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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2586 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 1, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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ie “if you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?” was a favorite discussion topic both on the SSC open thread and on this forum in the early days, and still comes up occasionally.

I've always rejected the question's premise. One can always do a No True Scotsman as to what really counts as rich, but I'm fairly certain the average SSCer or Mottizen was and is well above average in income and net worth, especially age adjusted. Common exceptions might be some of those still in graduate school or otherwise in some early-on-shit-gobbling phase of their career like being a medical resident.

I don’t think it’s a hugely useful conversation. Almost nobody beats the market in the long term, and if you can consistently beat benchmark by a few percent a year for a decade or two you’re a star fund manager.

To make the kind of return you’re describing you need to gamble or cheat (or both, as the latter generally amounts to the former).

Agreed, it's not a useful conversation. Any individual investor able to double $1M in two years just got lucky from gambling.

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A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

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