This doesn't at all jive with your statement about percentiles previously. A major league baseball player is in the top fraction of the top 1% of people based on baseball skill.

The only possible way you could consider Trump a 'major leaguer' for financial skills is if you just look at absolute values of net worth. But we already covered why that's a dumb way of looking at financial skill.

This is probably why people argue with you so much, you don't seem to be at all consistent in what you're saying.

I absolutely have enough information to say that about him. He actually said those racist/sexist/war criminal things. That's enough for him to be a bad person in my book. I don't need to know if deep down in his soul he would really act on those things.

I've never understood the mentality that excuses horrible things people say because you just assume they're lying to you.

I mean, he's in the top 400 richest people on the planet, ranked #121 if we believe that list to be accurate. If you want to get all mathy and break it down to a straight up % we'd have a lot of back and forth to hash out. It's hard to agree on the number but he's up there. If you want to argue about him being in the top 1% or the top 5%, whatever, but you act as if we're off by some ridiculous margin.


Because you don't know enough about him. You know only about what stories were written about him and you can't put them into context.

Do you think Mother Theresa was a good person? I think the vast majority of people do, she's going to be declared a saint in a few months. She had many people criticize her for her actions when she was alive. Christopher Hitchens describer her as “A thieving, fanatical Albanian dwarf.” But none of that matters, does it? Because she is looked at as doing something noble in her life, and that is the most important factor in judging her to the majority of people.

I think the reverse can be said about Trump. The focus is on all the outlandish or fringe things he's said or done. I would think much of that is just rhetoric. Just as Obama saying he didn't support gay marriage (it was obvious he always supported gay marriage, he just couldn't take that position politically), we knew it was just rhetoric. Trump isn't going to be deporting 11 million people. Ain't happening. We know and it and he knows it and we know he knows we know it. The only people who buy into that are the people who don't understand what is going on.

How much is enough? By this rationale, you can't ever have an opinion on anybody you don't personally know well. People form judgements based on what they know. In Trump's case, we have a lifetime of evidence, in the form of actions and statements, about what kind of person he is. I don't know what Trump is like behind closed doors, but I know enough to have an impression about what his values are.

It's the same on the forum. People form judgements about you based on your posts. That judgement is (or should be) subject to revision based on new information, but the idea that you have to withhold judgement until you know everything about a person is silly.

Like most things, it depends on how many points of information we have to work with. The more you have, the better you can feel about how much you know of someone. I would think most people only know a few things about Trump, yet they will judge him in many different categories based on just a few pieces of information. It's virtually impossible to know if Trump is a "good person" or not. It's not impossible to formulate an opinion on if he is "Presidential", though. He's not presidential. He talks recklessly and in a manner that doesn't line up well with previous presidents. He doesn't speak in a way that shows much intellectual curiosity or knowledge of certain subjects. Therefore, it isn't a stretch for someone to say they don't think he's a good fit to be President of the United States.

It isn't as easy to pass judgement on if he's a "good" person or not. It takes more information to make that conclusion, and the information needed to formulate that opinion just isn't readily available.

For exmaple I've had this discussion about people like sports celebrities. People trip all over themselves to talk about how much they love someone like Michael Jordan. Yeah, Michael Jordan is a great basketball player. He may be one the best that has ever played. He's done amazing things on the basketball court. That doesn't mean he's a "good" person. In fact, from many sources he's supposed to an ******* of epic proportions. Yeah, to many people Jordan is a hero (and he is, on the court), but that has nothing to do with who he is as a person because most people just don't know enough about him. After reading story after story of how much of a colossal jerkoff he is in real life, I think it's safe to say that Michael Jordan is a jerkoff. It's not just one incident or one thing that happened in a stressful moment, it's countless stories from people that Jordan is a true dick.

I feel the same way about Trump. We just don't know enough about him yet to judge him personally.

So you think you have enough "points of information" to make a judgement about Micheal Jordan, but I don't have enough to make a judgement about Trump? Cool story, I guess.

How would you feel if somebody told you that you actually didn't know enough about Jordan and that "you know only about what stories were written about him and you can't put them into context"? You'd laugh at them and you'd be right.

What's "cool story" about it? I've never met either of them, but I've heard enough about one to formulate an opinion about one and not enough about the other. I don't judge people based on their political or religious beliefs, in general, without meeting them. In the case of someone like Trump especially it'd be actually harder to know because he's playing politics. This is why I brought up the Obama reference earlier.

Wil, you're going around in contradictory circles.


This is just one of the times you say you agree that Trump isn't a super star financial wizard. Going so far as to agree with me that at least 5% of the population of the Earth has achieved more impressive financial results.

And then you go right back to this completely contradictory nonsense focusing just on Trumps absolute wealth:

25th-5th percentile isn't major league quality. Hell, it's probably like star player in the top tier local beer league.


What? I know what he said and the context he said it in.

Ignoring everything else, I know he said we should kill the families of terrorists. This isn't something the media made up. I saw and heard him say it. What context makes that acceptable to you?


This is nonsensical garbage. Sorry.

I told you it'd be a total guess. I shouldn't have said your 5-25% range was pretty accurate, thinking more about it the range is too wide, so I'd have to backtrack a bit. Top 25% would make it almost in the "easy" range, and I never implied what he did was easy by any means. So if you want to say I agreed to something I shouldn't have, yes, you're right. I think what he accomplished was in the highest of difficulties. How high, I'm not willing to argue about.

