"Learn to analyze well. Assess the risks and the prospective rewards, and keep it simple."<p>"Stay fit. You don’t want to get old and feel bad. You’ll also get a lot more accomplished and feel better about yourself if you stay fit. I didn’t make it to 91 by neglecting my health."<p>It's a good final letter and has good advice. Complicated guy, complicated legacy, but good advice.
I loved this tweet from him a year or so ago: <a href="https://twitter.com/boonepickens/status/953398294172102658" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/boonepickens/status/953398294172102658</a>
"It’s your shot now."<p>That statement and others show me the Pickens was trying to help others, to encourage them. I especially like the list of guidelines at the bottom of the page.
> Don’t look to government to solve problems — the strength of this country is in its people.<p>I’ve been reading One-Storied America[0], a book from 1935 by two Soviet humorists visiting the United States. The book echos this perspective on every page.<p>[0] you can find a good 1937 translation online under the title Little Golden America by Charles Malamuth.
<i>> Stay fit. You don’t want to get old and feel bad. You’ll also get a lot more accomplished and feel better about yourself if you stay fit. I didn’t make it to 91 by neglecting my health.</i><p>This. Many people don't realize that staying fit isn't a quest to live longer but to live physically better in the later ages.<p>I cringe when someone tells me stuff like "yeah but that dude smoked and never exercised and lived until 80s while the fit guy got cancer and it didn't help him" ... yes but you forgot to mention that living life in his body became a miserable experience since 45 vs. someone else who may have died in 60s of cancer but in fact spent something like 50 fulfilling years feeling great.<p>Staying fit may not save you from cancer or car accident, but but the life is so much better when you live in a fit body.
I find it mesmerizing that people on this thread have a problem with the criticism of a highly influential person upon their death. I mean were people bound to say only positive things when Augusto Pinochet and Robert Mugabe dusted off?<p>Obviously I don't think T Boone shares the legacy of violent dictators but my point is that those clutching their pearls here trying to categorically separate themselves from those who speak ill of the dead are not separate at all. They either don't believe what Pickens did was all that bad or they don't believe he did bad things. On their spectrum of "posthumous criticism" Pickens lies on the positive side of their personal threshold.
The comments on this thread are terrible.<p>I don't know enough about him to pass moral judgement, but it seems like many others think that they do (after a quick scan of Wikipedia, meh, that's good enough).<p>It just seems crass to be flippantly judgmental when the guy just died, and in response to his last elegant / humble / insightful "post" to the world.<p>I'm also confused at the implicit viewpoints that, IMO, are at odds with the HN/YC ethos of "individual hussle/initiative/hack your way to huge growth/etc". I.e. if Pickens wasn't from another generation and another industry, I think he'd fit in very well with the HN/YC types (disclaimer/ha, I'm making an assumption that I just chastised others for doing).<p>Anyway, makes me wonder if the "real HN" crowd has moved on elsewhere.
I wish there was a block user feature on hn. Frankly, with about half the commenters in this thread, I think I would be better off if I didn't run across their inane comments on any subject any more.
I had no idea who this guy was. Quick excerpt:<p>> Thomas Boone Pickens Jr. was an American business magnate and financier. Pickens chaired the hedge fund BP Capital Management. He was a well-known takeover operator and corporate raider during the 1980s. As of November 2016, Pickens had a net worth of $500 million.<p>So, it seems, a "financial" predator, possibly of the worst kind. Not a lot of sympathy for these kind of people.<p>Edit: to be clear, "late" philanthropists are a nice thing, but as Ricardo Semler [0] once said, "If you need to give away money, you took too much in the first place".<p>[0]: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricardo_Semler" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricardo_Semler</a>