What is the deal with these people who are super-successful offline (e.g. Chamath, Marc Andreessen, Elon Musk), but on social media have such mediocre, cringe, or bad opinions, getting easily-verifiable facts wrong or just repeating sale or boring stuff, or digging in when wrong? Why is there such a large disconnect between being so successful in one domain (e.g. creating companies) and the ability to produce good, well-informed opinions online?
My answer: People who are really successful offline tend to be specialists--they find something that works, and then scale or repeat it. People who have "good opinions about a broad range of topics" are generalists, but this does not necesailty lead to large wealth, which typically requires specialization.
Generalists tend to be higher IQ and get bored more easily, seeking novelty, but this comes at the cost mastery at a skill to become wealthy. Becoming a billionaire at running restaurants means knowing everything about the restaurant industry--perhaps not exactly intellectually simulating work--but necessary for success. Specialists can be really smart, but I would say generalists are smarter in the aggregate. There is no "industry person" who is as broadly read about history and other humanists topics as Moldbug, for example, as the ultimate generalist.
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I’m surprised Moldbug is your example of someone posting good, well-informed opinions online. I didn’t get the impression that his takes were any better informed than Musk’s, just because he uses pompous flowery prose instead of juvenile sex jokes and doge memes does not make the underlying ideas more rigorous.
I use him an example because, regardless of what you think of his politics, it's remarkable what he (and a handful of others ) has done over the past decade. With minimum promotion they created concepts and lingo ( e.g. cathedral, accelerationism, neo reaction) that have gained currency among the media, intelligentsia, and even the highest rungs of power, as well as implanting criticism of democracy as something to be taken seriously. Elon by comparison owns an entire social media platform hasn't really had nearly as much success implanting an idea or meme of similar popularity.
The fancy prose makes his ideas more memorable and taken more seriously by important people. Compare "free trade is bad for jobs" vs "great sucking sound." The latter is more memorable and memetic, and people continue to refer it after Perot's death.
If it were possible to increase Elon's verbal IQ by 1 sd at the cost of 1sd of wealth, he would probably be even more effective.
I mean, DOGE? That's pretty popular (not the crypto thing), at least among the right crowd, but even the wrong crowd knows what it is (and they loathed and feared it). That's not nothing.
agree, doge was memetic and was Elon's idea originally
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