3 ms·

In other words, we tell lies, to people who pretend to believe them. Everyone lies and we know it, our companies have mottos and everyone knows they’re fluff,

In other words, we tell lies, to people who pretend to believe them. Everyone lies and we know it, our companies have mottos and everyone knows they’re fluff, and we teach kids to “thrive in ambiguity”, which is a beautiful phrase I’ve found on a job offer and which I have found symptomatic of our economy. I still wonder what it was like to live in ex-RDA. Did people tell lies that others pretended to believe?

chitowneats 4y ago
ya hehe I had to be it's what reputations are made of, to some extent I feel bad for those who get f*** by it by this dumb game we woke westerners play where we say all the right shiboleths and so everyone likes us
- Zanni 4y ago
  Note to down voters: this is a (relevant) direct quote from SBF's interview in Vox. [0] [0] https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23462333/sam-bankman-fried-ftx-cryptocurrency-effective-altruism-crypto-bahamas-philanthropy https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23462333/sam-bankman-frie...
  - drooby 4y ago
    Whoa, this guys is a straight up sociopath
    - nmz 4y ago
      Which would make him perfect CEO material too.
  - plugin-baby 4y ago
    Thanks! I had read it as poetry.
    - chitowneats 4y ago
      It's certainly poetic.
- Sakos 4y ago
  > by this dumb game we woke westerners play where we say all the right shiboleths and so everyone likes us Unfortunately, the people who treat it like a game like SBF are the ones who make it in business and in politics. There's no need to have ethics if it's sufficient just to act like you do. Reminds me of Kyrsten Sinema who played the part until she had the job.
  - clnq 4y ago
    Related: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/ https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-....
- uxp100 4y ago
  I gotta say that removing the context from this sort of changes its meaning in a misleading way for those seeing it for the first time. It makes perfect sense in this context as well but some people have interpreted this as a sort of nihilism, but it’s actually an endorsement of pure utilitarianism, more or less. Which doesn’t make it better, my big take away from all the FTX stuff is that SBF and friends were just uh, not that smart, just dipshits losing other peoples money and thinking everything in life was as easy as impressing brainless VCs. (With some actual on purpose fraud mixed in as well, who knows)
  - chitowneats 4y ago
    > pure utilitarianism > a sort of nihilism The SBF saga is a great example of how easily the former degenerates into the latter. We're talking about someone who graduated MIT. He clearly has some amount of smarts and personal drive. "He's just a dipshit" is not an adequate explanation. Though, yeah, he ends up a dipshit at the end of the story (presumably).
    - jeffskiling 4y ago
rqtwteye 4y ago
“In other words, we tell lies, to people who pretend to believe them.” The same happens at corporations. When you are in planning meetings you often know the politically correct answer already. If you say it will actually take five times longer you are out of the inner circle. That although everybody knows that it will take that long. Seems the whole hierarchy is one big circle where everybody bullshits each other and knows it.
inglor_cz 4y ago
I wonder if a descent to full-blown Soviet "Vranyo" (brazen lying) can be prevented. As in: "They lie to us, we know they're lying, they know we know they're lying, but they keep lying to us, and we keep pretending to believe them." Pretty much the only brake pad on that machine is that capitalism actually requires at least some efficiency from the players, and a web of lies like that will destroy any institution. But I am far from certain.
- eastbound 4y ago
  I often compare science environments to general environments. In science, if you’re wrong, there’s no pardon: Your rocket doesn’t land on the moon, so you gotta keep your speech clear, your expertise precise, and your reputation perfect. In speech environments, if you’re handwaving it and are dishonest, you win the market. Science environments are better suited for me, but I get bashed in general environments…
  - inglor_cz 4y ago
    There is science and science. Rocket science is notoriously unforgiving. Nutrition science is pretty much the opposite, a half-hearted attempt to make sense of "garbage in, garbage out". The difference is in, among others, loopback length. If something goes wrong during a rocket launch, the fireball is only seconds away. Not so much in food and health, where the consequences take decades and multiple causal factors are hard to disentangle.
- int_19h 4y ago
  Orwell wrote this in a letter in 1944: "Everywhere the world movement seems to be in the direction of centralised economies which can be made to ‘work’ in an economic sense but which are not democratically organised and which tend to establish a caste system. With this go the horrors of emotional nationalism and a tendency to disbelieve in the existence of objective truth because all the facts have to fit in with the words and prophecies of some infallible fuhrer. Already history has in a sense ceased to exist, ie. there is no such thing as a history of our own times which could be universally accepted, and the exact sciences are endangered as soon as military necessity ceases to keep people up to the mark. Hitler can say that the Jews started the war, and if he survives that will become official history. He can’t say that two and two are five, because for the purposes of, say, ballistics they have to make four. But if the sort of world that I am afraid of arrives, a world of two or three great superstates which are unable to conquer one another, two and two could become five if the fuhrer wished it. That, so far as I can see, is the direction in which we are actually moving, though, of course, the process is reversible."

