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Trump Is Reality TV, Mueller Is The Wire

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  1. #1

    Default Trump Is Reality TV, Mueller Is The Wire

    You know it's true. And wuf, I know you're going to try to turn the analogy in favor of Trump with some sort of diatribe about how reality TV has done much more to shape blah blah blah-- but, you know, come on, lol

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  2. #2
    If the Democratic base ever figured out that Trump is reality TV, the Democrats would probably gets some wins in.
  3. #3
    The Wire wins in the end. The system holds. The aberration is expelled and bearing is reset.
  4. #4
    Indeed.
  5. #5
    It's not the belief that Trump is an idiot that amuses me, since that's a fair charge, it's the idea that the alternative was somehow preferable.
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  6. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    It's not the belief that Trump is an idiot that amuses me, since that's a fair charge, it's the idea that the alternative was somehow preferable.
    The idea that he is an idiot is one of the most interesting things to me. Because I think it is all hallucination, of which I was once a part.

    It's things like lots of people use "bigly" as a pivot point to Trump being an idiot. Well, it's a word, it's in the dictionary. It's the media that blew the whole thing up and acted like it wasn't, who didn't have as much intelligence and facts and knowledge as their so-called idiot, so maybe it was them who were the idiots while pointing the finger.

    What else makes Trump an idiot? His speech pattern? That he uses simple words and uses stream of consciousness type stuff a lot? Okay, fair enough. Yet we should probably note that this is contrast to the political norm, so it stands out, which can make somebody who doesn't like him hallucinate that it's idiocy. And note that if a favorite writer/artist of the turbo art world spoke like this, he would be hailed as brilliantly using brilliant rhetoric like stream of consciousness, or even they would say his brain is just so so so active that he talks like this so his iq must be >million.
  7. #7
    It should be noted that at times I've accused him of being a genius, usually in reference to the way he handles the screeching banshees.

    Perhaps "idiot" is the wrong word. Try "odious". Just... not nearly as odious as the alternative.

    And he's very much entertaining.
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  8. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    The idea that he is an idiot is one of the most interesting things to me. Because I think it is all hallucination, of which I was once a part.

    It's things like lots of people use "bigly" as a pivot point to Trump being an idiot. Well, it's a word, it's in the dictionary. It's the media that blew the whole thing up and acted like it wasn't, who didn't have as much intelligence and facts and knowledge as their so-called idiot, so maybe it was them who were the idiots while pointing the finger.

    What else makes Trump an idiot? His speech pattern? That he uses simple words and uses stream of consciousness type stuff a lot? Okay, fair enough. Yet we should probably note that this is contrast to the political norm, so it stands out, which can make somebody who doesn't like him hallucinate that it's idiocy. And note that if a favorite writer/artist of the turbo art world spoke like this, he would be hailed as brilliantly using brilliant rhetoric like stream of consciousness, or even they would say his brain is just so so so active that he talks like this so his iq must be >million.
    His name is Russel Brand. He too is an idiot.
  9. #9
    I have no idea how we got to Russel Brand from there, but yes he's an idiot.

    He can be quite funny though, sometimes. I'll admit he's made me laugh.
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  10. #10
    The whole "bigly" thing was amusing, to be honest. When I first saw that he used the word, I did what anyone who has never heard the word before should do before diving in... google it. Once I saw it was indeed a word, I found it ridiculously funny that there were people calling him stupid for using that word. If he deliberately used that word knowing it would have this impact, then certainly he's a genius.

    I find him somewhat odious though, but this really isn't anything unusual for a world leader. It takes a special kind of person to strive for the job in the first place, and in the case of USA it takes a very strong and assertive individual to prevail against the ironically-named Democrats, who will happily use the least democratic means possible to gain an advantage.

    When was the last time you had a "nice guy" as Prez? JFK? Our last "nice guy" was John Major, and he was fucking useless.
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  11. #11
    Hey wufwugy is your avatar genuine or some kind of sarcasm? I know a lot of guys over there like Trump which is like fine, but you should know that Farage is basically a comedy character over here.
  12. #12
    Farage is comedy to the screeching banshees, sure, but to those of us who have been desperate to leave the EU for well over a decade, he's something of a hero.
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  13. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    Farage is comedy to the screeching banshees, sure, but to those of us who have been desperate to leave the EU for well over a decade, he's something of a hero.
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-37187768

    I mean, he is a comedy character almost in a literal sense. The BBC themselves are commissioning mockumentaries about him
  14. #14
    The BBC is left-wing state propaganda, of course they're mocking him.

    That said, he is comedy, just the good sort of comedy, at least when it comes to politicians.
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  15. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    The BBC is left-wing state propaganda
    Good lord this place has gone properly mental! Bye guys!
  16. #16
    Quote Originally Posted by boost View Post
    The Wire wins in the end. The system holds. The aberration is expelled and bearing is reset.
    Coupling this post with the thread title, I'm inferring your statement to mean Mueller is the winner, and Trump is the aberration?

    I don't get it
  17. #17
    Quote Originally Posted by dwarfman2 View Post
    Good lord this place has gone properly mental! Bye guys!
    You say this like it's a crazy statement, but sadly it's entirely true. I read the BBC daily, it's my go-to place to see what my government wants me to think about internal and world affairs.
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  18. #18
    Alright, we've gone on a bit of a limey tangent here. Let's get back to talking about countries that matter.

    There are a lot of very extreme accusations about Trump's behavior. "He's stupid", "He's unstable", "He's prone to tantrums", "He's racist", "He's sexist", on and on and on and on and on. Anyone espousing those positions should be laughed at, mocked, ridiculed, and shamed for it. There is simply no way that Trump could be where he is right now, if his behavior is guided by stupidity, impulsiveness, and misogyny. It's simply impossible to be all of those things, to the extreme that he's being accused of, and still be as monumentally successful as he has been in all things.

    Some of the more legitimate complaints about his character call out the fact that he lacks the deportment of his 44 predecessors. That's probably a valid concern. But it's also not really Trump's fault. He's obliterated his competition in business. He climbed to the height of the entertainment industry despite having no discernible show-business talent. And then he took on BOTH political parties, and the media, almost simultaneously, and defeated them all to become President of the United States.

    When you kick that much ass, you don't really have to be afraid of anything. You can say or do anything you want with almost no consequences whatsoever. Unlike his 44 predecessors, he really doesn't have to care about cow-towing to the party leadership, or tip-toeing around the news media. On that front, Trump doesn't really have any 'skin in the game'.

    Everyone knew that Trump was a ruthless business man, uncouth speaker, and aggressive womanizer for DECADES before he ever tried to run for President. Do I think it's a great thing that a person like that is now the head of state? OF COURSE NOT! But it's not Trump's fault. America knew all this stuff about him, and voted for him anyway.

    So any time Trump does something uncouth, adulterous, clownish, or otherwise totally consistent with his behavior and character....that's on the American voters, and NOT Donald Trump.

    President Trump is the consequence of our culture.

