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Amusing/sad how the announcement doesn't mention Joi Ito at all, even with a perfunctory "thanks for your service". Apparently taking a donation from an unpers

Amusing/sad how the announcement doesn't mention Joi Ito at all, even with a perfunctory "thanks for your service". Apparently taking a donation from an unperson is enough to make you an unperson as well these days.

acdha 7y ago
You mean breaking institutional policy and covering it up doesn’t get you a gold watch and a laudatory press release?
- throwaway2048 7y ago
  Breaking policy, covering it up, and getting paid six digit amounts of money for it. But no, this is obviously some kind of witch hunt. /s Edit: six digit
  - ta0987 7y ago
    Triple digit? Like, a hundred dollars?
  - DonHopkins 7y ago
    Epstein paid Ito seven digits for his own personal investment fund, more than twice what he gave Media Lab.
    - nonce42 7y ago
      Serious question: what does it mean that Epstein paid $1.2 million into Ito's personal investment fund? Is that an investment fund that Ito ran? Or did Ito get the money personally? I did some web searches a couple of days ago but couldn't find an explanation of this strange wording.
      - DonHopkins 7y ago
        It means Ito's investment fund was his main gig, and Media Lab was only a side hustle.
- i_am_nomad 7y ago
  The Media Lab does present a yearly Disobedience Prize, so...
  - elliekelly 7y ago
    Unrelated to MIT/Ito, your comment got me wondering whether there are any MBA-type case studies on how to foster a culture with the "right" amount of disobedience? Some amount of rules/processes are necessary but (in my little corner of the world at least) the most important skill is being able to gauge the risk/reward of bending or breaking them. I wonder if "disobedience" is a learned skill and whether we should be putting in more effort to teach it.
    - smelendez 7y ago
      I think people often point to the "Skunk Works" at Lockheed Martin that built the SR-71.
    - ismail 7y ago
      Unsure if you will find anything on “disobedience”. To me it can be broken down to encouraging the following in the culture: 1. Diverse views 2. Confidence to speak 3. candor and honesty 4. agency Having said that there needs to be a minimum amount of agreement on some values/principles/philosophy. Without agreement on this you end up in chaos. What you want is to keep culture at the “edge of chaos” [0]. Also have a look at the adaptive cycle [1] and diversity in perspectives. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_of_chaos https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_of_chaos [1] https://www.resalliance.org/adaptive-cycle https://www.resalliance.org/adaptive-cycle
    - neel_k 7y ago
      It's actually super easy to achieve in general: literally (and I genuinely mean literally) tens of thousands of primary schools manage it. You need (a) the members of the culture to have a shared ethos that sees the work as a noble pursuit and work towards, (b) enough money to ensure the system has enough slack that people can take the initiative to do things like help each other without everything falling apart, but (c) not so much money flowing around that the ethos gets overwhelmed by self-interest. The trouble is that at a few million dollars money becomes a motive with a universal adapter, and enough people will let ethics slide to score that trust and shared values become unreliable. So it's nearly impossible to achieve in a VC-backed startup setting. If you really want academic research about how the mixture of altruism and self-interest affects the balance of rule-making and individual initiative, then IMO the best thing to read is the economist Julian le Grand's 2003 book _Motivation, Agency and Public Policy: Of Knights and Knaves, Pawns and Queens_.
AndrewBissell 7y ago
First they came for the associates of child rapists, and I did not speak up because I did not associate with people who rape children.
geofft 7y ago
What service is there to thank Joi for? What did he do in his time at the Media Lab? This isn't about unpersons, this is about honesty.
vl 7y ago
And amusingly commenting about it downvotes you to hell, lol.

acdha 7y ago

You mean breaking institutional policy and covering it up doesn’t get you a gold watch and a laudatory press release?

throwaway2048 7y ago
Breaking policy, covering it up, and getting paid six digit amounts of money for it. But no, this is obviously some kind of witch hunt. /s Edit: six digit
- ta0987 7y ago
  Triple digit? Like, a hundred dollars?
- DonHopkins 7y ago
  Epstein paid Ito seven digits for his own personal investment fund, more than twice what he gave Media Lab.
  - nonce42 7y ago
    Serious question: what does it mean that Epstein paid $1.2 million into Ito's personal investment fund? Is that an investment fund that Ito ran? Or did Ito get the money personally? I did some web searches a couple of days ago but couldn't find an explanation of this strange wording.
    - DonHopkins 7y ago
      It means Ito's investment fund was his main gig, and Media Lab was only a side hustle.
i_am_nomad 7y ago
The Media Lab does present a yearly Disobedience Prize, so...
- elliekelly 7y ago
  Unrelated to MIT/Ito, your comment got me wondering whether there are any MBA-type case studies on how to foster a culture with the "right" amount of disobedience? Some amount of rules/processes are necessary but (in my little corner of the world at least) the most important skill is being able to gauge the risk/reward of bending or breaking them. I wonder if "disobedience" is a learned skill and whether we should be putting in more effort to teach it.
  - smelendez 7y ago
    I think people often point to the "Skunk Works" at Lockheed Martin that built the SR-71.
  - ismail 7y ago
    Unsure if you will find anything on “disobedience”. To me it can be broken down to encouraging the following in the culture: 1. Diverse views 2. Confidence to speak 3. candor and honesty 4. agency Having said that there needs to be a minimum amount of agreement on some values/principles/philosophy. Without agreement on this you end up in chaos. What you want is to keep culture at the “edge of chaos” [0]. Also have a look at the adaptive cycle [1] and diversity in perspectives. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_of_chaos https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_of_chaos [1] https://www.resalliance.org/adaptive-cycle https://www.resalliance.org/adaptive-cycle
  - neel_k 7y ago
    It's actually super easy to achieve in general: literally (and I genuinely mean literally) tens of thousands of primary schools manage it. You need (a) the members of the culture to have a shared ethos that sees the work as a noble pursuit and work towards, (b) enough money to ensure the system has enough slack that people can take the initiative to do things like help each other without everything falling apart, but (c) not so much money flowing around that the ethos gets overwhelmed by self-interest. The trouble is that at a few million dollars money becomes a motive with a universal adapter, and enough people will let ethics slide to score that trust and shared values become unreliable. So it's nearly impossible to achieve in a VC-backed startup setting. If you really want academic research about how the mixture of altruism and self-interest affects the balance of rule-making and individual initiative, then IMO the best thing to read is the economist Julian le Grand's 2003 book _Motivation, Agency and Public Policy: Of Knights and Knaves, Pawns and Queens_.

AndrewBissell 7y ago

First they came for the associates of child rapists, and I did not speak up because I did not associate with people who rape children.

geofft 7y ago

What service is there to thank Joi for? What did he do in his time at the Media Lab? This isn't about unpersons, this is about honesty.

vl 7y ago

And amusingly commenting about it downvotes you to hell, lol.