chitowneats 4y ago

ya hehe I had to be it's what reputations are made of, to some extent I feel bad for those who get f*** by it by this dumb game we woke westerners play where we say all the right shiboleths and so everyone likes us

Zanni 4y ago
Note to down voters: this is a (relevant) direct quote from SBF's interview in Vox. [0] [0] https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23462333/sam-bankman-fried-ftx-cryptocurrency-effective-altruism-crypto-bahamas-philanthropy https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23462333/sam-bankman-frie...
- drooby 4y ago
  Whoa, this guys is a straight up sociopath
  - nmz 4y ago
    Which would make him perfect CEO material too.
- plugin-baby 4y ago
  Thanks! I had read it as poetry.
  - chitowneats 4y ago
    It's certainly poetic.
Sakos 4y ago
> by this dumb game we woke westerners play where we say all the right shiboleths and so everyone likes us Unfortunately, the people who treat it like a game like SBF are the ones who make it in business and in politics. There's no need to have ethics if it's sufficient just to act like you do. Reminds me of Kyrsten Sinema who played the part until she had the job.
- clnq 4y ago
  Related: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/ https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-....
uxp100 4y ago
I gotta say that removing the context from this sort of changes its meaning in a misleading way for those seeing it for the first time. It makes perfect sense in this context as well but some people have interpreted this as a sort of nihilism, but it’s actually an endorsement of pure utilitarianism, more or less. Which doesn’t make it better, my big take away from all the FTX stuff is that SBF and friends were just uh, not that smart, just dipshits losing other peoples money and thinking everything in life was as easy as impressing brainless VCs. (With some actual on purpose fraud mixed in as well, who knows)
- chitowneats 4y ago
  > pure utilitarianism > a sort of nihilism The SBF saga is a great example of how easily the former degenerates into the latter. We're talking about someone who graduated MIT. He clearly has some amount of smarts and personal drive. "He's just a dipshit" is not an adequate explanation. Though, yeah, he ends up a dipshit at the end of the story (presumably).
  - jeffskiling 4y ago

rqtwteye 4y ago

“In other words, we tell lies, to people who pretend to believe them.” The same happens at corporations. When you are in planning meetings you often know the politically correct answer already. If you say it will actually take five times longer you are out of the inner circle. That although everybody knows that it will take that long. Seems the whole hierarchy is one big circle where everybody bullshits each other and knows it.

inglor_cz 4y ago

I wonder if a descent to full-blown Soviet "Vranyo" (brazen lying) can be prevented. As in: "They lie to us, we know they're lying, they know we know they're lying, but they keep lying to us, and we keep pretending to believe them." Pretty much the only brake pad on that machine is that capitalism actually requires at least some efficiency from the players, and a web of lies like that will destroy any institution. But I am far from certain.

eastbound 4y ago
I often compare science environments to general environments. In science, if you’re wrong, there’s no pardon: Your rocket doesn’t land on the moon, so you gotta keep your speech clear, your expertise precise, and your reputation perfect. In speech environments, if you’re handwaving it and are dishonest, you win the market. Science environments are better suited for me, but I get bashed in general environments…
- inglor_cz 4y ago
  There is science and science. Rocket science is notoriously unforgiving. Nutrition science is pretty much the opposite, a half-hearted attempt to make sense of "garbage in, garbage out". The difference is in, among others, loopback length. If something goes wrong during a rocket launch, the fireball is only seconds away. Not so much in food and health, where the consequences take decades and multiple causal factors are hard to disentangle.
int_19h 4y ago
Orwell wrote this in a letter in 1944: "Everywhere the world movement seems to be in the direction of centralised economies which can be made to ‘work’ in an economic sense but which are not democratically organised and which tend to establish a caste system. With this go the horrors of emotional nationalism and a tendency to disbelieve in the existence of objective truth because all the facts have to fit in with the words and prophecies of some infallible fuhrer. Already history has in a sense ceased to exist, ie. there is no such thing as a history of our own times which could be universally accepted, and the exact sciences are endangered as soon as military necessity ceases to keep people up to the mark. Hitler can say that the Jews started the war, and if he survives that will become official history. He can’t say that two and two are five, because for the purposes of, say, ballistics they have to make four. But if the sort of world that I am afraid of arrives, a world of two or three great superstates which are unable to conquer one another, two and two could become five if the fuhrer wished it. That, so far as I can see, is the direction in which we are actually moving, though, of course, the process is reversible."