    We glamorize, idolize, and almost deify celebrities. Is it any surprise that one became President?

    After this shooting in Florida, the media gave us a healthy dose of celebrity reactions on twitter. Kim Kardashian's "thoughts and prayers" were echoed through the mainstream as if she were some kind of constitutional scholar. Why in the world would we expect the President to stay off social media????

    We have apps to help you cheat on your spouse. Should we be shocked if our President had an affair with a porn star?

    I could go on and on with this stuff. But you get the idea.

    Trump is the president America deserves. And if America doesn't like it.....then America needs to get its shit together.
  19. #19
    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    You say this like it's a crazy statement, but sadly it's entirely true. I read the BBC daily, it's my go-to place to see what my government wants me to think about internal and world affairs.
    The left wing conservative government?

    The BBC is pretty liberal but it's pretty hard to argue it is left wing.
  20. #20
    The liberal agenda is left wing. Didn't you see all those antifa dickheads waving around flags with socialist logos on? Just because they're pro-Tory, doesn't mean they're not left wing. They oppose Trump, they promote immigration and multiculturism in the most blatantly politically correct way possible, while giving very little attention to right wing views. Furthermore, they absolutely parrot the "victim" strategy employed by the left, they embrace identity politics. Yeah they're left wing, just not quite as blatant as Corbyn. The Tories are left wing, it's insane. Wasn't so long ago I thought we had two right wing major parties, now I see them both as left. What's actually happened is that left and right wing politics have gone completely out of the window and we're left with neo-liberalism and democratic socialism. Neither of those are right wing, and neither of those are particularly appealing.
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  21. #21
    Quote Originally Posted by BananaStand View Post
    There is simply no way that Trump could be where he is right now, if his behavior is guided by stupidity, impulsiveness, and misogyny. It's simply impossible to be all of those things, to the extreme that he's being accused of, and still be as monumentally successful as he has been in all things.
    Not only is it possible, but it can be expected given enough election cycles. That's how probability works.

    Further to that point, the expectation of undeserved success should increase when the starting point of the successful is elevated. The fact that Donald Trump entered the world with so many challenges already behind him is clear when you realize that at a certain point of wealth (one which Trump was born into) a person can cease to produce and live comfortably from the capital gains. I'm not claiming he did that (I'm also not claiming that he didn't unintentionally do a much more complex version of that which ostensibly looks like the opposite of what it is), I'm only saying he is not, by any stretch of the phrase, a self made man, and any claim that he is is a total farce.

    That being said, I can see how people misinterpret his story as the story of a self made man, most importantly how he himself could do so-- and that's all that matters for this first paragraph to be supportive of the rest of your post which is quite good.
  22. #22
    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    I have no idea how we got to Russel Brand from there, but yes he's an idiot.

    He can be quite funny though, sometimes. I'll admit he's made me laugh.
    Yeah, I really like his comedic style. It's high energy, very animated through his lanky frame and expressive face, and despite his deficit in rational discourse, he's got a good wit and is quite clever.
  23. #23
    Quote Originally Posted by boost View Post
    Not only is it possible, but it can be expected given enough election cycles. That's how probability works.
    Dude, we're not playing plinko. Election results aren't random. They are the result of conscious decisions made by millions of people weighing different factors. The active decision making negates the effects of probability.

    Further to that point, the expectation of undeserved success should increase when the starting point of the successful is elevated. The fact that Donald Trump entered the world with so many challenges already behind him is clear when you realize that at a certain point of wealth (one which Trump was born into) a person can cease to produce and live comfortably from the capital gains.
    Even if you're not insinuating that Trump is undeserving of his success (which you are), that doesn't mean that he's dumb, unstable, hateful, or dangerously temperamental.

    I'm not claiming he did that (I'm also not claiming that he didn't unintentionally do a much more complex version of that which ostensibly looks like the opposite of what it is), I'm only saying he is not, by any stretch of the phrase, a self made man, and any claim that he is is a total farce.
    This is a really pathetic game that the left likes to play.

    There have been many differing accounts of how much of a head start Trump actually got. The highest figure I've heard quoted was $200 million. If you think turning $200M into $10B is easy...you're nuts. Even if you invested it at a guaranteed 10% and capital gains tax was only 20%, you wouldn't even be halfway there after 40 years.

    To make the money he's made, you need to make a much higher rate of return. Higher returns, means higher risks. That means less margin for error. That means less mistakes. That means you almost never lose.

    Think that just happens by accident???

    Furthermore, even if everything you said is true....why does it matter? How does having a head start make him "stupid"???
  24. #24
    Quote Originally Posted by BananaStand View Post
    that doesn't mean that he's dumb, unstable, hateful, or dangerously temperamental.
    He never said it does mean those things.

    You act as though attributing those qualities to Trump is just some ploy that comes out of thin air, like, say, questioning Obama's citizenship.

    Those attributions have nothing to do with his status as a celebrity, they have to do with his behavior.

    When you do interviews where you babble incoherently, people call you dumb.

    When you overreact to every little slight, people call you unstable.

    I'm not sure anyone calls him hateful, but if they did, if might come from seeing his blatantly racist tendencies.

    Dangerously temperamental might be overstating it a bit, but I beware of anyone who refers to himself as 'very stable'. It sounds like the kind of thing an unstable person would say.
  25. #25
    Quote Originally Posted by Poopadoop View Post
    He never said it does mean those things.
    Actually, he kinda did. The argument was that Trump's successes prove that his brain works. Boost's reply was "he's not as successful as you think he is". That's wrong. It's also incoherent babbling unless the intent is to suggest that Trump might indeed be stupid, and his success doesn't prove otherwise.

    You act as though attributing those qualities to Trump is just some ploy that comes out of thin air
    No I don't. I think attributing those qualities to Trump is just some ploy that comes out of partisan rage over Hillary's loss.

    , like, say, questioning Obama's citizenship
    That didn't come out of thin air. It came from Hillary Clinton. Obama was addressing rumors about his birth during the 2008 primaries, and for years afterward. Donald Trump never once brought up the subject before 2011.

    Those attributions have nothing to do with his status as a celebrity, they have to do with his behavior.
    You mean the cherry picked behaviors edited together into a disparaging blooper reel. No reasonable or intelligent person could make those attributions when considering the entirety of Trump's resume.

    When you do interviews where you babble incoherently, people call you dumb.
    If the guy made a habit of 'babbling incoherently', then there is absolutely no way he could become an icon of business success, an elite entertainment star, and hold the highest political office in the world. It just couldn't happen. Again, you're cherry picking frames for your blooper reel.

    When you overreact to every little slight, people call you unstable.
    The mainstream media has declared war on him and has devoted every resource they have to discrediting him, nullifying his success, and ultimately removing him form office in clear defiance of a fair electoral process. You call that a "little slight"???

    I'm not sure anyone calls him hateful, but if they did, if might come from seeing his blatantly racist tendencies.
    You should look up the word "blatant". I don't think it means what you think it means. There have been some insensitive and off-color one-liners. But nothing that warrants the accusations of hate, racism, and bigotry that he's had to endure.