It depends on if I think he's serious or not. I don't think he's serious, if that's what you're asking. Just as I don't think he's serious about deporting 11 million people.

You may not agree with it, but it's not nonsensical. There's a lot of sense to it. Political rhetoric is not to be taken seriously. That's why it's called political rhetoric.

lol at highest of difficulties.

By your own statement he roughly 40x his money over 3-4 decades. That is not the highest of difficulties. Not even close.

Hell, its even worse. Looks like he was around $1 billion in the late 80s. So even if we took an extremely high valuation of $10 billion now - that's a 10x improvement over 30 years.

Why are we going over this so many times? I already said we aren't going to be able to pin this down to some sort of number that will make either of us happy. I don't think what he did was easy at all, but I don't just dismiss it as something trivial because he started with a big chunk of it. What he's done is really impressive to me. If it's not to you, great, but if you want to rank him in the history of humanity, that's not something I'm willing to argue about.

What else do I have to say about this? That I put him in the 0.000001% and if you can prove me wrong you win the argument?

Do I need to spell it out? You declared you know enough about Jordan to decide if he's a good person. You also declared it's "virtually impossible" to make that judgement about Trump. You don't get to make that decision for others. Just because you don't think you have enough info on Trump doesn't mean the rest of us don't. That's why I said this:

If you are saying you can confidently make a guess about a person's character over one or two pieces of information, then sure, you're right.

Yeah, because we only have one or two pieces of information about Trump...

We're going over it because you keep changing what you're saying, making false equivalencies and making really ****ty analogies.

Let's go through those pieces of information. I'm not hard to convince.

Uh... I'm not sure how you define 'pieces of information'. But one of these must be true:

1. You don't understand what the phrase means.
2. You have no clue what's happening in the world around you.
3. You are pretending to be dumb to try to have a stupid argument.

Regardless of which one of those is true I can't imagine I would enjoy or get anything out of having that discussion with you.

Native Intellugence ranking: If I didn't know anything about their backgrounds, and based my judgement only on, say, debate performances, I think I'd say:

1. Clinton
2. Cruz
3. Sanders
3. Kasich
5. Trump

Including background, I would bump Cruz up to the top.

I'm not sure if "native" intelligence was adequately defined. I think there are other aspects of intelligence that are important for effective leaders. These would include:
1. "quickness" i.e., how fast you pick up unfamiliar material
2. "integration" i.e., collation of disparate knowledge into a cohesive view
3. "depth" i.e., a combination of creative problem-solving, critical thinking, and logical reasoning

The current ways we have to evaluate and compare candidates, through debates and speeches, is very limiting. Especially once we're down to two candidates, I would love to see any or all of the following (all to be covered live in prime time of course):

1. A completely unmoderated discussion where the candidates sit at a coffee table and just talk about their plans and worldviews for 2 hours.
2. An actual round of Jeopardy.
3. Taking written tests of world history, general knowledge, scientific literacy, etc. and discussing the results.
4. Taking a test of reading comprehension.
5. A "practical exam" where the candidate is given a crisis and has to immediately state in as much detail as possible what they would do. A whiteboard could be used.
6. A test of "quickness" - although I'm not sure how this would work

Imagine there was going to be a TV show where Trump and Clinton were going to be presented with various problems and challenges. First Trump would go into an isolation booth while Hillary takes the challenge, they they switch places. Everybody in America would watch that ****, and we'd quickly learn everything we need to know about the candidates. Obviously none of this will ever happen.

Hah, it's an interesting idea - but it's basically the same problem as interviewing candidates for a job. And the reality is that's really hard so I don't think any sort of tv contest would really enlighten us that much.

If it's not something you want to discuss I'm totally fine with it, as I agree it probably wouldn't be fun. What I will say is if you think the things he's saying on the campaign trail are what he actually plans on doing if he actually became president, you're the one who doesn't understand what's going on.

When people like Cruz say things like "We will repeal every part of Obamacare", we know that is simply not true. It's just rhetoric, things to galvanize support. They voted something like 50 times on repealing it, it never came close.

When you take things like him claiming he's going to kill terrorist families and deport millions of illegal immigrants seriously, then I just don't think you know how politics works.

Sure.

But that's setting the bar kind of low. And the genetic differences are minute. The fact that bernie spent his formative yeras smoking pot and protesting to try and get sucked off by hairy women had a much bigger impact on why he talks like a ******.

What I think is pretty clear is that there're people in the republican and democratic core who're at least as intelligent and are far more dedicated to politics and policy.

Which is why it matters very little whether the prospective nominee is overflowing with the most basic of elements of what might be construed as creative ideas.


The only reality I can imagine that would make trump look brilliant in my eyes is if his entire campaign was designed to cripple the republican establishment chances at winning in the next general election. And on some level I kind of hope that is what it is, because I want to like him so badly.

@Abbaddabba - Thanks for engaging and explaining.

I am sweet, kind, and lovable away from Internet posting.

I would point out that financial success is not based solely on return on investment. However, with TRUMP I think the assessment is fair. My understanding is that his Atlantic City ventures didn't work out well and that probably was a strategic mistake.

lovable?

I can see calling yourself kind, but how do you know you're lovable?

How do you know he's not? It's unknowable without meeting him in person.