12 ms·

His story is a cautionary tale about real life vs idealism. The two come into conflict frequently, and sometimes violently. Nothing is more difficult or dangero

His story is a cautionary tale about real life vs idealism. The two come into conflict frequently, and sometimes violently. Nothing is more difficult or dangerous than holding power to account; the mechanisms we imagine are in place to hold power accountable exist purely in that imagination. The personal feelings of shame, guilt, or ethical responsibility we imagine there to be, or the social pressure brought to bear on those who demonstrate a lack of those qualities, is missing when push comes to shove. Being an idealist, really believing in these things, is the setup for great tragedy. The fundamental mistake is to believe that others think like you do or value the same things you value. Of course I know nothing of this particular situation, but the shape of it is all too familiar - an idealistic, inspirational collegue forced out after speaking truth to power. How many tens of such people do we know? How many of them do not actually get back on their feet? How many of them did we speak up for?

danlugo92 2y ago
[flagged]
- dang 2y ago
  Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - s5300 2y ago
    dang do you normally edit w/o leaving history of it? feels like this is the first time i’ve noticed.
    - dang 2y ago
      I'm not punctilious about it; I usually add "Edit:" if the information materially changes the meaning of the comment. (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20%22edit%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...) In the case of the GP I changed my wording to be softer and refer directly to the site guidelines. (Originally it said "Please don't take HN threads on political flamewar tangents. Nothing good's going to come of it, whichever way you lean.")
brailsafe 2y ago
Yep. I often reflect on some of my career mistakes, especially when evaluating current decisions within the context of a job or interacting with other institutions, and what I wish I'd learnt earlier would be to "read a room". Sure, there is technically a process for reporting wrongdoing, but there's no process for reporting wrongdoing and keeping your job, and keeping your job is more important. What isn't your job is taking moral stances on things, having political opinions, provoking what others might see as unnecessary conflict, in any form. Sure, you could spend some time ensuring accessibility standards are being met, but really you shouldn't unless someone complains, because although you think it's good practice, you're being paid to put visible results on the screen, unless you can make a business case for it that's sufficiently compelling and rewarding that it's worth pursuing. You'll lose your job for not getting the thing shipped, but probably won't for it not being theoretically good enough, unless you're a real doctor or real engineer Don't stick your neck out unless you control the outcome (for positive or negative), and figure out what you're really being told to do or asked to do, and keep your effort to that. Don't go above and beyond, it's out of scope and you're better off sleeping. Not joking. If you can't do that, you might struggle to stay employed, and it's not worth your personal risk. At work, keep your opinions to yourself, nearly all the time, they're rarely important, just get the work done and go home, work isn't that important either, don't pretend like you're saving the world.
- coldtea 2y ago
  >Sure, there is technically a process for reporting wrongdoing, but there's no process for reporting wrongdoing and keeping your job, and keeping your job is more important. What isn't your job is taking moral stances on things, having political opinions, provoking what others might see as unnecessary conflict, in any form. Up to a certain point. That answer didn't hold up well at the Nuremberg trials. After a point there's also dignity and morality, not just "keeping the job".
  - totetsu 2y ago
    Not trying to troll here, but, what does something like Nuremberg trails matter in a country where someone who can incite an insurrection and then become president again, or a world where international criminal court orders are ignored?
AndrewKemendo 2y ago
I mean can you offer any suggestions as to solutions to get out of this situation? Feels intractable
- yoyohello13 2y ago
  It’s been the way of society since pre-history. Finding a solution would probably bring about utopia.
- peetle 2y ago
  The right answer for most people is to simply leave and pursue their ideals in a more favorable venue.
  - thimkerbell 2y ago
    How could that more favorable venue be made, and have been made visible to him and to people like him?
- simpaticoder 2y ago
  Creative idealists tend to abstract away the social politics of power and are often suprised by the result of their actions. They do not have enough fear of others and what they are capable of. The response is not only a personal surprise, but an epistemological shock. The solution is to remain aware of the reality of your situation. This is particularly difficult for thinkers and dreamers because their attention is often elsewhere; but one must make the effort or bad abstraction will hit you like a freight train. The other solution is to ally yourself with other less pragmatic principled idealists such that you can help them assess the situation and take mutually beneficial action. One must understand the battle to come, you must feel the fear of failure and the possibility of success. The worst thing you can do is be unaware of the game entirely, or be aware and disdain it, and so play it like a fool. Finally, if you are extremely talented and recognized for it, the de facto situation is that you acquire advocates to play the game for you. But this is a rare position, and not without its drawbacks.
sieabahlpark 2y ago
[dead]
benreesman 2y ago
Economists and auction theorists have a term of art: “revealed preference”. It’s typically not applied to society in the large, but I think it’s useful to zoom out from time to time. Our society, whatever the internal dynamics, has a revealed preference in the extreme, a preference so forceful it’s an idee fixe, a singular objective. We will sacrifice anything: arbitrary loss of life, arbitrary suffering and indignity, arbitrary damage to the planet to transfer wealth upwards constantly to the maximum extent that we can blow past the feeble speed bumps that our institutions represent. This upwards wealth transfer is in two senses of the word “up”: from poor to rich, and from young to old. We openly advertise targets for the economy like “the stock market” (US equities overwhelming held by boomers and rich people), or GDP growth (real wages at the median, go back to Venezuela commie). We don’t even pretend we’re optimizing for anything else. Lina Khan is trying to enforce laws already on the books and is deemed dangerously radical. You think these sociopaths won’t kill people? They’ll kill millions of people if they have to, they’ve done it before.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > to transfer wealth upwards constantly This is overly simplistic. Truer: we will sacrifice a lot to maintain our relative standard of living.
  - benreesman 2y ago
    Who’s standard of living? We will render arbitrary people homeless to constrain the supply and push up real asset prices for homeowners. We’ll tolerate flagrant cartel monopoly and flagrant securities fraud and all manner of evil to drive equities up? Qui bono? Not the working person at the median.
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > Who’s standard of living? Each person's. It's an individual determination. > We will render arbitrary people homeless to constrain the supply and push up real asset prices for homeowners Yes. Because from the homeowner's perspective, they're maintaining their real standard of living. Crafting good policy requires being very careful about whose relative standard of living you're sacrificing for the greater good. Because no matter how privileged you think someone is, for them, it's the baseline. > We’ll tolerate flagrant cartel monopoly and flagrant securities fraud and all manner of evil to drive equities up? No, not really. Shareholders win in the aftermath of antitrust action and trusted equity markets. We tolerate those things, the first much more than the second, but not for the reasons you presume.
g-b-r 2y ago
"cautionary", "real life vs", "Nothing is more difficult or dangerous", "exist purely in that imagination". You're claiming that real life is always as in this episode; and so, I guess, that you should never oppose someone at an higher position? Or with more power? It's healthy to be aware of the possibility that things could go this way, but it's definitely not a guarantee that they will; in some environments it's more likely to happen, in others more likely to not happen. But if we always acted as selfish cynics, then yeah, real life would be guaranteed to be what you describe
medo-bear 2y ago
how about not being a coward being enough of a reason to stand up for what you believe in. no where is it written that being brave entails success. sometimes though it is said that success entails being brave