    Dangerously temperamental might be overstating it a bit.
    Some guy named Tim Steyer has got a real hard on for a Trump impeachment and is running ads all over cable news. One asks "what can a president do in 30 seconds" and then goes on to suggest that it's enough time for Trump to throw a tantrum and enter nuclear launch codes. If you think that's a realistic possibility, you're in-fucking-sane. So it's nice that you say "dangerously temperamental" is an overstatement. But that's not the overall narrative being pushed in the media. The media is telling people that's a real risk.

    , but I beware of anyone who refers to himself as 'very stable'. It sounds like the kind of thing an unstable person would say.
    How would a stable person respond to incredibly insulting and ignorant inquiries about his mental capacity?
    Last edited by BananaStand; 02-19-2018 at 03:46 PM.
  26. #26
    Quote Originally Posted by BananaStand View Post
    Actually, he kinda did. The argument was that Trump's successes prove that his brain works. Boost's reply was "he's not as successful as you think he is". That's wrong. It's also incoherent babbling unless the intent is to suggest that Trump might indeed be stupid, and his success doesn't prove otherwise.
    1. Why do you equate all his 'success' at business (I guess all the bankruptcies and whatnot don't register) with supreme intelligence?

    2. Assuming he has a superior business acumen, why do you insist it must transfer to all other intellectual domains?


    Quote Originally Posted by BananaStand View Post

    That didn't come out of thin air. It came from Hillary Clinton. Obama was addressing rumors about his birth during the 2008 primaries, and for years afterward. Donald Trump never once brought up the subject before 2011.
    But when he did he sure ran with it didn't he?


    Quote Originally Posted by BananaStand View Post
    You mean the cherry picked behaviors edited together into a disparaging blooper reel. No reasonable or intelligent person could make those attributions when considering the entirety of Trump's resume.
    Hard to argue they're cherry picked when pretty much every day is a blooper reel, but w/e.



    Quote Originally Posted by BananaStand View Post
    If the guy made a habit of 'babbling incoherently', then there is absolutely no way he could become an icon of business success, an elite entertainment star, and hold the highest political office in the world. It just couldn't happen. Again, you're cherry picking frames for your blooper reel.
    No, he mainly babbles incoherently when he's asked about things like policy. This concerns people who for some reason feel it's his job to be able to show some understanding of the issues involved. So either he's a genius who's too lazy to learn what he needs to know to do his job properly or he's an idiot who couldn't do his job properly if he tried. Take your pick.


    Quote Originally Posted by BananaStand View Post
    The mainstream media has declared war on him and has devoted every resource they have to discrediting him, nullifying his success, and ultimately removing him form office in clear defiance of a fair electoral process.
    Half of them have done this, the other half are doing exactly the opposite.


    Quote Originally Posted by BananaStand View Post
    You call that a "little slight"???
    When did I say that? Every little slight does not include every big slight.


    Quote Originally Posted by BananaStand View Post
    You should look up the word "blatant". I don't think it means what you think it means. There have been some insensitive and off-color one-liners. But nothing that warrants the accusations of hate, racism, and bigotry that he's had to endure.
    Taken in sum, his behavior reflects what is most likely a racist outlook. Go watch the 'blooper reel' as you call it and say that guy doesn't seem like a wee bit racist.


    Quote Originally Posted by BananaStand View Post
    Some guy named Tim Steyer has got a real hard on for a Trump impeachment and is running ads all over cable news. One asks "what can a president do in 30 seconds" and then goes on to suggest that it's enough time for Trump to throw a tantrum and enter nuclear launch codes. If you think that's a realistic possibility, you're in-fucking-sane. So it's nice that you say "dangerously temperamental" is an overstatement. But that's not the overall narrative being pushed in the media. The media is telling people that's a real risk.
    How is that any different from any other president? People ran campaigns claiming Obama was a terrorist. If you can't stand the heat, don't run for president - you might win and have to deal with this greasy shit.


    Quote Originally Posted by BananaStand View Post
    How would a stable person respond to incredibly insulting and ignorant inquiries about his mental capacity?
    Most of us just ignore you when you do that. Why would I feel the need to defend my intellect when I'm secure about it? I don't. So, what I don't do is send a list of a dozen tweets putting you down and claiming you're part of a conspiracy against me, and that I'm like, a really really really smart person.
  27. #27
    Quote Originally Posted by boost View Post
    Not only is it possible, but it can be expected given enough election cycles. That's how probability works.

    Further to that point, the expectation of undeserved success should increase when the starting point of the successful is elevated. The fact that Donald Trump entered the world with so many challenges already behind him is clear when you realize that at a certain point of wealth (one which Trump was born into) a person can cease to produce and live comfortably from the capital gains. I'm not claiming he did that (I'm also not claiming that he didn't unintentionally do a much more complex version of that which ostensibly looks like the opposite of what it is), I'm only saying he is not, by any stretch of the phrase, a self made man, and any claim that he is is a total farce.

    That being said, I can see how people misinterpret his story as the story of a self made man, most importantly how he himself could do so-- and that's all that matters for this first paragraph to be supportive of the rest of your post which is quite good.
    What if we use more sophisticated measurements? He is one of the only people in the world to corner the market he is in. Hell, he virtually invented that market. The popularization of business in reality TV, that was him, he made that happen.
  28. #28
    Quote Originally Posted by dwarfman2 View Post
    Good lord this place has gone properly mental! Bye guys!
    If this is why you leave, it demonstrates that the opinions you hold contain low rigor. If you return, I'll explain why Based Uncle Nige' is a gangster among men and that the BBC gobbles Marx cock.
  29. #29
    Quote Originally Posted by Savy View Post
    The left wing conservative government?

    The BBC is pretty liberal but it's pretty hard to argue it is left wing.
    In what ways is the BBC conservative or classic liberal?
  30. #30
    Quote Originally Posted by Poopadoop View Post
    1. Why do you equate all his 'success' at business with supreme intelligence?
    His success is too great and too sustained to be luck. It's also not the result of a 'head start', as I demonstrated to boost a few posts above.
    What else could it be? Do you think people just gave him all that money because he's so good looking?

    (I guess all the bankruptcies and whatnot don't register)
    He started 513 companies. 4 declared bankruptcy. Scoreboard

    2. Assuming he has a superior business acumen, why do you insist it must transfer to all other intellectual domains?
    Define business acumen? Do you think it's just knowing when to buy/sell? A business empire his size requires a high number of the executive skills that are also requisites for president. leadership, negotiation, policy, a deep understanding of markets, stuff like that. The overlap is tremendous. Why do you insist on separating business skill from political skill.

    But when he did he sure ran with it didn't he?
    I'd describe it differently. He said basically "there's enough murkiness around this guy's birthplace that we should get to the bottom of this". Then rather than "run with it", he drew a line in the sand. "Show your birth certificate before the election and I'll give $5M to the charity of your choice"

    Even if you think Trump is being petty, partisan, and in-fucking-sane.....you know he has the money, and you know he'll pay up. So why wouldn't obama just show the document? Don't you think that looks suspicious??

