muttering affirmations to the contrary.
Some of the worst behavior ive seen in my life has been done by devout catholics. who themselves cant see the consequences of their actions. and im not knocking religion, i just had to live alot of life to start being alarmed by outspoken moralists.
> Some of the worst behavior ive seen in my life has been done by devout catholics.
Those same "devout Catholics" can also be found identifying as secular "progressives" or whatever other word is trendy and evokes implications of moral superiority and righteousness. The religions and pantheons may differ but the core psychological mechanisms are the same.
The devout Catholic knows all the canned responses and hymns by rote, but only when the priest is there to prompt him; he forgets his moral code the second he has stood up from the pews.
Analogously the secular progressive will eagerly output all the tokens expected of a "good person" when adequately prompted with contemporary inclusive language; yet they don't appear to be able to keep to their principles in other environments when they aren't being supplied with the exact same context and tokens.
What a wildly random series of sentences that never bother making an actual point.
Personally, while I'd rather people be good, I'll settle for them pretending really hard.
> What a wildly random series of sentences that never bother making an actual point.
What a dismissive and lazy thought terminating cliche with literally zero informational content whatsoever.
> Personally, while I'd rather people be good, I'll settle for them pretending really hard.
The point is people don't even pretend. They receive a prompt then parrot the response by rote which is never understood and then immediately forgotten; by the time all the lip service has been paid and all the tokens emitted they don't even know what it is they're supposed to pretend to do.
You'll noticed I already addressed that. There are a number of virtuous actions you can perform. One of those is "emitting the right tokens" in the right context. Can we argue that other things are more virtuous? Easily. Does the existence of more virtuous actions make these actions nonvirtuous? Of course not.
Saying the right thing is a good start.
It's less to do with there being more virtuous actions than "vain repetitions" and the parroting of empty words, more to do with the fact that such signaling in the "corners of the streets" is already completely devoid of any virtue other than the immediate (and only) "reward" of merely being seen as virtuous.
> Saying the right thing is a good start.
So this is an argument in favor of calling one's self a "deep thinker" or "a good person" or "authentic" as mentioned in TFA? I mean, these are probably among the "right things" one can say about themselves, so why not start there?
[0] Matthew 6:5,7 KJV
I find often with progressives not that those people are constantly trying to "signal" they support or stand with some people, but rather that they themselves are of some minority and therefore want to surround themselves in places where they're actively accepted.
Like, gay people aren't going to gay bars and drag shows to signal how woke and cool they are. They're going there because that's where they can be them, and that's where they're gonna have fun.
Or, when it comes to identity groups that they're not a part of, there's usually some overlap. Like a lot of the sort of underground gay scene and the black communities go hand and hand, and you'll see the adoption and flow of things like language and culture between them.
Similarly, there’s a special military unit whose motto is “Facta Non Verba”— deeds, not words. Talk is cheap!
So we're just posting third party blind item gossip on here huh.
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That's a weird juxtaposition of rare events and extraordinarily frequent ones. :p
Then they gossip about that, then they gossip about the gossip. Its a feedback loop.
Well, it's a social network.
I've noticed this with movies. If a movie is being advertised a lot, it's usually a bad movie. Why else are they trying so hard?
The opposite happened with the Matrix. I think I saw 1 bus stop poster for it, and didn't know what it was until multiple people at work said, "you have to see it!" Too bad they never made a sequel.
You might just not like big-budget movies - there's definitely a correlation between the size of the budget and a lack of novelty. Take a look at Wikipedia's list of most expensive films, almost every single one on there is a big franchise film - often late in the franchise too. I think the first one on there that isn't based on previous material is Avatar at #41 and I think the only other is Tenet at #62.
This makes sense - if you're funding a movie you want a return on your investment. You could make 20 risky $10m movies or one that's $200m which has to succeed or else. When you put your money into the $200m movie you want to make sure it's as inoffensive as possible and appeals to as wide an audience as possible, so you want a franchise that's proven to pump out hits in the past (or a director who does the same, like Cameron for Avatar and Nolan for Tenet).
> Too bad they never made a sequel.
Sarcasm?
https://xkcd.com/566/
Language warning if you have kids around or don’t like that.
from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Matrix_(franchise) sequels:
I'm sure the parent-poster is making a joke about the other movies being bad, as opposed to being bizarrely unaware of them.
It's an xkcd reference
No, this is older than the xkcd. I think it goes back to 1999-2003, when we had hoped we'd ever get a fourth Star Wars movie.
It's an older meme, but it checks out? :)
You meet a lot of people with no morals and no money.
You meet less people with morals and no money.
You meet even fewer with no morals and a lot of money.
And you meet almost no one with morals and a lot of money.
Makes for a four-quadrant diagram that Gartner would never publish.
If ChatGPT generates it for someone's homework or slide deck, who's to say Gartner didn't. :)
I guess it depends on your definition of a lot. There are plenty of 100 million+ net worth people that have a good moral compass in my experience. Typically these are family business owners or what we'd call owner-operators.
Edit: I'd even argue the general idea of capitalism is virtuous by default.
1) I provide something others find useful
2) I invest (providing capital for others to do 1)
> I'd even argue the general idea of capitalism is virtuous by default.
I wouldn't, in my opinion:
Capitalism incentivizes selfishness at the detriment of others that are "playing the [capitalism] game" or anti-competitive practices. It also pushes people to hoard resources - think Tragedy of the Commons or anti-competitive practices in general. The incentive is to reduce the amount of resources available to competition while increasing your holdings, allowing you to repeat the loop but with higher chances of success.
