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Reddit seems pretty unprincipled in general. Their decisions wouldn't be so bad if they appeared to stem from a coherent principle but overall they seem to only

Reddit seems pretty unprincipled in general. Their decisions wouldn't be so bad if they appeared to stem from a coherent principle but overall they seem to only be reacting and doing whatever is politically expedient in the moment. Not unlike most orgs I suppose.

Bakary 6y ago
Sounds like a principle to me. edit: to make this answer less of a throwaway line: it's a principle that underpins most of the MMR-based ideology on this very same website and animates most of the tech scene in general, "making the world a better place" statements notwithstanding. How many of you here can genuinely pretend otherwise in your professional life? A portion perhaps, but clearly the minority. Beyond the simple cynicism of pointing it out, this principle seems to be quite stable and efficient in the face of an audience that shifts its priorities every two seconds. Perhaps the better question to ask would be why the system of incentives that we have cultivated rewards this behavior. The crowd rewards certain behaviors, and in an increasingly postmodern world moral statements are usually lost in the noise or take the shape of a parody of themselves.
- NoSorryCannot 6y ago
  I view a principle as being a belief held that one will hold the line on, even if to do so would be potentially costly. A principle isn't necessarily popular or just. Optimizing for traffic, revenue, or whatever else is certainly a strategy but I don't think it's a principle in the sense of someone or some people having principles. And I would add that the effective output of such a strategy, if it were the behavior of an individual, would probably be described as sociopathic.
  - Bakary 6y ago
    I agree with your general stance, but I do wonder if this strategy hasn't morphed into an ideology in itself or at least what we'd recognize as principles (which can indeed cost people by their definition, but not necesarily so) At least that is what I see with much of the content shared here. The world view that percolates across all those articles is one that praises hustle culture, a mechanistic optimization of life, rationality fetishism, "hacking" social relationships, founder/mogul worship and many other ideas that support entrepreneurial success as the fundamental arbiter of value and moral worth. I even saw a few people sincerely believing thar systemic poverty could be alleviated with some bootsrapped startup concept. Essentially a mix of sociopathy and technocracy that can also paradoxically function as a guiding light for non-sociopathic people.
  - a1369209993 6y ago
    > I view a principle as being a belief held that one will hold the line on, even if to do so would be potentially costly. A principle isn't necessarily popular or just. To be scupulously fair, "never hold the line, especially if it would be costly to do so", is still a principle by that definition, albeit a vacuous one. Just like "zero" is a number of apples you can be holding.

Bakary 6y ago

Sounds like a principle to me. edit: to make this answer less of a throwaway line: it's a principle that underpins most of the MMR-based ideology on this very same website and animates most of the tech scene in general, "making the world a better place" statements notwithstanding. How many of you here can genuinely pretend otherwise in your professional life? A portion perhaps, but clearly the minority. Beyond the simple cynicism of pointing it out, this principle seems to be quite stable and efficient in the face of an audience that shifts its priorities every two seconds. Perhaps the better question to ask would be why the system of incentives that we have cultivated rewards this behavior. The crowd rewards certain behaviors, and in an increasingly postmodern world moral statements are usually lost in the noise or take the shape of a parody of themselves.

NoSorryCannot 6y ago
I view a principle as being a belief held that one will hold the line on, even if to do so would be potentially costly. A principle isn't necessarily popular or just. Optimizing for traffic, revenue, or whatever else is certainly a strategy but I don't think it's a principle in the sense of someone or some people having principles. And I would add that the effective output of such a strategy, if it were the behavior of an individual, would probably be described as sociopathic.
- Bakary 6y ago
  I agree with your general stance, but I do wonder if this strategy hasn't morphed into an ideology in itself or at least what we'd recognize as principles (which can indeed cost people by their definition, but not necesarily so) At least that is what I see with much of the content shared here. The world view that percolates across all those articles is one that praises hustle culture, a mechanistic optimization of life, rationality fetishism, "hacking" social relationships, founder/mogul worship and many other ideas that support entrepreneurial success as the fundamental arbiter of value and moral worth. I even saw a few people sincerely believing thar systemic poverty could be alleviated with some bootsrapped startup concept. Essentially a mix of sociopathy and technocracy that can also paradoxically function as a guiding light for non-sociopathic people.
- a1369209993 6y ago
  > I view a principle as being a belief held that one will hold the line on, even if to do so would be potentially costly. A principle isn't necessarily popular or just. To be scupulously fair, "never hold the line, especially if it would be costly to do so", is still a principle by that definition, albeit a vacuous one. Just like "zero" is a number of apples you can be holding.