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Pair this New Yorker article with Anand Ghiridaradas' thread from today about his experience with the Media Lab. [0] Ghiridaradas is author of Winners Take All

Pair this New Yorker article with Anand Ghiridaradas' thread from today about his experience with the Media Lab. [0] Ghiridaradas is author of Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World [1]. He was also on the panel for MIT Media Labs' Disobedience Award. It was their answer to the MacArthur Foundations' "Genius Grants". Reid Hoffman, of LinkedIn, Greylock, and Blitzscaling fame is the donor who sponsors the Disobedience Award. He comes out looking...not good. [0] https://twitter.com/AnandWrites/status/1169947031806365696?s=20 https://twitter.com/AnandWrites/status/1169947031806365696?s... [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37506348-winners-take-all https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37506348-winners-take-al...

dondawest 7y ago
Wow, Ghiridaradas coming so correct. I tried to read his book “Winners Take All” multiple times and found it absolutely unreadable, he kept restating the same point with different overly-complex words and name-drops. But here he writes with real clarity and real precision. Just wish he’d applied that same clarity to the writing style in his book!
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
DoctorOetker 7y ago
Anand is not seeing the bigger picture: it's about hush money and the cloak of charity, not prestige-for-cash which does not make sense if you think about it. I had a long comment explaining my interpretation backed by quotes, but it's too long for HN apparently so here is the link, at a text storage site (I couldn't get past pastebin's "SPAM filter" captcha) https://textuploader.com/192lt https://textuploader.com/192lt EDIT: I am not on twitter, so if anyone could mention this to Anand I would appreciate.
- amsilprotag 7y ago
  From your text: Then Anand shares the thoughtful and profound email he sent to Ito & Co and others at MIT Media Lab, from which it is crystal clear Anand is unambiguously trying to do the right thing. You're giving Giridharadas way too much credit. His e-mail resignation is an implicit ultimatum (if you don't fire him, I will go public), to which Hoffman counters by saying how he will try to frame Giridharadas as trying to personally gain from this scandal (which, clearly he will). By publicly stating Hoffman's weak threat, while reserving the future threat of revealing their correspondence, Giridharadas makes it harder for Hoffman to follow through on the threat without public backlash. So Giridharadas targets this tweetstorm to inflict maximum damage to Ito supporters and MIT admins. The hush money line is harder to prove and channels frustration towards the hushers more than the facilitators. The cash for prestige line places all the blame on Epstein and Ito. Then he publicly shares the list of Ito supporters [0] and creates public knowledge of their thinning numbers. When the firing eventually occurs, Giridharadas will have collected the spoils of a successful cancellation, the public knowledge that he can make very credible threats. If you are correct, we should expect Giridharadas to place more emphasis on the hushers for the sake of justice. If I am, we should expect him to put all effort into bringing down Ito. [0] https://twitter.com/AnandWrites/status/1170025167063605250 https://twitter.com/AnandWrites/status/1170025167063605250
  - AndrewBissell 7y ago
    Yes, surely the villain here is the guy trying to hold people to account for knowingly associating with and taking money from a convicted child predator, and shining a light on all the ass covering they are now engaged in, and not the people who did all this heinous stuff in the first place. Truly a case of cancel culture run amok.
    - amsilprotag 7y ago
      I think Giridharadas is very good and says good things and picks good targets. But there is a strange attitude here and on twitter that he is guileless, when clearly he is making very calculated moves. This is especially apparent in seeing the Hoffman comment as a threat but not the resignation letter. Maybe the gp came off as harsh, but I'm trying to explain why the ggp should not expect the husher line of attack to be immediately adopted.
      - ColanR 7y ago
        > clearly he is making very calculated moves A very good person can also be someone who makes calculated moves. The two characteristics are not mutually exclusive.
        fatbird 7y ago
        Yes, this. Doing the right strategically for maximum effect is better than merely doing it for performative effect.
    - wutbrodo 7y ago
      I can't imagine how confusing the world must be when one only sees things in the world such childish black-and-white terms, where the existence of evil automatically means that anyone in opposition is a morally-unimpeachable angel. To be clear, there's no comparison between the parent comment's model of Ghiridaradas's actions and those of Ito et al, and AG's telling of their actions is pretty damning regardless of his motivations. But responding to someone trying to flesh out a better understanding of the situation by mentioning his motivations (without excusing one iota the far-worse actions of others) with "NO THERE CAN ONLY EVER BE ONE SIDE DOING BAD THINGS" is about as simple-minded a take as I can imagine.
AndrewBissell 7y ago
Between this and the party he hosted where Elon Musk introduced Epstein to Mark Zuckerberg, Reid Hoffman is coming across as one of the absolute worst people in tech when it comes to the Epstein Affair. Can we start booing him off stages at conferences now, please?