    In any event, he became convinced otherwise and admitted he was wrong. Isn't that how it's supposed to work?

    Hard to argue they're cherry picked when pretty much every day is a blooper reel, but w/e.
    It only looks that way filtered through CNN

    No, he mainly babbles incoherently when he's asked about things like policy.
    Disagree. Every word is audible and intelligible.

    This concerns people who for some reason feel it's his job to be able to show some understanding of the issues involved
    .
    This is a passive aggressive talking point from the left. Just because he doesn't agree with you about the issues involved, doesn't mean that he doesn't understand them.

    So either he's a genius who's too lazy to learn what he needs to know to do his job properly or he's an idiot who couldn't do his job properly if he tried. Take your pick.
    What do you consider "proper"? Again, just because you disagree, doesn't mean something is improper. He seems to be handling the job just fine.

    Half of them have done this, the other half are doing exactly the opposite.
    That's simply not true. There's Fox, and then there is MSNBC, CNN, ABC, NY Times, WaPo, and many many others. In addition there is entertainment and academia. news media, entertainment industry, and academia......The left has a solid monopoly on the information that flows into people's brains.

    When did I say that?
    I quoted you. WTF??

    Every little slight does not include every big slight.
    I don't know what you mean here. There is a 24 hour multi-network campaign to destroy the man. If that's little, what do you consider a "big slight"?

    Taken in sum, his behavior reflects what is most likely a racist outlook. Go watch the 'blooper reel' as you call it and say that guy doesn't seem like a wee bit racist.
    I think he's as racist as any 71 year affluent white man. Which by 2018 standards is "a wee bit racist". It's part insensitivity, it's part overreaction to political correctness, but there's no hate there. All of the intense "-ist" adjectives that have been used to describe him, heavily imply a hateful agenda.

    How is that any different from any other president? People ran campaigns claiming Obama was a terrorist. If you can't stand the heat, don't run for president - you might win and have to deal with this greasy shit.
    The obama-terrorist business was fringe at best. The "Trump is a maniac" stuff is clearly mainstream. Claims that "obama is a terrorist" and "Trump can't be trusted with nukes" are equally insane. Yet the latter has considerably more credibility. Do you see the problem??

    If the ObamaHatersUSA superPAC tried to buy airtime on CNN claiming that Obama was a terrorist.....what do you think would happen?

    Most of us just ignore you when you do that. Why would I feel the need to defend my intellect when I'm secure about it?
    Are you being serious here? If this is really what you think, I don't see how you can feel secure about your intellect.

    You can't let the mass media engage in a campaign to denigrate your intelligence, not fight back, and still win an election. It's not a question of personal security. Other people's opinions matter. So if you're being smeared, and you hope to win an election, then it is absolutely imperative that you present your side of the story. That's what Twitter does for Trump. He absolutely NEEDS a rapid fire defense mechanism against the constant barrage of attacks on his intelligence, honor, and fitness for office.

    So, what I don't do is send a list of a dozen tweets putting you down and claiming you're part of a conspiracy against me, and that I'm like, a really really really smart person
    The guy is accused of treason with no evidence. I'd cry 'conspiracy' too.

    Again, he needs twitter to present his side of things quickly, simply, and in a way that connects with the public. Some people think it's not part of the comportment required of a Head of State. But like it or not, that connection with the public was a huge pillar of his victory.
    Last edited by BananaStand; 02-19-2018 at 08:41 PM.
  31. #31
    Quote Originally Posted by BananaStand View Post
    Actually, he kinda did. The argument was that Trump's successes prove that his brain works. Boost's reply was "he's not as successful as you think he is". That's wrong. It's also incoherent babbling unless the intent is to suggest that Trump might indeed be stupid, and his success doesn't prove otherwise.
    My argument was nuanced, but boiled down it has two main points, he likely is not as financially successful as he would like us to believe (this was mostly an implied argument) and that no matter how successful he is, success is not conditional on intelligence.

    To make the money he's made, you need to make a much higher rate of return. Higher returns, means higher risks. That means less margin for error. That means less mistakes. That means you almost never lose.
    False. More risk, means greater margins, means greater margins for error. I get how you could get this backwards, but think about it-- more margins, means, so long as you don't go bust, your margins can absorb more error.

    Further, net worth calculations can become very murky the more complex a person's finances are, which in general means the richer you are. For example Elizabeth Holmes was a billionaire and the next morning a nothingaire. This is because her net worth was contingent on a lot of things, the most important of them which proved to be non existent. In Trumps case, without his willing transparency, all we really have is a rough idea of his assets and his word that they eclipse his debt obligations to the tune of some odd billion dollars.

    I don't want to pretend to read minds, but if I might hazard a guess as to why wuf seems to want redirect the conversation to his success as an entertainer, the flimsiness of his status as a billionaire would be the guess.

    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    What if we use more sophisticated measurements? He is one of the only people in the world to corner the market he is in. Hell, he virtually invented that market. The popularization of business in reality TV, that was him, he made that happen.
    Show your work. As far as I can tell, there is no good reason to believe that he invented the market or even major aspects of the character. I'm sure he would dispute this, but the creators/producers of the Apprentice certainly don't think the credit you are giving him is justified. Then again, he hasn't disputed their claims (to my knowledge) leaving it as one of the few slights he doesn't seem to have gone after. Probably because all of the pitch meetings, exchanges with agents, scripts penned by professional writers, etc are well documented and would contradict his counter claims.
    Last edited by boost; 02-20-2018 at 06:31 PM.
  32. #32
    Quote Originally Posted by boost View Post
    My argument was nuanced, but boiled down it has two main points, he likely is not as financially successful as he would like us to believe (this was mostly an implied argument)
    Why is that "likely"? I mean, if someone out there is making 98,500/year and wants to round up their salary to $100K because it makes them feel good, fine. White lies. Could Trump be guilty of that? Sure. But do you think he's rounding off billions of dollars? If he's only worth $8 billion....what's the difference??

    Spoiler:
    If you're thinking of posting "about 2 Billion"....go fuck yourself


    and that no matter how successful he is, success is not conditional on intelligence.
    Prolonged, sustained, immense success across multiple highly competitive ventures (including a presidential election) doesn't happen by accident, luck, or variance. It doesn't happen by way of a $200 million head start. It doesn't happen by sucking everyone else's dick.

    You and Poop keep trying to say that his success doesn't demonstrate intelligence. What does it show then??

    False. More risk, means greater margins, means greater margins for error. I get how you could get this backwards, but think about it-- more margins, means, so long as you don't go bust, your margins can absorb more error.
    Holy fucking shit dude. Do you know what "risk" means???? It definitely does not mean greater margin for error. Not even close. It means that the consequences of your mistakes are magnified. Errors cost more. That's a REDUCTION of margin for error.

    Let's say we have an apple tree, and start selling apples for 25 cents each. What are our risks? Our apple tree could die. Deer could eat our crop. And the market could reject our price point.

