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Comment by xwowsersx | Hacker News Reader

I have to agree with you and admit that I'm somewhat relieved to see I'm not the only one who felt this way. The list as a whole reflects a certain self-unaware separateness from the "real world". It is hard to describe, but eery indeed.

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I think it smacks of a young person who has been spending a lot of time trying to get an insight into what super-wealthy industry leaders, VC, politicial leaders etc. are wondering about, to the point that these lines of enquiry seem perfectly normal and hasn't had enough exposure to the broader picture to understand why these things are weird, even unfeasible. Could be completely wrong. Just a guess.

EDIT just checked his Bio. Nope, not young. Perhaps just in some sort of bubble. Thinktank perhaps. The whole tone is all very think-tanky.

Haha yes, before you edited I was going to say he's 57! It's more the bubble/think-tank thing, you're right.

He's a "policy wonk"

Its also nuts that one of these "things to work on" is "find me a wife, I'm too high performing to find one on my own."

I strongly disagree with this comment. Many, many people pour massive amounts of time and energy into finding a partner, and often end up dissatisfied with the results. Mechanics that improve the experience and the result of dating really would make life easier and better for many people. If you doubt this, have some conversations with people in their late 20s and 30s who are dating.

Your "find me a wife" portrayal is the least charitable possible interpretation of that section of the article. Was your comment made in good faith?

Since he seems to be married (according to Wikipedia), this strikes me as a very uncharitable reading. (It would also be uncharitable if he wasn't married though)

Uncharitable, yes, but doesn't that item strike you as weirdly out of place?

I mean, even in this list.

I think it's the "highly effective people are not doing this well" comment that strikes us. Nobody is doing this well, but his emphasis on top performers makes it seem like "we need to solve this problem for them so they can go back to being highly effective"

Good point.

To my mind, this list is very much like the "how to make more entrepreneurs (in the VC sense) more successful" articles that show up often.

We may want to solve this problem so they can breed and have highly effective children.

ahh, but for that we need to go back to a world where highly effective people married people who were content to bring up children and not be highly effective themselves. Having children is a huge barrier to being highly effective, unless you can offload all the caring duties onto someone else ;)

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