"They are not average and they are not normal" — Brian Klaas on power seekers. #shorts

less than 1m read

·Nov 3, 2024

Processing might take a few minutes. Refresh later.

The people who end up in power are not representative of the rest of us. They are not average, and they are not normal people. Those who are power hungry tend to self-select into positions of power more than the rest of us.

As a result, we have this skew, this bias in positions of power where certain types of people, often the wrong kinds of people, are more likely to put themselves forward to rule over the rest of us. That is one of the key challenges of modern life: we have to find ways to block them.

There's this absolute intersection between culture, behavior, individuals, and systems. When we have this simplistic view of power, we're missing the story.

What you really need is a system that attracts the right kind of people, so that the diplomats who are clean, nice, and rule-following end up in power. Then, you need a system that gives them all the right incentives to follow the rules once they get there.

If you do have people who break the rules, there needs to be consequences.

Nature's Grand Show: Exploring a Season of Wonder in Canada | National Geographic

Why You Should Want Driverless Cars On Roads Now

View All

The Philosopher of Pleasure | EPICURUS

Pleasure is the first good. It is the beginning of every choice and every aversion. It is the absence of pain in the body and of troubles in the soul. Epicurus. In the third century BC on the Greek island of Samos, a man was born that would become the fo…

Why the gradient is the direction of steepest ascent

So far, when I’ve talked about the gradient of a function, and you know, let’s think about this as a multivariable function with just two inputs. Those are the easiest to think about, uh, so maybe it’s something like x² + y². A very friendly function. Wh…

Analyzing motion problems: position | AP Calculus AB | Khan Academy

Divya received the following problem: A particle moves in a straight line with velocity ( v(t) ) is equal to the square root of ( 3t - 1 ) meters per second, where ( t ) is time in seconds. At ( t = 2 ), the particle’s distance from the starting point was…

Why most New Year's Resolutions fail

[Applause] As autumn settles in, leaves fall from the trees, and another growing season ends with the harvest. This might not have been a great year for crops, but winter will destroy the evidence of last year’s efforts and present a new opportunity for g…