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We have seen decades of general stagnation compared to decades of new inventions and growth before that. [Just imagine a bunch of quotes from Peter Thiel here.

by blfr 6y ago

We have seen decades of general stagnation compared to decades of new inventions and growth before that. [Just imagine a bunch of quotes from Peter Thiel here. You read or heard the argument already.] Good chunk of it is probably due to our societies getting physically older. But how much can be attributed to the culture of being nice, getting along, not rocking the boat, undermining people, etc? OP ironically even advises to be contrarian to the contrarians. Pretty ingenious rhetoric.

TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
Innovative companies like DEC, Bell Labs, and Xerox Parc (not so much IBM) ran on playful maturity, not on jerkish narcissism. Generally they were not terrible places to work - unlike the kind of startup that's a playground for dark triad people with emotional handicaps. The latter are destructive. A small minority get shit done, but only some proportion of the shit that gets done turns out to be truly beneficial. The rest is just a toxic mess of bullshit, lies, self-aggrandising posturing, manipulation, and empathy-free exploitation, sometimes with a side order of overt fraud and criminality. And there's been a lot more of that in recent decades than in the real-adults-but-at-play innovation powerhouses of the 50s, 60s and 70s.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- bitwize 6y ago
  And those destructive startups are run by people who seem "nice" in person but who enact their own sinister agenda, maybe while tricking themselves into thinking they're doing good. Being "nice" and being a good person are two different things.
api 6y ago
I like turning it around and asking: why do human beings seem unable to achieve these heights without a jerk pushing them? I have a loose hypothesis of my own. Most of us are wired for a vastly slower and quieter pace of life with very little change and very few large opportunities. Think hunter gatherers or simple agriculture, the environment and evolutionary pressures at play for 99.99% of our history. Now we have a very different environment: fast, lots of change, and lots of opportunities for huge gains everywhere. By the standards of this environment we basically all suffer from low grade depression and anhedonia. We are literally wired to watch the corn grow. But there are freaks. There are manics, bipolar people, high functioning psychopaths, people who are wired for fast opportunity grabbing and risk taking. Unfortunately these freaks being outliers are also often burdened by mental illness that comes with the package they got, and the odd way they are treated by society (as either gods or devils but never just peers) distorts their personality formation. They are wired in some ways for this environment, but they are socially deeply maladjusted. Jerks. We sort of use these people in an odd way. We make them leaders and via the mirror neuron effect borrow some of their drive. Then when their jerkish behavior gets too severe or things are not going well, we sacrifice the king. This seems to be how regular people are able to adapt to the present fast forwarded hypermodern environment. The other way is drugs. There are drugs like amphetamine that seem to allow regular humans to retune their brains for the current environment without borrowing motivation from a jerk. Unfortunately these come with major side effects and due to habituation the effects are not sustainable and stop working after a while.
- tafox 6y ago
  There are good people with high energy too, it isn't something reserved for just the jerks.
csours 6y ago
> We have seen decades of general stagnation compared to decades of new inventions and growth before that. I strongly disagree with this premise. We've seen a huge amount of refinement and polish in existing areas. You can't call that stagnation. It is less visible, but still a huge amount of value created. > "But how much can be attributed to the culture of being nice, getting along, not rocking the boat, undermining people, etc?" How many jerks are hailed as geniuses because they are good at presenting the work of others well? How many because they outright stole other people's work?

by blfr 6y ago

TheOtherHobbes 6y ago

Innovative companies like DEC, Bell Labs, and Xerox Parc (not so much IBM) ran on playful maturity, not on jerkish narcissism. Generally they were not terrible places to work - unlike the kind of startup that's a playground for dark triad people with emotional handicaps. The latter are destructive. A small minority get shit done, but only some proportion of the shit that gets done turns out to be truly beneficial. The rest is just a toxic mess of bullshit, lies, self-aggrandising posturing, manipulation, and empathy-free exploitation, sometimes with a side order of overt fraud and criminality. And there's been a lot more of that in recent decades than in the real-adults-but-at-play innovation powerhouses of the 50s, 60s and 70s.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
bitwize 6y ago
And those destructive startups are run by people who seem "nice" in person but who enact their own sinister agenda, maybe while tricking themselves into thinking they're doing good. Being "nice" and being a good person are two different things.

api 6y ago

I like turning it around and asking: why do human beings seem unable to achieve these heights without a jerk pushing them? I have a loose hypothesis of my own. Most of us are wired for a vastly slower and quieter pace of life with very little change and very few large opportunities. Think hunter gatherers or simple agriculture, the environment and evolutionary pressures at play for 99.99% of our history. Now we have a very different environment: fast, lots of change, and lots of opportunities for huge gains everywhere. By the standards of this environment we basically all suffer from low grade depression and anhedonia. We are literally wired to watch the corn grow. But there are freaks. There are manics, bipolar people, high functioning psychopaths, people who are wired for fast opportunity grabbing and risk taking. Unfortunately these freaks being outliers are also often burdened by mental illness that comes with the package they got, and the odd way they are treated by society (as either gods or devils but never just peers) distorts their personality formation. They are wired in some ways for this environment, but they are socially deeply maladjusted. Jerks. We sort of use these people in an odd way. We make them leaders and via the mirror neuron effect borrow some of their drive. Then when their jerkish behavior gets too severe or things are not going well, we sacrifice the king. This seems to be how regular people are able to adapt to the present fast forwarded hypermodern environment. The other way is drugs. There are drugs like amphetamine that seem to allow regular humans to retune their brains for the current environment without borrowing motivation from a jerk. Unfortunately these come with major side effects and due to habituation the effects are not sustainable and stop working after a while.

tafox 6y ago
There are good people with high energy too, it isn't something reserved for just the jerks.

csours 6y ago

> We have seen decades of general stagnation compared to decades of new inventions and growth before that. I strongly disagree with this premise. We've seen a huge amount of refinement and polish in existing areas. You can't call that stagnation. It is less visible, but still a huge amount of value created. > "But how much can be attributed to the culture of being nice, getting along, not rocking the boat, undermining people, etc?" How many jerks are hailed as geniuses because they are good at presenting the work of others well? How many because they outright stole other people's work?