Microsoft and OpenAI's close partnership shows signs of fraying

A telling quote about Sam, besides the "island of cannibals" one. Is actually one Sam published himself:

"Successful people create companies. More successful people create countries. The most successful people create religions"

This definition of success is founded on power and control. It's one of the worst definitions you could choose.

There are nobler definitions, like "Successful people have many friends and family" or "Successful people are useful to their compatriots"

Sam's published definition (to be clear, he was quoting someone else and then published it) tells you everything you need to know about his priorities.

As you said, Sam didn’t write that. He was quoting someone else and wasn’t even explicitly endorsing it. He was making a comment about financially successful founders approach making a business as more of a vision and mission that they drive to build buy-in for, which makes sense as a successful tactic in the VC world since you want to impress and convince the very human investors

This is the full post:

""Successful people create companies. More successful people create countries. The most successful people create religions."

I heard this from Qi Lu; I'm not sure what the source is. It got me thinking, though--the most successful founders do not set out to create companies. They are on a mission to create something closer to a religion, and at some point it turns out that forming a company is the easiest way to do so.

In general, the big companies don't come from pivots, and I think this is most of the reason why."

Sounds like an explicit endorsement lol

Well, it’s an observation, intelectual people like to make connections, to me observing something or sharing a connection you made in your mind it’s not necessarily endorsing the statement about power.

He’s dissecting it and connecting with the idea that if you a have a bigger vision and the ability to convince people, making a company is just an “implementation detail” … oh well .. you might be right after all … but I suspect is more nuanced, and is not endorsing religions as a means of obtaining success, I want to believe that he meant the visionary, bigger than yourself well intended view of it.

"It got me thinking" is not an endorsement

Those are boring definitions of success. If you can’t create a stable family, your not successful at one facet, but you could be at another (eg musk.).

I'm sure if we were to confront him on it, he would give a much more nuanced view of it. But unprompted, he assumed it as true and gave further opinions based on that assumption.

That tells us, at the very least, this guy is suspicious. Then you mix in all the other lies and it's pretty obvious I wouldn't trust him with my dog.

"this is most of the reason why". He's assuming it as true.

Boring is not correlated with how good something is. Most of the bad people in history were not boring. Most of the best people in history were not boring. Correlation with evilness = 0.

You could have many other definitions that are not boring but also not bad. The definition published by Sam is bad

> The most successful people create religions

I don't know if I would consider being crucified achieving success. Long term and for your ideology maybe, but for you yourself you are dead.

I defer to Creed Bratton on this one and what Sam might be into.

"I've been involved in a number of cults, both as a leader and a follower. You have more fun as a follower, but you make more money as a leader."

> This definition of success is founded on power and control.

I don’t get how this follows from the quote you posted?

My interpretation is that successful people create durable, self sustaining institutions that deliver deeply meaningful benefits at scale.

I think that this interpretation is aligned with your nobler definitions. But your view of the purpose of government and religion may be more cynical than mine :)

The other telling quote was him saying Admiral Rickover was his mentor.

Someone born to enormous wealth is a bad example of someone being instrumental to their own success in influencing things.

I suppose Eric Hoffer inverted this quote.

If you want to create a company- makes sense.

If you want to create a country- better have a good reason, many noble people have done it, many bad people have done it.

If you want to create a religion- you're psycho (or you really are the chosen one)

Notice how Sam's definition of success increases with the probability of psychopathy.

>If you want to create a religion

I think he is making an allusion to Apple's culture.

There's successful companies because their product is good, there's more successful companies because they started early (and it feels like a monopoly: Google, Microsoft), and there's the most successful company that tells you what you are going to buy (Apple's culture).