HN user
Thats why, dont use Grok, dont buy a Tesla, dont support the mega corps that have bent a knee to them
sure. i refused to buy a tesla. at some point of my work it became impractical to not use grok. i think the message i want to get through is, there are so many ways to devalue elon, using grok or not does not matter that much if someone offsets it. it is the easiest thing to do but it is not necessarily the most effective
yes elon has gone crazy; yes trump is a convicted felon; mention it, and move on, fixating on these is not the way to actually defeat elon or trump as shown by the recent elections. there are better things to do to weaken elon and trump's cause
1. to have a healthy HN, we can't have this amount of political discussion under Grok 4.5. I am politically very liberal and not a fan at all of elon, but this ratio of technical vs. politics drives away the best discussion and will reddit-ify HN. This is my primary argument.
2. also, talk to people more! elon is very controversial, and that means that people's opinion of him differs a lot even in the more liberal crowd! i am not saying that we should be apolitical, but the HN bubble is bubbling, and the bubbling bubble will bubble away good technical AND political discussion. we can weaken elon's cause much better if we have a good grasp of people's actual opinion of elon and we go defuse that
agreed; i am not saying that we should not care about morals, but HN could really strive to be one level higher in its knowledge of ethics than 'using grok4.5 is supporting $evil', because if you go that chain then 'using A\ is supporting spacex/elon hence A\ models are poison' also seemingly stands
I used to question myself strongly about using Grok or any product with questionable morals. Then I realized that:
1. I just bought a house, using a bunch of SWE-salary money.
2. I moved into SF several years ago, probably contributing to the gentrification
3. Thousands of children in China had no financial means for education, yet I did nothing
So I used Grok, donated quite a lot of money at the annoyance of my family to an NGO in China, and decided not to donate to SF non-profits due to me still having a mortgage and I am still kinda selfish.
The message I want to spread is that we should take a practical stance to morals and doing good. I like Grok for many things; it is morally good to boycott it, and in my opinion there are many other morally good things we can also do while staying practical