    Using your logic, we could make more money, and have greater margin for error if we use our apple tree for chainsaw-throwing target practice, take down our deer fence, and increase our price to $10 per apple.

    Elizabeth Holmes was a billionaire and the next morning a nothingaire. This is because her net worth was contingent on a lot of things, the most important of them which proved to be non existent. In Trumps case, without his willing transparency, all we really have is a rough idea of his assets and his word that they eclipse his debt obligations to the tune of some odd billion dollars.
    There are enormous physical structures....massive buildings.....with Trump's name on the top. Elizabeth Holmes can not say the same. Probably why Trump's been Trump for 40 fucking years and this is the first time I've ever heard of Lizzy.

    I don't want to pretend to read minds, but if I might hazard a guess as to why wuf seems to want redirect the conversation to his success as an entertainer, the flimsiness of his status as a billionaire would be the guess.
    You can't have it both ways. Either, he's monumentally successful, and that's a testament to his brilliance. Or he's spent nearly half a century fooling the public into believing that he's monumentally successful, which would be a testament to his brilliance.

    Show your work. As far as I can tell, there is no good reason to believe that he invented the market or even major aspects of the character.
    This is correct.

    When 'reality TV' took off, it was because people were compelled by the hilarious and ridiculous juxtapositions. It started with MTV's 'Real World' that had cool people living in a house acting like total fucking ass holes. Then it escalated. Survivor showed us what happens when civilized people are removed from civilization. I recall a show where upscale socialite Paris Hilton and her ugly friend were forced to do the filthy farmhand work of the common people. The bachelorette let guys like me get our shadenfreude by watching suave hunks get dumped and rejected by the hot girl.

    It doesn't take a genius to make a show where highly accomplished and successful people get fired.
    Last edited by BananaStand; 02-20-2018 at 08:13 PM.
  33. #33
    Quote Originally Posted by boost View Post
    Show your work. As far as I can tell, there is no good reason to believe that he invented the market or even major aspects of the character. I'm sure he would dispute this, but the creators/producers of the Apprentice certainly don't think the credit you are giving him is justified. Then again, he hasn't disputed their claims (to my knowledge) leaving it as one of the few slights he doesn't seem to have gone after. Probably because all of the pitch meetings, exchanges with agents, scripts penned by professional writers, etc are well documented and would contradict his counter claims.
    What are you looking for? It is most likely the case that in a plurality of viewers, he was the most important part of the Apprentice (and that niche of reality TV in general) if there was any. Also didn't he go from being nothing in pageantry to being one of the top guys?

    He has one of the most recognizable brands (from name to product to hair, etc.) which he made happen.
  34. #34
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    What are you looking for? It is most likely the case that in a plurality of viewers, he was the most important part of the Apprentice (and that niche of reality TV in general) if there was any. Also didn't he go from being nothing in pageantry to being one of the top guys?

    He has one of the most recognizable brands (from name to product to hair, etc.) which he made happen.
    Arguably he made this hugely recognizable brand on the back of countless business failures that were given great PR spin. The importance of asking "at what cost?" shouldn't be lost on you.
  35. #35
    Banana, your understanding of what it means to acquire risk and what the upsides and what the downsides of doing so are is not uncommon, but it is not correct.

    I'm not sure what you were doing with your analogy, but a better use of it may be that a farmer who owns an apple orchard can chose to use banned fertilizers/pesticides. In doing so, he can plant his crop a little late, slack on upkeep to some extent, not negotiate the best prices for his apples, etc, all because the use of the banned chemicals has given him a greater crop yield. The farmer may fly under the regulators radar for months, years, decades, or he may never catch their attention. Until he gets shut down he will seem to have a wildly successful orchard.

    This is how the trade off of risk for greater margins works.
  36. #36
    Quote Originally Posted by boost View Post
    Arguably he made this hugely recognizable brand on the back of countless business failures that were given great PR spin. The importance of asking "at what cost?" shouldn't be lost on you.
    "countless business failures"?

    The Trump organization owns over 500 business entities. Exactly 6 of them filed for bankruptcy.
  37. #37
    Quote Originally Posted by boost View Post
    This is how the trade off of risk for greater margins works.
    We're gonna go down a rabbit hole of what "risk" means, and I really don't want to. But the above only holds true in the context of "cheating", as in your analogy.

    your assertion falls apart when we start talking about risks that do not involve breaking rules.

    Like, if a company takes on debt to capitalize a new venture. There is now a higher demand for cash flow to satisfy those debt obligations. Maintaining that cash flow requires successful operation of the venture. If the venture is not successful, cash flow suffers, and debts can be called, forcing bankruptcy.

    However, by using debt to finance capital, the firm can use it's own cash to invest in better assets and better talent, which yields a higher return.

    More risk ----> Less margin for error ----> Higher return.
  38. #38
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    Talking about Trump's bancruptcies is pretty pointless. The 6 noted cases are chapter 11 reorgs, which are used to "save" a company from bancruptcy. All of them were Trump's hotels and casinos. Chapter 11 can be filed for for a number of reasons, wuf can probably tell more about it. This however in no way means all his other business ventures have been successful. Trump U, steaks, airline, vodka, travel, magazine etc have all been very much unsuccessful.

    Anyhoo, "risk" means an outcome or situation with potentially undesirable effects, if you're looking for the risk management definition. A risk is defined by it's impact and probability. In layman's terms, if you incur more risk, it's either more likely that something goes wrong, or that when things do go wrong the impact is worse. I would say there's therefore either the same or more margin for error with increased risk. If there's a scenario where taking on more risk meant the probability of the overall risks lowered without the impact rising, I'd go all in every day.
    Our brains have just one scale, and we resize our experiences to fit.

  39. #39
    Quote Originally Posted by BananaStand View Post
    "countless business failures"?

    The Trump organization owns over 500 business entities. Exactly 6 of them filed for bankruptcy.
    You too can own a as many business entities as you want. The paperwork is pretty self explanatory, the filling fee, depending on state, can be as little as $30, and again, depending on state, there may not be any annual fee to stay in good standing.

    Now that you bring it up, I invite you to do a little digging into those 500 entities. How many of them are active businesses? There are many legitimate reasons to form a legal entity or even a network of legal entities, but many of them do not support the thesis that shear quantity of entities is a useful signal for measuring success.
  40. #40
    Trumps businesses can't have been going that well otherwise he wouldn't have had to look for a second job.
  41. #41
    Quote Originally Posted by BananaStand View Post
    We're gonna go down a rabbit hole of what "risk" means, and I really don't want to. But the above only holds true in the context of "cheating", as in your analogy.

    your assertion falls apart when we start talking about risks that do not involve breaking rules.
    False. A car rental business can lower it's standards for who it rents to (say allowing those younger than 26 to rent without restriction) and reap the rewards.

