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Lumifer comments on No Universally Compelling Arguments in Math or Science - Less Wrong
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Certainly doesn't look like that to me. Obama, Putin, the Chinese Politbureau -- none of them are amongst the richest people in the world.
Influential (especially historically) and powerful are very different things.
It's not an answer, it's a definition. Remember, we are talking about "power-hungry humans" whose attempts to achieve power tend to end badly. These power-hungry humans do not want to be remembered by history as "influential", they want POWER -- the ability to directly affect and mold things around them right now, within their lifetime.
Putin is easily one of the richest in Russia, as are the Chinese Politburo in their country. Obama, frankly, is not a very powerful man at all, but rather than the public-facing servant of the powerful class (note that I said "class", not "men", there is no Conspiracy of the Malfoys in a neoliberal capitalist state and there needn't be one).
Historical influence? Yeah, ok. Right-now influence versus right-now power? I don't see the difference.
I don't think so. "Rich" is defined as having property rights in valuable assets. I don't think Putin has a great deal of such property rights (granted, he's not middle-class either). Instead, he can get whatever he wants and that's not a characteristic of a rich person, it's a characteristic of a powerful person.
To take an extreme example, was Stalin rich?
But let's take a look at the five currently-richest men (according to Forbes): Carlos Slim, Bill Gates, Amancio Ortega, Warren Buffet, and Larry Ellison. Are these the most *powerful* men in the world? Color me doubtful.
Well, Carlos Slim seems to have the NYT in his pocket. That's nothing to sneeze at.
A lot of money of rich people is hidden via complex off shore accounts and not easily visible for a company like Forbes. Especially for someone like Putin it's very hard to know how much money they have. Don't assume that it's easy to see power structures by reading newspapers.
Bill Gates might control a smaller amount of resources than Obama, but he can do whatever he wants with them. Obama is dependend on a lot of people inside his cabinet.
Not according to Bloomberg:
"amass wealth and exploit opportunities unavailable to most Chinese" is not at all the same thing as "amongst the richest people in the world"
You are reading a text that's carefully written not to make statements that allow for being sued for defamation in the UK. It's the kind of story for which inspires cyber attacks on a newspaper.
The context of such an article provides information about how to read such a sentence.