People
| Intelligent | Stupid | |
|---|---|---|
| Quiet | Intelligent/Quiet (perceptive or shy) | Stupid/Quiet (perceptive or shy) |
| Loud | Intelligent/Loud (perceptive) | Stupid/Loud (unperceptive) |
Don’t be the bottom right corner. It’s also the most numerous category in modern society.
Stupid/loud people are the only people that are annoying to me because almost everything they say is useless, and they often don’t recognize it in themselves so they never get out of that corner, but many people don’t like intelligent/loud people because they perceive them as arrogant, which reflects an insecurity that stupid people have more than the validity of correct ideas from those who are intelligent/loud.
If someone has good ideas, I want to hear it, even if they are unpolished/direct about it.
Intelligent people recognize that they are stupid, hence they will be quiet. Boastful intelligent people deserve the privilege beacuse that they say matters, unless they are actually incompetent in that area (in which they become stupid/loud). It’s very difficult for someone to remain in the intelligent/loud category without falling into the stupid/loud category because it takes a lot of effort to have a good grasp of any single category.
But stupid/loud people should not be mistaken for people grasping at words as they attempt to learn a topic well, in which even experts look stupid in the beginning.
I don’t think stupid/quiet people cause that much trouble: they recognize they aren’t that good at things, so they keep quiet, or maybe they’re shy.
- Intelligent/Loud becomes Intelligent/Quiet or Stupid/Loud. It is an unstable state.
- Stupid/Loud only becomes Stupid/Quiet when others tell them to stfu.
- Intelligent/Quiet becomes Intelligent/Loud when they have something useful to say and usually recognize that humans naturally have limitations on knowledge, hence the default of all is stupidity and they have something to learn.
Companies
| Competent | Incompetent | |
|---|---|---|
| Large | Apple, Tesla, Nvidia, etc. | Boeing, IBM, etc. |
| Small | YC Startups | Many SMBs |
For companies, you want to work either on the left side (competent) or coast at an incompetent company while doing something on the side.
It’s probably better to work at a startup because you need equity to hit another socioeconomic class, just make sure that the startup isn’t Incompetent and Small. Working at a Large and Competent company is a stable source of income and an envious position to be in, but not actually the most optimal.
More People
| Appears Not Dumb | Appears Dumb | |
|---|---|---|
| Actually Dumb | Doctors, lawyers, scientists, politicians (rule followers) | Drug addicts, alcoholics (basic rule breakers) |
| Not Dumb (advanced rule breakers) | Visionary CEOs, philosopher kings, researchers, House MD | People who talk and think differently from the meta but aren’t successful (priests, advisors, historians) |
Doctors are actually dumb. I had a Harvard-educated cardiac surgeon describe herself as a plumber. Doctors don’t know everything, so they have an internal doctor internet that they use to look things up.
They do things like prescribe oral itraconazole for a topical nail fungal infection, causing liver failure. Once you’ve read enough medical case reports, you recognize a lot of practitioner stupidity.
Charlie Munger lost his eye due to cataract surgery. I read three or four cancer blogs. Here’s one by Jake and one by Pham. They have similar pathways: hope for “the specific cure,” believing drugs are closely matched to solving problems, not realizing huge systemic effects as the human body is a nonlinear system, variations of prayers and hope that things will turn out fine, copes in the form of “the cancer is in remission!,” radiation usually being the thing that ends up killing people very quickly, and so on. I also read When Breath Becomes Air, Being Mortal, and And, Finally.
The current attempted solutions at health are wrong, and they’re killing us.
Types of Roles in Society
This is closely related to the above.
You have a sliding scale between people who are robots and people who are thinkers. Important to ask if a role requires thinking: there’s no skill expression in fast food or being a cashier, but some in being a waiter or a cleaner. Doing a job well gets you noticed.
- Robots/Operations (rule-followers)
- Check-in assistants, cashiers, recruiters who look for specific and repeated terms, admissions officers, waiters, factory workers, cleaners
- Thinkers
- Doing a job well, unique ways of doing a job, making decisions