    Or to stay with the farmer-- he could expand his farm to the point at which the local aquifer can only support this capacity should rainfall stay consistent. He will have increased margins, more room for error, until a dry year hits.
    Like, if a company takes on debt to capitalize a new venture. There is now a higher demand for cash flow to satisfy those debt obligations. Maintaining that cash flow requires successful operation of the venture. If the venture is not successful, cash flow suffers, and debts can be called, forcing bankruptcy.

    However, by using debt to finance capital, the firm can use it's own cash to invest in better assets and better talent, which yields a higher return.

    More risk ----> Less margin for error ----> Higher return.
    Right, this is an example of responsibly taking on increased risk. The increased margin offers a choice: mitigate the risk, thereby reducing the increased margin (possibly to the point of a lower margin than before the risk, but netting a higher dollar profit due to scale), or you can reap the rewards of the unmitigated risk and hope it doesn't all come crashing down before you exit your risky position.

    My argument is that someone can opt out of mitigating the risk and appear wildly successful. Depending on the details, variance can hide an entities true win rate for what intuitively feels like an ample amount of time to definitively decide if they are a success or not.

    My position is not that Donald Trump is or isn't a success (in the more meaningful sense of true win rate given a sufficient sample size), it is that I don't believe that there is enough data available to definitively say, and what data there is tends to align with an inflated net worth.

    I think you have a pretty good mind for the pieces in play, but sometimes you're failing to fully grasp how they interact with each other.
  42. #42
    Look guys, if we're gonna say that businesses can just assume more and more risk, and all it does is make it easier to turn a profit, then you can all just fuck off.

    That is literally some of the dumbest, most idiotic bullshit I've ever heard. And as much as I like ranting at stupidity, this one is just too pathetic and sad for me to unleash my wrath.
  43. #43
    Banana,

    I think maybe the scenario you're thinking of would be one in which you take on debt to scale, reducing margins greatly, and thereby reducing the margin for error. You are right that while under the debt obligation your margin for error, in this venture, is temporarily greatly reduced-- however, if you make it to the other side of the debt obligation, your actual margin can be quite big. When each bet is viewed in the grand scheme, in a succession of bets, you can see that a bad strategy can appear to be a succeasful strategy if your bankroll can see you through to the payoff of one of these high risk bets. Your true win rate can be masked for quite some time.

    As an illustration, think of sitting down at a slot machine with $100. If you bink 777 for $1,000 before your $100 is exhausted, you now have an even bigger bankroll to weather the downsides of variance. Now, imagine you could only pull the slot arm twice a year. A good starting bankroll and a couple successive lucky pulls, and if we didn't had no way of knowing for a fact that you have a losing win rate, we might think you're a slot genius.

    Again, I'm not saying this is the case for Trump-- I'm saying that there isn't sufficient evidence to definitively say it isn't. However, there is more than a bit of prima facie evidence to the affirmative.
  44. #44
    Right.....Melania married him for his risk
  45. #45
    Quote Originally Posted by BananaStand View Post
    Look guys, if we're gonna say that businesses can just assume more and more risk, and all it does is make it easier to turn a profit, then you can all just fuck off.

    That is literally some of the dumbest, most idiotic bullshit I've ever heard. And as much as I like ranting at stupidity, this one is just too pathetic and sad for me to unleash my wrath.
    The key is that it isn't easier to turn a true profit-- it's a game of three card monty when you do this. The two show cards read "PROFITS!" and the third card reveals the truth. The crazy thing is, you can actually be unwittingly running one of these three card monty businesses due to ignorance. Or of course it can be intentional. And further, it's not even necessarily against the rules.
  46. #46
    Quote Originally Posted by BananaStand View Post
    Right.....Melania married him for his risk
    This is your argument? Your argument rests on a super model trophy wife's ability to carry out due diligence on her prospective husband's business acumen?
  47. #47
    its a more substantial argument than this conversation deserves.

    youre welcome
  48. #48
    Quote Originally Posted by Savy View Post
    Trumps businesses can't have been going that well otherwise he wouldn't have had to look for a second job.
    True
  49. #49
    Boost might be right in that the space Trump occupies could be a fat tailed distribution. There probably isn't enough data to say at which probabilities deviations from the mean occur. Or maybe there is enough data, we just have to interpret it better. For example, it probably isn't the case that if somebody does what Trump does he will become like Trump, but it may be the case that in a population with a sub-population where people do what Trump does, Trumps arise.
  50. #50
    Quote Originally Posted by boost View Post
    The key is that it isn't easier to turn a true profit-- it's a game of three card monty when you do this. The two show cards read "PROFITS!" and the third card reveals the truth. The crazy thing is, you can actually be unwittingly running one of these three card monty businesses due to ignorance. Or of course it can be intentional. And further, it's not even necessarily against the rules.
    This just reeks of whiny left-wing uninformed nonsense. Did you hear this at an Occupy protest??

    Reading between the lines here, your thought process is obvious. Your jealous rage towards anyone wealthy compels you to level insane accusations of fake profits, 'cooking the books', and something something three card monty.

    Just because you don't have an understanding of accounting and corporate finance doesn't mean that profits are an illusion
  51. #51
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    True
    I thought this was really funny and it was.

    Just shows how shit FTR has become, add in the fact Ong has found a job and you know you're going downhill.
  52. #52
    Quote Originally Posted by BananaStand View Post
    This just reeks of whiny left-wing uninformed nonsense. Did you hear this at an Occupy protest??

    Reading between the lines here, your thought process is obvious. Your jealous rage towards anyone wealthy compels you to level insane accusations of fake profits, 'cooking the books', and something something three card monty.

    Just because you don't have an understanding of accounting and corporate finance doesn't mean that profits are an illusion
    Profits can be an illusion. And there are certain hallmarks of smoke and mirror profits. Why read between the lines when I'm happy to tell you exactly what I mean and what motivates my interests?

    My interest here is not based in an attempt to deligitimize capitalism. I want to better understand it so as to not be an unwitting three card monty operator. Am I envious of those wealthier than I am? Sure, in that I would like to have more wealth. That motivates me to try to better understand how to predictably acquire wealth.

    While I don't have a comprehensive grasp of accounting and/or corporate finance, it is an established fact that there are ways to structure corporate entities and methods of accounting that result in an illusion of profit. I never once said broadly that this is the case of all corporate entities or all profits and I this cannot be reasonably inferred from my posts ITT.
  53. #53
    Quote Originally Posted by Savy View Post
    add in the fact Ong has found a job and you know you're going downhill.
    It's the end times.
  54. #54
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    Boost might be right in that the space Trump occupies could be a fat tailed distribution. There probably isn't enough data to say at which probabilities deviations from the mean occur. Or maybe there is enough data, we just have to interpret it better. For example, it probably isn't the case that if somebody does what Trump does he will become like Trump, but it may be the case that in a population with a sub-population where people do what Trump does, Trumps arise.
    Bingo. I think I was missing some helpful vocab that you supplied in "fat tailed distribution."

