4/24/2025 at 10:21:50 AM
> There's Zuck, whose underlings let him win at board-games like Settlers of Catan because he's a manbaby who can't lose (and who accuses Wynn-Williams of cheating when she fails to throw a game of Ticket to Ride while they're flying in his private jet).Why does this seem to be a recurring pattern among the modern ultrawealthy? Does anyone who fails to bend over backwards for them just end up getting exiled? Have the elites through history always been this insecure or is it a modern phenomenon?
If you're wildly successful at something with significant real world influence, why would you care so strongly about something as relatively inconsequential as a board game or a video game? Being good at any kind of game is mostly a function of how much time and energy you've invested into it. If you claim to be an extremely hardcore worker who has any kind of family life there just aren't any leftover hours in the day for you to grind a top position in a game. And anyway, if you're playing games for fun and to bond with people, you probably shouldn't be playing tryhard optimal strategies every game, and should instead explore and experiment with more creative strategies. This is a lesson that took me a while to learn.
by TheAceOfHearts
4/24/2025 at 11:54:43 AM
You've won the lottery, but you don't want to acknowledge that you won the lottery. You want to feel they you deserve your position through hard work and talent. You're living in a society where people are credulous, to some degree they believe that hard work and talent are related to success.So what will happen? Everyone you hire ends up patting you on the back, telling you what a great guy you are.
by lordnacho
4/24/2025 at 1:09:22 PM
> to some degree they believe that hard work and talent are related to successDoes anyone actually believe that hard work and talent are either zero or negatively correlated to success? I don't think the correlation is 1.0, but I firmly believe that it's positive for both.
by sokoloff
4/24/2025 at 2:32:03 PM
I do.108 Billion humans have ever lived on planet earth. 8 billion-ish currently.
Most of them live lives that in no way reflected on their hard work and talent, but rather their circumstances, starting with where and when they were born but encompassing a million different contingencies outside the control of their hard work or talent.
So do you think you have talent and hard work greater than 99% of those many billions? If you're posting on HN you've probably got "success" in that extreme even if you've never applied yourself or excelled in anything of any note.
by ZeroGravitas
4/24/2025 at 3:16:58 PM
Pick any of those 8 billion. Have them work half as hard. Have them have half as much talent. Do their outcomes remain the same , get better, or get worse?You’re arguing that there are other factors that also influence outcomes (and that those other factors are stronger forces).
I agree with that point, but that’s not a refutation to the notion that the coefficients on talent and hard work are positive, nor a convincing argument that success is unrelated to those two factors.
by sokoloff
4/24/2025 at 3:40:17 PM
Can anyone benefit from working 10% harder or smarter? Undoubtedly. But success isn’t linear. It’s clear from the zeitgeist that the ultra-rich and powerful—past or present—aren’t working a million percent harder or smarter; their positions are more accurately explained by structural advantages. The first million might be 95% hard work and talent. The next million, probably a bit less so.by siavosh
4/24/2025 at 3:44:04 PM
> It’s clear from the zeitgeist that the ultra-rich and powerful—past or present—aren’t working a million percent harder or smarter; their positions are more accurately explained by structural advantages.Millions of people had an equal or better starting condition than Mark Zuckerberg so we aren't really lacking privileged people, but vanishingly few of those do become ultra wealthy.
by Jensson
4/25/2025 at 3:38:32 AM
It’s not just about starting condition but also the level of psychotic desire to profit at any cost.by BobbyTables2
4/24/2025 at 3:59:41 PM
I'm not going to get into the role of luck, but more curious -- how many ultra-rich individuals do you think can exist on the planet earth?by siavosh
4/24/2025 at 4:17:25 PM
Point is that wealth is a pretty minor part here compared to luck and skill, as otherwise people born wealthy would dominate the startup world. Instead its people born to upper-middle class families that dominates it.by Jensson
4/24/2025 at 4:46:24 PM
> otherwise people born wealthy would dominate the startup world. Instead its people born to upper-middle class families that dominates it.Those are just two different points on the "wealthy" scale. If you zoom out on a global level, they are not very far apart.
The kind of upper-middle class family that produces startup founders tends to be from the rich countries.
It makes perfect sense that it's the pretty wealthy and not the super-wealthy. There's more of the UMC, and they only need a certain amount of social/economic capital to roll the dice.
by lordnacho
4/24/2025 at 4:43:07 PM
I broadly agree with your point, but you’re overlooking a critical dimension: once someone successfully identifies and exploits a niche (through a combination of skill and luck), the subsequent growth >can< often become largely independent of further skill or luck. At that stage, wealth through some basic intelligence compounds itself, regulatory capture can then occur, monopolistic behaviors can emerge—none of which are necessarily admirable traits in a society. But we're talking about different parts of an elephant and I don't think we disagree, but stepping back what we may disagree about is my opinion that ultra wealth (I'm not talking about millionaires or low level billionaires) but the wealth of Musk/Bezos/Zuck is a bug of the system, not a feature.Humorous analogy: Imagine you’re playing a video game where, through a mix of skill and luck, you stumble upon an incredibly overpowered weapon. With even minimal competence, this weapon lets you easily acquire even more powerful gear, initiating a self-reinforcing loop that rapidly propels you to dominance. Soon enough, your advantage reshapes the entire game—limiting access to similar weapons for other players. The game stops being fun, or as some might put it, it becomes fundamentally unfair.
by siavosh
4/25/2025 at 2:53:19 PM
This is a basic feature of capitalism and every other acquisitive social system.Without forced redistribution of wealth/power that set hard limits you're going to get a runaway, and the whole thing melts down.
This won't happen if the people with wealth/power care about consequences and have the wisdom to model outcomes accurately. But the kinds of people who care about consequences in capitalism are unlikely to be chasing huge wealth in the first place.
The system cannot work. It's fundamentally manic depressive, alternating between irrationally exuberant booms and catastrophic crashes, and consuming talent and raw materials for self-defeating ends.
by TheOtherHobbes
4/25/2025 at 5:58:55 AM
Saying it's literally 0 implies a belief that free will doesn't exist (predeterminism), right? If so, who are you trying to convince here? :pIt's complex.
by 3np
4/25/2025 at 12:43:06 PM
To play devil's advocate: Free will not existing doesn't mean that your environment doesn't affect your outcomes. On the contrary, in fact. So convincing you means that I am the environment that affects you.by Arisaka1
4/25/2025 at 12:57:52 PM
I don't see how that complicates things?This is the thread GP was supposed to be a reply to:
> > Does anyone actually believe that hard work and talent are either zero or negatively correlated to success?
> I do.
by 3np
4/24/2025 at 4:14:11 PM
I imagine first you’d have to define success in a way others might agree with. And talent, for that matter—most notable talents can’t be easily exploited by capital.But, I do know for sure that being wealthy is correlated to neither skill nor hard work, but savvy leverage of the skill and hard work of others. That shit has to end. You should make proportional to the work you put in. Shareholders and investors are even worse.
But whatever. I do not expect the world to improve at this point. We’re just stuck in a shitty place (as humanity) and asked to be grateful for the insight of the rich.
by Throw9444
4/25/2025 at 1:11:33 PM
>You should make proportional to the work you put in.Throughout the 20th century we have seen what such a social structure leads to: millions of deaths from hunger. And always, without exception: the transition to work-based economy - and in the next decade the population becomes many times poorer and a huge percentage of the population dies of starvation.
So no thanks. Between shareholders and investors, and starvation, I choose shareholders and investors.
by Ray20
4/24/2025 at 3:53:26 PM
[dead]by varelse
4/24/2025 at 3:58:21 PM
Circumstances and luck are hugely important, but you have agency even if you don't have full control.Any of us could get hit by a meteor or drop dead at any minute, but working harder towards goals in aggregate moves us towards those goals, so I don't understand how this logic works?
by datadrivenangel
4/24/2025 at 7:14:47 PM
That's assuming that free will actually exists, which is an open question at this point.by amanaplanacanal
4/26/2025 at 4:48:33 AM
By ‘at this point’ you mean since humans started pondering the meaning of existence, right?by lazide
4/24/2025 at 1:21:23 PM
What they want to believe is that their wealth is in proportion to their hard work and talent. But even ignoring luck, in a "tournament market", rewards are a strongly nonlinear function of inputs. Being no 2 in a market which is a natural monopoly has limited rewards.by ajb
4/25/2025 at 2:29:19 PM
Hard work and talent are related to success. But when the outcome is "become the richest person in the world", hard work and talent are a rounding error compared to luck. Does anybody really think Zuckerberg is even in the top 5% hardest working or talented people in the world? A decision as inconsequential as rewriting Facebook to a different language in the early days could have derailed the entire enterprise. There is a lot of luck involved.by camdenreslink
4/25/2025 at 3:58:44 PM
Yes, I would absolutely consider Zuckerberg as one of the top 5% most talented people in the world. Frankly, that isn’t a particularly high bar whatsoever. Haven't you ever been amongst the general populace?You’ve committed the typical sin on this site of overrating technical prowess and underrating business acumen. There’s a reason so many founder CEOs from his era ended up getting sacked while he’s maintained control and Meta has become the behemoth it is. Next you're going to tell us how Steve Jobs was a charlatan and a cheat.
Is the act of buying a lottery ticket a "rounding error" when it comes to winning the powerball?
by daseiner1
4/25/2025 at 4:48:10 PM
I think you underrate the talent of people in the general populace. There are very talented people everywhere. It rarely translates into wealth.By the way, the act of buying a power ball ticket is essentially a rounding error. The odds of winning the grand prize (which is what we're talking about here) is 1 in 292,201,338. That is for all intents and purposes the same as zero.
by camdenreslink
4/25/2025 at 5:09:18 PM
The United States has ~4.25% of the world population, but 8 of the 10 richest people in the world live in the United States.Even if you just take the advantage of being born in the United States (which, fine, exclude Musk from that list then) 7 of the 10 people on the list, including Zuckerberg, are among 5% "luckiest" people in the world just based on where they were born.
This is eliminating any luck they got from hereditary wealth, geographical location, and catching the surge of value in their respective industry at the exact right time.
by BobaFloutist
4/25/2025 at 5:00:21 PM
Seriously, I work at a FAANG and Zuck would be in the top 5% most talented people at my company. Hands down. That doesn't take away from all the things he's clearly _terrible_ at, one being actually caring about other people, but still clearly an exceptional engineer and business mind.by _dark_matter_
4/25/2025 at 6:47:53 PM
Cut it with the FAANG exceptionalism, I worked for multiple FAANGs, you need to reevaluate many of your opinions. The biggest skill people at FAANGs have is getting hired at a FAANG and that is it.by sitkack
4/25/2025 at 8:02:53 PM
I don't know where you got the idea that I have faang exceptionalism, quite the oppositeby _dark_matter_
4/25/2025 at 11:20:25 PM
What if Zuckerberg fell in love with playing the flute as a kid and became one of the best flute players in the world instead of starting Facebook?by UltraSane
4/24/2025 at 1:47:48 PM
You can believe it's positive, but not buy the idea that someone is millions of times more hard working or talented than ordinary people.The guy who has made billions needs the stronger form of this karma-like idea.
by lordnacho
4/24/2025 at 1:33:39 PM
I don't personally know any people who believe that hard work and talent have zero positive correlation with success. However I know many people who believe that parents' socioeconomic status, genetics, luck, birthplace, and lack of scruples are all much more significant factors.I choose to actively reject that mindset because doing so motivates me to focus on elements within my control, but if I'm being honest I think they are probably correct, at least from a statistical perspective.
by asoneth
4/24/2025 at 2:15:21 PM
My take: "winning the lottery" in a Facebook sense requires a floor of talent and work at the early stages, but the odds of winning don't correlate with how much talent and work exists, nor are continued talent and work required once a critical mass of success has occurred. External factors - being in the right place at the right time, having some cushion of familial wealth, etc - dominate once you're over the floor.by JeremyNT
4/24/2025 at 5:56:03 PM
Neither talent nor hard work have anything to do with helping humanity.The reality is that our measurements of success don’t correlate with “goodness”, they correlate with getting stuff done. And you can do lots of evil stuff pretty easily.
The reason so many rich people seem evil is because they are. You don’t become rich via charity. You become rich by exploiting others and siphoning their success to yourself.
It’s just plainly evident in every sector of our economy. You don’t have to pay for the bad shit you do. Look at tobacco. Tobacco is a zero-value or negative-value industry. The sheer existence of tobacco actively makes the world a worse place.
But guess what? They don’t pay for your COPD medicine. They don’t pay for your congestive heart failure. But they will happily take your money for a carton.
All bad costs are externalizer, and all profit is kept. The end result is obvious. The more good you do, the stupider you are. The more evil you do, the more money you make.
by const_cast
4/25/2025 at 1:31:08 PM
Tobacco actually has some value: It produces a craving, which can be satisfied temporarily. Being able to fulfill some kind of desire, even a contrived one, is the value. Or rather, the addiction of smoking created a desire that can definitely be satisfied.by xkcd-sucks
4/24/2025 at 6:20:02 PM
Are you sitting in a room while typing this? At the margin to reduce the odds of heart attacks, you should be at a walking desk outdoors, or ideally not arguing on the internet at all. Someone trying to "help humanity" should decide the threshold of acceptable self harm for you, just like you feel free to decide it for smokers; then after determining how you should live, they can declare that the alternatives make the world a worse place.If I was asked about the best correlate for being evil, honestly trying to make the world a better place by determining how specifically others should live would be on top of the list by a huge margin.
by sershe
4/24/2025 at 9:37:02 PM
> If I was asked about the best correlate for being evil, honestly trying to make the world a better place by determining how specifically others should live would be on top of the list by a huge margin.Really? Telling people, "hey, don't give other's poison, that's bad"... is worse than giving other's poison? You actually believe that?