dondawest 7y ago

Wow, Ghiridaradas coming so correct. I tried to read his book “Winners Take All” multiple times and found it absolutely unreadable, he kept restating the same point with different overly-complex words and name-drops. But here he writes with real clarity and real precision. Just wish he’d applied that same clarity to the writing style in his book!

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

DoctorOetker 7y ago

Anand is not seeing the bigger picture: it's about hush money and the cloak of charity, not prestige-for-cash which does not make sense if you think about it. I had a long comment explaining my interpretation backed by quotes, but it's too long for HN apparently so here is the link, at a text storage site (I couldn't get past pastebin's "SPAM filter" captcha) https://textuploader.com/192lt https://textuploader.com/192lt EDIT: I am not on twitter, so if anyone could mention this to Anand I would appreciate.

amsilprotag 7y ago
From your text: Then Anand shares the thoughtful and profound email he sent to Ito & Co and others at MIT Media Lab, from which it is crystal clear Anand is unambiguously trying to do the right thing. You're giving Giridharadas way too much credit. His e-mail resignation is an implicit ultimatum (if you don't fire him, I will go public), to which Hoffman counters by saying how he will try to frame Giridharadas as trying to personally gain from this scandal (which, clearly he will). By publicly stating Hoffman's weak threat, while reserving the future threat of revealing their correspondence, Giridharadas makes it harder for Hoffman to follow through on the threat without public backlash. So Giridharadas targets this tweetstorm to inflict maximum damage to Ito supporters and MIT admins. The hush money line is harder to prove and channels frustration towards the hushers more than the facilitators. The cash for prestige line places all the blame on Epstein and Ito. Then he publicly shares the list of Ito supporters [0] and creates public knowledge of their thinning numbers. When the firing eventually occurs, Giridharadas will have collected the spoils of a successful cancellation, the public knowledge that he can make very credible threats. If you are correct, we should expect Giridharadas to place more emphasis on the hushers for the sake of justice. If I am, we should expect him to put all effort into bringing down Ito. [0] https://twitter.com/AnandWrites/status/1170025167063605250 https://twitter.com/AnandWrites/status/1170025167063605250
- AndrewBissell 7y ago
  Yes, surely the villain here is the guy trying to hold people to account for knowingly associating with and taking money from a convicted child predator, and shining a light on all the ass covering they are now engaged in, and not the people who did all this heinous stuff in the first place. Truly a case of cancel culture run amok.
  - amsilprotag 7y ago
    I think Giridharadas is very good and says good things and picks good targets. But there is a strange attitude here and on twitter that he is guileless, when clearly he is making very calculated moves. This is especially apparent in seeing the Hoffman comment as a threat but not the resignation letter. Maybe the gp came off as harsh, but I'm trying to explain why the ggp should not expect the husher line of attack to be immediately adopted.
    - ColanR 7y ago
      > clearly he is making very calculated moves A very good person can also be someone who makes calculated moves. The two characteristics are not mutually exclusive.
      - fatbird 7y ago
        Yes, this. Doing the right strategically for maximum effect is better than merely doing it for performative effect.
  - wutbrodo 7y ago
    I can't imagine how confusing the world must be when one only sees things in the world such childish black-and-white terms, where the existence of evil automatically means that anyone in opposition is a morally-unimpeachable angel. To be clear, there's no comparison between the parent comment's model of Ghiridaradas's actions and those of Ito et al, and AG's telling of their actions is pretty damning regardless of his motivations. But responding to someone trying to flesh out a better understanding of the situation by mentioning his motivations (without excusing one iota the far-worse actions of others) with "NO THERE CAN ONLY EVER BE ONE SIDE DOING BAD THINGS" is about as simple-minded a take as I can imagine.

AndrewBissell 7y ago

Between this and the party he hosted where Elon Musk introduced Epstein to Mark Zuckerberg, Reid Hoffman is coming across as one of the absolute worst people in tech when it comes to the Epstein Affair. Can we start booing him off stages at conferences now, please?