4 ms·

“Greed” is one of those words where the definition doesn’t really tell you where the line is: “intense and selfish desire for something, especially wealth, pow

“Greed” is one of those words where the definition doesn’t really tell you where the line is: “intense and selfish desire for something, especially wealth, power, or food.” (Oxford via Google) Who doesn’t feel “intense and selfish desire” for money? Who doesn’t feel that going into a performance review? It’s human nature to feel this feeling, if that’s what we want to call “greed”.

Jensson 3y ago
> It’s human nature to feel this feeling, if that’s what we want to call “greed”. Yes, greed is human nature, just like lust etc. We value when people suppress such feelings, but we know everyone has them.
- apantel 3y ago
  It’s not that clear-cut. “Greed” as defined this way is one of the main drives making people do things. They go out into the world and exert themselves in order to acquire wealth, power, and renown. It’s a core part of what has produced civilization from out of the darkness of total animal-like ignorance. The inventors, makers, statesmen, pioneers, explorers of history… what do you think was motivating them? What do you think has kept life procreating on this planet in the face of overwhelming hardship? Lust. I think it’s one-eye-blind to demonize greed, lust, or any other part of human nature. Those drives are inseparable from us being here in our current state, living reasonably well, conversing over the internet on phones and computers.
  - ants_everywhere 3y ago
    I agree that greed plays a role in civilization, but I think your read on human history is overly simplistic in an important way. A great deal of what has driven civilization forward are the people who are driven by curiosity. People like Archimedes, Plato, Newton, Einstein. Not to mention the millions of curious nameless folks who improved the boat, the spear, the wheel, the book. Folks like RMS without whom I doubt we'd have anything like the current open source ecosystem including Linux. These tend to be people who are not only curious, but whose sense of greed is lower than the average. Without these folks, it's not clear to me that humanity ratchets forward in progress. If you just have greed and lust, the steady state would be something like power politics of states warring against each other with swords for thousands of years. History has gotten stuck in those states many times, and when we finally break out it's typically the curiosity-driven folks who give the greed-driven folks a reason to invest their money in something other than raising an army for yet another war of honor.
    - apantel 3y ago
      Yes, curiosity and the desire to create and explore. Those are probably my main drivers though I certainly can feel and acknowledge that greed and lust are key drivers. I wasn’t saying greed is the only driver. Edit: I’d also add, I think it’s a false romanticism to think that people like Einstein and other great thinkers and creators were not without the lower drives like greed and lust. If you think about all of the stages of their lives, and all of the actions and endeavors that led to them advancing their fields, greed and lust would have been interleaved as drivers of many of those actions. Maybe one year Einstein just had a bigger fire lit under his feet because he was trying to impress a girl. Or he worked harder one year because he needed the money. Then you have people like Edison who were certainly motivated by greed and the lust for power. You have the industrialists like Carnegie who built the railroads. Then you have all of the workers across generations who did all of the work… how much of that work was driven by the “selfish and intense” desire for money?
      - ants_everywhere 3y ago
        Right, I agree. I'm not saying people like Einstein don't have greed or lust. What I did say is that empirically the people motivated by curiosity often have lower than average greed levels, which I think makes them uncharacteristic of the population in general. With respect to lust, I didn't mention it because it was orthogonal, but my understanding is that they're about evenly divided into groups with higher than average lust and lower than average. Paul Erdos is a famous name rumored to be in the latter category.
    - marshray 3y ago
      > Without these folks, it's not clear to me that humanity ratchets forward in progress. I think the part you're missing is all the brilliant ideas from brilliant people we missed out on over that 2,000+ year from people we never heard of due to science and art being funded only haphazardly by random wealthy patrons. For almost all of history it was simply not an option to make a living simply by writing or researching. That's still the case in much of the world. But once we started to systematize it properly, and governments recognized that technology was a strategic necessity, bam, within a century or two we went from playing with primitive batteries, to nuclear fission, the internet, and now AI. Somebody was paying for Stallman to sit in an MIT lab and write a free compiler. Maybe we don't talk enough about who or why, or how to replicate that kind of success.
  - vitiral 3y ago
    The unfulfillable desires for greed and power are what destroys people and civilizations. Lust likely a close second. The ancient Stoics taught on this very point and it is just as true today. We've created some clever tricks of seemingly infinite growth, but all things that grow also die. Restraint and being satisfied with what you already have are the keys to stability. Life is not overwhelming hardship my friend. It is bliss. At the end is the tiger eating your insides saying what bliss is your life, please become part of me. With words we deceive ourselves, convinced that we are separate from the living world we came out of.
mitthrowaway2 3y ago
Just speaking for myself but if I were getting a 500k salary, my remaining concerns would shift in the direction of worrying about the longevity of human civilization, and less about the value of my equity comp. That's because I'd have enough to put a roof over my kids heads and food on their plate, so the world they grow up in would be my next priority. That would probably have me siding with the board against Altman. But I don't work at AI or earn that kind of money, so who knows.
- adastra22 3y ago
  No, you'd buy a bigger house, put your kids in private school, start taking bigger vacations, and find that $500k doesn't go as far as you thought it would. I mean, objectively that's what happens to 95% of people in that situation. Hedonic adaptation is a bitch.
- chii 3y ago
  > if I were getting a 500k salary but you're not, presumably. And when you _do_ have that sort of salary, your circle of friends and priorities will also change along with it. At least, for the average person who also makes your claim.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
ben_w 3y ago
Me, that's who. I've earned more than I spend in every job since I was a graduate, and the only reason for me to ask for €85k in my current job hunt* is to avoid sending red flags to the hiring teams. There's a very small positive reward from seeing the number go up, certainly not intense. * Senior iOS, been doing iOS since the first iPod with retina display, Berlin, details on my website

