The challenge with the world is that it requires nuance, ad hoc thinking, and effortful thinking. The human brain doesn't like putting effort into thinking. It's uncomfortable. It's easier for us to just have one rule, one heuristic, that we can simply apply to many similar situations. This is why ideology exists and is so powerful. You can always find people chanting the same phrase or slogan, over and over, regardless of the circumstance. Because it's easier for them to do that than it is for them to treat every situation as unique and to reason through it from first principles. Hell, sometimes that's just not feasible.

In this situation, yeah, sometimes powerful people do dumb shit. And ideologues come by and say, "You just don't understand the 4d chess!"

But also, sometimes it's the opposite! And the powerful person does something smart, but that's unclear or unfamiliar to the average person without massive wealth/access/power. And ideologues from the peanut gallery come by and say, "Another powerful person doing stupid stuff!"

And of course, the right (but alas more effortful) approach is to evaluate each situation individually, and reason through the factors, and also to wait to see how it turns out, before evaluating.

For example, the author evaluations Elon's purchase of Twitter as an irredeemably stupid decision. And I agree, many things about how that went down seem very stupid. But at the same time, dude has launched an AI lab that's gotten tons of press and exposure thanks in large part to X, combined it with his other companies, and is about to IPO for $1.5T+. Maybe you don't like it. Maybe I don't like it. Maybe there's lots to complain about here, but it's difficult to describe this as a "stupid" move.

Does that mean he was playing 4D chess? Also, maybe not! Maybe he just lucked into this situation. Maybe he didn't foresee it initially, but figured it out later. Or maybe, much more reasonably, he figured that he has tons of optionality and tons of leeway, so even if he doesn't have a good plan to begin with, he'll likely figure it out. Who knows.

It's tough to be a speculator judging from the sidelines with incomplete knowledge. And it's even tougher to avoid allowing our biases and ideologies to compel us to simply shout our beliefs rather than being objective and analytical.