Except that all the numbers on his net worth are based just on his word and he's clearly a serial liar.
Interestingly, I think the fact that he's quite stupid may be how he succeeded at the presidential election. An intelligent, principled person would have a vision and philosophy that guides their actions. When questioned on details or specifics they would use their philosophy to arrive at a reasoned answer.
Trump has essentially no record of this. He has no governing philosophy or sophisticated understanding of how the world works. He seems to do nothing but say what he feels in that moment -- even if how he feels isn't backed up by any reality.
However, in certain election environments that can also be a huge benefit. If the electorate is looking for a foil, someone to reflect their feelings, and the electorate itself isn't acting on calculated reasoning, the dunce with an acute sense of emotional environment is the perfect avatar.
In a sense, the reasoned candidate is at an inherent disadvantage since they will attempt to articulate a particular philosophy. If the electorate is mostly a coalition based on shared emotional reaction, stating a clear philosophy can do nothing but weaken support among your own constituency. In essence, being specific allows people to disagree with you. If you hand wave, they just imagine you think like they do, since they already think you feel like they do.
I can think of another group of people who a similar skillset: confidence artists. They're often not very bright or very skilled, but they are good at reading a room, a person, and an emotion. Interestingly, I don't believe Trump believes himself to be a con-artist; he's just a natural.
> Except that all the numbers on his net worth are based just on his word and he's clearly a serial liar.
No they're not, the link I provided also showed figures based on Forbes estimate of his net worth.
$40,000,000 (Trump's share of his father's fortune) invested in the market in 1974 would be worth $1.22 billion in 2015 (when he announced his campaign).
Compared to Forbes estimate of his net worth at $4.5 billion and Trump's own estimate of his net worth at $10.0 billion at the same date. Both beat the market handily and in fact Forbes could have overestimated his fortune by triple the amount and Trump would still be ahead.
> An intelligent, principled person
Again, I'm not talking about principled, I'm making the argument purely that Trump is intelligent. Not whether he is principled, or a good person, or a good businessman or even if he's a good president.
> He has no governing philosophy
I don't know about that. From what I can tell, he seems to consistently follow the same or similar playbook outlined in 'The Art of the Deal'.
> $40,000,000 (Trump's share of his father's fortune) invested in the market in 1974 would be worth $1.22 billion in 2015 (when he announced his campaign).
How did you get that number? Did you include re-invested dividends?
If you start in October 1974 and end in June 2015, you get a return of 9817.096% with dividends reinvested and only 2923.171% without [1]. So starting with $40 million you would end up closer to $4 billion. Admittedly that is after fiddling with the months to maximise the return.
> Compared to Forbes estimate of his net worth at $4.5 billion ...
There is a good chance that the $4.5 billion Forbes estimate is a significant overestimation. There is no downside for Forbes to overestimating his fortune, but a significant one in underestimating: they risk getting sued by Trump. See [2], on how he lost a lawsuit in 2006 when a journalist claimed that he was only worth $250 million. It also contains examples of how Trump inflates his net worth. The fact that he still hasn't released his tax returns and has no plans to do so, also speaks volumes.
> ...and Trump's own estimate of his net worth at $10.0 billion at the same date.
Given his long history of lying his own claim is useless.
> How did you get that number? Did you include re-invested dividends?
From the site I linked to above (which incidentally is the site [1] you linked to in your post). It includes re-invested dividends and also taxes, which were significantly higher in the late 70's and early 80's compared to what they are now. The page I linked to goes through their methodology.
You make good points about his net worth, but even if I was to concede that, I believe my main point still stands.
He might not be an astute investor, but even if his entire businesses are only worth hundreds of millions, you can't run a company of that size for so long if you "lack intelligence" - even more so if you're building it back up after losing a billion dollars a few decades earlier.
> From the site I linked to above (which incidentally is the site [1] you linked to in your post). It includes re-invested dividends and also taxes, which were significantly higher in the late 70's and early 80's compared to what they are now. The page I linked to goes through their methodology.
I missed that link. It makes some good points. Of course, if you had $200 million in 1974, and your marginal tax rate was 75%, you would not hold it in person but would shield it in a corporation. I'm sure his tax lawyer would have found some structure that would have brought down his taxes significantly.
> you can't run a company of that size for so long if you "lack intelligence"
He is not a complete moron, but he is far from a brilliant businessman. And he doesn't seem to have many intelligent insights outside of business.
He is good at selling an image that appeals to a lot of Americans, though.
> even more so if you're building it back up after losing a billion dollars a few decades earlier.
How do you lose a billion dollars? Does that take a special kind of intelligence? Or does it maybe indicate that he takes irresponsible risks that sometimes pay off, but sometimes go horribly wrong? Could his relative success be explained by survivorship bias?
I'm not claiming he is a brilliant businessman. I'm only disputing the assertion that he "lacks intelligence", which is what started this side-thread.
> How do you lose a billion dollars?
Many different ways. For example, Hillary spent over a billion dollars on her losing campaign, but I don't assume that Hillary lacks intelligence because of this.
> Could his relative success be explained by survivorship bias?
It could well be, and again I'm not ascribing any sort of "special intelligence" to Trump, just that I don't agree that he "lacks intelligence".
> figures based on Forbes estimate of his net worth.
You know Forbes is just a business magazine, and just a small one at that?
They don't have any privileged information. They probably just based their reporting on his self-reported wealth. At best they could look at the public valuations of some of his properties, but since the Trump organization is privately held they have no way of knowing how badly he's leveraged.
Here's a hint: check how much Forbes said Elizabeth Holmes was worth in 2015.