Jensson 3y ago

> It’s human nature to feel this feeling, if that’s what we want to call “greed”. Yes, greed is human nature, just like lust etc. We value when people suppress such feelings, but we know everyone has them.

apantel 3y ago
It’s not that clear-cut. “Greed” as defined this way is one of the main drives making people do things. They go out into the world and exert themselves in order to acquire wealth, power, and renown. It’s a core part of what has produced civilization from out of the darkness of total animal-like ignorance. The inventors, makers, statesmen, pioneers, explorers of history… what do you think was motivating them? What do you think has kept life procreating on this planet in the face of overwhelming hardship? Lust. I think it’s one-eye-blind to demonize greed, lust, or any other part of human nature. Those drives are inseparable from us being here in our current state, living reasonably well, conversing over the internet on phones and computers.
- ants_everywhere 3y ago
  I agree that greed plays a role in civilization, but I think your read on human history is overly simplistic in an important way. A great deal of what has driven civilization forward are the people who are driven by curiosity. People like Archimedes, Plato, Newton, Einstein. Not to mention the millions of curious nameless folks who improved the boat, the spear, the wheel, the book. Folks like RMS without whom I doubt we'd have anything like the current open source ecosystem including Linux. These tend to be people who are not only curious, but whose sense of greed is lower than the average. Without these folks, it's not clear to me that humanity ratchets forward in progress. If you just have greed and lust, the steady state would be something like power politics of states warring against each other with swords for thousands of years. History has gotten stuck in those states many times, and when we finally break out it's typically the curiosity-driven folks who give the greed-driven folks a reason to invest their money in something other than raising an army for yet another war of honor.
  - apantel 3y ago
    Yes, curiosity and the desire to create and explore. Those are probably my main drivers though I certainly can feel and acknowledge that greed and lust are key drivers. I wasn’t saying greed is the only driver. Edit: I’d also add, I think it’s a false romanticism to think that people like Einstein and other great thinkers and creators were not without the lower drives like greed and lust. If you think about all of the stages of their lives, and all of the actions and endeavors that led to them advancing their fields, greed and lust would have been interleaved as drivers of many of those actions. Maybe one year Einstein just had a bigger fire lit under his feet because he was trying to impress a girl. Or he worked harder one year because he needed the money. Then you have people like Edison who were certainly motivated by greed and the lust for power. You have the industrialists like Carnegie who built the railroads. Then you have all of the workers across generations who did all of the work… how much of that work was driven by the “selfish and intense” desire for money?
    - ants_everywhere 3y ago
      Right, I agree. I'm not saying people like Einstein don't have greed or lust. What I did say is that empirically the people motivated by curiosity often have lower than average greed levels, which I think makes them uncharacteristic of the population in general. With respect to lust, I didn't mention it because it was orthogonal, but my understanding is that they're about evenly divided into groups with higher than average lust and lower than average. Paul Erdos is a famous name rumored to be in the latter category.
  - marshray 3y ago
    > Without these folks, it's not clear to me that humanity ratchets forward in progress. I think the part you're missing is all the brilliant ideas from brilliant people we missed out on over that 2,000+ year from people we never heard of due to science and art being funded only haphazardly by random wealthy patrons. For almost all of history it was simply not an option to make a living simply by writing or researching. That's still the case in much of the world. But once we started to systematize it properly, and governments recognized that technology was a strategic necessity, bam, within a century or two we went from playing with primitive batteries, to nuclear fission, the internet, and now AI. Somebody was paying for Stallman to sit in an MIT lab and write a free compiler. Maybe we don't talk enough about who or why, or how to replicate that kind of success.
- vitiral 3y ago
  The unfulfillable desires for greed and power are what destroys people and civilizations. Lust likely a close second. The ancient Stoics taught on this very point and it is just as true today. We've created some clever tricks of seemingly infinite growth, but all things that grow also die. Restraint and being satisfied with what you already have are the keys to stability. Life is not overwhelming hardship my friend. It is bliss. At the end is the tiger eating your insides saying what bliss is your life, please become part of me. With words we deceive ourselves, convinced that we are separate from the living world we came out of.

mitthrowaway2 3y ago

Just speaking for myself but if I were getting a 500k salary, my remaining concerns would shift in the direction of worrying about the longevity of human civilization, and less about the value of my equity comp. That's because I'd have enough to put a roof over my kids heads and food on their plate, so the world they grow up in would be my next priority. That would probably have me siding with the board against Altman. But I don't work at AI or earn that kind of money, so who knows.

adastra22 3y ago
No, you'd buy a bigger house, put your kids in private school, start taking bigger vacations, and find that $500k doesn't go as far as you thought it would. I mean, objectively that's what happens to 95% of people in that situation. Hedonic adaptation is a bitch.
chii 3y ago
> if I were getting a 500k salary but you're not, presumably. And when you _do_ have that sort of salary, your circle of friends and priorities will also change along with it. At least, for the average person who also makes your claim.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

ben_w 3y ago

Me, that's who. I've earned more than I spend in every job since I was a graduate, and the only reason for me to ask for €85k in my current job hunt* is to avoid sending red flags to the hiring teams. There's a very small positive reward from seeing the number go up, certainly not intense. * Senior iOS, been doing iOS since the first iPod with retina display, Berlin, details on my website