Sometimes powerful people just do dumb shit

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."

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.

cosmotic

Better title: Sometimes people do dumb shit, even powerful people

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.