Hacker News Reader

I always found his type of talk to be pretty...vapid. He basically takes a trend in technology, turns it up to 11 with crazy ideas that his "sources" have "seen", and blasts it EVERYWHERE.

Today it's AR this, AR that, secret company X has AR that will REVOLUTIONIZE EVERYTHING in 6 months then when it passes 6 months it's "oh well they're still working on it. I mean he said FOR SURE a clear or see through iPhone would be announced in 2017. How does that even make any sense? He later claimed they were still working on something like that.

It's essentially a way to be famous for being famous and offering nothing of value to anyone.

Since he appeared on the scene I have always wondered, how in an environment where engineers take pride for what they have actually done (US tech world), a guy that only talks and has no engineering accomplishment to show is given that much cognitive space. Back when he was a Microsoft evangelist (!) I have watched a few videos of him to get the sense of a talking human being. And I could't believe how shallow he was. His whole demeanor was one of an airhead.

His hyping of the greatest iphone EVAR was obsurd. Then after the announcement his quiet backing down a-la "they weren't able to get the supply chain figured out" or "they're still working on it"

k.

I'll always remember him as the guy who wore his Google Glass in the shower, posted a picture of it, and then got mad when it broke.

What I remember hating the most was just how successful people like him - and there are plenty - are at being popular.

This is really what boggles my mind. There are so so many people who are "independent consultants or innovators or specialists" but don't code, don't do product management or sales or any other of the core things that businesses do. Yet people somehow listen to them as though they are experts - despite having no expertise or hands on.

I'd love for someone to explain why and how these people get to be well known.

They promote themselves.

So how do they find audiences that don't see right through their BS?

I believe the adage goes, “there’s a sucker born every minute.”

Mssrs. Barnum, Menken, and Gresham would like a word.

P.T. Barnum, I guess? Who are the other two? A quick googling doesn't provide much info...

The sources of three quite famous quotes:

"There's a sucker born every minute." – P.T. Barnum

"No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public." – H.L. Mencken

"Bad money drives out good money." – Thomas Gresham

Gresham's Law strikes me as far more than just about money. Mencken gives a pretty good expansion of it in his 1926 essay "Bayard vs. Lionheart", which is famous for its closing paragraph about an idiot being elected president, but in its development of why that dynamic comes into being reveals a critical truth about the interaction of complexity at population levels.

I'm still working on a fully generalised expression of Gresham's Law, but the basic form is that it operates as a complexity constraint based on the realised returns on complexity within a given market, or the differential across multiple markets.

"Bad money drives out good" is the mechanism that if, in a single market, coin of high specie content and low specie content circulate together and at the same face value, then the high-grade coin will be preferentially withheld from circulation due to its greater intrinsic value. If there's not sufficient coin for all commerce, this need not be all the high-grade coin, but it tends that way.

In multiple markets, if there is a foreign demand for the specie itself, the good coin will seek that (higher) foreign compensation and actually depart the country of issue.

In politics, as Mencken expands the idea, the problem is that within a majority system, the winner of a popular contest will be the candidate who appeals to a majority of voters. A sophisticated candidate who cannot be understood by the common voter is at a marked disadvantage.

In manufacturing and entertainment, assuming a mass market and either winner-take-all or economies-of-scale dynamics, again, you'll find that the offering which is simple enough to be accepted and understood by more (perhaps with a boost from advertising) will do so. There are other dynamics, including the "Market for Lemons" (Ackerlof) which can enter into that -- Mencken pressages that with his mention of David Harum in his essay -- Harum is the title character and horse-trader of a novel and film of the same name, from which the concept "horse trading" entered the vocabulary. (In a pre-industrial time, "horse trader" occupied very nearly the same occupational niche as "used-car salesman", for much the same reasons.)

And, again to government, given multiple jurisdictions, and a potential range of laws graded by strictness, so long as the individual is free to choose the relevant jurisdiction, then a race-to-the-bottom dynamic results where the least-strict regulatory environment dominates, absent any corrective influence. This noted in divorce laws (Nevada, later Alabama, ultimately no-fault in most states), environmental and labour regulations, company incorporation, and international ship registries ("flags of convenience") being typical examples.

(Also thanks for the spelling fix on Mencken. I always forget the 'c'.)

http://amomai.blogspot.com/2008/10/hl-mencken-bayard-vs-lion...

Expertise eats up a lot of time. Not much time left for indulgent self promotion.

The scariest thought to me is a corollary to that idea of looking at the scary incompetence of journalism regarding a subject you understand, and realizing that most topic-specific writing is in the same boat -- right now, we are all looking up to and aggrandizing people who similarly don't produce/work, and not realizing it. A good reminder to think about the people you follow and what they've really done.

This is called the Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect (or rather, you're describing breaking free from it).

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-ge...

Thanks, I learned something new today.

By the way, the curious origin of the name:

"I call it by this name because I once discussed it with Murray Gell-Mann, and by dropping a famous name I imply greater importance to myself, and to the effect, than it would otherwise have."

The full speech in which it appears is interesting: https://web.archive.org/web/20060827111102/http://www.michae...

Famous for being famous.

Three things - in a world like startups where the people in the lead haven't got much experience and might have many doubts, anyone with an explicit opinion and even a vague air of knowledge might be clung to. - Even the people that see through all the BS might still want tot tap into his network of contacts - Exposing him and getting into a fight with a loud bully potentially takes a lot of energy, so most people just shut up and get on with their own things rather than risk being diverted into a non-productive, public and probably drown-out game of mud wrestling.

Confidence mainly, if you're an extrovert who exudes confidence, people will listen.

I think they are called "Journalists".

There are certainly many other powerful men in the tech world who have done similar things, gotten away with it, and believe that they can continue without repercussions.

I hope the response to this story is lasting and harsh enough to send a message to other sexual abusers. If Scoble's career is ended by this story, I think a clear example of 'sexual abuse ends careers of the powerful' would do a lot to reduce this kind of behavior in the future.

If this blows over after a few news cycles, women will be worse off.

> It just felt so unfair how this unintelligent bloke managed to con everyone into thinking his opinion mattered

What is your definition of intelligence? Some would define it as the ability to effectively take advantage of the way things actually are in the world to achieve your goals.

By that measure, people like Scoble are highly intelligent: they see the way the world is and do the things that grant them status and wealth in that world. The same is true of politicians, successful executives, and others that know how to "play the game".

One can have a genius-level IQ and achieve nothing at all because of an unwillingness or inability to play that game. Intelligence isn't worth much if it isn't pragmatic.

Complaining that you'd like people and the world to be different, to allocate status more "fairly", usually won't get you far. Although hopefully exposing the abuses of these people will change things for the better.

I don’t know him personally but I do know of him and have read his articles and watched some YouTube videos. I’d never heard of Weinstein before this happened but I know of Scoble so this feels somewhat surreal. I wonder if he’s woken up to read this yet and what his response will be.

Your general comments about how some people are experts at making themselves appear important ring true in the games industry too, we have a bunch of “journalists” talking about things they don’t understand at all and it is extremely depressing for the development teams that our customers listen to them so keenly.

I've never met Robert Scoble in real life, and have only ever had one interaction with him.

In 2003, I was unemployed and trying to each myself VB.net. I emailed him a question, and he replied to me. I was kind of surprised to get a response.

This obviously doesn't excuse what he has done, but I was grateful to him at the time.

It's like the K* family, famous because they are famous. If not for that they'd be nobodies without any achievements at all.