You say he wasn’t particularly gifted but he was definetly smart no? I mean him graduating from MIT is at least evidence that he is not suffering from brain-damage.
I don’t think he was witless, I just think he presented himself as a boy genius when in reality he was just a narcissist with ADHD. He spent a lot of time developing a persona that mixed imagery of Steve Jobs and Aaron Swartz.
But if you actually look into his actual work… None of it’s groundbreaking, especially considering all the innovative aspects of ftx were all lies built upon fraud.
blargerer@kbin.social 6 months ago
You are falling for a common pitfall, assuming that intelligence is the dominant factor in success. There is enough evidence to suggest intelligence is a thing and that it does help general ability broadly, but it is basically always dominated by other factors, be it affluence or experience. It's entirely possible for an expert in 1 field to end up being completely clueless and seeming like a dumbass when talking about anything else. There is even research to suggest people that are experts in one domain can be easier to fool into thinking they are more competent in all domains, actually making them less likely to seek external opinions and ending up worse off.