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Comment by tootie | Hacker News Reader

I think there's a lack of appropriate adjectives for people like Balaji and also Musk or even Marc Andreesen. It's plainly obvious that none of them are actually dumb. These are clearly people with high IQs and active imaginations. Where they fall down is in being prone to being wildly irrational. They're also just self-absorbed and seemingly lacking in empathy and compassion.

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> These are clearly people with high IQs and active imaginations. Where they fall down is in being prone to being wildly irrational. They're also just self-absorbed and seemingly lacking in empathy and compassion.

What you are missing is that extreme wealth insulates them from any significant personal consequences of their logical imaginativeness, so such feedback never gets incorporated into their logic.

If the rest of us espoused fascism and then lost our jobs and standing in our communities, we would be in real trouble.

For the tech uber-wealthy (pun intended), money is community. Your community (peers or acolytes) will keep boosting you as long as you have it, because it completes the circular logic that explains your success.

The most dangerous thing to the dictators is yes men.

I tend to see it the opposite way. Yes men are the ones who enable dictators (also cult leaders). Perhaps that's what you actually meant?

This is a weird case of yes to both...

Think of it this way, the yes man will enable the leader to drive the fully loaded truck at 100MPH even when the brakes are bad. The yes man also won't tell the leader they are rapidly approaching a cliff either.

I call it "Engineer Brain" after watching a talented relative descend into madness trying learn virology during the pandemic. It was further crystalized after the Titan submersible incident and reading about the terminal hubris of Stockton Rush.

We spend our lives specializing into ever smaller subdomains of already small domains. A lifetime of bending your brain in one direction, being well compensated, being told you are smart... it leads to tremendous gaffs once you step out of your little specialized world.

It's important to maintain a deep humbleness and acknowledge the gaps in your knowledge. Don't disregard experts in other fields because they are saying things that conflict with your biases. Learn to identify your biases and think about how they may limit you from gaining understanding. It's much more fun to go through life with the attitude of not knowing everything and listening to people who know what they know.

It would be far worse to silo everything off to "experts" in their field. Usually such deference is just a cop out for not learning what they learned.

Often the best work is done when combining the knowledge of people from different fields. Humility is important but more collaboration is needed, not less.

I don't disagree. My two examples were people who not only did not collaborate, but actively resented the knowledge offered from experts different fields.

I do think that past successful collaboration can lead to a bias though. As a programmer I've solved problems for a variety of disparate industries and fields. I know just enough to know I'm vastly ignorant of those fields save for a little part that I helped solve problems for. But I've seen colleagues go the opposite route.

When criticized by people outside the field the reaction seems to be either to ignore or to explain.

Lately I've been watching videos tangential to conspiracies. Too many choose defensiveness when the truth is easier and more interesting.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=MhkTo9Rk6_4 https://youtu.be/RJTbcfHY3AU

No, I don't think this is engineer brain. That's something more neutral, more similar to a hacker mentality, IMO.

This is wealth brain.

> A lifetime of bending your brain in one direction, being well compensated, being told you are smart... it leads to tremendous gaffs once you step out of your little specialized world.

That's not explained by simple engineer brain, plenty of us engineers are not in this position. But those who are wildly, exceptionally successful under capitalism, get their ideas (good and bad) reinforced more and more. They look at their success - money, power, fame, influence, and believe it is due to the correctness of their ideas, not due to the exact stupidity of humans they look down upon.

I agree completely that wealth plays a critical role, if not the most critical role, in all of this. Especially at the higher end with Balaji and all the other would be tech John Galts.

I have just observed that the threshold is low enough that many middle-class engineers achieve it (I've always lived in low cost of living areas where engineers get to live pretty comfortable lives relative to their surroundings. But that's just my one data point). Their folly tends to be more banal, like ordering Ivermectin from Mexican pharmacies or endlessly talking about nuclear power in a near utopian fashion. Admittedly, pretty harmless stuff compared to the article.

I think it could easily be both. A lot of people who fall into this trap aren't all that wealthy. Certainly not to the degree of being isolated from society unless they choose to be.

It's a different form of rationality, one that is self-referential. They understand the Internet as a medium for discourse, where the audience is extremely large but the number of other memes competing for attention is also very large. They also understand that the more outrageous and anger-provoking a statement is, the more likely it is to go viral. Therefore, the way to ensure that your statements actually have an impact is to hype them up to the most provocative, outrageous form that you can, see who bites, piss people off, and get them talking.

We're discussing this article, after all, right? We know who Balaji is. While look at how many very rational "Show HN" posts here fail to get traction or reach the front page.

Oftentimes, there's a kernel of a true idea behind the hype, but it's been taken to the most extreme form possible simply because the most extreme form is the only one that goes viral.

> the most extreme form is the only one that goes viral.

Thus social media drives society insane.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc

This video will make you angry is correct yet again.

But they are doing just fine. Only those of us who see this as the insanity that it is, are falling down.

What mechanisms can fix this?

> These are clearly people with high IQs and active imaginations.

I only see evidence of wealth. Not talent, skill or ability.

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