Sorry to say this, but the thread is becoming so full of technical jargon as to leave me quite blissful, as I am quite ignorant about all these phrases and catchwords!
Deepa. On Sat, Feb 14, 2026 at 12:57 PM Kiran Karthikeyan via Silklist < [email protected]> wrote: > I agree with your core diagnosis. This is less about whether individuals > are good or bad, and more about what our systems select for and then > over-reward. > > By selection, I mean the filters used to promote, get funded, and gain > status: who boards back, who orgs elevate, who markets amplify, and which > signals are rewarded (short-term outcomes, narrative control, risk-taking, > political safety). When rewards flow to people who can deliver outcomes > without relational or ethical constraints, we should expect more of that > behavior, and then we label it leadership. > > Your Epstein point: high emotional and social perception is different from > moral empathy. It can increase exploitative power when decoupled from > ethics. I would add a third axis to the map, alongside trust and > performance: moral constraint or integrity. The problem is not low EQ. It's > instrumental EQ without moral limits, amplified by incentives. > > On the quadrant, I agree that high performance plus low trust gets > rewarded too often. A nuance is that relationship optimization can also > become status quo defense. Novel ideas get shot down, dissent gets managed, > and alignment becomes a substitute for progress. Serious > innovation/transformation often needs structural protection, such as > ring-fenced teams, mandated collaboration, and protected budgets. > Otherwise, the default incentives are short-term performance and risk > minimization. > > The morality angle matters beyond the workplace. Today, wealth comes with > a halo, not just of competence, but of general goodness and authority on > unrelated topics. That deference reduces accountability, expands influence, > and reinforces the selection loop. It’s social rent-seeking on steroids. > > Fix selection and rewards, and you get different people rising. Price in > relational accountability and moral constraint, and you get fewer > billionaires as an outcome. > Kiran > > *From: *Silklist <silklist-bounces+kiran.karthikeyan= > [email protected]> on behalf of Pavithra K via Silklist < > [email protected]> > *Date: *Friday, 13 February 2026 at 12:29 PM > *To: *Intelligent conversation <[email protected]> > *Cc: *Pavithra K <[email protected]> > *Subject: *Re: [Silk] are billionaires human? > > I’ve been thinking about this using a simple Trust X Performance map. > > > If we put Performance on one axis (measuring output, as defined by a > system) and Trust on the other (psychological safety, reliability, moral > regard), the ideal leader clearly sits in the High Trust + High > Performance quadrant. > > > What’s striking in many workplaces, though, is how much attention (and > promotion) goes to the High Performance + Low Trust quadrant. These > individuals deliver outcomes, often at the cost of relational damage, and > the system interprets that as leadership potential. > > > Meanwhile, people in the High Trust + Lower Performance (distinction > here-- lower performance because it is undervalued, systemically) quadrant > often wield disproportionate informal influence: they hold teams together, > transmit context, and create coherence. Yet they are rarely promoted at the > same rate as the top left quadrant. > > > This makes the question less about whether EQ is “declining" and more > about whether our systems are structurally optimized to reward > performance, which is divorced from relational accountability. > > > On the Epstein point specifically, he doesn’t strike me as low EQ at all. > Rather, IMHO, he exemplifies high social and emotional perception > combined with near-zero moral empathy. IMHO, he demonstrated that he > could (and did, very effectively) read and manipulate emotional landscapes > without perceiving others as fully human. To me, that distinction matters. > > > So perhaps the real pathology isn’t low EQ, but a form of instrumental/ > functional emotional intelligence that is removed from ethics. And > perhaps, this is amplified by systems that reward results without regard > for how they’re produced. > > Should leadership be defined as the optimization of individual > performance? Or should we define it as the capacity to maintain trust when > perfromance is under strain? > > -pavi > > On Fri, 6 Feb 2026 at 07:56, Thaths via Silklist < > [email protected]> wrote: > > On Thu, Feb 5, 2026, 12:37 AM Venkatesh Hariharan via Silklist < > [email protected]> wrote: > > > > On Thu, Feb 5, 2026 at 12:18 PM Udhay Shankar N via Silklist < > [email protected]> wrote: > > The state of the world, and especially the Esptein files cesspool, has me > thinking of _Altered carbon_ (the book, not the TV show). In my reading, > the core point of the book is "past a certain level of wealth, you're not > really human any more". > > The key reasons: > > * Access to wealth, opportunities, networks and bodily modifications far > beyond what anyone at a lower socio-economic stratum can access. So much so > that you're not really comparable any more. > * Inability to perceive other people as even being of the same species, > but only as exploitable resources. > > Thoughts? > > Udhay > > > It seems to me that many "successful" folks become so because of their IQ. > Once success goes to their heads, their EQ becomes inversely proportional > to their IQ. Or, perhaps, they never had much EQ in the first place. The > number of High IQ/Low EQ folks that are in leadership positions is perhaps > the biggest causal factor for the sad state of world affairs. My highest > respect is now reserved for the rare breed of folks who are High IQ/High > EQ. As for the High IQ/Low EQ folks, they have a certain stink of > arrogance. Once you learn to detect them, it becomes easy to avoid them! > How did we become such a low EQ society? > > > Since Udhay started this thread talking about Epstein.... Looking at the > network Epstein built (collecting interesting people in his own way), and > the facility with which he communicated with his circle, I don't get the > impression that he was weak in his EQ. In fact, he seems to have been > highly aware of the emotional buttons of his circle and how to manipulate > them. > > Thaths > -- > Silklist mailing list > [email protected] > https://mailman.panix.com/listinfo.cgi/silklist > > -- > Silklist mailing list > [email protected] > https://mailman.panix.com/listinfo.cgi/silklist >
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