4 ms·

There is merely a step away from arguing for 'wrongthink' as a policy. Ideas should be examined, thoroughly and openly. Staying away does the opposite to the go

There is merely a step away from arguing for 'wrongthink' as a policy. Ideas should be examined, thoroughly and openly. Staying away does the opposite to the goal you may want to achieve. Suggesting that ideas can corrupt is especially troubling on HN, which is supposed to be more focused on rational/logical discourse.

jacquesm 5y ago
> Suggesting that ideas can corrupt is especially troubling on HN, which is supposed to be more focused on rational/logical discourse. But they can. Religion, racism, terrorism, fascism: they are all ideas that can corrupt, and some people are more susceptible to this than others. If you find that you are at the end of your wits and unable to find one more source for management advice to the point that you have to turn to the masters of slaves of a few thousand years ago I think you should simply stop looking because nothing good can come of that. Ideas do not exist in a vacuum, they exist in a timeframe as well as what was considered locally acceptable and those conditions all but ensure that anything that you think you might learn is going to be very hard to apply. We study history to avoid repetitions, not to see what particular item certain despicable people from the past had to say. For an encore: Sex tips by rapists, explosive manufacture by suicide bombers, vegetarian cooking by A. Hitler, marketing tips from J. Goebbels and how to run a start-up by Elizabeth Holmes. Those are books I can do without.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
  "For an encore: Sex tips by rapists, explosive manufacture by suicide bombers, vegetarian cooking by A. Hitler, marketing tips from J. Goebbels and how to run a start-up by Elizabeth Holmes." I understand that you wrote it in jest, but isn't Goebbels studied precisely due to the nature of marketing ( propaganda ) he employed? I personally find it interesting. Why does association work so well? Why does it automatically follow that if Hitler wrote an absolutely spectacular vegan recipe that basically cures cancer, it is automatically off limits to everyone? Before you answer, note that Americans brought some actual Nazi scientists after WW2(operation paperclip). Should US have done without?
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    The US (and Russian, by the way) appropriation of German scientists and Nazi party members post WWII is certainly controversial and there are plenty of people who strongly believe that they should have stood trial in Nuremberg instead of being given a new job with plenty of perks. As Tom Lehrer wrote: "Don't say that he's hypocritical, Say rather that he's apolitical. "Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department, " says Wernher von Braun." The sarcasm dripping of those words is hard to replicate without hearing it sung, I recommend the original: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEJ9HrZq7Ro https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEJ9HrZq7Ro
    - A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
      But, in your opinion, was it the right thing for US to do? Say you are Truman. You are responsible for US and how it fares on the world stage. What would be the right thing to do? Show trials in Nuremberg will satisfy the public. Useful heads and knowledge at the very least would be prevented from going to Russia, where who knows what they would work on. If Braun was truly apolitical, history timeline could have easily changed.
      - jacquesm 5y ago
        Utilitarian arguments and ethics rarely go together well, hence 'realpolitik'. What my opinion is on the matter is irrelevant, history has run its course and here we are. We're well into 'old man lost his horse' territory now, of course you never know what the utility of a particular event is in the longer term. The doctor that saves the baby's life may well have caused a mass murderer to live a long and productive life. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_old_man_lost_his_horse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_old_man_lost_his_horse
        A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
        I agree. We are just two random people on the internet discussing things passed. One never really knows what the action is going to ultimately accomplish, but if the opinion on that particular matter is irrelevant, why is the following opinion relevant: "Those are books I can do without."? If the history has ran its course, does it matter?
- bckr 5y ago
  > If you find that you are at the end of your wits and unable to find one more source for management advice to the point that you have to turn to the masters of slaves of a few thousand years ago I think you've interpreted the article as some kind of prescriptive document modeled on slavery. This isn't Business Insider. It's Aeon. If anything the article comes across as critical of modern management by way of being too similar to Roman slave management. But it's more interesting than that. It's a look at how Roman slavery was a very complex system, much different from the way we popularly imagine "Slavery" (with a capital "S")--AKA American chattel slavery. I think that your revulsion is coming from a very beautiful place, and that you're a bit out of step here. We can rightly revile chattel slavery, and despise the thought of ancient slavery, and also be curious about it.