    The interesting thing is that while outliers of this subset of the population who appear to have an astronomical winrate are rare in both the subset and the general population, we can expect them to pop up frequently in the subset of ultra successful people. Which could mean under certain definitions of "moderately successful" and "wildly successful" we might actually be able to say more about the moderately successful's intelligence/deservidness/aptitude than the wildly successful when the only data point is their level of success.
  55. #55
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    It's the end times.
    Member when FTR was boring because you'd be posting regularly? Member.
  56. #56
    *regularly + stubbornly and long.
  57. #57
    Cmon my work/not work ratio during my time at FTR is still pretty goddam impressive, and considering I only intend to do this commuting bollocks for six months, it won't be long before things are normal again.
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  58. #58
    Quote Originally Posted by boost View Post
    While I don't have a comprehensive grasp of accounting and/or corporate finance, it is an established fact that there are ways to structure corporate entities and methods of accounting that result in an illusion of profit.
    Think for a minute....

    I mean actually THINK

    Why would Trump want to create an illusion of profit? What possible motivation would he have? What the fuck is Trump gonna do with profits? Get yourself an answer to that question before you read on.

    Now, whatever answer you came up with...is wrong. The correct answer is that Trump would prefer his companies to NOT be profitable. There is FAR more incentive to create the illusion of losses than there is to create the illusion of profits.

    Yes, it's true that companies will *spin* their financial statements in ways that make the company look more successful than it may actually be. But the goal of those companies is to drive up their stock price. Trump's companies are privately held. It's stock isn't traded. The only thing profits do for Trump is drive up his tax bill.

    Furthermore, while there are some accounting tricks you can do to manipulate your profits, you can't fake cash flow. It always "comes out in the wash". Either you're bringing in more revenue than you pay in expenses, or you aren't. You can't create an "illusion" of cash flow. Because cash is tangible. Either it's there, or it isn't. And if it isn't, the business will eventually become insolvent, and fail.

    And it doesn't take long either. When Jeff Skilling took over Enron, he asked the SEC for permission to use "mark-to-market" accounting. Without getting into the details, it was basically a method that allowed Enron to over-estimate it's future cash flow. In the short term, these optimistic estimates drove up Enron's stock price. Then Enron used its own stock as collateral to get more cash, book another deal, over estimate its value, and drive the stock price up further. Rinse and repeat. Eventually, the cash never materialized, Enron stock dipped. Now it's collateral wasn't worth as much. Loans were called. And Enron didn't have the cash to cover it. Bankrupt.

    That whole process took less than 10 years. Enron was the 7th largest corporation in America. Then one day they changed course, stopped being an energy distribution company, and became an energy trading company. A little tweak to the rules -- that the SEC permitted -- allowed them to *spin* their financial results more favorably.....and in under a decade the whole thing came crumbling down.

    Trump has been crushing it for half a fucking century. You can't fake that.
  59. #59
    Quote Originally Posted by BananaStand View Post

    Trump has been crushing it for half a fucking century.
    You, and a lot of other people, seem to believe this is true..

    You can't fake that.
    ...so apparently you can.
  60. #60
    So let me get this right...
    If Trump's business makes a profit, it's an illusion, even though tax laws absolutely disincentivise non-existent profit.
    otoh, if his companies make a loss, it's either bad business practise or he's fiddling the books for tax reasons.

    He's a billionaire who became POTUS. He's either a ridiculously successful businessman or a ridiculously successful criminal. His haters really can't give him credit, even where its due, can they?
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  61. #61
    Quote Originally Posted by boost View Post
    You, and a lot of other people, seem to believe this is true..
    who is "a lot of other people?"

    Even a tiny business with a line of credit from a local bank will get two audits a year. Most business owners don't do their own taxes, they hire a CPA. Well that CPA isn't going to sign his name to your tax return without auditing your financial statements. And then the IRS has a go.

    That's four audits, for even the tiniest of companies. Trump has FIVE HUNDRED companies, many of which are humongous. And I'm sure he does business with more than just one bank. Each one of them wants to do their own audits. And you can be sure IRS knows who Trump is.

    So there are "a lot of other people" giving Trump's finances shitloads of scrutiny. Nothing Enron-esque has happened in the decades that Trump's been in business. At this point it's probably safe to say that the guy is actually making money. It is substantially impossible that he's created the wealth that he has, with smoke and mirrors. It just can't happen. Not this much, and not for this long.

    Getting back to the original question..."Does Trump's success prove that he's intelligent?"

    HOW THE FUCK CAN IT NOT???

    They guy has demonstrated a volume and duration of success that is almost unmatched. He's grown wealth at a rate that the entire rest of the market could only ever dream of. Either that happened because he's a fucking genius who made all the right moves, almost every time. Or, he's a diabolical mastermind who has expertly evaded overwhelming regulatory scrutiny and constant challenges from detractors over the course of decades.

    Neither of those is 'dumb'. So to the question "Is Trump smart enough to be President?".....hell fucking yes he is. How could anyone say otherwise??
  62. #62
    I can't fucking believe that people believe this shit...

    http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018...note-card.html

    Throughout the hit piece on Trump, Blake makes comments implying that Trump would have been completely clueless without his note card.
  63. #63
    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    So let me get this right...
    If Trump's business makes a profit, it's an illusion, even though tax laws absolutely disincentivise non-existent profit.
    otoh, if his companies make a loss, it's either bad business practise or he's fiddling the books for tax reasons.

    He's a billionaire who became POTUS. He's either a ridiculously successful businessman or a ridiculously successful criminal. His haters really can't give him credit, even where its due, can they?
    I think what Boost might be saying (correct me if I'm wrong) is that Trump could just be running good.

    Which, well, might be true. One of the main misunderstandings that people have with statistics and probability that Nassim Taleb discusses is that when there are not sufficient data points, the distribution and probabilities of events are not well understood. If the game is poker, where millions of hands are played by the top guys, well that might be enough data points and it probably can be said that the successful ones aren't just running good. Yet when it comes to the extreme ends of business or political success, it might be a different ballgame. There might not be that many data points. Though I don't know even the right way to conceptualize this situation in the first place. It's possible there are a ton of data points and that a Trumpian result is normal. I don't know.
  64. #64
    Could be relevant.

    https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/964137671886065664



    I'm not sure what to make of this. I'll have to think about it some.
  65. #65
    How does "running good" work? How that that analogy from poker work in the real word of business?

    In poker, as you point out, there are millions of hands over a career. Well, how many "decisions" does a business owner face in his career? It's like you're saying a business is a single game of poker. It's not. It's a career.

    So "running good" doesn't really cut it except for the most ludicrously lucky people, of which, granted, Trump could be one of. But the probability is ludicrously low.
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  66. #66
    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    How does "running good" work? How that that analogy from poker work in the real word of business?

    In poker, as you point out, there are millions of hands over a career. Well, how many "decisions" does a business owner face in his career? It's like you're saying a business is a single game of poker. It's not. It's a career.

    So "running good" doesn't really cut it except for the most ludicrously lucky people, of which, granted, Trump could be one of. But the probability is ludicrously low.
    I probably agree. Lifetime business success across many fields is probably dynamic enough that ain't nobody who makes it runs good.