To give some context, I used to smoke. For a long time!
Nobody wants to smoke. The only people that want you to smoke are the people literally extracting value out of your rotting corpse.
Look, if you actually think those people are better, then whatever. Clearly this isn't something I can dispute or even try to argue against so who cares. Just... find some medication or something, I don't know. This pathetic, self-destructive method of thinking can't be right.
by const_cast
4/25/2025 at 5:34:42 AM
Yep, I used to smoke too. I wanted to smoke and i still sometimes miss social and contemplative aspects of it 17 years after stopping, even though any chemical cravings stopped in a couple monthsOn the later part, your comment was very insightful too, cause you are a perfect example of what I'm talking about.
1) You decide for others what is good for them, implicitly treating their judgements with contempt.
2) When someone suggests that people might have different thresholds and tradeoffs and you probably wouldn't like it if someone who disagrees with you would make life decisions for you with the same moral certitude as you do in 1, you respond with "This pathetic, self-destructive method of thinking can't be right.", dismissive contempt.
The person coming across in these comments is a self-important possibly power-hungry psychopath - exactly what I was talking about. A mini version of the people behind everything from great leap forward and collective farms to white man's burden. I mean you gotta tell these wrong-thinking people how to live their lives correctly, cause you are right and their objections are just some mental defect!
by sershe
4/24/2025 at 3:13:00 PM
At school I used to play marbles. I had no skill whatsoever so I did "set ups" where I put a marble down and other kids threw theirs from a standard distance to hit it. If they missed the marble was mine. More valued marbles got more chances.I got "marble rich" because I knew who the good players were and when one came a long I put my foot over my marble. Once you knew the trick it was impossible not to win on average and be a few marbles better off every day. Even a slight positive over a few weeks turns into a lot.
At a certain point I stopped finding this desirable and felt a bit guilty about it - the marbles were of no use to me really and it was enough to know that I had the trick of succeeding.
I wonder if this is roughly how people get wealthy in real life other than that they don't think "enough".
by t43562
4/25/2025 at 1:10:46 PM
They become rich because 1/ they got marbles to start with 2/ they like marbles when marbles are a thing 3/ they figure out a trick nobody has figured out (and it's just a trick, not much genius in there) 4/ they want more marbles 5/ they don't care if they loose (so they can take risk)by wiz21c
4/24/2025 at 1:26:44 PM
"if hard work was all you needed to get rich, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire".The clothes I'm wearing right now were probably made by a sweatshop laborer working 12 hours a day under awful conditions, getting paid something like 1% of what I make in my tranquil 7 hour workday sitting comfortably at a computer.
I therefore think that just hard work has an almost zero correlation to success by itself.
If you add in "addressing a valuable market", then yes, hard work helps, in that more effort spent addressing that market will likely yield higher rewards. But working hard on something people don't want will not yield success, in my view.
by achenet
4/24/2025 at 2:13:52 PM
"The horse was the best worker in the kolkhoz, but never became its chairman". Heck, there is an entirely too depressing to read (but probably mostly correct) theory about how the office politics work [0] and I imagine it roughly translates to the other fields as well. Putting lots of efforts into some random thing most likely won't make you rich and/or powerful. It's putting the effort into becoming rich and powerful that gets you there — but that takes a rather particular personality and skill set.[0] https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...
by Joker_vD
4/25/2025 at 2:46:42 PM
For most of human history yes, the amount of hard work you did was negatively correlated with success. Kings, Queens, and Pharos sat on thrones while peasants built the pyramids, farmed the land, etc.Even today high effort jobs tend to be low paying, paper shuffling, or keyboard tapping tends to pay better.
by stonemetal12
4/24/2025 at 1:58:29 PM
But negative, but success is correlated to success so much that at some point work and talent are irrelevant. Let's say Zuck has an idea to make something. He has enough people around him discussing ideas that he can basically pick one he likes and it's already pre-filtered. Then he can give it to basically anytime he chooses, with arbitrary skills threshold and resource allocation. Then he's got a whole support network to make it work. And if it falls? A loss of a few millions means nothing to him and he can try again.Every step of that is inaccessible to someone hardworking and talented. So let's say you got lucky once or was born with wealth available to you - you can skip the whole talent and work thing.
by viraptor
4/25/2025 at 2:24:40 PM
To add, it isn’t just hard work and talent but also the willingness to take a calculated risk when an opportunity presents itself. Most talented and hard working people I know are so risk averse that they would let multiple opportunities to make billions pass them by.by jandrewrogers
4/24/2025 at 1:36:24 PM
>Does anyone actually believe that hard work and talent are either zero or negatively correlated to success?On average or for a particular person? Maybe on average there’s an effect (r=.4), so there will be many people for whom that correlation is in their individual case actually negative. Some struggle with this notion, and assume success must signal talent or hard work in individual cases. How one defines success matters a lot too. If one is comparing zuck to some random CEO, say collison, can you say zuck is more hardworking or talented? He is more successful on paper, but I doubt he is significantly more hardworking or talented.
by fooList
4/24/2025 at 3:16:39 PM
Do you actually believe that Mark Zuckerberg worked harder and is more talented than (rounded to the nearest person) every other person on the planet?by blitzar
4/25/2025 at 1:41:41 AM
Who should be promoted and/or given a raise?The person working hard with the same company for 15 years with extensively proven track record and well known impact across the organization?
Or the interview candidate with 5yrs experience?
Yet every time, companies roll out the red carpet for the new guy. He’s probably at least half bluffing and the new company has little concrete evidence of his past performance.
by BobbyTables2
4/24/2025 at 3:02:38 PM
A lot of people seem to think of success as the sum of a bunch of independent variables: positioning + insight + hard work + talent + luck - scruples ... Then, they argue about the relative magnitude of each term.It's obviously more complex than this, but I think it's more useful to think of it as a product. You don't need a high value in any of them to succeed, but a tiny value in even one means you need an astronomical value somewhere else.
by amalcon
4/25/2025 at 11:37:40 AM
To throw some controversy onto the mix, they are related, but in the same way that [some race] is correlated to [some behaviour] in the extremes of the probability distribution, but mostly makes no difference at the overwhelming core of it.And therefore when people say [some race] makes no difference in [some behaviour], and other people say "Why is it always [some race] when we see [some behaviour]", and others say "the observation that [some race] leads to [some behaviour] is false because 50% of the time I see [some other race] being worse than [some race] in terms of [some behaviour]" they are all completely right, but just focusing on different properties of the distribution.
So back to your example, yes, in the extremes, many people who are ultrawealthy may have had those behaviours. But by far and large those behaviours don't make much of a difference to the overwhelming majority of the population, and therefore it's likely that other factors were far more important in terms of making an ultrawealthy person becoming ultrawealthy in the first place. At best, someone who was destined to be ultrawealthy didn't make it because they didn't have those behaviours, but that's more like winning the lottery and being too forgetful to go cash it in, rather than having characteristics that will help you win the lottery in the first place.
by tpoacher
4/25/2025 at 11:47:49 AM
In the case of talent and hard work, I think it works the other way: the vast majority of people will see better results in their “normal/broad-middle” lives from increases in hard work or, said otherwise, suffer negative outcomes from lapses in effort [getting fired for lack of attendance or having worse health outcomes from a lack of exercise being concrete examples].It’s not that interesting or relevant to me whether Musk, Gates, Zuckerberg, Bezos had talent or work ethic as significant elements of their success. It is interesting and relevant to me as an adult, parent, and mentor the role that talent and hard work play in outcomes for my family and the students I mentor.
I strongly doubt it’s anything other than a positive correlation and believe that the correlation is relevant for normal people.
by sokoloff
4/25/2025 at 11:30:29 PM
This is true, but you are conflating two very different definitions of success.If anything, your definition is rather tautological: success is the expected outcome of hard work, which cannot be obtained without it.
Whereas in the case of the ultraworthy, the whole point is that hard work cannot reasonably be expected to lead to astronomical wealth in the absence of other factors, and, in the presence of those factors astronomical wealth might even occur without any hard work. So if ultrawealth is one's definition of success, then no hard work is little more than a red herring.
by tpoacher
4/24/2025 at 2:03:31 PM
I think you can certainly make some of your own luck via hard work, but there is a difference between actually making on your own, and starting on 3rd base.by apercu
4/25/2025 at 4:36:35 PM
It's obviously a combination of talent, hard work and luck. Usually in that order. The luck in Zuck's case was being in the right place at the right time. Obviously he made the most of it with talent and hard work.by chairmansteve
4/25/2025 at 4:23:24 PM
I think that, broadly speaking, hard work and talent strongly predict success. But the circumstances can dramatically affect the magnitude. I have no doubt that Zuck would've been successful in 1880, but not one of the richest people who ever lived. The leverage that comes from being an introverted hacker type was not as great then.by drumdance
4/24/2025 at 1:23:38 PM
I suspect talent and hard work are pretty well correlated with becoming wealthy (say >$10m), but I think you then need a big injection of luck to take you from wealthy to ultra wealthy.by remus
4/24/2025 at 2:05:14 PM
> I suspect talent and hard work are pretty well correlated with becoming wealthy (say >$10m)Statistically, no.
by apercu
4/24/2025 at 2:56:56 PM
Nah bro all the poors are just lazy bro /sby N_Lens
4/24/2025 at 2:09:01 PM
How many are born into it? If I think about the people that I personally know who are worth 8-figures or more they were each born into wealth. I wouldn't ever say that they also don't work hard and have talent, because they truly do, but it doesn't apply to their wealth.by scruple
4/24/2025 at 4:34:19 PM
Talent and hard work at what is what's missing from these discussions, I think.I literally don't even know what kind of work I should do if I wanted to make a billion dollars. I think it's mostly delegating, and convincing people to give me ownership of things that throw off money that I get, or to invest in things for which I have such ownership so my ownership becomes more valuable. But in concrete terms, I don't even know what to do to make that happen, like, step 1 of that process, I have no idea. Just being talented at programming and working hard at it (more talented than I am, and working harder than I do, even) doesn't seem to be a great way to get there. You have to focus on and have talent for activities that cause capital to end up owned by you, and I have zero idea where to even start with that kind of thing.
Meanwhile, I was socialized as a kid into a smear of multiple Fussellian "Prole" categories, plus his "Middle", so I have to hype myself up and still feel bad just to hire a plumber and not hover around them because I feel like I ought to be helping (and definitely feel like I've failed on some level any time I choose to do that instead of doing the work myself), and the notion of owning a business but not working at, or just being a kind of hype-man for it mostly for my personal benefit, weirds me the fuck out, it feels fragile and strange. Why would people let me do that and make so much money from it? It's so weird; I get that's how things work, but the idea of doing it feels scary and kinda gross, and I don't mean because of risk of failure.
I think I'd need a huge mindset shift and a totally different skillset to get actually-rich. I'd need to be a different person entirely. Meanwhile there's a long list of things I am or could become talented at, and could work hard at, and that produce real value, that might make me a living but will never get me past seven or maaaaybe with a ton of right-place-right-time luck ten digits of lifetime earnings, let alone net worth.
by alabastervlog
4/24/2025 at 1:33:30 PM
It's not just luck. It's about how far would you go against the human principles. Remember, zuck is a prime ideological person who never had any ethics on respecting other people's privacy. His well known textual conversation with a friend on calling people "dumb fucks" for giving out their data for using "facebook" is one of the many examples.by zfiber
4/24/2025 at 3:03:33 PM
I think it was a Steve Jobs quote, paraphrase "it's 5% the idea, 95% implementation".Lots of very intelligent and talented people out there. But when you have the good fortune of coming up with a great idea (Facebook in the mid 00's) you have to use your talent to relentlessly implement it.
This is what separates the plebs from the ultra wealthy. Intelligence + talent + idea + implementation = success
by hnpolicestate
4/24/2025 at 9:31:31 PM
> Facebook in the mid 00'sTiming plays a huge role in this too.
by nyarlathotep_
4/24/2025 at 7:34:41 PM
I think it was a Tutankhamun quote, paraphrase "it's 5% the idea and the implementation, 95% having been born into a family who are very wealthy and who also happen to do a good job instilling the innate belief in you that dominating in business is everything".There's a shockingly large number of people out there with buckets of "intelligence + talent + ideas" who never get the opportunity to move to the "implementation" phase of anything as they're too busy surviving, and the world is all the poorer for it.
As if that cruel ignominy weren't enough on its own, we are also blessed with the spectacle of ignoramuses piling up and blaming the "plebs" for a situation they've no control over. What a double whammy.
by -__---____-ZXyw
4/24/2025 at 1:42:36 PM
Enormous numbers of humans work hard and are talented at the things they do. Hard work and talent gets you a middle-class existence, at least if you were born in the right country and with the right resources to go to university, etc.In the case of Zuck, he basically did play a lottery ticket, and a perfect confluence of being in the right place at precisely the right time yielded some success. A million other programmers, working just as hard and just as talented, were trying to make their web app hit at that time and failed.
That's how life is. It is a lottery ticket that Zuck is super rich. And it's a strawman to act as if pointing this out means that hard work and talent don't matter.
And FWIW, the overwhelming predicate of significant business success is sociopathy. I am kind of a broken record on this, but I think Meta's entire business is basically the oxycontin of the online world, and that everyone involved should feel absolute shame about the negative value they bring to the world. Non-sociopaths would have felt shame and changed course when they realized they were getting rich on the mentally ill, conspiracies, misinformation, etc.
by llm_nerd
4/24/2025 at 2:15:52 PM
> The overwhelming predicate of significant business success is sociopathyBingo. Now good luck getting such message into heads of star-stuck young folks who dream of faang and similar jobs thinking there is some respect to get there in 2025, when its all about money.
