Pls complete this survey from @BCPCouncil about protecting the Sandbanks dunes which in turn protect our coast & provide a habitat for protected species including Sand Lizards @DorsetWildlife@ARC_Bytes @ARGroupsUK
https://t.co/6KHJyfSN03
Many are surprised that some smart folks in tech seem disconnected from reality when it comes to politics. There's a simple explanation. To understand why this happens, you need to understand startups and venture capital.
The best startups often look like really bad ideas when the founders first conceive of them. It's very common that everyone around them is telling them their idea is crazy and definitely not going to work. 2/3 of Jeff Bezos' friends told him he'd never sell books online and passed on investing in the first round. Most around Sam Altman thought the idea of smarter than human LLMs this decade was science fiction. These sorts of stories are everywhere in startup land.
And so the best VCs and startup folks develop an immunity to people around them telling me them something is a bad idea. In startup land, this is great. But in other areas of life being immune to everyone around you telling you your thinking is flawed can lead to becoming disconnected from reality.
A great example here is Peter Thiel's arguments around the virtues of being contrarian. It's a fact that in investing, basically all of the great returns come from being BOTH non-consensus and right. Just being right the majority of the time isn't enough -- you have to be right about things most others get wrong. So many investors force themselves to be more contrarian. If many other people believe a thing, they run away. If very few people believe a thing, they get more excited. This works really well in investing because it allows you to hit big outliers. In investing being wrong 90% of the time but being very very right 10% of the time can lead to phenomenal returns (this is basically all of venture capital).
Too many people in tech then apply (knowingly or unknowingly) this same framework to politics. If many people believe a thing is true, they run away. If very few people believe a thing is true, they lean in. This can lead to them believing and espousing conspiracy theories and being disconnected from reality. Being 90% wrong but 10% very very right in investing works great. But being 90% wrong and 10% very very right in politics is not good.
This is one of the main reasons we're not just having policy disagreements but reality disagreements. Smart people applying a framework from one area of their lives to a different can lead them astray.
@AbelowRob i sometimes wonder that if Picasso, Elvis or Beethoven were alive today, some "commercial executive" would call them "content creators". not everyone can be creative, and those of us who are not should not seek to devalue those who are with demeaning labels.
The lengthy sentences on the 'Just Stop Oil' protestors are grotesquely disproportionate. As for the judge forbidding them to explain why they were protesting, it looks. like fascism. I deplore it.
@ProfBillMcGuire prison should be for violent and serious offences and be focused on rehabilitation. no one should be incarcerated for stopping traffic.
Can all the racists who posted after the Euros final at Wembley please take note…
Every single one of our penalty takers just now has Black heritage.
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