    If we say "what does it take to become a billionaire?" or "what does it take to become the president?", those distributions are probably fat-tailed. But the situation we're dealing with is far more dynamic and complex than those questions.
  67. #67
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    Trump's success implies his intelligence, it doesn't prove his intelligence.
    It's bigly, even hugely, more likely that he is intelligent than some uber Forest Gump kind of lucky, but it can't be known for sure.


    Intelligence manifests in many, many forms.
    I don't think anyone could credibly deny that Trump has extremely high charismatic intelligence.
    I don't think anyone could credibly argue that Trump has low business intelligence.

    (Personally, I think he edges on low empathy / borderline sociopathic tendencies, his daughter certainly does, but that's neither a fault nor a criticism of a successful CEO and/or world leader. Making dispassionate decisions which ignore arguments based on pathos is a good thing in a successful leader.)

    His apparently poor ability to answer complex questions off the cuff isn't indicative of either A) that he really doesn't have answers to these questions, or B) that it matters.
    A) He's not under oath, and may see no advantage to adding fuel to the perpetual fire of criticizing POTUS. If the criticism is all idiots calling him an idiot, then he doesn't have to waste any minutes addressing that in any way.
    B) He has excellent advisors, and so long as he is capable of trusting the experts he's appointed to be his advisors, that's just as good.
  68. #68
    I realise it's not as obvious as poker, and I understand that poker is actually a pretty good metaphor for business in some aspects. But luck in poker is governed purely by probability, and we can calculate that. In business, where's the luck? Being given a million by Daddy? That's just like a poker player learning how to play at the macros instead of micros. You still better start winning soon.

    If he bought into one company at the right time, and had no actual influence in the decisions that led to its success (or indeed potential failure), then yeah we can say he was lucky. But if he is directly involved in the business decisions, and in multiple companies, well each decision is a hand in poker, and for a business to be successful, it needs to make net +ev decisions.

    I have no problem with half a decade of business decisions being put into "career" territory, rather than "casual".
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  69. #69
    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    If he bought into one company at the right time, and had no actual influence in the decisions that led to its success (or indeed potential failure), then yeah we can say he was lucky.
    Everything else in your post was good, except this. Even this, is not luck. He still had to select a company to invest in, and a time to invest.

    And if that company was successful, it's because it had the capital to do so. So his investment does have influence over success/failure.
  70. #70
    Quote Originally Posted by BananaStand View Post
    Everything else in your post was good, except this. Even this, is not luck. He still had to select a company to invest in, and a time to invest.

    And if that company was successful, it's because it had the capital to do so. So his investment does have influence over success/failure.
    For sure, but maybe he picked the compnay for no good reason other than he liked the name, like picking a horse. Making a single decison that can make or lose you a fortune is not "skill", not unless you accurately estimate your returns and risks and compare them to other options, at least.

    Investment is indeed an important factor, but it isn't necessarily an intelligent decision to invest.
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  71. #71
    Quote Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey View Post
    Trump's success implies his intelligence, it doesn't prove his intelligence.
    It's bigly, even hugely, more likely that he is intelligent than some uber Forest Gump kind of lucky, but it can't be known for sure.
    I mean, if you gotta play this semantic nerd-game where "there is no such thing as null" go ahead. You're coming to the right conclusion, which is more than can be said for other people in this thread.

    Intelligence manifests in many, many forms.
    I don't think anyone could credibly deny that Trump has extremely high charismatic intelligence.
    I don't think anyone could credibly argue that Trump has low business intelligence.
    Stop with this. Intelligence is the ability to acquire skills and knowledge. Leave it at that. Trying to slice and dice things into different categories of intelligence is just a futile exercise. Next thing you know we'll be talking about tie-tying intelligence, or combover intelligence, or pornstar fucking intelligence. C'mon.

    (Personally, I think he edges on low empathy / borderline sociopathic tendencies, his daughter certainly does, but that's neither a fault nor a criticism of a successful CEO and/or world leader. Making dispassionate decisions which ignore arguments based on pathos is a good thing in a successful leader.)
    Just say 'pragmatism', sheesh

    His apparently poor ability to answer complex questions off the cuff isn't indicative of either A) that he really doesn't have answers to these questions, or B) that it matters.
    A) He's not under oath, and may see no advantage to adding fuel to the perpetual fire of criticizing POTUS. If the criticism is all idiots calling him an idiot, then he doesn't have to waste any minutes addressing that in any way.
    B) He has excellent advisors, and so long as he is capable of trusting the experts he's appointed to be his advisors, that's just as good.
    Henry Ford once sued the Chicago Tribute for slander after it called him "ignorant". In court, the Tribune's lawyer tried to prove Ford's ignorance by asking him trivia questions, mostly related to American history. Ford, being a high school dropout, couldn't answer. He merely explained to the counselor that he could push a button on his desk and, within minutes, have a dozen experts in his office ready to explain everything about anything.

    Ford won the case, and the court awarded him six cents.
    Last edited by BananaStand; 02-22-2018 at 02:32 PM.
  72. #72
    More importantly, if you have one decision in a business, ie to invest or not to invest, it's easy to "run good".

    If you have multiple, then it's not so easy.
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  73. #73
    MadMojoMonkey's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by BananaStand View Post
    I mean, if you gotta play this semantic nerd-game where "there is no such thing as null" go ahead. You're coming to the right conclusion, which is more than can be said for other people in this thread.
    Right. It's our insistence that words have meanings, the most popular of which are collected in dictionaries, which is the fault, here.

    It's certainly not that you use the word "prove" metaphorically to mean "really likely, but not certain" in a conversation just begging for misunderstanding (a political conversation).


    You can gripe that it's other people's fault that you're not understood all you like, but it's not going to address your desire to be understood until YOU start playing the game the rest of us are playing... the game where we want to express our ideas in the most understandable way for our audience so that we can spend a minimum amount of time bickering over mangled metaphors and most of our time actually sharing our ideas.
  74. #74
    Quote Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey View Post
    Right. It's our insistence that words have meanings, the most popular of which are collected in dictionaries, which is the fault, here.

    It's certainly not that you use the word "prove" metaphorically to mean "really likely, but not certain" in a conversation just begging for misunderstanding (a political conversation).
    Says the guy who eschews the dictionary definition of "intelligence" so he can slice and dice it however is necessary in order for his ramblings to make sense.

    Quote Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey View Post
    You can gripe that it's other people's fault that you're not understood all you like, but it's not going to address your desire to be understood until YOU start playing the game the rest of us are playing... the game where we want to express our ideas in the most understandable way for our audience so that we can spend a minimum amount of time bickering over mangled metaphors and most of our time actually sharing our ideas.
    Are you 'sharing ideas'? I must have missed it. All I see is you pissing on what was a fine exchange of ideas.
  75. #75
    None of this actually addresses the question of whether he's fit to be president. He might have an IQ of 200 but if all he does is watch Fox News, tweet, and eat cheeseburgers he's prolly not right for the job.

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