danlugo92 2y ago

[flagged]

dang 2y ago
Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- s5300 2y ago
  dang do you normally edit w/o leaving history of it? feels like this is the first time i’ve noticed.
  - dang 2y ago
    I'm not punctilious about it; I usually add "Edit:" if the information materially changes the meaning of the comment. (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20%22edit%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...) In the case of the GP I changed my wording to be softer and refer directly to the site guidelines. (Originally it said "Please don't take HN threads on political flamewar tangents. Nothing good's going to come of it, whichever way you lean.")

brailsafe 2y ago

Yep. I often reflect on some of my career mistakes, especially when evaluating current decisions within the context of a job or interacting with other institutions, and what I wish I'd learnt earlier would be to "read a room". Sure, there is technically a process for reporting wrongdoing, but there's no process for reporting wrongdoing and keeping your job, and keeping your job is more important. What isn't your job is taking moral stances on things, having political opinions, provoking what others might see as unnecessary conflict, in any form. Sure, you could spend some time ensuring accessibility standards are being met, but really you shouldn't unless someone complains, because although you think it's good practice, you're being paid to put visible results on the screen, unless you can make a business case for it that's sufficiently compelling and rewarding that it's worth pursuing. You'll lose your job for not getting the thing shipped, but probably won't for it not being theoretically good enough, unless you're a real doctor or real engineer Don't stick your neck out unless you control the outcome (for positive or negative), and figure out what you're really being told to do or asked to do, and keep your effort to that. Don't go above and beyond, it's out of scope and you're better off sleeping. Not joking. If you can't do that, you might struggle to stay employed, and it's not worth your personal risk. At work, keep your opinions to yourself, nearly all the time, they're rarely important, just get the work done and go home, work isn't that important either, don't pretend like you're saving the world.

coldtea 2y ago
>Sure, there is technically a process for reporting wrongdoing, but there's no process for reporting wrongdoing and keeping your job, and keeping your job is more important. What isn't your job is taking moral stances on things, having political opinions, provoking what others might see as unnecessary conflict, in any form. Up to a certain point. That answer didn't hold up well at the Nuremberg trials. After a point there's also dignity and morality, not just "keeping the job".
- totetsu 2y ago
  Not trying to troll here, but, what does something like Nuremberg trails matter in a country where someone who can incite an insurrection and then become president again, or a world where international criminal court orders are ignored?

