I really dislike the meme that the typical person is stupid.

The typical person is the result of a ruthless Darwinian selection process that has left the typical person savvy, agile, aware, alert, and capable.

The typical person might be coded inarticulate because the education available to the typical person stresses different vocabulary than people not subject to ruthless selection pressure recently.

I’m home schooled to put it mildly, more accurate is that I was presented books and an admiration for acumen, and I deliberately delineate by degree the dramatic dismissal of people on HN who condescend to typical people.

The typical person on HN would survive about three minutes in a legitimately menacing environment.

Summers was on Jon Stewart recently. People know who he is. They might not know his long-time advocacy for maximum toxic waste disposal in Africa, but in fairness Rubin helped quiet that down. They might have forgotten that he personally knew-capped Brooksley Born at the exact perfect time to demonstrate that LTCM was the prototype for ever godawful prop deak today.

I’ll refrain from commenting on Fidji Simo out of personal experience because it would be unfair given that I’ve known her for 12 years and merely remark that the public record is a litany of OSHA violations handled more clumsily than the already low bar Amazon set.

The typical person is a lot savvier than the typical HN hot take smartass who is dramatically out of their depth.

I absolutely agree with you regarding "typical person is not stupid" point. People just don't care about it, and don't know. It's not about stupidity, it's just not a useful information for majority of people. Knowing about internal OpenAI drama, the board members, everything that happened in the last couple of years is just very out of reach for most of the people.

It's the same if I mentioned some random people from my interest circles that you definitely won't know, but I can guarantee at least millions of people who share the same interests know about those names.

Obviously I can be wrong, but my simple sniff test is asking a couple of friend groups and bar chats with regulars, who are not in tech. Some people don't even know about OpenAI despite using ChatGPT (basically a household name now)! I'm also clueless when my friends in finance/law throw in some names and companies that I have no connection to and knowledge of.

Sorry, I didn't mean to sound dismissive, probably shouldn't write comments during work hours.