> I’ve heard the same story about Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and of course, Steve Jobs…
Is this supposed to be a positive point? Gates has exploited numerous legal maneuvers to create yes, a gigantic software company, and one of the absolute largest blights on tech as an industry. Name a Microsoft product that doesn't suck ass. Elon Musk hasn't done a fucking thing, he got lucky with PayPal, bought and booted the founders of Tesla, and has been coasting on it ever since. And since he fired his PR team his public image has gone to shit and all of his companies, save Space X and only because of generous Government contracts, are going down the drain.
> Being an “asshole” is very strongly correlated with the ability to build the best or biggest company in your field.
No, being an asshole is what one can get away with once one has struck it rich in tech. For all the shit talking I would do about Jobs, and do it I will, he is the only one on this list who did it in the direction you're talking about, where he was the asshole first, who THEN built a ridiculously successful business. Gates was a nepo baby who got access to computers at an incredibly young age when that was borderline unheard of. Musk would've never left his mothers basement if not for his father's wealth.
> It’s like girls in dating. They say they want a sensitive guy, but end up getting married to the jock with the big muscles.
Ah, you're also in your mother's basement I see.
> There’s this particularly western notion that no, no, no, millions of years of evolutionary advantage and game theory just doesn’t apply
We haven't been meaningfully part of evolution, survival of the fittest, since the first of our ancestors picked up a rock and tied it to a stick, and leapt to the top of the foodchain. We are by virtue of social networking and tool usage, apex predators. Nothing has been a threat to us in the "nature" way for thousands of years and nobody thinks otherwise apart from weird alpha-male guys who follow incredibly shit nature "science" to justify their unhinged anti-social behavior.
Is this supposed to be a positive point? Gates has exploited numerous legal maneuvers to create yes, a gigantic software company, and one of the absolute largest blights on tech as an industry. Name a Microsoft product that doesn't suck ass. Elon Musk hasn't done a fucking thing, he got lucky with PayPal, bought and booted the founders of Tesla, and has been coasting on it ever since. And since he fired his PR team his public image has gone to shit and all of his companies, save Space X and only because of generous Government contracts, are going down the drain.
> Being an “asshole” is very strongly correlated with the ability to build the best or biggest company in your field.
No, being an asshole is what one can get away with once one has struck it rich in tech. For all the shit talking I would do about Jobs, and do it I will, he is the only one on this list who did it in the direction you're talking about, where he was the asshole first, who THEN built a ridiculously successful business. Gates was a nepo baby who got access to computers at an incredibly young age when that was borderline unheard of. Musk would've never left his mothers basement if not for his father's wealth.
> It’s like girls in dating. They say they want a sensitive guy, but end up getting married to the jock with the big muscles.
Ah, you're also in your mother's basement I see.
> There’s this particularly western notion that no, no, no, millions of years of evolutionary advantage and game theory just doesn’t apply
We haven't been meaningfully part of evolution, survival of the fittest, since the first of our ancestors picked up a rock and tied it to a stick, and leapt to the top of the foodchain. We are by virtue of social networking and tool usage, apex predators. Nothing has been a threat to us in the "nature" way for thousands of years and nobody thinks otherwise apart from weird alpha-male guys who follow incredibly shit nature "science" to justify their unhinged anti-social behavior.