I work in banking, much better job than startup/faangs could offer here in Europe, at least people aren't so naive when joining. Had a discussion with my boss recently and we figured we have around 40% of management visibly falling under various sociopathic definitions. Not requirement per se but certainly helps thrive up there.
by jajko
4/24/2025 at 6:56:31 PM
> dream of faang and similar jobs thinking there is some respect to get there in 2025Something that has bothered me in recent times is how much more concerned people are with where they work as opposed to what they work on. I honestly believe people would design software to kill puppies and kittens so long as they could tell people they work at a Big N company.
Not to mention, I think a vast majority of the products and services that come out of these Big N companies have increasingly started to reflect this mentality each passing year and have so for the past decade or more.
by hirvi74
4/24/2025 at 2:47:20 PM
I agree with you that there is positive correlation.I also believe those two things are correlated with genetics (and of course environment/upbringing)
by theonething
4/24/2025 at 2:08:07 PM
I have no idea. What I do know is that there's no degree of hard work or talent that will make me a billionaire.by scruple
4/24/2025 at 2:16:37 PM
I'd argue that every billionaire has a talent for persuading capable people to join them on a journey.Having that skill alone isn't enough because you also need to pick the right journey at the right time, but not having that skill definitely means you won't be a billionaire.
by onion2k
4/24/2025 at 5:25:08 PM
This makes me think of early employees in a startup that goes through an IPO or acquisition. Skill and talent get you through the door but heaps and heaps of luck lead to that event. Having personally won a (minor) startup lottery I got to see the luck factor first hand.by scruple
4/24/2025 at 3:30:11 PM
Meh. If you get lucky once and make a chunk of money or were born into money, people will associate that success with skill rather than luck, and follow you hoping that luck repeats. You don't need the skill if you can point at a big house and a nice car.by devin
4/25/2025 at 8:10:46 PM
Depends on what you define as talent.For example there're studies that intelligence over 120 is negatively correlated with success as a leader.
by ajuc
4/25/2025 at 2:46:12 PM
I think they’re like linearly correlated to a point and then other things take over.I do think that the primary factor that can lead to billionaire status aside from luck is sort of moral flexibility / shamelessness / irrational risk tolerance above and beyond hard work and talent.
by techpineapple
4/24/2025 at 1:29:36 PM
[dead]by zfiber
4/24/2025 at 1:21:13 PM
> Does anyone actually believe> I firmly believe that it's positive for both.
Alright, setup an experiment and prove it. Should be easy.
Speculation is free. Can't ever be wrong in the land of uncertainty.
by latency-guy2
4/24/2025 at 1:37:18 PM
Yes, it's totally sensible that someone would setup an experiment to prove a conjecture in a comment thread that will be forgotten in a couple hours. Totally reasonable ask.by overgard
4/25/2025 at 3:51:13 AM
Guess there's nothing we can do then. Beliefs are all that matter.by latency-guy2
4/25/2025 at 4:34:34 AM
> You've won the lottery, but you don't want to acknowledge that you won the lottery.Yes, but where does this drive come from?
I haven't the faintest idea, however we can extrapolate from some facts.
One fact is that they have a lot of money. Duh... But also money is the key metric to measure success, so a lot of other people flock around those who have money so that it rubs a bit off of them, that Midas touch.
Suddenly these ultrawealthy are surrounded by an endless wave of gold diggers. The immediate thing that follows is flatter, and then echo chamber.
Now imagine that goes for years and years. Slowly this metaphorical richy's whole world views -- and also how he view himself, his identity and his relationship with the things around him -- gets tied absolutely to that notion that he is right.
For this imaginary person, losing a game isn't just am innocent loss anymore. It's a direct question of his own identity.
I think this explains a lot, but I'm not psychologist so it's just a wild guess.
by gchamonlive
4/25/2025 at 9:45:14 AM
In addition, I think you have to be sort of selfish to become ultra-wealthy. At some point people who believe that they became rich not by their own merit would start to distribute some wealth around. While selfish and egotistical people would hoard all their wealth, compounding it into ultra-richness.by Nurw
4/24/2025 at 11:55:25 PM
I kind of wonder if they have to dominate to be the unquestioned leader.Like Steve Jobs dominating the whiteboard, or Elon Musk angrily emailing in early Tesla after not being mentioned by PR at the beginning.
by m463
4/24/2025 at 4:32:00 PM
Skill and effort obviously has a part in explaining success.That aside, I can’t be the only person tired of people bringing envy politics to this forum, trying to shoehorn wealth into every single discussion involving someone who is wealthy, as if that’s the only, or even a valid, way to look at everything they do.
by scarab92
4/25/2025 at 1:44:16 PM
There's a trove of truth in this <lottery / denial> perspective. It happens on all levels of success. But what a profoundly different world it would be if wholesome humility was the default tendency. I'm not saying it would be a panacea, but understanding the dynamics, even intuitively, of the myriad interdependencies that allow our every action would be a humble leap in a better direction.For me, the only thing anyone deserves is what everyone else deserves, and everything else is a form of lottery. There's simply no place for arrogance other than delusion. It's good to remember who built the foundations you've succeeded on, and if not beyond one's capacity, with a little dose of reverence, respect or something other than self immersion. Zuckerborg is a mirror for many.
by eth0up
4/24/2025 at 1:28:32 PM
[dead]by zfiber
4/24/2025 at 10:21:46 PM
[dead]by throwaway29812
4/24/2025 at 12:16:09 PM
I wish I could upvote you twice.by mercacona
4/24/2025 at 10:46:10 AM
In order to get into Zuckerberg’s position in the first place, you need to have a highly competitive personality type. And competitive people want to win at EVERYTHING, all the time. It’s a constant compulsion. Even if they might intellectually understand the distinction between “just a game” and “actual serious time”, they don’t “feel” that distinction in their bones. They have no off switch.by Jevon23
4/24/2025 at 11:49:03 AM
I think there are some similar remarks on Bill Gates in another good memoir by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen [1]. Even on his school days, Gates was so sure he will not have a competition on Math, since he was the best at math at his school. When he went to Harvard, (which I somehow remember as Princeton(!) as pointed out by a commenter) and saw people better than him, he changed to applied math from Pure math. (Remarks are Paul's)> I was decent in math and Bill was brilliant, but I spoke from experience at Wazzu. One day I watched a professor cover the black board with a maze of partial differential equations, and they might as well have been hieroglyphics from the Second Dynasty. It was one of those moments when you realize, I just can’t see it. I felta little sad, but I accepted my limitations. I was OK with being a generalist.
> For Bill it was different. When I saw him again over Christmas break, he seemed subdued. I asked him about his first semester and he said glumly, “I have a math professor who got his PhD at sixteen.” The course was purely theoretical, and the homework load ranged up to thirty hours a week. Bill put everything into it and got a B. When it came to higher mathematics, he might have been one in a hundred thousand students or better. But there were people who were one in a million or one in ten million, and some of them wound up at Harvard. Bill would never be the smartest guy in that room, and I think that hurt his motivation. He eventually switched his major to applied math.
Even Paul admits, he was torn between going into Engineering or Music. But, when he saw his classmate giving virtuoso performance, he thought "I am never going to as great as this." So, he chose engineering.
Maybe it is a common trait in ambitious people.
Edits: Removed some misremembered information.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Idea-Man-Memoir-Cofounder-Microsoft/d...
by rottc0dd
4/24/2025 at 11:57:40 AM
Huh. I remember being miles ahead of my peers in computer science in high school. When getting to college and finding people most definitely better than I was, I was incredibly excited to finally find such people, not scared away.by technothrasher
4/24/2025 at 12:52:13 PM
in my experience, people who grow up as the biggest fish in a small pond (whether concerning just fields they care about, or in general) are always 99% of the time, one of these two when they end up a middling fish in the big pond: like you, happy to find peers and inspiring exemplars to collaborate with and learn from, or those who hate that they are not the best anymore.the former group probably leads the healthiest & happiest life fulfillment while pursuing their interests — i'm heavily biased though because i too fall into this category and am proud of this trait.
the latter group consists of people who either spin their wheels real hard and more often than not burn out in their pursuit of being the best, or pivot hard into something else they think they can be the best at (often repeatedly every time they encounter stronger competition) like gates & co, or in rare cases succeed in being the best even in the more competitive environment.
this last .001% are probably people whose egos get so boosted from the positive reinforcement that they become "overcompetitive" and domineering like zuck or elon, and let their egos control their power and resources to suppress competition rather than compete "fairly" ever again.
i think there's a subset of people from both main groups that may move from one into the other based on life experiences, luck, influence of people close to them, maturity, therapy, or simply wanting something different from life after a certain point. i don't have a good model for whether this is most people, or a tiny percentage.
by keerthiko
4/24/2025 at 3:45:02 PM
I think the more common outcome you're not seeing, for the "other" group, is that they just go back to smaller ponds where they excelled in the first place, and often make strong contributions there.Once it's been observed that there are bigger fish, you can't really go back to the naive sense of boundless potentiality, but you can go back to feeling like a strong and competent leader among people who benefit from and respect what you have.
Your comment focuses on the irrepressibly ambitious few who linger in the upper echelons of jet-setting academia and commerce and politics, trying to find a niche while constantly nagged by threats to their ego (sometimes succeeding, sometimes not), but there's many more Harvard/etc alum who just went back to Omaha or Baltimore or Denver or Burlington and made more or less big things happen there. That road is not so unhealthy or unhappy for them.
by swatcoder
4/24/2025 at 4:27:06 PM
this is a very good point, and a blind spot in my comment because IME people who left the small pond in the first place were dissatisfied and unfulfilled there.it is absolutely possible that after experiencing the bigger pond, people can develop purpose in their "original" pond based on values like community and relationships, or even simply dislike the vibes in bigger ponds and want to undo as much as they can. this is a super valuable thing to society and humanity for the most part, as perhaps more change can happen this way than big things happening in big places.
personally i struggle with this, because whenever i re-enter a smaller ecosystem (including/such as the one i grew up around) i feel like everyone has a distorted view of the bigger pond and self-limit themselves, which is a contagious energy i can't stand.
by keerthiko
4/24/2025 at 2:19:50 PM
well putby technol0gic
4/24/2025 at 11:38:08 PM
In pure math at a school like Harvard, the standout kids like the ones in that quote are probably trying to become tenured math professors. There are very few such positions available. You can shoot for the stars, and if you succeed, make about the same as the average software engineer. More likely, get stuck a postdoc. So most students give up pure math at some point. If you realized you weren’t cut out for it in freshman year, you got a head start over the people who got a math phd before finding out the hard way.This pressure didn’t exist in computer science because there were plenty of tech jobs for anyone competent (not sure if that’s still true in 2025). And you didn’t need to be a genius to build something cool.
by aoanevdus
4/25/2025 at 4:43:38 AM
Math can also be taught very young with compounding effect, but you’re very unlikely to be exposed to the coaching and expertise at a young age. Of course the few in the world who combine aptitude with exposure are the kind of people you will find at Harvard. If you’re not one of them you may be a decade behind.I also had a math professor who believed in extreme differences within the research community. He said only a top advisor would actually be engaging with real research and be able to bring you with them.
> More likely, get stuck a postdoc.
I still can’t understand why the outcomes for math Phds are so bad. They have extremely general intelligence which is applicable to any jobs I’ve had. I think it’s some combination of being unable to sell, unable to explain what they do, and still having their aspirations defined by professors.
by grandempire
4/25/2025 at 5:13:50 PM
It's because it's considered settling for lesser to "sell out to industry."Kinda reminds me of the old "amateur athlete" paradigm.
It's not that you can't get a good job with a math PhD, it's that you can't get a good job and the respect of your peers/community. I'm sure there are plenty of companies that would be thrilled to hire math PhDs, they just don't also offer a ton of opportunities to work on cutting edge (math) research and publish papers.
by BobaFloutist
4/24/2025 at 12:03:13 PM
Excuse me for generalizing the point. That's not fair to do just based on these anecdotes. But, I can also understand their perspective.Paul continued to be a guitar player all his life and hosted jamming sessions in his home. I started with piano very late in my life and not very regular, but I am just happy to join the fun party.
by rottc0dd
4/24/2025 at 7:21:58 PM
Congratulations on learning piano. I think everyone who is capable of learning an instrument should consider it.Rachmaninoff once said, "Music is enough for a lifetime, but a lifetime is not enough for music." So, no matter when one starts, there would never be enough time to truly master the craft.
I believe it is better for one to start late and enjoy it than start early and burnout.
by hirvi74
4/25/2025 at 6:13:07 AM
Thanks a lot. It is really fun. But, I don't have adult company in my neighborhood.If take "What if I don't became great with this" anxiety out of the equation, it feels just more fun and life seems a little more colorful being a beginner.
by rottc0dd
4/24/2025 at 1:47:25 PM
That’s not a common reaction with humans. When people are the best, there’s a huge serotonin rush. Like literally this is measurable in humans.Serotonin regulates dominance hierarchies and is associated with happiness. It’s so biological in nature that the same effect can be witnessed in lobsters. People or lobsters high in dominance have more serotonin and are generally happier.
Your story is not only anomalous. But it’s anomalous to the point where it’s unrealistic too. I can’t comment on this but if you did not feel the associated come down of serotonin I’m more inclined to say you’re not being honest with yourself more then you’re a biological anomaly. There’s likely enough variation in genetics to produce people like you so I’m not ruling it out.
by ninetyninenine
4/25/2025 at 6:47:20 PM
Human instinct is a complex of different things acting in opposite directions, including things that work against hierarchy.I'm shocked that you think this is an unbelievable reaction, I know lots of people who really do think like that.
I wonder if you might find C S Lewis's lecture on the "inner ring" interesting.
by kybernetikos
4/25/2025 at 7:10:24 AM
It sounds like the commenter above is just less insecure about themselves and more excited for opportunities to discuss and learn than you and whoever you're describing here are.by Llamamoe
4/25/2025 at 12:38:42 PM
No im saying dominance hierarchies are the natural order of things and it’s ingrained in biology.Pretending that hierarchy doesn’t matter and that you don’t care where you are in that hierarchy is lying to yourself.