Providing something others find useful seems like a lucky side effect that often isn't even true, there's a lot of industries who have no intention of providing something useful (like stock trading, short trading especially). Most companies are trying to reduce costs as much as possible, reducing the usefulness of their product/service to the lowest point that people will still pay for.
But I agree with your other points - just because capitalism breeds selfishness it doesn't mean all parties are going to the extremes.
You can't be totally selfish and function in a capitalist society though. To obtain capital at some level you have to provide something that someone else wants.
> It also pushes people to hoard
you don't get really rich by hoarding. you get rich by investing in others.
> short trading especially
no. short trading is the least greedy form of investment. your gains are hard capped and your downside risk is unbounded. long trading has unbounded upside and hard capped downside. if you are shorting aside from exceptionally weird cases, you are acting on information you perceive that other people dont see (like you think the CEO is defrauding the public) and you are praying to god nobody bails out the company.
This is obviously not directly related to the original article, but I don't understand what you mean when you say stock trading isn't useful. Do you mean brokers aren't useful? I don't understand how this could be the case when many people want to own stocks (one major reason being that they want to be able to draw on capital gains to provide income in retirement, either personally or institutionally as part of a pension).
This is _not_ my personal opinion but I think people would argue it doesn't produce anything. If you hold that making money isn't inherently useful a lot of businesses don't make sense. Brokers are just trading abstracted pieces of companies around whose value is subjective. I've heard it described as Pokemon cards for adults.
I'd argue that most people don't "want to own stocks". What they want is (to go from your example) "to have a comfortable life even when they're not working anymore". They just want stocks because that's an available mechanism to achieve that. Similarly people don't want to sit in cramped airline seats, but there aren't available alternatives in many cases.
Capitalism prioritizes making money, not satisfying people's needs and wants.
I knew a tech founder once who spent an hour lecturing us (his employees) on business ethics. He'd even written a little red book (like Mao) to codify his thoughts on how we should all behave.
Fast forward a few years and the guy flees the US after being charged with securities fraud. Spends the rest of his life living on his millions in a foreign country with no US extradition treaty.
He fled rather than have the book thrown at him!
Not to be that guy but this just isn’t a helpful heuristic and I think the author fundamentally misunderstands introductions. The point of self identifying with some operating principle (value-add) isn’t about guaranteeing it to be true, it’s a social contract that A: indicates your priorities and B: offers a short-circuit to credibility.
Just because you state yourself as value-add doesn’t mean I am going to believe you are a value-add, it indicates that being value-add is your priority, so if I need to call on my investors for something I might go to you first, and if you fail to be a value add then you discredit literally your entire existence in my professional network.
This is why “introduce yourself” is such a valuable question. It reveals how a person views themself in a context. Do they jump into titles? Achievements? Their operating principles? Their failures? Their insecurities?
I don’t know. I prefer this over no information.
> This is why “introduce yourself” is such a valuable question. It reveals how a person views themself in a context. Do they jump into titles? Achievements? Their operating principles? Their failures? Their insecurities?
An old standby I love that is familiar, warm, emphasizes respect and consent, and plays well with individuals or a group:
“How may I help you?”
I'm an empath
It seems like this is just saying "corporate buzzwords are bullshit", which I agree with but I'm not sure it's news.
What was the point of this blog post? To re-use the shit metaphor, to the author of this blog post: Shit or get off the pot. I have a general disdain for these types of post where the author has to know that the very first thing every reader would do is google around to try to figure out exactly who he's talking about (in this case, the psychopathic VC). I.e. leave plenty of details where a determined searcher can figure out the subject of the post, but without naming names. IMO, if you're going to go that far, you should either name names or shut up.
Secondly, the only other takeaway I got from this post is "beware of narcissistic psychopaths, especially in the VC world." Yeah, and water is wet.
VC industry likes to mention that there are bad actors without actually mentioning the bad actors. It's a faux pas to actually name and shame. The industry happens to be small enough and super relationship-driven so, for better or worse, observing the faux pas matters.
I cannot think of a selfish upside to broadcasting who the alleged bad actors are.
But I can think of selfish downside to doing so. Retaliation and discrediting, by someone you already know is underhanded. Also, you don't want to be known as someone who might violate a confidence, or air industry dirty laundry. Also, when someone Web searches your name, you don't want some scandal headline to come up.
I can also think of selfish reason to say that there are bad actors, without naming them: "Of course, we're good ones, just warning you, because we're looking out for you."
Eh. I’m not really into “hard and fast” rules. In most cases, there’s no reason to mention personal assets, but sometimes, it’s useful. Same goes for personal weaknesses.
Whatever I say, I mean; whether making a commitment, giving a compliment, or telling someone that I may be good (or bad) at something, so they can make their own mind up.
I do feel that it’s important to back up what I say. That’s a big reason that I’m so open.
Isn't it the symptom of current time - you have to blatantly self promote yourself? Or is it still easier to let your work speak for you instead of noisy self promotion?
I hope you're joking. You can spend years developing ground-breaking shit in the dark and no one will ever know you exist. You might attract a miniscule following of people who recognize the value of what you're creating, but they won't evangelize for you.
Was there a time in human history where self promotion didn't work?
"Look upon my works ye mighty...."
"My friend, you can trust me"
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