4 ms·

What would you do if 999 employees openly signed a letter and you are the remaining holdout.

paulddraper 3y ago
Is your argument that the 1 employee operated on peer pressure, or the other 999? Could it possibly be that the majority of OpenAI's workforce sincerely believed a midnight firing of the CEO were counterproductive to their organization's goals?
- dymk 3y ago
  It's almost certain that all employees did not behave the same way for the exact same reasons. And I don't see anyone making an argument about what the exact numbers are, nor does it really matter. Just that some portion of employees were swayed by pressure once the letter reached some critical signing mass.
  - paulddraper 3y ago
    > some portion The logic being that if any opinion has above X% support, people are choosing it based on peer pressure.
    - mrfox321 3y ago
      The key is that the support is not anonymous.
- mrfox321 3y ago
  Doing the math, it is extremely unlikely for a lot of coin flips to skew from the weight of the coin. To that end, observing unanimous behavior may imply some bias. Here, it could be people fearing being a part of the minority. The minority are trivially identifiable, since the majority signed their names on a document. I agree in your stance that a majority of the workforce disagreed with the way things were handled, but that proportion is likely a subset of the proportion who signed their names on the document, for the reasons stated above.
  - paulddraper 3y ago
    > it is extremely unlikely for a lot of coin flips to skew from the weight of the coin So clearly this wasn't a 50/50 coin flip. The question at hand is whether the skew against the board was sincere or insincere. Personally, I assume that people are acting in good faith, unless I have evidence to the contrary.
    - mrfox321 3y ago
      I'm not saying it's 50/50. But future signees are influenced by previous signees. Acting in good faith is different from bias.

Is your argument that the 1 employee operated on peer pressure, or the other 999? Could it possibly be that the majority of OpenAI's workforce sincerely believed a midnight firing of the CEO were counterproductive to their organization's goals?

dymk 3y ago
It's almost certain that all employees did not behave the same way for the exact same reasons. And I don't see anyone making an argument about what the exact numbers are, nor does it really matter. Just that some portion of employees were swayed by pressure once the letter reached some critical signing mass.
- paulddraper 3y ago
  > some portion The logic being that if any opinion has above X% support, people are choosing it based on peer pressure.
  - mrfox321 3y ago
    The key is that the support is not anonymous.
mrfox321 3y ago
Doing the math, it is extremely unlikely for a lot of coin flips to skew from the weight of the coin. To that end, observing unanimous behavior may imply some bias. Here, it could be people fearing being a part of the minority. The minority are trivially identifiable, since the majority signed their names on a document. I agree in your stance that a majority of the workforce disagreed with the way things were handled, but that proportion is likely a subset of the proportion who signed their names on the document, for the reasons stated above.
- paulddraper 3y ago
  > it is extremely unlikely for a lot of coin flips to skew from the weight of the coin So clearly this wasn't a 50/50 coin flip. The question at hand is whether the skew against the board was sincere or insincere. Personally, I assume that people are acting in good faith, unless I have evidence to the contrary.
  - mrfox321 3y ago
    I'm not saying it's 50/50. But future signees are influenced by previous signees. Acting in good faith is different from bias.