It’s like saying the janitor is equal in respect to the software engineer. We don’t like to admit but the janitor is less respected and looked down upon. I’m annoyed by people who pretend it doesn’t matter.
by ninetyninenine
4/25/2025 at 5:33:40 PM
I don’t know if some people are just wired differently, but I can back up the feeling of not caring at all where I fall in a hierarchy or how much people respect or don’t respect me.The things I find most thrilling always relate to being challenged. Finding someone better than me qualifies. Having ideas challenged or being proven wrong are the most positive experience I’ve had, especially being forced to change deeply held beliefs. I mention this because it’s one of those things that I always hear people say that everyone hates, but I’ve always felt the opposite, just from a pure chemical feeling perspective. I don’t think I could possibly be unique in that experience.
by ewzimm
4/24/2025 at 4:54:53 PM
I don’t think they said anything about their serotonin. They just described their reaction to the situation. If we were able to ask lobsters about their self-experience we might learn something about them too.by dullcrisp
4/24/2025 at 10:10:05 PM
You sound like Jordan Peterson.by nadir_ishiguro
4/24/2025 at 12:01:50 PM
A less unflattering interpretation might be that once they saw the level of skill required to contribute to a field, they switched to a field that they could more meaningfully contribute to.by marcianx
4/24/2025 at 1:42:47 PM
I think the reality though is you don't need to be in the top 99.999% to contribute to a field, you just need a unique take/voice. Trying to be the best at anything is a bad strategy in a connected worldby overgard
4/24/2025 at 12:08:43 PM
Yeah, but these are also about people who are not even starting off at a field. These are teenagers. It really stood out that they can think where they can make most impact in the world at such an young age.by rottc0dd
4/24/2025 at 1:28:54 PM
Agreed, it's very impressive. The distribution of capability in the human race is incredible.by xeromal
4/24/2025 at 12:46:50 PM
What are you talking about? Our society harasses every teenager to think again and again and give definite answers to exactly that kind of question. It's completely normal and exactly like every other young person.by marcosdumay
4/25/2025 at 4:48:53 AM
Especially for smart kids who are used to getting in that positive feedback cycle of rewards and admiration.by grandempire
4/24/2025 at 12:44:31 PM
And to understand that there are people who are much better, to internalize it and change the major also requires some intelligence. I wish I had that insight instead of banging my head against the walls, barely passing while others sailed through and continued to Phd with half my effort.by myth_drannon
4/24/2025 at 1:41:35 PM
There’s a very very similar story about Jeff bezos and physics.https://youtu.be/eFnV6EM-wzY?si=Nc_EqhXEFJVuQWS6
I’m not making this up. Seems like a shared personality trait among these people.
by ninetyninenine
4/24/2025 at 12:19:53 PM
I’m pretty sure Gates went to Harvard, not Princeton.by jrpelkonen
4/24/2025 at 12:32:00 PM
You are right. I should have looked it up.> I was decent in math and Bill was brilliant, but I spoke from experience at Wazzu. One day I watched a professor cover the black board with a maze of partial differential equations, and they might as well have been hieroglyphics from the Second Dynasty. It was one of those moments when you realize, I just can’t see it. I felta little sad, but I accepted my limitations. I was OK with being a generalist.
> For Bill it was different. When I saw him again over Christmas break, he seemed subdued. I asked him about his first semester and he said glumly, “I have a math professor who got his PhD at sixteen.” The course was purely theoretical, and the homework load ranged up to thirty hours a week. Bill put everything into it and got a B. When it came to higher mathematics, he might have been one in a hundred thousand students or better. But there were people who were one in a million or one in ten million, and some of them wound up at Harvard. Bill would never be the smartest guy in that room, and I think that hurt his motivation. He eventually switched his major to applied math.
by rottc0dd
4/24/2025 at 7:03:14 PM
> Even Paul admits, he was torn between going into Engineering or Music. But, when he saw his classmate giving virtuoso performance, he thought "I am never going to as great as this." So, he chose engineering.Coincidentally, I had a very similar experience, and made a similar decision to switch to software engineering. However, the irony is that I am also just a bad, if not worse, at software engineering. Oh well, not a day goes by that I regret my decision.
by hirvi74
4/24/2025 at 2:07:54 PM
"Oh well, I'm not going to be Andres Segovia, so I guess I will never pick up a guitar."I think that attitude comes from people who are deeply unhappy. They need therapy.
by apercu
4/24/2025 at 3:15:19 PM
When I was 18 years old and a new classical guitar student, I was very fortunate to hear the Maestro in concert. I even got to meet him briefly afterward because my music professor had some connection to him.I was blown away at the time by what was possible and that, even though he was very old at the time and had to be led out onstage by the arm, needed help getting seated, and had the guitar placed in his lap, what he could still play was so far advanced of anyone in my class who were all in attendance.
The temptation (and I have felt this many times since then after hearing various guitarists) could have been "I should just quit now because I'll never be that good." But I'm glad I didn't succumb to that and decided that "I'd rather not sound like anyone else" and still feeling pleasure and accomplishment from playing on my own terms.
by wyclif
4/24/2025 at 7:32:25 PM
I wonder if our professors knew each other?My classical guitar instructor was well acquainted with Segovia, and he himself, was a student of Julian Bream. However, my instructor was without a doubt one of the most angry people I think I have ever interacted with. He was somewhat better known for his arrangements and less so as a performer.
> "I should just quit now because I'll never be that good."
I never had to think about this because my instructor would often tell me this. XD
by hirvi74
4/24/2025 at 8:04:03 PM
Mastery comes with age, no way around that.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pi7WcHqBNU - Here are some bits of wisdom from Japanese master chefs, both young and old.
by imp0cat
4/25/2025 at 2:03:32 PM
In light of this, it's weird how the software industry, especially startup culture, is so rife with age discrimination.by cratermoon
4/26/2025 at 10:25:52 AM
Experienced people see through b.s. and push back. Less experienced people are simply easier to exploit. And whether or not the current job market allows us proper perspective, a large part of our working population is exploited. That’s how capitalism works in practice.by apercu
4/24/2025 at 12:24:41 PM
> In order to get into Zuckerberg’s position in the first place, you need to have a highly competitive personality type. And competitive people want to win at EVERYTHING, all the time.Many competitive people want to win, but they want to win the real game, not a rigged version.
by eru
4/24/2025 at 12:35:25 PM
> Many competitive people want to win, but they want to win the real game, not a rigged version.There are far, far fewer of these people than you think. Lance Armstrong was the best, and he cheated to win anyway. Barry Bonds was the best, and he cheated to win anyway. Tom Brady was the best, and he cheated to win anyway.
by kibwen
4/24/2025 at 1:06:38 PM
The thing Tom Brady is accused of (deflating footballs) is scientifically proven to be a result of the ideal gas law. The NFL admitted they had no idea that was a thing when they levied the accusations at him.Even if you believe the NFL and it was "more probable than not" that he was "generally aware" of a scheme to deflate the balls, let's not pretend that accusation is even in the same universe as what Bonds and Armstrong did
by hackeman300
4/25/2025 at 2:18:30 PM
Perhaps he failed to cheat, but the text messages that came out make it very clear that he attempted to.by fallingknife
4/25/2025 at 12:19:41 AM
Though a far cry from steroids & doping, DeflateGate was found NOT to be explainable by the ideal gas law.https://web.archive.org/web/20191107043435/https://static.nf...
"we have concluded that it is more probable than not that Jim McNally (the Officials Locker Room attendant for the Patriots) and John Jastremski (an equipment assistant for the Patriots) participated in a deliberate effort to release air from Patriots game balls after the balls were examined by the referee
...
Our consultants confirmed that a reduction in air pressure is a natural result of footballs moving from a relatively warm environment such as a locker room to a colder environment such as a playing field. According to our scientific consultants, however, the reduction in pressure of the Patriots game balls cannot be explained completely by basic scientific principles, such as the Ideal Gas Law, based on the circumstances and conditions likely to have been present on the day of the AFC Championship Game. In addition, the average pressure drop of the Patriots game balls exceeded the average pressure drop of the Colts balls ...
...
Based on the testing and analysis, however, Exponent concluded that, within the range of likely game conditions and circumstances studied, they could identify no set of credible environmental or physical factors that completely accounts for the Patriots halftime measurements or for the additional loss in air pressure exhibited by the Patriots game balls, as compared to the loss in air pressure exhibited by the Colts game balls. Dr. Marlow agreed with this conclusion. This absence of a credible scientific explanation for the Patriots halftime measurements tends to support a finding that human intervention may account for the additional loss of pressure exhibited by the Patriots balls."
by verteu
4/24/2025 at 12:53:27 PM
>Many competitive people want to win, but they want to win the real game, not a rigged version.Apply the phrase to the staff member he lost to, and the situation makes sense. The staff member wants to win the real game (of remaining a high-salary Facebook employee), and will throw an otherwise inconsequential game of Catan to maintain that position's security.
by OtherShrezzing
4/24/2025 at 1:25:55 PM
The do anything to win mentality often includes bending the rules where they can. Someone listed some top people in their various sports below but I'd include Lebron too. Dude is the best basketball player the world has ever seen at least when considering longevity but he still flops often to get what he wants even though he doesn't need to to win. He's just going to get every edge.by xeromal
4/24/2025 at 12:30:50 PM
Some people view rigging the game as a part of a larger game.by Jensson
4/24/2025 at 2:44:54 PM
Yes, that is a convenient escape hatch for justifying amoral behavior.by shermantanktop
4/24/2025 at 12:55:56 PM
In my personal experience the will to win and the willingness to cheat in general correlates.by Gravityloss
4/24/2025 at 12:31:38 PM
There is no real game in the fog of business development. You invent your own and see if it works.by mensetmanusman
4/24/2025 at 1:35:13 PM
The game of capitalism is to win by any means necessary. Rigging the game and evading the law is part of game itself. All winners play the game this way.by ninetyninenine
4/24/2025 at 6:15:26 PM
What does any of this have to do with capitalism?Have you ever seen a succession struggle in eg any old monarchy?
by eru
4/25/2025 at 6:22:37 AM
Capitalism is a system that allows people to make wealth based on trade. The winners in this game are the people at the top of the hierarchy. All these type A billionaires are the ultimate winners of the game. Zuck is a winner.In communism the system says there are no winners. Everything needs to be fair.
by ninetyninenine
4/25/2025 at 2:04:25 PM
The "system" in this case being the guy at the top who has taken all the power.Please feel free to point to the real world exception, because I can't find it.
by mionhe
4/25/2025 at 3:10:43 PM
There's plenty of exceptions. PR China just after Deng was a good exception, and so was the Soviet Union after Stalin.But they were only exception in the lame technical sense that you didn't have a single 'guy at the top' in charge, but a sharing of power by eg something like the Politburo.
by eru
4/25/2025 at 3:09:05 PM
> In communism the system says there are no winners. Everything needs to be fair.I'm glad you take them at their word. May I interest you in some beach front property?
In any case, there's plenty more systems than just these two.
by eru
4/24/2025 at 12:31:18 PM
"If you're not cheating, you're not trying."by daxfohl
4/24/2025 at 12:58:26 PM
To be fair, some games effectively to force you to move outside normal set of rules eventually ( ie. Monopoly, when bank money supply dries out ).by A4ET8a8uTh0_v2
4/24/2025 at 6:16:19 PM
Diplomacy encourages cheating, but only if you don't get caught.by eru
4/24/2025 at 1:12:27 PM
It's not competition that they like. It's winning.Competitive athletes expect to lose. They don't want to lose, but there's only one winner (or three podium spots) in any given contest. They turn "not wanting to lose" into their motivation for getting better, still knowing that they are fairly likely to lose. The competition is the point, and when they lose, they are still a little happy if they did better than they did last time.
