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Thank you for telling us that! The story has been repeatedly flagged on HN, even this extremely detailed and reasonable post on lesswrong: https://www.lesswron

by aredox 2y ago

Thank you for telling us that! The story has been repeatedly flagged on HN, even this extremely detailed and reasonable post on lesswrong: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QDczBduZorG4dxZiW/sam-altman-s-sister-annie-altman-claims-sam-has-severely https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QDczBduZorG4dxZiW/sam-altman...

dang 2y ago
You can't know the truth about a painful family situation by consuming internet drama. Internet users have their own reasons for engaging in such drama—no doubt rooted in their own painful family situations, and from that point of view their reasons make sense—but none of this discussion is reliable. It is frequently harmful though. Internet users don't pause to consider the harm they may be contributing to, but sometimes it's real. Given that you can never find out the truth this way, and that the discussion is motivated by other things, and that it can have unintentionally harmful effects, I think the HN users who flag these posts are behaving responsibly. Processes exist for bringing such topics into public discourse. For example, there's institutional journalism (which has many defects, but on a matter like this I think it's functional)—there are hurdles that have to be overcome to report on such things, and rightly so. And then of course there is the legal system, with its higher standards of due process. I don't know anything about this specific situation and as mods we haven't been killing those posts, but the HN community has decisively deemed it off topic and I think that's a good call.
- aredox 2y ago
  1. YC is not a neutral party, it has clear, deep ties with Sam Altman. 2. The behavior of Annie Altman at childhood is very abnormal and very consistent with trauma. 3. The bahavior of Sam & co locking Annie out of her heritage and witholding support that would be chup change for them is appaling in itself. 4. We don't know if it is truly the HN community that deemed it off topic.
  - dang 2y ago
    My point is that you can't determine anything about 2 or 3 from internet drama, it's harmful to pretend that you can (<-- I don't mean you personally, of course, but anyone), and people do it for reasons of their own that have nothing to do with the family they're ostensibly interested in. The same goes for any family. It's just that people tend to direct this energy at celebrities, because that's how the celebrity system works in our culture. (I'm not arguing 1 and 4 because they're beside the point I was making)

by aredox 2y ago

dang 2y ago

You can't know the truth about a painful family situation by consuming internet drama. Internet users have their own reasons for engaging in such drama—no doubt rooted in their own painful family situations, and from that point of view their reasons make sense—but none of this discussion is reliable. It is frequently harmful though. Internet users don't pause to consider the harm they may be contributing to, but sometimes it's real. Given that you can never find out the truth this way, and that the discussion is motivated by other things, and that it can have unintentionally harmful effects, I think the HN users who flag these posts are behaving responsibly. Processes exist for bringing such topics into public discourse. For example, there's institutional journalism (which has many defects, but on a matter like this I think it's functional)—there are hurdles that have to be overcome to report on such things, and rightly so. And then of course there is the legal system, with its higher standards of due process. I don't know anything about this specific situation and as mods we haven't been killing those posts, but the HN community has decisively deemed it off topic and I think that's a good call.

aredox 2y ago
1. YC is not a neutral party, it has clear, deep ties with Sam Altman. 2. The behavior of Annie Altman at childhood is very abnormal and very consistent with trauma. 3. The bahavior of Sam & co locking Annie out of her heritage and witholding support that would be chup change for them is appaling in itself. 4. We don't know if it is truly the HN community that deemed it off topic.
- dang 2y ago
  My point is that you can't determine anything about 2 or 3 from internet drama, it's harmful to pretend that you can (<-- I don't mean you personally, of course, but anyone), and people do it for reasons of their own that have nothing to do with the family they're ostensibly interested in. The same goes for any family. It's just that people tend to direct this energy at celebrities, because that's how the celebrity system works in our culture. (I'm not arguing 1 and 4 because they're beside the point I was making)