What I took from the video game thing is that he thought he could fool people.

It's very obvious to gamers when someone hasn't played, it actually doesn't matter whether you have high level gear.

There's things you can't buy with money, and respect is one of them. He fundamentally doesn't understand how status works. He could, for free, just put out a video where he says "look at me, I'm a busy CEO, but I play this game even though I'm bad at it".

People would think positively about that.

> In their minds, financial success is the ultimate yardstick.

In a loopy recursive way, it is. Cost gates what we can do and become. Paying back your costs to extend your runway is the working principle behind biology, economy and technology. I am not saying rich people are always right, just that cost is not so irrelevant to everything else. I personally think cost satisfaction explains multiple levels, from biology up.

Related to introspection - it certainly has a cost for doing it, and a cost for not doing it. Going happy go lucky is not necessarily optimal, experience was expensive to gain, not using it at all is a big loss. Being paralyzed by rumination is also not optimal, we have to act in time, we can't delay and if we do, it comes out differently.

> Having enough money to pay someone to play the game for you, is the same as being good at the game, in his mind.

It's worse than that: he thinks the point of playing games is to be number 1 in the world.

Also doesn't help that wealth means they can own newspapers or social media to promote their shitty takes as gospel, and have armies of regular Joe fanbois, that kiss their ass and tell us how wise they are...

You say financial success as though it is completely independent of pretty much everything. "How could I be wrong, look how handsome I am"

To create great wealth in a vibrant capitalist society you have to have some model about the world you can exploit. It can be a better rocket design, some insight into human psychology that can help you raise money, or something else.

Some people fall ass backwards into money through luck, but that's rare, and people with great wealth don't have that luxury because they would squander it away and won't be able to grow what they have been given. At any extreme, you have to have both luck and skill. The best athletes are both incredibly gifted and incredibly hard working

They could be wrong on some things but to pretend they don't have a somewhat functional world model that is different enough from the consensus that it allows them to exploit it for great wealth is just naive.

I think the flip side would be "if you're so smart, why aren't you rich?" I prefer why aren't you happy myself, but sure, random person commenting on the internet about how the wealthiest people in the world don't know anything about the world, why haven't you exploited your superior knowledge relative to said billionaire to amass great wealth for yourself?

that's pretty rich coming from Tim "They're paying me enough to ignore slavery" Dillon.

I really don't think he thought it was equivalent, he was just larping and thought he could trick people.

[dead]

> The fact that they have so much wealth is a testament that their way of thinking is always right.

At least wealth is a quantifiable measure of success in our society.

In contrast, many posters on HN think they're always right (it's notorious for it) with no qualifications whatsoever.

This discussion is a sea of jealously and a perfect example.