The people who want to win regardless of the competition, regardless of the rules: we call those people bullies.
by dsr_
4/25/2025 at 2:16:17 PM
[dead]by oscu0
4/24/2025 at 12:55:02 PM
Reminds me of this post[0] from a few weeks ago:>A couple years back, I got a job offer from an investment bank to help them win zero sum games against people who didn't necessarily deserve to lose. I had tried very hard to get that offer
by OtherShrezzing
4/24/2025 at 11:01:57 AM
I think that while the trait itself is fairly common the ability to bully and pressure everyone around you to give in to this level of petty and demeaning deference is quite rare. You only see it in powerful people because they're the only ones who can actually make people do this.I have an aunt like this and she's super annoying and largely ostracized and in constant conflict with people around her, but if she had $175 billion she could probably surround herself with people who would indulge her.
by throw__away7391
4/24/2025 at 11:09:27 AM
Money is a potent and addictive hallucinogenic neurotoxin. We have a culture where everything is run by addicts, with predictably disastrous consequences.by TheOtherHobbes
4/24/2025 at 12:41:17 PM
s/money/powerMoney is a means to an end.
by dgfitz
4/24/2025 at 11:11:38 AM
The two sour losers I know just refuse to play any game at all. Cooperative games or team games they think are kinda fine though of they are "forced to". They just can't handle being targeted as individuals.Maybe Zuckerberg has a lack of self reflection?
by rightbyte
4/24/2025 at 2:34:17 PM
I'm like that and really I have lots of free time because of not playing any competitive gamesDownside is I obviously don't use that free time to do anything I'm not already skilled at, like art or music or writing or exercise (except for rock climbing which I manage to not be competitive at)
by 01HNNWZ0MV43FF
4/24/2025 at 5:11:51 PM
Ye. My problem is the opposite. I am a way too good loser. It has its drawbacks too but they are less emotionally obvious maybe.by rightbyte
4/24/2025 at 12:44:47 PM
A few years back (2015ish?) I read a big magazine profile of Michael Jordan in his post-basketball life and I was really surprised by how unhappy he seemed - extraordinarily competitive at everything, even casual games of golf, running up huge gambling debts, etc.This is a guy who was the most dominant athlete of his generation, arguably the greatest the ever play the game, and yet he can't turn it off, he can't relax and rest on his laurels. The same personality quirks that drove him to win at basketball mean he can't tolerate losing in any arena.
by ForHackernews
4/24/2025 at 2:41:27 PM
Arguably, to be great at modern sports, you have to be good at multiple unrelated thing (On field strategy, Physical Conditioning, Actually the sport itself, playing politics, doing all of that while listening to coach), either you have that kind of drive to be the best at all of them or you'll just be a good athleteby joseda-hg
4/25/2025 at 9:51:35 AM
I have trouble believing that highly competitive people enjoy winning against people who aren't trying to win. Catan has a lot of luck, you'd expect to lose a lot of games.by stevage
4/24/2025 at 1:15:34 PM
I can recall being this way as a small child. So had I not been disciplined as a child so that I would not be a sore loser, did this blunt something that would have led to my being more "successful"?by jollyllama
4/24/2025 at 1:19:35 PM
I suppose I assumed “choosing your battles” had to be a skill they were also good at. Only 24 hours in a day.by ip26
4/24/2025 at 12:12:34 PM
I'm pretty sure this is the correct and intuitive reason. In a competition to be 'ever above everything else', tragically it selects for the most pathologically ruthless behaviour pattern, be it Musk or Putin. If there were a contestant even more unscrupulous than you, he'd take your place. So, as long as we allow/tolerate obscene wealth, we invariably get this. And if we try to avoid it the wrong way, we get Stalin.by fifticon
4/24/2025 at 11:27:50 AM
The Bill Gates Chair Jump is another great example of this.by schmidtleonard
4/24/2025 at 11:52:16 AM
What a ridiculous video that's reading way too much into a silly 5 second clip.Bill Gates may be competitive, but this specific event, and the whole idea that it somehow represents a shift, is completely unrelated to the current topic. People have different private and public personas, and even present different personas to different people. This is completely normal, and often the only way to cope with being a celebrity, especially for introverted personality types.
by imiric
4/24/2025 at 12:19:32 PM
It's only 5 seconds edited down to match your attention span. Exceed it, I suppose, because the fact that personas exist is not the pertinent part, it's the glimpse past BillG's persona to see the compulsive competitive behavior: inventing a chair game, "cheating" at it, and instead of brushing it off as silly fun (which everyone would have accepted) getting increasingly flustered until he walked out of an interview.by schmidtleonard
4/24/2025 at 1:19:09 PM
Way to assume what my attention span is.Speaking of which, if you watch the (nearly) full interview[1] instead of that 5 second clip, you'll realize that the chair jumping bit had nothing to do with the reason he walked out of that interview. I couldn't find the full version, but you can see that towards the end he gets annoyed at the constant prodding to get him to admit some wrongdoing. The entire segment is made to portray him as some out-of-touch rich guy and tyrant that abuses his employees and competitors. Just poor television all around, more interested in promoting sensationalism for engagement purposes, than showing an honest image of the person. The chair jumping bit is proof of this, given that it's the only thing the public remembers.
Extrapolating that bit to make some grand assumption about his personality is beyond ridiculous.
by imiric
4/24/2025 at 12:36:23 PM
I was interested in this anecdote about the board games, but it seems like there's at least some dispute about how true or inflated this story is:https://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerberg-board-game-c...
I think it's easy to believe a narrative like this about someone generally disliked, but the reality about basically everyone is that we have good moments and bad moments. People that are famous are constantly being watched and evaluated.
Given the inevitability of those bad moments being observed and reported, I don't think it's a good foundation for evaluating someone's character. In this case, it's mostly useful for confirming an already negative point of view.
by KeithBrink
4/24/2025 at 1:30:09 PM
from the article you linked, it seems that Zuck told everyone else to gang up on the next hardest player so he could win.That they went along with it is... kind of in line with what Wynn-Williams said. Would they still have all teamed up on Zuck's opponent if Zuck hadn't been their boss?
by achenet
4/24/2025 at 2:03:06 PM
Sure, one single anecdote doesn't say much.But at this point it would be hard to say that Zuck is not a toxic individual. Not everyone is toxic.
by palata
4/24/2025 at 1:40:23 PM
I know a number of wealthy folks, many of them, actually really decent people. They deserve their wealth, and I have no issues with it. They tend to have somewhat different value systems than I do, but we get along, anyway.I have learned that one word they pretty much never hear, is "No."
Even the very best of them, gets used to having every whacked-out fever dream their Id squeezes out, treated like God's Word.
People who aren't very good at self-analysis and self-control, can have real problems with it.
We are watching a bunch of very public examples of exactly this, right now.
by ChrisMarshallNY
4/24/2025 at 2:04:18 PM
How wealthy are the wealthy folks you know ? a quant or faang principal engineer making 1.5-2 million/year is wealthy and worked hard to get there (although, luck is still a big part of it) yet they're much closer in wealth than a fast food employee than they are to the super rich. Someone who has accumulated 50 millions of assets is wealthy, yet they'll never afford a super yacht or the lifestyle that billionaires can afford.by nartho
4/24/2025 at 2:48:54 PM
the principle engineer may have a lot of money but also still has a job with a boss and thus probably still hears (or know they can potentially hear) "no".by ido
4/24/2025 at 2:29:11 PM
Multi-millionaires (not billionaires), but they are business owners and finance folks.They own a mansion and a yacht (Bugs Bunny reference).
But you are correct. Different orbit from the ultra-wealthy. They still hang out with plebes like me.
However, if this happens to these folks, then you can bet that it also happens to the next valence level.
by ChrisMarshallNY
4/24/2025 at 11:06:26 AM
In the 1800s in Spain, king Ferdinand VII, was famously keen on playing billiards while being a really bad player. His opponents were known to, not only play badly, but play so that he would get easy positions to shoot."Así se las ponían a Fernando VII" is even nowadays a popular -though not that widely used today- expression to tell someone the task in front of them is an easy one nobody can fail.
by genezeta
4/24/2025 at 1:23:58 PM
Being ultra wealthy/famous/powerful would have a lot of negative psychological pressures that would likely effect all of us in that situation. Personal growth is difficult. Acknowledging negative parts of ourselves is difficult. Many times, we are forced to confront something negative about ourselves because of how it effects our lives and our relationships.I think we have all had that friend at some point that was a poor sport. They were poor losers, gloating winners, and just unpleasant to play games with. Usually that person stops getting invited to game night, or you have a “come to Jesus” talk with them about their behavior. The social pressure of losing friends is a powerful motivator.
But what if that person has an unlimited supply of people that would validate, flatter, and reinforce their bad behavior? When you are thinking about who to hang out with from your unlimited rolodex, you will likely subconsciously lean towards people that make you feel validated, understood, respected, etc. Slowly, by degrees, over years, you could find yourself surrounded by sycophants, where you more and more validated and catered to, and are less and less used to hearing constructive criticism of your behavior.
It reminds me of how highly processed “junk” foods can short circuit a lot of our physiological mechanisms around overeating. Basically unlimited availability of junk food is part of why obesity is has shot up. Being ultra wealthy/famous/powerful is the highly processed food of the psyche. It doesn’t mean every rich person become psychologically unhealthy but it makes the rates of it shoot up.
by 542354234235
4/24/2025 at 10:32:09 AM
> Have the elites through history always been this insecure or is it a modern phenomenon?Yes. As a kid, I read a legend that one of the Charlemagne's knights got so annoyed for losing a game of chess that he killed his opponent with the chessboard.
by js8
4/24/2025 at 11:54:39 AM
> this insecureI agree that such an event would demonstrate insecurity. I would also argue that past elites were not “that insecure”, because they put their lives at risk by waging wars. Of course, later elites figured out ways to address the downsides.
by laserlight
4/24/2025 at 12:18:28 PM
There's a frame question in this, and the history of duelling. Is your image, or self-image, in matters of honor or social status more important than your life? Is it secure or insecure to risk your life simply because of an insult? To what extent does "security" in this context boil down to the capacity for violence, rather than anything else?by pjc50
4/24/2025 at 2:07:21 PM
But duels were instituted primarily to curb vendettas, deadly street brawls, and retaliatory assassinations that aristocrats regularly engaged in. At least with a duel, the violence was limited to one death and a settlement to the honor of all involved. It was in improvement to the situation they were facing at the time.But the idea of honor itself was a necessity for most of history, when there was no central government to enforce contracts, punish violence, etc. Your reputation was one of the only protections you had. Whether your family was known to exact revenge to those that wronged you or as weak pushovers would affect someone’s decision to kill one of you, steal your things, or make a deal with you and keep everything for themselves.
You had to show that anything someone could gain at your expense would be outweighed by your commitment to take more back in revenge.
by 542354234235
4/24/2025 at 12:18:59 PM
It's hard to speak broadly about this I think but since we already are. Military aristocrats like knights were at the least risk among combatants in an armed conflict, being better armed, armored, and more likely to be mounted compared to the levied militias or even professional soldiers, later in the early modern era.And social norms at the time were to take them hostage and ransom them back to their family or allied higher lord if possible, so their chances of surviving a lost battle were much higher than that of the men they were leading. So even in this context they are already figuring out "ways to address the downsides."
Vs the like, the normal people who would also be called on to die in battle, but then the rest of the time would be living under the capricious and frequently violent rule of these certainly-no-more-than-average-emotionally-secure men with more or less unchecked power over their daily lives.
What we have now developed from what they had then and a lot of the dynamics are quite similar. The violence is more abstract but that's exactly what the current crop of tech billionaires is trying to change.
by giraffe_lady
4/24/2025 at 1:09:38 PM
>> Why does this seem to be a recurring pattern among the modern ultrawealthy? Does anyone who fails to bend over backwards for them just end up getting exiled? Have the elites through history always been this insecure or is it a modern phenomenon?There is a long history of wealthy elites wanting to always win, even at games, and who want to be the center of attention.
Kaiser Wilhelm II had many of the same characteristics seen in today's ultrawealthy elites. When he commanded forces in German military exercises his side was always the side that won because it was his side.
"Wilhelm II's reign marked a departure from the more restrained leadership of his predecessors, as he sought to assert direct influence over the German Empire's governance and military affairs. This shift toward a more "personalist" system, where loyalty to the Kaiser outweighed true statesmanship, weakened the effectiveness of German leadership and contributed to its eventual strategic missteps."
Source: https://www.deadcarl.com/p/the-kaiser-and-his-men-civil-mili...
Lots of historical echos in the state of the world today.
by thesuperbigfrog
4/24/2025 at 9:07:11 PM
>This shift toward a more "personalist" system, where loyalty to the Kaiser outweighed true statesmanship, weakened the effectiveness of German leadership and contributed to its eventual strategic missteps."I'm not convinced there has ever been a positive or constructive outcome from cults of personality.
by mrguyorama
4/24/2025 at 10:59:39 AM
> Have the elites through history always been this insecure or is it a modern phenomenon?This is very Roman Emperor behavior. Or Chinese Emperor, for that matter. It has pretty much always been the case that power and privilege lets you get away with bad behavior while simultaneously holding your subordinates to onerous standards and/or inflicting punishment on a whim.
Building a court who will steer you away from bad ideas rather than surrounding yourself with yes-men requires active effort, and enough humility to be aware of that risk.
The other constant historical trope is of course the abuse of power for sexual purposes.
by pjc50
4/24/2025 at 11:58:13 AM
I had a conversation with one of these types. He honestly told me, "I really feel I am superior to most people". He was very frank with me. (And, in the things he did, he was actually much better than most people - he did have great talent but also spend almost all of his time on that.)So my pet peeve theory is when they feel they are not superior and other people are better than them in activities that involve logical thinking for example, they feel extremely uncomfortable as their perception of themselves gets weaker, hence these strange behaviors.
by benterix
4/24/2025 at 1:19:44 PM
When someone builds their whole identity around being "the smartest person in the room," any situation that challenges that (even something as trivial as losing a game) can feel like a threat to their entire self-image. It's not just ego, it's almost existential.by HexPhantom
4/24/2025 at 12:46:34 PM
I think you'll see this kind of thing in many professions. Some doctors, who are highly specialized and highly trained in their field, act like they should automatically be great at skills they barely have experience with, and then get frustrated when they don't immediately excel or when people with less impressive credentials end up being better at something.My family member who taught flying to hobbyist pilots always said physicians were the most dangerous students because of their "know-it-all" attitude.
by phaedrus441
4/24/2025 at 2:02:47 PM
The game thing is just the tip of the iceberg.There's lots of talk in the entertainment world, from the long-term famous, about how money and fame tend to be fundamentally warping. Bill Murray said to Pete Davidson that, once it happens, nearly everyone is an asshole for about two years. People fawn all over you; they do things for you. They give you things for free. You can get things normal people can't get. If you're making a few million a year, you have economic power beyond nearly everyone you've ever known. At a certain level, travel is a whim, not a slog through TSA and airport lines. And you lose the ability to deal with pushback of any kind.
The smart ones -- the ones with some capacity for self-awareness -- course-correct. The others don't.
But in Hollywood, one assumes, the bubble is far less perfect than the one around someone like Zuck, whose power over Facebook is absolute and inviolate, and who has money and power beyond almost every other person on the planet. So there's only a very small chance of any course-correction, and thus he stays an asshole, and that assholery extends to insisting that he win at trivial board games.
by ubermonkey
4/24/2025 at 10:34:44 AM
Success has a part of skill, and a part of luck. It hurts to be reminded about skill issues.Board games aren't as simple as time invested. I could spend my whole life studying chess, and some 13yo prodigy will handily beat me blindfolded, while juggling three other boards.
