Scott Alexander

I don't know.

Back to the text.

If they just deal with it maturely instead of spinning up maladaptive defenses against it, they're a nerd who is hopefully good-natured and accepting of their nerdiness and hopefully does some good work in some specific small area and changes the world in some specific small way or some very large way if they can work together with other people to get lucky.

Bugmaster writes, quote, End quote.

Scott writes, I worry that Adams, and you, are doing something where unless the average person can solve every problem by facts and intelligence alone, then facts and intelligence lose and memes and persuasion win.

But the average person also can't solve every problem by memes and persuasion alone.

If Dilbert is an 80th percentile nerd, the 80th percentile persuader is, I don't know, a used car salesman?

Dilbert's probably earning more money, especially nowadays when he could make L5 at Google.

And if Donald Trump is a 99.9999th percentile persuader, the 99.9999th percentile nerd is Ilya Sutskiver.

Probably most people would slightly prefer being Trump to Sutskiver, but Sutskiver does have a couple billion dollars, plus the more ethereal rewards of genius.

It still seems like a pretty good deal.

I also think you're doing a sort of black and white thinking here.

Every day, great persuaders like Sam Bankman Freed and Elizabeth Holmes end up in jail, because in fact the things that they said were true were not.

Every day, smooth-talking charismatic manipulators successfully seduce the girl into bed with them, then totally fail to turn it into a happy, stable marriage.

Because after a few years, even the dumbest woman catches on and figures out whether her mate provides real value or not.

Even Donald Trump has only a 37% approval rating because he can't make we should alienate our allies over Greenland sound plausible to most of the American people.

When someone's very good at it, persuasion sometimes helps them blur facts around the edges.

But that's it.

Nobody except Scott Adams and a few psychotherapists ever go to hypnotist school.

Most don't even go to any formal persuasion classes.