Dwarkesh Hirani

If you just look through the list, a lot of them are like PhD economists, PhD industrial engineer, et cetera, et cetera.

I mean, some of them that you look, it's like, oh, they have a PhD in Marxist theory or something.

Which that seems fake.

But...

Are they actual technocrats?

If you look at their degrees, they seem quite impressive.

Or is this just fake, made-up credentialism?

If there's a PhD economist in the Politburo, should I be impressed and be like, oh, they probably really understand economics?

Or should I just think this is kind of a fake degree?

Yeah.

I still feel confused about how to model the competence of the party because on the one hand, they are

super educated in STEM and are selected at least partly on merit, et cetera.

On the other hand, we just see them make... A lot of zero COVID was just genuinely stupid, scrubbing down airport runways and so forth.

And it just lasted for too long.

And why was nobody steering the ship then?

So...

Well, no.

What's the way to put together this picture?

But if you're an economist, okay, so here's a question.

Like, traditionally, the way I understand it, if you study economics in at least an American university, you'll learn about, like...