Board games cannot be conquered with wealth or a successful business. Or, rather, they can, but only by pressuring your underlings into letting you win; giving you the feeling you crave.
by tux3
4/24/2025 at 11:03:33 AM
Naw, the rare super talented 13yo child that excells at such games will have also spend an incredible amount of time learning everything there is about it - leaving very little time to pursuit outside of that discipline to improve themselves.There is a grain of truth to what you're saying, obviously - as Magnus has proven when he started to enter chess tournaments... Outplaying people with decades more experience. But you're also ignoring that he spend pretty much every waking moment of his thinking life playing chess.
by ffsm8
4/24/2025 at 11:43:17 AM
But if you knew people were letting you win, wouldn't that ruin the feeling forever?It seems like there must be another component, but maybe it is just that simple.
by sampullman
4/24/2025 at 11:53:20 AM
If they let me win, that is since I have power over them.by johannes1234321
4/24/2025 at 1:37:53 PM
This is the more interesting answer to me because it's a reminder that everyone is playing a different game.I used to play games to win, but now I play games to maximize the collective enjoyment of playing the game. This shift began with my spouse (who is a very sore loser) but continued with my children. I still let them lose sometimes because I want them to know how to enjoy a losing game, but I (selfishly) want them to enjoy games as much as I do, so that's my focus, and I will play to lose (as non-obviously as possible) frequently.
When I play games against good players now, I notice that I've lost a lot of skill in the kind of strategic ruthlessness required to win. I found this surprising, because playing in a way where you're trying to "fix" the outcomes for other players and modulate the mood of the game based on outcomes still requires a great deal of strategic insight and clever play. I guess the additional attention to the social and emotional dynamics must naturally reduce focus. It's kind of a shame, because you can't maximize enjoyment with a skilled player without being skilled, but I suppose the trade off is that there will always be more unskilled players who can benefit from enjoyment maximizing play than skilled players who will suffer from subpar opponents. Naturally, skilled players are already getting a lot out of the game, or else they wouldn't be playing enough to become skilled.
by IggleSniggle
4/25/2025 at 5:34:46 AM
Board Games in the same vein as grand strategy/4x with a dizzying number of rules like Catan or HOI4 are very much initially a function of time invested, otherwise you literally have no idea what you're doing.by corimaith
4/24/2025 at 11:53:56 AM
At the Versailles court of the Louies there were constant parties and games, gambling and otherwise. It wasn't to bond or for fun, it was to keep the aristocracy too busy to threaten the dictatorship, as well as letting the king exert an immediate influence over them through a borderline insanity.Infamously the first or second Versailles Louis, I forgot which, got very aggressive around the topic of toilet excretions, basically forcing aristocrats to try and handle being drunk and desperately needing both to piss and stay in his vicinity. The ceremony around the parties and the court in general over time got more and more intricate and maddening, causing the aristocracy to spend more and more resources on getting clothes and drinks and showing up at the right time and doing the right thing and being on top of the fashion of the day.
It would be weird if a late modern corporate dictator didn't apply similar tactics, since they are known to work and didn't come to an end until the guillotines rolled into town. Things like sleepovers in the office, ceremonial games, constant 'after work', oddball demands regarding clothing and behaviour, intimate surveillance and gossiping, and so on.
by cess11
4/24/2025 at 12:02:14 PM
>Things like sleepovers in the office, ceremonial games, constant 'after work', oddball demands regarding clothing and behaviour, intimate surveillance and gossiping, and so on.That sounds more like a cult than a company.
I don't understand why anyone would put up with that, if they had any other alternative. And most people do have alternatives.
by hermitcrab
4/24/2025 at 1:25:48 PM
With the number of people that have been swept up in cults over history the entire idea that "people can just easily leave" doesn't seem to pan out well.by pixl97
4/24/2025 at 1:23:00 PM
> I don't understand why anyone would put up with thatTo paraphrase McBain's answer to "how do you sleep at night?"
"On top of a pile of money with many beautiful ladies".
by hylaride
4/24/2025 at 1:26:01 PM
People with the skills to earn lots of money can generally also get well paid jobs at companies not run by sociopaths.by hermitcrab
4/24/2025 at 1:53:48 PM
Finding those companies is hard, especially when there's an obvious winner. Hell, I'd have joined facebook (not in hindsight, though) in the early 2000s because the specific challenges they were facing would have been novel. That being said, I'd likely feel terrible for what FB became had I did.I visited the FB campus ~2015 on the invitation of some former colleagues that worked there. It felt very culty at the time and I left with the vague feeling that I always got when I left the house of my spoiled and over-privileged friend that I had in grade school. How they were working with the scale of data that they had to deal with was very cool, though.
by hylaride
4/24/2025 at 6:25:44 PM
Corporations are commonly run as cults, at least to some extent. It could be demands of loyalty ('we're a family'), personality cult, dress code, 'teambuilding exercises' and so on.The alternatives usually involve a threat of more uncertainty or misery.
by cess11
4/24/2025 at 12:50:51 PM
Louis XIV had a notably insecure childhood, with portions of the nobility were in open rebellion. When he came of age, he set about to make damn sure that they were under his thumb.But the parallel seems lacking to me: Musk and Zuckerman can't jail recalcitrant managers.
by cafard
4/24/2025 at 6:31:38 PM
Sure, every tyrant has a story that superficially allows some shift of blame.They could, though. It's just that they likely would have to do something more involved than depriving them of their contracts, which is often enough to get rid of the problem and unlike an aristocracy where bloodlines and births set limits there are now institutions that produce replacements 'at scale'.
by cess11
4/25/2025 at 2:36:37 PM
Being an Olympic gymnast or marathon runner or boxer is not, broadly speaking, healthy. These pursuits require you to make sacrifices that push your body to extremes, to its physical limits, and not only you are selected for a very particular set of traits, there are also lots of health and psycho-social compromises that are entailed by those traits and by your training process. That is the cost of competition.Likewise running a company. You guys are, to be blunt, freaks. It requires very particular psychological and social conditioning to be in that place doing that thing, it demands specific types of personality traits and adaptations, and that probably doesn't make you, the successful CEO, a well-balanced, "normal" person.
Now take that person, who is a little bit alien in the first place, and ask what happens when they can choose everything about their surroundings, when they get fitted for their GERDpod https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtV33YSKOJk . They still have the same personality quirks, traumas and experiences that got them to this place, but now they're rich beyond imagining, every whim trivially achievable except power over other people (and that only minimally constrained). Like a person stuck in a perpetual state of orgasm, the question of whether they like it or not and really isn't relevant to whether we're going to be inviting them to the cookout or how they're going to behave in church. Any interaction, they're going to make it weird. Because they're weird. Their situation is weird, and the mentality that brought them to that situation is independently weird. A normal person would have pursued normal fulfilling things in life, and they chose entrepreneurial ambition.
by mapt
4/25/2025 at 2:51:39 PM
Good point, and it made me think about a more general point about people:It's often the same underlying trait that gives someone qualities that we like/admire but also the qualities we don't like.
When we evaluate each other, we sometimes have thoughts like "she has <good quality>, but if only she'd work on <bad quality>".
Over the years I finally realized that's not how we work. Our traits aren't always connected to isolated levers that we can pull independently.
The really good sales guy might exaggerate fibs in personal convo. The girl that moved from Germany to Mexico to start a successful hostel also has a hard impulsiveness that's hard to get along with. The really attentive mother is risk-averse to a point of absurdity. All examples of friends off the top of my head. Or me: I can find happiness anywhere that I am (good), but it also means I don't have the drive to rock the boat when I should (bad).
There doesn't necessarily exist the possibility of preserving the good part if you were to fix the bad part since the fix might require changing the underlying trait.
by hombre_fatal
4/24/2025 at 1:42:57 PM
> And anyway, if you're playing games for fun and to bond with people, you probably shouldn't be playing tryhard optimal strategies every game, and should instead explore and experiment with more creative strategies.Agreed. I have played some truly awful strategies in games (Azul: Queen’s Garden comes to mind) where it was clear within a round or two that it was doomed to fail; my wife / gaming partner expressed dismay that I was doggedly continuing, but to me, I had to see it through without introducing other variables so that I could definitively know (modulo luck of tile draw) that the strategy sucked. I thoroughly enjoyed losing.
EDIT: if anyone is curious, the strategy was to maximize high-point (5/6) tokens above everything else, eschewing end-round bonuses, brief tactical shifts, etc. Turns out it’s really hard to collect enough sets of them to count at game end, and you’re giving up compounding points along the way.
by sgarland
4/24/2025 at 11:09:25 AM
Right? I had a sort of respect for the Zuck, same partner for a long time, seems nice to his children, does charity… And then he gets one of those mega yachts and he can’t stand loosing at board games. So disappointing.by teekert
4/24/2025 at 11:13:11 AM
Surprise surprise, probably the image you had of Zuckerberg was not an intimate look into his personal life but instead a carefully crafted image created by an professional agency whose life and blood is creating neat images of famous people.Somehow, actual real life details are starting to come out (he does seem more "daring" as of late, might be why), destroying the picture painted by the professionals for all this time.
Celebrity worship really needs to end, including the worship of the celebrity programmer. We're all humans, with a bunch of flaws, and it's easy to forget when what you're consuming is a fake impression of someone.
by diggan
4/24/2025 at 12:06:27 PM
There is definitely a point where we need to stop assuming that people who are good at building tech companies are, by default, good at _anything_ else.They might be, sure. But we shouldn't assume it.
by maxehmookau
4/24/2025 at 11:57:48 AM
> crafted image created by an professional agency whose life and blood is creating neat images of famous peopleMelon should fire his!
by exe34
4/24/2025 at 12:18:57 PM
Probably did.by immibis
4/24/2025 at 11:39:06 AM
I'd think the ruining society for profit part would be a red flag.by mupuff1234
4/25/2025 at 2:33:09 PM
You should read about what he did on Kauai. He fell in love with the community so he stole their birthright.by bix6
4/24/2025 at 11:18:36 AM
Imagine being so spineless, so utterly desperate for power, that you’re willing to contort your public persona just to appease a man who made lying a brand. Zuckerberg didn’t just sell out—he gift-wrapped his integrity and hand-delivered it to Cheetolini.by Swoerd123
4/24/2025 at 12:02:48 PM
[dead]by varelse
4/24/2025 at 12:10:44 PM
I know these types of people, a lot of them, but I am not one of them. I was a student at Harvard, I've dated the daughter of a film studio owner, the daughter of the then-owner of Gucci, I've worked at an Academy Award winning VFX studio, I know celebrities and CEOs, and I married an Academy Award winner. I know these people.There is a mechanism in high wealth investment circles that seeks very ambitious and simultaneously low self knowledge individuals to invest heavily. They tend to be driven and charismatic in that drive, while being very ignorant of their negative impact on others. Many high net worth individuals see themselves in such youth, and invest in them, their ideas and their drive. They create psychopaths, and celebrate their mistakes as fuel for control of them later. This mechanism I am describing is very powerful, dominating.
by bsenftner
4/24/2025 at 11:07:34 AM
I think it is part nature, part nurture.To get where they are, they need to be quite smart, competitive, and ruthless.
As soon as they succeed, they become magnets to yes-men and people trying to ride their coat-tails.
So you end up in a position where the majority will ask "how high?" when you tell them to jump, and who will never question you.
Do that for a couple of decades, and something has to change - psychologically. You become condition to it.
by TrackerFF
4/24/2025 at 1:13:13 PM
>I think it is part nature, part nurture.Really rich people aren't any different from the rest of us. You quickly realize that what sets them apart is privilege. You see behaviors in the wealthy that if they were poor they'd be locked up for. "They just let you do it if you're rich" comes to mind.
by pixl97
4/24/2025 at 1:34:06 PM
There is also a feedback effect. Most people are part of groups which aren't strongly selected for moral character, but the rich and powerful become surrounded by people who are after money and power, unless they deliberately manage to avoid that. So some of their bad behaviour is because the availability heuristic tells them that that's how most people behave, and fills them with cynicism and contemptby ajb
4/24/2025 at 11:15:54 AM
> Have the elites through history always been this insecure or is it a modern phenomenon?The modern phenomenon, relative to history in general, is that upsetting an elite doesn't get you immediately killed or sold into slavery. But yes, they have always been like this. Behind every great fortune is a crime, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
by krapp
4/24/2025 at 10:46:29 AM
> If you're wildly successful at something with significant real world influence, why would you care so strongly about something as relatively inconsequential as a board game or a video game?I think that successful people tend to be people who pay a lot of attention to "winning" in as many situations as possible. If you accept losing as a part of life and move on, you're not going to be successful, because you don't spend time thinking how you could've won. Of course this looks funny in situations where one cannot win, but it's really helpful when it comes to fixing your mistakes, allowing you to be successful.
by anal_reactor
4/24/2025 at 11:43:22 AM
> but it's really helpful when it comes to fixing your mistakes, allowing you to be successful.It would be helpful if they'd take a loss as a learning opportunity. But as stated in the original quote they threw a tantrum and accused the opponent of cheating, taking away no lesson to improve the next time around.
by Extasia785
4/24/2025 at 2:17:12 PM
There’s a podcast I love called Real Dictators.It looks at loads of dictators from history - Stalin, Hitler, Saddam Hussein.
What they all have in common is a love for loyalty and subservience. And they demand loyalty and subservience be constantly proven. Often in very weird and trivial ways.
Eg. Saddam Hussein liked to have a BBQ where he would cook (but not eat) and make the food inedible spicy. Then he would force his top people to eat it while he laughed at them.