> I don't know about that. From what I can tell, he seems to consistently follow the same or similar playbook outlined in 'The Art of the Deal'.
That you don't see the difference between a set of strategies for making money in real estate and a governing philosophy of how you see the world and act as a person is the crux of the problem.
> That you don't see the difference ... is the crux of the problem.
I'm simply pointing out observable reality.
'Art of the Deal' may just be a set of strategies for making money in real estate, but those same strategies seem to guide how he sees the world and acts as a person.
I'm not making any judgement about whether that is a good or bad thing, but failing to understand that means failing to understand Trump.
1. Think big
2. Protect the downside and the upside will take care of itself
3. Maximize your options
4. Know your market
5. Use your leverage
6. Enhance your location
7. Get the word out
8. Fight back
9. Deliver the goods
10. Contain the costs
11. Have fun
Aside from the last one, these are simply statements of strategy on how to achieve your goals. This is not a framework for arriving at the goals themselves. You could use this strategy to work for autocracy or democracy or really any world you want. The first question to ask is which world you want to live in, not how to get there.
His only statements on normative, not positive, values come from things like "America winning" and "being great" and "going back." But it absolutely true that, for many Americans, these are a contradiction in terms.
I can attempt to infer his values from these vague statements, but I think that it is improper for a leader to not start with a set of first principles, independent from ill-defined notions like "winning", that guide what it means to win and what it means to be great.
> I can attempt to infer his values from these vague statements,
Well, there's a whole book that goes in to specific details about those vague statements, so you don't have to infer much at all about what he means by them.
Much of the crazy, and supposedly unpredictable things Trump does, follows the playbook laid out by Art of the Deal. He's been following the same script for decades, and people are somehow surprised when he keeps doing the same thing.
> but I think that it is improper
I'm not commenting on the propriety or value of Trump doing this, just pointing out that he does do it (whether others think it improper or not).
Love him or hate him, if you want to understand him, the Art of Deal provides insight on that.
By "vague statements" I was referring to his comments on "America winning" or "being great again." Does Art of the Deal describe those statements in detail?
Well, not those statements specifically, it describes that type of statement and Trump's rationale for using them.
Here's a quote -
"The final key to the way I promote is bravado. I play to people’s fantasies. People may not always think big themselves, but they can still get very excited by those who do. That’s why a little hyperbole never hurts. People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular.
I call it truthful hyperbole. It’s an innocent form of exaggeration — and a very effective form of promotion."
So, it's a promotion tactic to get people thinking positive and thinking big, but also, the vagueness means that each person can attribute it to whatever is important to them, which leads to much stronger engagement and emotional connection.
Once again, I think that's more of a statement on how he achieves his goals, not how he arrives at goals in the first place.
For instance, there's an inherent conflict between freedom and security. The government and the people must strike a balance on these issues. How does Trump decide what the right balance is? What philosophical principles does he use to decide how much freedom we should be willing to trade for security?
The ghostwriter of that book says he made the whole thing up, because Trump got bored so quickly he wouldn't sit for an interview longer than 10 minutes.
Read the source for the compiler and find all the differences. There are constantly minor semantic changes, like numeric conversions, double parsing, scope of generated temps in for loops, delegate conversions, Nothing, etc.
I just started typing this list off the top of my head and every time I typed something out I could think of one more thing. And these are just the ones I remember, so they're probably the ones that were annoying to work around in the compiler.
The difference between populism and democracy is that populists always claim to speak "for the people" even if the people are divided. They'll even take action against the majority and simply claim that all the "real" people are for it.
And despite lambda calculus being written entirely using single letter variable names, Scheme programmers all use proper word-size variable names in their programs.
Mathematics notation is so notoriously awful that mathematicians often can't even read equations from other disciplines without significant extra context.
You are the one who imputed that 'cmurf referred to all parties named the Republican Party, rather than the more logical interpretation as the current party named the Republican Party.
"The logical interpretation"? There's not much logical about using the word "always" and expecting everyone understand "currently" was actually meant, when no caveat like "modern" was included.
This gets my goat more on the grounds of using sweeping absolute statements, than any care for the reputation of Republicans, current or pre-1960.
This is simply not true. I was there when my entire org got rid of its test team and the people who stayed were not more likely to be H1B holders. If anything, the reverse was true.
Before we moved to Git, Roslyn was on TFS, which was basically Perforce/CVS/SVN.
You're absolutely right that the distinction among the former VCS's is minimal. However, Git offers value that was transformative compared to the former. Namely,
1. Git allows you to easily switch between multiple work items while keeping track of the work done in each item.
2. Git allows you to easily integrate with people who have significantly diverged clones of your tree without too much trouble.
3. Git allows you to easily work offline.
(1) is definitely the largest benefit, but was mitigated with tools like g5 when I was at Google. However, the Google gravity well has its own drawbacks.
(2) is very important if you want to host rapid release schedules with divergence of features. It's especially useful if you want to have long stabilization periods and low-risk bug fixes delivered in parallel to multiple customers.
(3) is pretty self-explanatory, but for most people it's underestimated how much downtime your VCS has. I'd bet, for most people, it's significantly less than 5 9's. Not only is that wasted time, it's frustrating because it's usually consecutive and removes entire working days at random.
I take it you haven't actually used the tool that was mentioned in the comment you replied to, namely git-svn? My use of svn to interface with projects using Subversion has essentially entirely been replaced by git-svn, and I can say it is essentially
impossible for someone who has used it to not realize that at least offline now works like git. Taking a step back: at some point what you run on the server is just a storage format; unless you used some of the more advanced Subversion features (at which point you might actually like using it), it generally maps pretty directly to git semantics, at which point essentially all other functionality differences are mere porcelain.
