<story><title>Justin Time</title><url>https://blog.ycombinator.com/justin-time</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>iamcurious</author><text>&amp;gt;Presidents are extremely smart&lt;p&gt;Interesting. Is there a part of the democatic process that guarantees electing extremely smart people?</text></item><item><author>ntumlin</author><text>Presidents are extremely smart and can quickly pick up on topics. Combine this with advisers giving you a detailed run down and you get this.</text></item><item><author>ptaffs</author><text>regarding the Obama clip, i&amp;#x27;m impressed Obama can talk so clearly about how airBnB works, for someone who lives in a bubble of security and probably never thinks about where he&amp;#x27;s going to stay when he goes on holiday, he can describe very well the social reputation components of airBnB.</text></item><item><author>paul</author><text>Justin doesn&amp;#x27;t just work with the media. Justin IS the media.&lt;p&gt;I think it&amp;#x27;s worth pointing out that Justin.tv led to the two largest YC exits to date, Twitch (Justin.tv pivot), and Cruise (founded by Justin.tv cofounder Kyle Vogt and Justin&amp;#x27;s brother Dan).&lt;p&gt;In 2008, Justin.tv co-founder Michael Seibel found Brian Chesky crashed on the floor of a hotel in Austin, offered him space in his room, began coaching him on how to build a startup, introduced him to the rest of the Justin.tv team, and ultimately brought them into YC! (and look where he is now: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=hP6TH3pBPi8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=hP6TH3pBPi8&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;p&gt;I look forward to more of the same :)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>derefr</author><text>A lot of the research around the evolution of intelligence suggests that some large part of what we think of as intelligence is inherently intertwined with the ability to socially signal, prevaricate, and negotiate: to assert social dominance of a group through out-thinking rivals and being better at swaying the majority &lt;i&gt;against&lt;/i&gt; those rivals. (Thus why sarcasm is considered inherently witty, exactly to the extent that it&amp;#x27;s subtle enough to trip up &lt;i&gt;some&lt;/i&gt; people but not all.)&lt;p&gt;If you take the dual roles that a President embodies: that of &amp;quot;managed to out-politician every other politician&amp;quot;; and that of &amp;quot;is believed by the technocrats of their party to be capable of &lt;i&gt;negotiating&lt;/i&gt; foreign policy, trade agreements, and military conflicts&amp;quot;—you end up with a fair proxy for that particular &amp;#x27;evolutionary&amp;#x27; measure of intelligence.</text></comment>
<story><title>Justin Time</title><url>https://blog.ycombinator.com/justin-time</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>iamcurious</author><text>&amp;gt;Presidents are extremely smart&lt;p&gt;Interesting. Is there a part of the democatic process that guarantees electing extremely smart people?</text></item><item><author>ntumlin</author><text>Presidents are extremely smart and can quickly pick up on topics. Combine this with advisers giving you a detailed run down and you get this.</text></item><item><author>ptaffs</author><text>regarding the Obama clip, i&amp;#x27;m impressed Obama can talk so clearly about how airBnB works, for someone who lives in a bubble of security and probably never thinks about where he&amp;#x27;s going to stay when he goes on holiday, he can describe very well the social reputation components of airBnB.</text></item><item><author>paul</author><text>Justin doesn&amp;#x27;t just work with the media. Justin IS the media.&lt;p&gt;I think it&amp;#x27;s worth pointing out that Justin.tv led to the two largest YC exits to date, Twitch (Justin.tv pivot), and Cruise (founded by Justin.tv cofounder Kyle Vogt and Justin&amp;#x27;s brother Dan).&lt;p&gt;In 2008, Justin.tv co-founder Michael Seibel found Brian Chesky crashed on the floor of a hotel in Austin, offered him space in his room, began coaching him on how to build a startup, introduced him to the rest of the Justin.tv team, and ultimately brought them into YC! (and look where he is now: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=hP6TH3pBPi8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=hP6TH3pBPi8&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;p&gt;I look forward to more of the same :)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nostrademons</author><text>To appeal to a broad segment of the electorate, you need to a.) be able to predict what will be important to a large number of diverse groups and b.) be able to analyze &amp;amp; synthesize that into a platform &amp;amp; message that will bring them over to your side.&lt;p&gt;The combination of both is a very rare skill that correlates well with intelligence.  Note that it requires both emotional &amp;amp; analytical intelligence: you need to understand what motivates people, and you also need to understand the numbers &amp;amp; segmentation well enough to make sure that you&amp;#x27;re empathizing with the right group of people.&lt;p&gt;CEO, BTW, requires a similar skillset.  I used to think that CEO was a do-nothing role that you got through political favors, and maybe in a couple dysfunctional companies that&amp;#x27;s still the case.  But in a functioning, market-leading company, being CEO requires that you first understand many different perspectives, and that you can synthesize those into a course of action that avoids pissing off any one core constituency too much.</text></comment>