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I know where you post from is not in the US. So 27% came from humble beginnings, without some family advantage to exploit. And like others I’ve mentioned, possibly taking advantage of government help. IMO “self-made” is largely PR/propaganda, and feeds the myth that the rich are smarter or work harder than the rest of us.

Like Franklin D. Roosevelt. William Taft reportedly weighed 330 poumds.

Didn't quite get that...until I recalled the thread title. That body language says more Sam than Samantha to me. But I'm just relying on bro stereotypes in that judgment.

Convenient for Nikki that she set an age limit that doesn't impact her. Plenty of people under 75 will not pass mental competency tests. If you are going to test one, test all.

! Moderator Note Chat GPT and their ilk are just amped-up predictive text. The give plausible-sounding, but not necessarily accurate answers. They are not to be used as a technical resource at SFN. That said, if you don’t phrase a question to explicitly include gravity, one might conclude there is no gravitational shift. GIGO

You do realize that GPT-4 doesn't give accurate answers to questions don't you? The GPT-4 was designed to sound like a person. It doesn't matter if it is telling you something completely wrong as long as it sounds like a person.

That is very true. The gap is the steepest for the poor, as there is no means to create or amplify wealth. The only resource available is labour and most money will be used to survive, leaving no space to invest. Entrepreneurship is difficult if you have no assets to leverage or if taking risks means to be be living on the streets. In contrast, even middle class folks can invest some modest amount after taking care of the essentials. And perversely, the ultra rich do not require income, they can just leverage their wealth.

No thanks, I'll stick with thinking logically.

I'm guessing you are referring to the apparent 'furrow' running roughly E-W from the SE end of Cuba to the coast of Belize. Compare with a tectonic map of the Caribbean area The feature clearly aligns with the northern boundary of the Caribbean plate, comprising two E-W transform faults flanking a small N-S trending rift zone. Yes, it looks like a furrow. But it's tectonic, not extraterrestrial in origin.

That’s a false dichotomy. Musk, currently #2 on that list, has taken quite a lot of money from the government in the form of subsidies and loan guarantees. That’s not self-made. Bezos gets plenty of subsidies, too. Any US business gets direct and/or indirect subsidies from government sources. Never saw the movie, but I think he was the villain, a composite character based on sociopaths, not someone whose wisdom is to be emulated. You might consider that your view from the outside doesn’t give you much insight. They’ve been there, done that if they are billionaires. By the same token, neither do you. Citation still needed. From what I’ve seen, so-called self-made successes tend not to acknowledge the outside support they get, in addition to downplaying luck. Kinda like Craig T Nelson’s diatribe, “I was on foodstamps and welfare and nobody helped me” (paraphrase)

Yes, I was going to point out that psychopaths can be quite successful at manipulating others and getting what they want. Which undoubtedly includes reproduction (even if the interest in child nurturing is zero). Women, like men, can make poor choices in mate selection and be duped by superficial charm and attractiveness. E.g. Ivana Trump. 🙂 And there is not a specific clinical definition or clearcut genotype for it, though there are some genes associated with an increased risk of psychopathy. There are some neuroanatomical studies out there that have found distinct brain variants which include a switched off orbitofrontal cortex and limbic system, smaller amygdala and differences in connections from amygdala to pre frontal cortex. But there are also non-psychopaths (and non ASPD) who may have these variations.

I am not sure about this. Muhammad's life is no better documented than the life of Jesus - all information about him comes from sources written over a century after his death (the first biography of Muhammad comes from ca. 750 AD while he died in 632 AD). Confucius and Buddha aren't better documented either.