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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Notes -
I think it’s because most modern founders are really not as grounded in day to day reality. It’s almost all abstracted to a degree that often makes a person think much to theoretically about issues that have a different reality when it’s not just numbers in a spreadsheet or other abstractions. They end up drawing a map and assuming the map is the territory.
Ironically I would point to both Elon and Trump as some of the few modern founders who really do seem to be "grounded in day to day reality" and to me a lot of the complaints I see about their alleged "bad opinions" read to me like the professor's complaints in this scene from Back To School.
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