They of course had to keep up the pretence that the food was delicious and pay him lots of compliments.
by jonplackett
4/24/2025 at 12:18:53 PM
No one deserves that much more than others. No one believes they don't deserve what they have. People work backwards to justify why they need so much more power, control, and wealth than others. Worse for Zuck b/c his special shares.The ambition/success feedback loop never stops, which is why the folks on top seem somehow less secure and content than the rest of us. Most of us figure out we probably won't be the #1 anything pretty early in our journey and stop fixating on comparison and focus on maximizing ourselves.
by DragonStrength
4/24/2025 at 1:22:33 PM
Most people have to make peace with not being №1, and in doing so, they actually get a shot at real contentment. But when you're at the top, the game never ends. There's always another metric to dominate, another threat to neutralize, another narrative to control.by HexPhantom
4/24/2025 at 1:17:04 PM
I think it's less a new phenomenon and more a timeless one - we've just digitized the palaceby HexPhantom
4/25/2025 at 1:54:44 PM
They think their wealth, position, etc. is a result of merit. However, they know their wealth was not earned, but given. At best, they were born into a position of privilege and simply used their existing, unearned, wealth to build more.Losing at a board game forces them to confront the fact that they aren't any more clever than their peers. They didn't get to where they were on their wits alone; they started the game with a few routes already developed.
by dfxm12
4/24/2025 at 2:02:24 PM
> Why does this seem to be a recurring pattern among the modern ultrawealthy?Who says it's limited to the ultra wealthy? My network has a lot of people who have net worths of under $5-6 million USD and a lot of them are highly insecure.
I've witnessed several of them going out of their way to tear down people who are fitter or more attractive than them as well.
Look at the manbaby actions through that lens and you might get some insight.
by apercu
4/24/2025 at 2:10:18 PM
Hmm. So highly insecure people have to "win" (however it's defined at the moment) in order to bury their insecurities for the moment, but ultra wealthy individuals 1) have more power, so they can make it so that they win more often, and 2) are noticed more (or at least by a wider circle), so when they do it, a lot more people pay attention.by AnimalMuppet
4/24/2025 at 2:24:55 PM
>so when they do it, a lot more people pay attention.It makes sense, media glamorizes these people and amplifies their actions, and some of the insecure folks crave attention. Look at that one guy who somehow works harder than all of us but is able to tweet all day every day...
by apercu
4/24/2025 at 12:34:24 PM
We all have personal quirks which would appear silly if publicly known. But most of us are not billionares, so these quirks do not come to light, or do not seem that strange in ordinary people. "Not wanting to lose at board games" is actually quite a mild personal quirk compared to some of the things I know about myself or about my close friends. I know a guy who spends 20 minutes picking out tomatoes.by myflash13
4/24/2025 at 1:29:16 PM
There is a huge difference between not wanting to lose and getting angry when someone doesn't let you win.by Arainach
4/24/2025 at 10:37:18 AM
Probably have been told their whole lives that they are so smart, clever, and special, that they will (and rightly should) always win. So any loss immediately looks to them like foul play by their opponent(s). Even if it's just a casual game. Anyone telling them otherwise doesn't last long in their orbit. As they gain power, they naturally grow a bubble of sycophants who reinforce their "I always win" beliefs.by ryandrake
4/24/2025 at 10:48:09 AM
There's also no shortage of people willing to tell Zuck and Musk (from a relatively safe distance, like in public here at HN) that they're insecure manbabies born into wealth who don't deserve a fraction of the power they've managed to claw themselves. I suspect that we, and the desire to show us wrong (or at the least spite us) are also part of the equation for why the current crop of billionaires are as they are.Not that this means we're wrong, exactly.
by vintermann
4/24/2025 at 12:00:39 PM
For £1M/year after tax, I'd tell Zuck anything he wants to hear from 9 to 5, excluding weekends, bank holidays and 28 days of annual leave.We all have a price really.
by exe34
4/24/2025 at 2:32:21 PM
You could make more than that without compromising yourself. Aim higher.by esafak
4/24/2025 at 3:18:17 PM
I'd have to put in effort. I've already got other things taking up my spare brain cell.by exe34
4/24/2025 at 1:28:48 PM
Here on HN, we're not telling Zuck and Musk anything. We're telling each other things about Zuck and Musk. Zuck and Musk aren't dropping by to find out what we think of them, ever.by AnimalMuppet
4/24/2025 at 2:18:36 PM
Figuratively speaking, we're telling them, since we're saying it loudly in public. You bet they know people are saying it. They might even peek in - we know some of their friends (arguably friends) who do, and Musk is among other things famous for being a bit of a social media addict.by vintermann
4/24/2025 at 3:54:09 PM
Rich people's bubbles are thick, and their "outside-the-bubble" communication tends to be write-only. I highly doubt Zucc or Musk spends any time at all on places like HN or Reddit, and their comms on their respective social media platforms tend to be broadcast sending/writing and not reading comments or feedback. They rely on the sycophants in their orbit to give them the summarized, sanitized, positive feedback, and downplay/hide the negative.by ryandrake
4/24/2025 at 4:48:20 PM
We know Musk spends time on X. We also know he reads as well as writes, because he often replies to random things.But even for a slightly wiser billionaire who does what you suggest - they wouldn't do that unless they knew they would get public hate, and were bothered by it. You don't have a thick bubble unless you understand that you need it.
by vintermann
4/24/2025 at 11:57:00 AM
From an Eastern philosophy point of view, low ego with high confidence, is a skill that can be trained. It is also a skill someone can get worst at. That being said, I don't think that Zuck and Musk would have become low ego people without internet criticism, since they are on the completely wrong path.by enaaem
4/24/2025 at 12:04:33 PM
[dead]by varelse
4/24/2025 at 1:23:00 PM
You mean "us jealous poor people who are mad that he is bright and successful".I've known a few people in the hundreds and millions of dollars in wealth category and that seemed to be their go to response when anyone had to say anything negative about their behaviors.
In the US at least, never underestimate the amount of calvinism and prosperity gospel that has creeped into every facet of our lives.
by pixl97
4/24/2025 at 9:11:05 PM
The need to dominate can be a favorable trait for success. It can also be all consuming that you can't easily turn off. Like...ok Zuck, you won the f'ing lottery. You could spend the rest of your life on an island or helping orphans, but you still work at Facebook - why? Because he's wrapped up in it. It's a miracle Bill Gates managed to step down.It can also be unsettling to know that, just as easily as you killed off competitors, competitors could unseat you.
So yea, you might sleep a bit easier at night if you can just win at the things you can control, like that darn Settlers of Catan game.
Also someone who reflexively accuses the other of cheating while playing a game likely has a hard time admitting they failed at something. Not an admirable trait in a leader.
by xivzgrev
4/24/2025 at 1:26:31 PM
One of my favorite tweets:> Being a billionaire must be insane. You can buy new teeth, new skin. All your chairs cost 20,000 dollars and weigh 2,000 pounds. Your life is just a series of your own preferences. In terms of cognitive impairment it's probably like being kicked in the head by a horse every day
by mcpar-land
4/24/2025 at 12:23:39 PM
> If you're wildly successful at something with significant real world influence, why would you care so strongly about something as relatively inconsequential as a board game or a video game?It’s possible that exact personality trait is what drove them to such success in the first place. Perhaps like an obsession with winning.
by RiceRichardJ
4/24/2025 at 1:53:58 PM
It’s more so related to power. Once you’ve acquired enough power, it consumes most people. They don’t like having their power challenged or put in a weakened state. Many of these people are acquiring power via some form or their “genius”. Technical wunderkind, military strategy genius, etc. So that drives their ego. But, they probably know they’re not actually a genius and plenty of people could have done what they did but they got lucky. So they end up getting defensive and insecure when anything challenges their power, risks to expose their genius as a fraud, etc. They’re operating on a mental house of cards and are volatile due to it. For regular people, they seem to be triggered by small things like losing a card game but it’s probably just that, a trigger that unleashed a wave of pent up insecurity.by conductr
4/24/2025 at 2:11:46 PM
f you're wildly successful at something with significant real world influence, why would you care so strongly about something as relatively inconsequential as a board game or a video game?Zuck 'earning' another billion probably means nothing to him. I doubt he can even keep count. All of that sense of self-worth that people derive from their career or wealth is lost in the noise of Meta's stock price for him. But winning a board game is tangible. It's right there in front of him, as a direct result of his own actions. He can feel that.
If you couple that with him being surrounded by people who know that losing to him makes him feel good, and that Zuck is more generous when he's happy, you can see why people lose on purpose.
by onion2k
4/24/2025 at 11:32:48 AM
These guys are sort of like a type of inherited wealth. They created companies at a time where you could go public and have no accountability to a board with power.When you take a genius and drown them in good fortune… you sometimes get a sense of personal infallibility.
by Spooky23
4/24/2025 at 11:09:01 AM
He should have eaten his own dog food and played the games inside the Metaverse where he could have had the environment ensure his desired outcome. But maybe the Metaverse itself is now a painful reminder of failure.by Mountain_Skies
4/24/2025 at 7:10:47 PM
The problem is also the justification stories they excrete to justify the wealth the capital machine pours on them. The whole gods choosen, superior, natural strong willed aristocratic uebermensch bottled into one cyst of sycophants. Totally unable to connect with "easily distracted by the trivial" normies, barely able to talk to the monomaniacs they once where themselves. Not a good show.by ashoeafoot
4/25/2025 at 8:33:28 PM
they know deep down that they don't deserve their status which makes them insecure and needing to constantly defend the narrative that they are in fact better.you'll see this behavior fade in the presence of someone who they themselves perceive as superior by whichever metric
by jrvieira
4/24/2025 at 10:40:02 AM
I think it's easy to unknowingly surround yourself with yes-men and become insulated from failure. Losing then seems like an exception to the rule, a bug.by mherkender
4/24/2025 at 2:30:00 PM
It's weird how moments can go from "we were playing a game when.." to "The New York Times is covering a game we played 15 years ago". What I've heard from people who were in the game was that he wanted to go to bed so he was trying to negotiate a quick end to the game. There was a time at a con where I did something similar (i.e. we had to finish, we couldn't just leave the game setup and play later.)Everything is viewed through a mirror darkly.
"HE FORCED OTHERS TO KNEEL BEFORE HIM, EVEN IN BOARD GAMES!1!" vs. "He wanted to go to bed so made a dickhead comment that would let him both win and sleep." Think back to your 20s, which feels more likely.
by miiiiiike
4/25/2025 at 2:35:17 PM
I don’t understand why people try and justify or defend these tech villains. What has Mark done to defend you? Besides harvest and sell your data.by bix6
4/25/2025 at 5:44:33 PM
I don't care about Mark Zuckerberg. I don't use Facebook, Instagram, or anything else Meta. I avoid it all, actually.I'll turn around on you: Why defend people who will distort every utterance just to score points on whatever is in the public's cross-hairs at the moment? Why support it? Why defend it?
Saying that a statement isn't accurate isn't the same as defending or holding water for the subject of the statement. If Zuckerberg said "the sky was blue" and another person started saying "Zuckerberg is a liar, so obviously the sky can't be blue" you're not defending Zuckerberg by stating that the sky is blue.
The world is in a perpetual information war. People and groups are constantly trying to make their version of reality stick by using every bullshit rhetorical tool at their disposal against whatever person or thing they deem a valid target.
I'm sick of it, almost everyone is sick of it.
by miiiiiike
4/26/2025 at 12:26:32 AM
This is a tell all memoir from someone who was abused and witnessed abuse at Meta and it seems your response is to call one portion hyperbole instead of focusing on the broader issue. You clearly know Meta is a bad actor since you intentionally avoid their products, yet you go out of your way to stick up for a claim that you also don’t know the truth about?by bix6
4/26/2025 at 3:09:34 AM
I didn't give a reason for avoiding the sites and apps that I listed.My last two comments sum up my thoughts. I don't have anything more to add.
by miiiiiike
4/24/2025 at 3:48:54 PM
It raises the question: where is the crack in this structural system, and how can we pry it open? Perhaps the vulnerability lies in the desire of the ultra-rich and powerful for societal respect—whether born of love or fear hardly matters. How should society respond? Mercilessly mock them.by siavosh
4/24/2025 at 2:40:16 PM
> Why does this seem to be a recurring pattern among the modern ultrawealthyIt makes a better story in a tell-all memoir?
by paulcole
4/24/2025 at 2:27:52 PM
> If you're wildly successful at something … why would you care so strongly about something as relatively inconsequential as a board game or a video game?> And anyway, if you're playing games for fun and to bond with people…
I see you answered your own question.
by JKCalhoun
4/24/2025 at 2:30:40 PM
That's interesting becasue at least with Zuckerberg, he entered a local bjj tournament under a fake name.And tbh if you eventually do find yourself against him your going to want the opportunity to say you submitted him. No one's letting him win at a tournament
by tayo42
4/25/2025 at 12:42:15 PM
Maybe you just hate to lose, which drives you to relentlessly pursue "success?"by throaway1989
4/24/2025 at 10:38:23 PM
John Major, who was prime minister of the UK in the 90s, has talked a bit about how isolated a position like that makes you, and how unprepared he was for it. Few of the normal pressures of life apply you in a position like that: you can't get fired (not really), you don't have to accept consequences (not really), and perhaps most importantly: you don't have anyone tell you "you idiot, that's fucking mental". No one that you can just dismiss anyway.I can't find the interview right now, it was a while ago, but I thought it was pretty interesting. Major was a man in his 50s when he became PM. Zuck was in his early 20s. You have to wonder what that does to a person. People like Zuck are more or less like child actors that made it big: everyone bends over backwards to deepthroat them and they've got a view of the world that's just delusional. I'd feel sorry if it wasn't for the highly negative and caustic effects.
by arp242
4/25/2025 at 12:22:14 AM
That story is disputed, to say the least.Dex Hunter-Torricke:
>There's a story about when I was playing Mark Zuckerberg at Catan. Sarah suggests I was deliberately letting Zuckerberg win the game, and "brazenly" dismissing her strategic guidance. It's a lovely anecdote that positions our heroic narrator as some sort of principled mind surrounded by a sea of yes men or something, and that we all liked to let Zuckerberg win. Yeah, except that's not what happened at all.
