I've been working with my first client who, I've come to recognize, is _very_ susceptible to believing exaggerated claims. This is someone who would enthusiastically dive into a cult if the right person told him it's nicer there, but instead he's tech entrepreneurship, so AI is always three weeks away from allowing him to replace all his employees.
In the meantime, everyone in the design team keeps sending back content that he's requested from ChatGPT instead of an actual copywriter. Because everyone here, like everyone on HN, can easily tell the difference, but he can't/won't.
What seems to be very difficult with someone like this is, they participate in hype cycles because not doing so leaves them feeling like _everyone knows something_ and they don't. They don't want to be the idiot left behind when something good happens, so they dive into every enthusiastic movement or belief that comes in range. They don't have the ability or will to suss out that each wave is made up of people exactly like them.
There are enough people like this where for better or worse, keeping up with these hype trains has become a solid investment strategy. Imagine getting in early enough on BTC, or DOGE, or AMC, or GME, or NVDA, or whatever comes next instead of cynically scoffing it off (for valid reasons) on its fundamental merits. You'd be singing a different tune I'm sure after it explodes and you've cashed out leaving the zealots on whatever subreddit holding the bag.
"Solid investment strategy" implies one could make money applying this idea consistently. There's a hundred new "next big thing" ideas every year - most of them amount to nothing.
My first impression about this is that your examples lean a lot on survivor bias.
However, with deep enough pockets, you can indeed invest in a thousand hyped things, avoid the worst ones, and see if one or two of these sucker magnets is a moonshot.
And suddenly we're describing traditional venture capitalism. To get rich, you just need to start by being rich!
I don't know, if you get out early enough and only invest a portion of your previous winnings into the next cycle, it only has to work long enough for you to build a decent nest egg. But I suppose the average cycle chaser doesn't think like that...
You can replace greater fool theory with any sort of investment strategy and your sentence is still very valid. The key is to just not over leverage yourself where you will get burned with one strategy. Never invest with money you can't afford to lose.
Exactly. Also for that half dozen successes listed before, there could have been thousands of options available at the time that only look silly in retrospect.
Joining a cult is a lot of fun as long as you can keep your wits about you and leave whenever you choose to. I’ve been in two, always used a fake name and only spent a couple of years in each. You will never be able to match the level of community or feeling of purpose outside of a cult.
Even from within the first few seconds you can tell Feynman is already annoyed with the interviewer. It's possible that there is some history here: there may have already been a long run of questions and he's now become tired of it.
I _think_ I can very easily spot BS. That has its downsides... I very easily get very annoyed with BS.
I know a few people who as good as constantly BS. It's a puzzle to me what drives them, and why it seems like they even don't know they are BSing. Is there some psychological explanation, I'm curious.
I was thinking about giving examples to state my point, but in fact every somewhat sane person must have had those 'WTF are they saying' moments.
I think part of it is that BS is commonly quite effective. Good BSers are commonly good at getting information out of people and feeding it back to them as a kind of echo chamber. Most people will not pose adversarial information (that is say something purposefully wrong) to see if the BSer agrees with it and parrots it back. The BSer confirms the other persons worldviews at the same time spouting whatever crap it is they are selling. Very common tactic in grifters.
One example I can easily recall is some guy bsing about his arena rank in wow. I wasn't good, but I asked enough questions to determine he was absolutely bsing to the point of laughter.
Like the kind of kid that says he has a GF that lives in another city or state or even Canada lol
Yes! This is what I use on technical interviews. I generally ask candidates to describe systems they have worked on in depth from an architecture perspective. This very rapidly spots the BS hand wavers from those who know how their systems work. As a side effect it can also serve as a gauge on how mature or junior they may be.
I wrote a program from scratch, tweaked it throughout my PhD, used it to get results for my thesis. I am quite confident in the robustness and accuracy of the program.
I couldn't explain my code to an interviewer (partially because it wasn't production-ready code, but mostly because I don't interview well). I'm glad I didn't get the job. Moved on to work with people who know I'm not a hand waver.
TBH, I've found there are people that can give great sounding answers that don't correspond all that well to reality.
There are also people who struggle to answer, because reality is more complex than what they can easily convey to someone who doesn't already know the domain.
Hey if you want a mock interview in some as-real-as-possible scenario, find my post on whoishiring and email the careers@ email with your cv, I’ll make sure to get you an interview and get feedback to you.
Feynman did not bulshit the answer as the interviewer does not have a capacity to understand the phenomena any deeper and he gives all valid reasons why. If instead he would have jumped to writing down a Hamiltonian and constructing a partition function from which magnetization could be derived for a magnet it would have killed the interviewer in obscurity.
During Silicon Valley boom cycles, these fast movers ted to do a lot better than people who stop to weigh the pros and cons, moral and ethical considerations, environmental impact, etc. etc.
It could be that their agenda is different from yours. Their agenda, as leader, is to keep all the balls in the air, keep everyone energized, everyone feeling trusted, the whole enterprise moving fast. A way to do that is to just keep charging forward with enthusiasm, at any target that's available. The movement and energy and trust is the thing.
The what and how is not for your client; it's not for the CEO (or not for a certain kind of CEO). That's for you and the employees. The CEO's job is to lead, inspire, motivate, provide resources.
I am yet to find a highly skilled person who gets excited by “moving fast” aka charging towards bullshit targets backed by unrealistic time/quality expectations. And getting highly skilled people bored or demotivated is the best way to drop all the balls that “leader” tries to juggle.
Seriously, I think this whole Marvel movie style leadership will be seen as a huge red flag and anti-pattern in 10-15 years, just like we now look down on those Henry Ford style managers of the 20th century.
In the meantime, everyone in the design team keeps sending back content that he's requested from ChatGPT instead of an actual copywriter. Because everyone here, like everyone on HN, can easily tell the difference, but he can't/won't.
What seems to be very difficult with someone like this is, they participate in hype cycles because not doing so leaves them feeling like _everyone knows something_ and they don't. They don't want to be the idiot left behind when something good happens, so they dive into every enthusiastic movement or belief that comes in range. They don't have the ability or will to suss out that each wave is made up of people exactly like them.
TLDR: High energy, low critical thinking.