AndrewKemendo 2y ago

I mean can you offer any suggestions as to solutions to get out of this situation? Feels intractable

yoyohello13 2y ago
It’s been the way of society since pre-history. Finding a solution would probably bring about utopia.
peetle 2y ago
The right answer for most people is to simply leave and pursue their ideals in a more favorable venue.
- thimkerbell 2y ago
  How could that more favorable venue be made, and have been made visible to him and to people like him?
simpaticoder 2y ago
Creative idealists tend to abstract away the social politics of power and are often suprised by the result of their actions. They do not have enough fear of others and what they are capable of. The response is not only a personal surprise, but an epistemological shock. The solution is to remain aware of the reality of your situation. This is particularly difficult for thinkers and dreamers because their attention is often elsewhere; but one must make the effort or bad abstraction will hit you like a freight train. The other solution is to ally yourself with other less pragmatic principled idealists such that you can help them assess the situation and take mutually beneficial action. One must understand the battle to come, you must feel the fear of failure and the possibility of success. The worst thing you can do is be unaware of the game entirely, or be aware and disdain it, and so play it like a fool. Finally, if you are extremely talented and recognized for it, the de facto situation is that you acquire advocates to play the game for you. But this is a rare position, and not without its drawbacks.

sieabahlpark 2y ago

[dead]

benreesman 2y ago

Economists and auction theorists have a term of art: “revealed preference”. It’s typically not applied to society in the large, but I think it’s useful to zoom out from time to time. Our society, whatever the internal dynamics, has a revealed preference in the extreme, a preference so forceful it’s an idee fixe, a singular objective. We will sacrifice anything: arbitrary loss of life, arbitrary suffering and indignity, arbitrary damage to the planet to transfer wealth upwards constantly to the maximum extent that we can blow past the feeble speed bumps that our institutions represent. This upwards wealth transfer is in two senses of the word “up”: from poor to rich, and from young to old. We openly advertise targets for the economy like “the stock market” (US equities overwhelming held by boomers and rich people), or GDP growth (real wages at the median, go back to Venezuela commie). We don’t even pretend we’re optimizing for anything else. Lina Khan is trying to enforce laws already on the books and is deemed dangerously radical. You think these sociopaths won’t kill people? They’ll kill millions of people if they have to, they’ve done it before.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> to transfer wealth upwards constantly This is overly simplistic. Truer: we will sacrifice a lot to maintain our relative standard of living.
- benreesman 2y ago
  Who’s standard of living? We will render arbitrary people homeless to constrain the supply and push up real asset prices for homeowners. We’ll tolerate flagrant cartel monopoly and flagrant securities fraud and all manner of evil to drive equities up? Qui bono? Not the working person at the median.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > Who’s standard of living? Each person's. It's an individual determination. > We will render arbitrary people homeless to constrain the supply and push up real asset prices for homeowners Yes. Because from the homeowner's perspective, they're maintaining their real standard of living. Crafting good policy requires being very careful about whose relative standard of living you're sacrificing for the greater good. Because no matter how privileged you think someone is, for them, it's the baseline. > We’ll tolerate flagrant cartel monopoly and flagrant securities fraud and all manner of evil to drive equities up? No, not really. Shareholders win in the aftermath of antitrust action and trusted equity markets. We tolerate those things, the first much more than the second, but not for the reasons you presume.

g-b-r 2y ago

"cautionary", "real life vs", "Nothing is more difficult or dangerous", "exist purely in that imagination". You're claiming that real life is always as in this episode; and so, I guess, that you should never oppose someone at an higher position? Or with more power? It's healthy to be aware of the possibility that things could go this way, but it's definitely not a guarantee that they will; in some environments it's more likely to happen, in others more likely to not happen. But if we always acted as selfish cynics, then yeah, real life would be guaranteed to be what you describe

medo-bear 2y ago

how about not being a coward being enough of a reason to stand up for what you believe in. no where is it written that being brave entails success. sometimes though it is said that success entails being brave