Read on: https://www.threads.com/@dextorricke/post/DHCUpnssuuw/theres...
I for one don't believe it.
by emmelaich
4/24/2025 at 1:29:48 PM
It's an old problem. Medieval kings had this problem. One way around it was the fool/jester, who could (within limits) say the things that nobody else was free to say.by AnimalMuppet
4/24/2025 at 8:54:48 PM
At my work, we play much much better board games than Settlers of Catan and Ticket to Ride. I feel for Zuck and his colleagues.by tasuki
4/24/2025 at 12:37:06 PM
> Have the elites through history always been this insecure or is it a modern phenomenon?I don't think _all_ the superrich _are_ this insecure. Like, the obvious examples of this sort of behaviour are Trump (golf, in particular), Musk (video game nonsense), Zuck (this). But all three of those are very obviously fucked-up, socially maladjusted people in _other_ ways, too. Potentially the issue is more that being very rich allowed them to _get away_ with this behaviour; poor weirdos have more incentive to suppress it because people will only accept it from rich weirdos.
Though the phenomenon of "adult manbaby gets upset when not allowed to win game (especially by his partner)" is _absolutely_ out there, even for non-absurdly-rich people; see any subreddit about relationships for examples.
by rsynnott
4/24/2025 at 1:24:49 PM
That phenomenon is certainly not exclusive to men. All it takes is someone insecure enough to feel that losing a game threatens their sense of worth as a person.by mwigdahl
4/24/2025 at 2:12:56 PM
Nah, definitely not exclusive to men, but you do see it more from men. I think possibly at least partially because it _is_ seen as somewhat more socially acceptable from men than from women; the boy who never grew up is viewed more favourably than the girl who ditto.> All it takes is someone insecure enough to feel that losing a game threatens their sense of worth as a person
You also need them to think that they'll get away with this behaviour, whether it be just being very rich, or because there is some societal tolerance of Homer Simpson-esque emotionally immature men, or for some other reason.
by rsynnott
4/24/2025 at 12:47:23 PM
People who have built empires who then surround themselves with Yes Men is probably the strongest indicator they’re about to lose it allby alfiedotwtf
4/24/2025 at 12:35:14 PM
> If you're wildly successful at something with significant real world influence, why would you care so strongly about something as relatively inconsequential as a board game or a video game?All the other comments are about Zuckerberg being an out-of-touch egomaniac, but I think this is a reflection of people.
We want our leaders to be infaliable and we use the stupidest metrics to judge people. Remember how Ed miliband eating a sandwich became a scandal? For every one person that would see losing as not a big deal, there's like ten people that will think "this guy can't win a game of settlers of Catan, and he's running the company???".
I am reminded of that joe rogan clip where he's just in awe of Elon Musk because of his Diablo rankings or something. People feed into the mythology.
It's all stupid and insane, but I don't see how anyone can look at the current state of politics or the stock market and not say that the world is full of crazy things that just run on vibes.
by preommr
4/24/2025 at 11:45:41 AM
i see it in local politics a lot too, people don't dare to contradict the leaders, who in turn end up believing they are right on everything, it's a sad thing reallyby croisillon
4/24/2025 at 3:43:39 PM
I think power sometimes leads to this kind of insecurity, but a bigger factor is that people with narcissistic personalities often succeed because ordinary people are unaccustomed to dealing with them. Narcissists often come off as unusually competent, confident, and intimidating. This leads normies to want to follow them and give them what they want.Narcissists are always extremely insecure, usually because someone crushed their ego during childhood. (There also exist people with intact egos who are simply arrogant; I'm not talking about them. The arrogant are easy to distinguish from narcissists after you study them a bit.)
My point is that Zuck was probably very insecure before the creation of FB, and he became rich partially because he was an insecure narcissist.
by dreamcompiler
4/24/2025 at 1:32:52 PM
It’s a personality trait that leads him to success.Yes Zuckerberg won the lottery. But at the same time his business acumen and ruthless personality put him in a position to win the lottery.
by ninetyninenine
4/24/2025 at 10:46:51 AM
used to be such accusations were grounds to seek satisfaction in a duel.. might be time to revive that practiceby jcgrillo
4/24/2025 at 2:13:03 PM
you're getting the order of events backwards. it's not "Become a billionaire, then become a baby who insists they be allowed to win board games". The order is, first you're an entitled, manipulative jackass with absolutely no bottom for unethical behavior and zero tolerance for "losing", then become a billionaire by being so brazenly shitty in all areas of life and getting people to go along with you. Caveat, you have to be a white guy for this to work and it works much better if you already inherited millions from your dad.As an exercise, apply this rule to all the other billionaires you know.
by zzzeek
4/24/2025 at 5:48:43 PM
I tend to agree with you, but I also tend to believe that indeed, having a billion dollars (read: having no constraints) will tend to bring out the worst in anyone.Another way to say this is, most people who earn obscene wealth who would be offended by the obscenity of it would work hard to give most of it away. Those who are not offended by the obscenity of it will be happy to keep it, so there's a selection bias to it.
by ModernMech
4/24/2025 at 12:02:46 PM
It’s part of the pathology. So much so it’s violating otherwise core tenets of their culture and customs:Look, today meritocracy and brutal honesty are absolutes, they’re considered critical, exactly to overcome biases that stand in your way. The Zuck types are 100% believers in this (heck they accelerated it), yet they still need positive affirmations like winning board games.
Most people (especially smart and opportunistic ones) fold because they know winning a private board game means nothing.
by klabb3
4/25/2025 at 2:50:42 PM
Probably he is insecure? Put too much into how much people think about him. And believes that being a big person he needs to be the best at everything, while - and this is a positive trait actually - he knows that he is not that big, needs to overcompensate and project much more than he possesses - which is a common trait on Facebook. Overreacts to the ubiquitous life experience of loss.by mihaaly
4/24/2025 at 10:49:26 AM
> If you're wildly successful at something with significant real world influence, why would you care so strongly about something as relatively inconsequential as a board game or a video game?Deep running narcissism, bordering on sociopathy or psychopathy.
by bmitc
4/24/2025 at 11:31:03 PM
Deep-seated insecurity?https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/11/08/elon-musk-almost-need...
by archagon
4/24/2025 at 11:27:30 AM
Many many many years ago I used to like playing Scrabble (knockoff) on Yahoo Games.I quit playing completely when my opponent accused me of cheating because I made a high point move and was winning.
by astura
4/24/2025 at 1:50:48 PM
First person shooters were like this back before I stopped playing them online.Get decent and dominate a few rounds? Here's a kick ban, must be cheating. Couldn't be because they keep bunching up.
by doubled112
4/24/2025 at 4:05:28 PM
Have the elites through history always been this insecure or is it a modern phenomenon?It's always been this way, more or less.
If you look back at the ultra-wealthy in any age, you'll find just these sorts of people. It's in 20th-century literature. It's in classic literature. It's in the Bible. It's probably in ancient Greek literature, but I'm not well-versed there.
At least in the early part of the last century, there was some hope. A number of ultra-wealthy people decided that instead of building a faster steam engine or racing to pump more oil, they'd engage in benefiting society as an alternative penis-measuring contest.
They were happy to pour the equivalent of today's billions into projects like paying artists to spend 30 years documenting the fading culture of the American Indian, or funding scientific expeditions to improve our understanding of ancient history.
Today's billionaires are, instead, trying to one-up each other on getting 12-year-old girls addicted to their apps.
Yay, progress.
by reaperducer
4/24/2025 at 10:40:31 AM
Given this, I don't want to imagine how much Elon Musk is suffering right now for the bullying he gets and for Tesla, which have higher stakes than a tabletop game.And I don't feel bad for it
by amarcheschi
4/24/2025 at 11:02:17 AM
He doesn't care about Tesla anymore. His president will kill EV subsidies and give them to coal. He never cared about the mission of Tesla, and anyone working at Tesla who still believes in it is a sucker.by aredox
4/24/2025 at 11:30:26 AM
So, why is he not selling all his Tesla stocks, then?by generic92034
4/24/2025 at 11:42:26 AM
One cannot simply sell all of their stock if they own that much.I don’t think Elon cares about Tesla as a vision anymore, but does he care about being “the richest man in the world” or at least one of them. Absolutely, and TSLA is the reason that’s true.
by solumunus
4/24/2025 at 1:32:52 PM
IIRC, he borrowed against them for a lot of stuff, including the Twitter acquisition. It's probably why he's freaking out a bit and returning to it. It's also not the first time he's had liquidity problems. Tesla literally did come weeks away from bankruptcy on a few occasions in the 2010s as he often put the cart before the horse. The infamous "refundable deposit" for the car back then that ended up being almost twice as much as promised was essentially an unsecured loan. People were almost out all their money.Bethany McLean (a journalist that was among the first to start questioning Enron's numbers and wrote the book "the smartest men in the room" on it that also became a documentary) has been following Elon Musk for well over a decade.
She once said "Whenever Elon is lashing out is when he's under enormous stress". Also, he has a large cult of true believers who believe a man who's taken credit for others work as his own all his life. Watch this documentary called "the cult of the dead stock" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5Bd6YxifCo ; it's like that x100.
by hylaride
4/24/2025 at 6:40:12 PM
> Tesla literally did come weeks away from bankruptcy on a few occasions in the 2010s as he often put the cart before the horse.Yet another thing Tesla should have faced sanctions on - you'd never have known this by listening to any earnings call or looking at any financial filings from Tesla at that time (and at one point I think the number was <10 days).
by FireBeyond
4/24/2025 at 7:02:21 PM
I really do wonder if outright financial fraud was occurring. There was a period of time where they were going through CFOs like water over Niagara Falls (whom I assume were refusing to sign off on the books?).by hylaride
4/24/2025 at 12:00:10 PM
Because as soon as he starts selling them, they'll devaluate immenselyby Biganon
4/24/2025 at 11:49:10 AM
That's not how it works. You can't sell without someone buying from you, and if you're selling everything then buyers will know your stock is worthless and will not exactly be rushing to take you up on the offer, except at whatever severely depressed prices will generate a profit margin from liquidating your assets.He's much better off propping up the stock with a bit more grifting for as long as that will last and living off loans taken with stocks as the collateral.
by Balinares
4/24/2025 at 11:53:24 AM
I think they don't have to pay the same amount of taxes if they use the stock as collateral for getting loansChances are there are some considerations which I don't know about
by amarcheschi
4/24/2025 at 12:15:36 PM
Because he can afford not to, for now.by aredox
4/24/2025 at 3:27:26 PM
First of all, there has been a significant selloff by Tesla top executives, including over $10 billion by Musk in the past 3 years [1,2,3]. The main reason he can’t sell of more is that he is still fighting in court to get his insane $56 billion executive bonus, which would be primarily in Tesla stock [4]. I say insane because it is over 500 times larger than any bonus given by any other company ever and is equivalent to giving every other Tesla employee an almost half a million-dollar bonus. I think we will see a lot more sell offs once the outcome of that legal battle is done, whether it comes out positive or negative for Musk.More broadly, I think Tesla’s general valuation is a house of cards that his been hyper inflated by years of Musk lying to investors about future sales, future products, and future features. He promised a million driverless taxi’s that would make $30,000 profit each year would be coming “next year” in 2019 [5], that full self driving was coming in an update “next month” in 2020 [6] and wildly incorrect capabilities of basically every product ever released.
[1] “four top officers at the company have offloaded over $100 million in shares since early February [2025]… Elon Musk's brother, Kimbal Musk, who also sits on the board, unloaded 75,000 shares worth approximately $27 million last month” https://abcnews.go.com/Business/tesla-board-members-executiv...
[2] “Musk sold a total of 41.5 million shares of Tesla stock between November 4 and December 12 [2024]… The sales came not long after a October 19, 2022 earning call in which he told investors ‘I can’t emphasize enough, we have excellent demand for Q4.’… But when Tesla reported fourth-quarter sales, they were far weaker than forecast, and that sent stocks down 12%, the worst day of trading for the stock in more than two years.” https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/04/business/musk-tesla-stock-sal...
[3] “Tesla CEO Elon Musk said Thursday he does not plan to sell any more shares of Tesla for at least the next two years, after the billionaire and nascent Twitter owner offloaded nearly $3.6 billion worth of stock this week [2022] as Tesla's share price tumbled.” https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicholasreimann/2022/12/22/musk...
[4] https://www.investopedia.com/elon-musks-multi-billion-dollar...
[5] https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/22/tech/tesla-robotaxis/index.ht...
[6] https://www.whichcar.com.au/news/tesla-level-five-absurd-say...
by 542354234235
4/24/2025 at 10:59:09 AM
Because they are psychopaths and sociopaths.Anyone with a conscience would worry about having the work of your lifetime being used in genocide. Zuck isn't like that. He doesn't care. What he cares is winning at board games.
by aredox
4/24/2025 at 5:44:25 PM
> If you're wildly successful at something with significant real world influence, why would you care so strongly about something as relatively inconsequential as a board game or a video game?Billionaires are highly psychologically disordered individuals. This is an expression of unrestrained narcissism in a "man" who has fully neglected to grow character as an individual, because his obscene wealth allows him to get through life with the emotional maturity of a teenager. Same with Musk, same with Trump, same with most other billionaires. Bill Gates is another great example.
People hate to admit it, but apparently having a billion dollars either makes one a narcissist, or it takes being a narcissist to make a billion dollars. Either way, just from the data we have in front of us, there's a very strong correlation there.
by ModernMech