jacquesm 5y ago

> Suggesting that ideas can corrupt is especially troubling on HN, which is supposed to be more focused on rational/logical discourse. But they can. Religion, racism, terrorism, fascism: they are all ideas that can corrupt, and some people are more susceptible to this than others. If you find that you are at the end of your wits and unable to find one more source for management advice to the point that you have to turn to the masters of slaves of a few thousand years ago I think you should simply stop looking because nothing good can come of that. Ideas do not exist in a vacuum, they exist in a timeframe as well as what was considered locally acceptable and those conditions all but ensure that anything that you think you might learn is going to be very hard to apply. We study history to avoid repetitions, not to see what particular item certain despicable people from the past had to say. For an encore: Sex tips by rapists, explosive manufacture by suicide bombers, vegetarian cooking by A. Hitler, marketing tips from J. Goebbels and how to run a start-up by Elizabeth Holmes. Those are books I can do without.

A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
"For an encore: Sex tips by rapists, explosive manufacture by suicide bombers, vegetarian cooking by A. Hitler, marketing tips from J. Goebbels and how to run a start-up by Elizabeth Holmes." I understand that you wrote it in jest, but isn't Goebbels studied precisely due to the nature of marketing ( propaganda ) he employed? I personally find it interesting. Why does association work so well? Why does it automatically follow that if Hitler wrote an absolutely spectacular vegan recipe that basically cures cancer, it is automatically off limits to everyone? Before you answer, note that Americans brought some actual Nazi scientists after WW2(operation paperclip). Should US have done without?
- jacquesm 5y ago
  The US (and Russian, by the way) appropriation of German scientists and Nazi party members post WWII is certainly controversial and there are plenty of people who strongly believe that they should have stood trial in Nuremberg instead of being given a new job with plenty of perks. As Tom Lehrer wrote: "Don't say that he's hypocritical, Say rather that he's apolitical. "Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department, " says Wernher von Braun." The sarcasm dripping of those words is hard to replicate without hearing it sung, I recommend the original: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEJ9HrZq7Ro https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEJ9HrZq7Ro
  - A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
    But, in your opinion, was it the right thing for US to do? Say you are Truman. You are responsible for US and how it fares on the world stage. What would be the right thing to do? Show trials in Nuremberg will satisfy the public. Useful heads and knowledge at the very least would be prevented from going to Russia, where who knows what they would work on. If Braun was truly apolitical, history timeline could have easily changed.
    - jacquesm 5y ago
      Utilitarian arguments and ethics rarely go together well, hence 'realpolitik'. What my opinion is on the matter is irrelevant, history has run its course and here we are. We're well into 'old man lost his horse' territory now, of course you never know what the utility of a particular event is in the longer term. The doctor that saves the baby's life may well have caused a mass murderer to live a long and productive life. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_old_man_lost_his_horse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_old_man_lost_his_horse
      - A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
        I agree. We are just two random people on the internet discussing things passed. One never really knows what the action is going to ultimately accomplish, but if the opinion on that particular matter is irrelevant, why is the following opinion relevant: "Those are books I can do without."? If the history has ran its course, does it matter?
bckr 5y ago
> If you find that you are at the end of your wits and unable to find one more source for management advice to the point that you have to turn to the masters of slaves of a few thousand years ago I think you've interpreted the article as some kind of prescriptive document modeled on slavery. This isn't Business Insider. It's Aeon. If anything the article comes across as critical of modern management by way of being too similar to Roman slave management. But it's more interesting than that. It's a look at how Roman slavery was a very complex system, much different from the way we popularly imagine "Slavery" (with a capital "S")--AKA American chattel slavery. I think that your revulsion is coming from a very beautiful place, and that you're a bit out of step here. We can rightly revile chattel slavery, and despise the thought of ancient slavery, and also be curious about it.