HN user
I'm willing to accept this if we only hire people who are on the opposite side of the ideological spectrum to whoever is suggesting this.
If you are a conservative, we will hire progressives to decide what is ethical and isn't ethical.
If you are a progressive, we will hire conservatives to decide what is and what isn't ethical.
Don't try to get away with sarcasm.
Whether this is part of your secret masterplan, or a casual Sunday morning comment, is irrelevant.
You referred to Quillette's articles as, "bullshit in its most exquisite, hand crafted, artisanal form". If you aren't willing to even attempt justifying such defamatory claims, don't make them.
Sigh.
This seems to be a common pattern on HN where users make very strong negative claims about some person/organisation without even attempting to justify it.
I wonder if this is a conscious tactic where people who don't like some person/organisation attempt to attach negative emotions to it.
Hoping that people unfamiliar with it would feel negatively about it, without really knowing why they feel that way. "I just remember someone saying that it is bad."
I'd say that behavior is often called "virtue signaling" when it's mostly other people who have to pay the cost for someone's "virtuous" behavior.
Example:
Y Combinator notices how only 15% of their funded founders are women. Their fellow progressives call them out on this, and YC commits to fund more women. They will write posts about how they want more female founders. They will organize women only events. Perhaps, they will even actually favor female founders over more qualified male founders for funding.
Very virtuous of them to care about gender equality.
The problem is that the society doesn't consist of "men" and "women". It consists of individuals. When a man applies to YC, he isn't "men", he is a unique individual. An individual who has put enormous effort to build a product. An individual who has been long dreaming of founding a company, and finally built enough courage to take the leap. An individual who would be qualified by his merits.
But... he gets rejected because YC consists of virtuous people who care about gender equality, and unfortunately they have already funded enough men.
Now YC gets to post how they have funded more female founders, and their fellow progressives will praise them for caring about gender equality.
And what happened to the aspiring male entrepreneur after that? No one knows. No one cares.
...
In this example, it's YC who gets all the virtue points, while it's the aspiring male entrepreneur who has to carry most of the cost for their "virtuous" behavior. This doesn't mean that YC's behavior is wrong, but it does suggest that their behavior isn't as virtuous as it seems.
Thus, "virtue signaling".
From "Laws of Tech: Commoditize Your Complement" (https://www.gwern.net/Complement):
Joel Spolsky in 2002 identified a major pattern in technology business & economics: the pattern of "commoditizing your complement"
This pattern explains many otherwise odd or apparently self-sabotaging ventures by large tech companies into apparently irrelevant fields ...
...they are pre-emptive attempts to commodify another company elsewhere in the stack, or defenses against it being done to them.
After having read this article, it's been interesting how a lot of these investments have started making more sense. They often aren't primarily about the product itself, rather they serve the function of minimizing any leverage other companies could have over them.
As Github offers an access to a valuable resource for tech companies, developers, Microsoft could use it to promote its products/services and to attract talent. This isn't good for Google, so they are hoping to reduce Microsoft's leverage.
In some sense this is obvious, but I hadn't consciously identified this as a pattern before.
For people not aware of Peterson, I want you not to take the parent comment seriously. Peterson is a highly polarizing figure, and people tend to have very strong positive/negative opinions about him.
Thus the parent comment is an example of someone feeling very negatively about him, and not an accurate representation of him or his ideas.
In addition to being a misogynist (top videos include "Feminism versus FACTS" and "Why feminism poisons everything")
Stop.
This type of public character assassination is completely unacceptable unless you are willing to properly justify it.
Urbit is interesting for me in how I first couldn't understand its purpose at all. Since then, I have had several cases of pondering on some difficult problem, only to find myself thinking, "...isn't this what Urbit is attempting to be a (partial) solution to?"
Is this more Jordan Peterson, “woe is men” shit?
Acknowledging the existence of a problem affecting men?
... then that is their problem, as individuals ...
I agree, but the society needs to acknowledge that it actually IS a genuine problem for these men. We can then encourage the development and adoption of technological solutions, such as sexual VR and sexbots. It might not be the ideal solution for these men, but at least it's a solution (and it puts no responsibility on women to do anything).
If you mean your post as a general argument against organisations claiming to value any vague "good thing", I can respect that. With few word changes in your comment, you could use it to argue against claims of valuing: privacy, diversity, inclusivity, environment etc.
Do you believe organisations should remove all claims of valuing such things?
What data are you referring to?
Trump is often described as narsisstic, petty, childish, unpredictable etc. and he seems much more likely to act based on personal emotions rather than "rational cost/benefit analysis". And then you have Bolton who seems to be hoping for a war.
These aren't the types most of us would want as our leaders, but they make extremely scary enemies when they are leading the most powerful military in the world.
Normally nothing serious will happen even if Russia or NK test their boundaries, and they know it. But now, with Trump and Bolton in charge, their casual threats can suddenly have real consequences for them.
I would be surprised if this didn't have a significant effect on how other countries decide to interact with the USA.
Sam Altman wrote in a blog post, "Earlier this year, I noticed something in China that really surprised me. I realized I felt more comfortable discussing controversial ideas in Beijing than in San Francisco. I didn’t feel completely comfortable—this was China, after all—just more comfortable than at home." [0]
This probably wasn't because China is inherently less censorious, but rather the set of controversial ideas in Beijing are different than the set of controversial ideas in San Francisco.
Thus Chinese companies can be biased in ways that are relevant to the Chinese market, but less likely to be biased in ways that are relevant to the Western market.
If SV companies are biased in a way that is relevant to the Western market, this can be an opportunity for the Chinese companies to provide a more neutral service.
Very exciting news!
I hope YC will help Chinese startups become global. My biggest problem with Silicon Valley is its ideological uniformity and the increasing willingness to use their companies/products as vehicles to push their ideologies.
China would be in an excellent position to address the part of the Western market that is increasingly alienated by this push. They can build SV tech clones for the local market, and then expand to the global market by offering ideologically more neutral (from Western perspective) alternatives to SV tech.
Chinese startups will have their own flaws, but at least we will have a choice.