4 ms·

Ironic given the entirety of tech elites are bending the knee (and funding) an administration out to gut funding for it. NSF is being gutted: https://www.nytim

by Havoc 1y ago

Ironic given the entirety of tech elites are bending the knee (and funding) an administration out to gut funding for it. NSF is being gutted: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/05/22/upshot/nsf-grants-trump-cuts.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/05/22/upshot/nsf-gr...

Mistletoe 1y ago
We found out that what they really worshipped all along was money. I’m sure this is self-evident to many, but I was optimistic and naive about it. I saw the good in people that have no good inside them.
- kulahan 1y ago
  To pretend someone has “no good in them” is weak, and essentially always incorrect.
  - jagger27 1y ago
    Absolutism doesn’t tend to win long term, that’s fair, but I’m personally content to critique sama's ongoing lack of good actions and behaviour.
  - vram22 1y ago
    J. F. C. ... And angels (how many) can dance on the head of a pin. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_many_angels_can_dance_on_the_head_of_a_pin%3F https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_many_angels_can_dance_on... (Something theologians debate about endlessly and absolutely uselessly. That is all they are good, er, bad, for.) Yeah, right. Pontificating much? Pathetic. How do you know he/she is "weak"? No argument provided. And the same for "incorrect". And who the hell are you to judge them? Let me apply some of your own judgement "ointment" on you: >essentially always incorrect. Your use of the word essentially in that phrase is essentially inessential. :) The meaning is equally well conveyed without that word. IOW, it's fluff, and can be done away with, fluffy kid. (wags wings at you. hi!) Grok what I mean? Grr. ;)
  - immibis 1y ago
    Sometimes it's a sensible approximation. For example, Hitler had no good in him.
    - jjtheblunt 1y ago
      Hitler ironically was a vegetarian because he supposedly felt compassion for animals. (Such contradictions obviously)
      - vram22 1y ago
        well, that shows him up as being even more of a fool and/or hypocrite (apart from being an ultra-evil swine), because, gasp, humans are also animals, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler Read full article before yapping a reply.
  - beloch 1y ago
    One of the chief arguments for low taxes on the 1% is that governments do dumb things with money. Billionaires are more likely to invest it in beneficial research, enterprise, etc.. If left to their own devices and not stripped of their resources, good billionaires will do great things for society. Or so the claim goes. The problem is, although much potential for good may exist in billionaires, the average billionaire spends next to nothing on philanthropy or research. It's only highly unusual exceptions who do. Next to nothing, even when well invested, accomplishes next to nothing. If billionaires won't open their purses to support the society that has provided them with opportunity, that's what taxes are for. If billionaires aren't lining up to fund research institutes, that's what tax-funded government research is for.
    - pfannkuchen 1y ago
      It sounds like you don’t think allocating capital to new business ventures or supporting the funding of existing businesses counts as supporting society? Businesses are made up of people, and last I checked all of the things I use on a day to day basis come from companies. Companies seem pretty important. Why do things like venture funding, which I think a lot of billionaires do engage in directly or indirectly, not count as supporting society?
      - beloch 1y ago
        Business ventures use long-term, curiosity driven research and educated workers to produce goods/services as a byproduct of generating profits for their owners. If the owners are not paying taxes that fund education or long-term research, nor directly funding same, then they're both short-sighted and parasitic.
      - srean 1y ago
        In a free market with competition, probably yes. The market is far from free, big money is near impossible to compete against. In effect, when they pour tens of billions the work that gets done could have been done perhaps with millions. Take a look at Chinese AI accomplishments and at what point it has been achieved. Granted plagiarism might be reducing some of the costs, but in a free market, things would have been a lot cheaper. Similar example India's accomplishments in space.
  - const_cast 1y ago
    A lot (most?) people have good in them for themselves. We've done a pretty good job at making sure the best thing for you also happens to be a pretty good thing for humanity as a whole. For the ultra-wealthy, this is almost never the case. If I chose to be evil, right now, my life would implode. Now that's not the only thing keeping me from going evil, but it certainly helps. The same is not true for people with the world's biggest safety net and infinite get out of jail free cards.
  - vram22 1y ago
    You are perfectly right. Just like you are weak, and essentially always incorrect, when you judge others, without substantiation of your statements - as you did above. So, you are no better than the person you replied to above. And apart from your use of the word "essentially" being essentially redundant, and hence adding nothing of value to your statement, did you know about the word "wrong"? It can easily replace your use of the word "incorrect" (which fancy-pants people tend to use, when simpler equivalent ones exist, probably to impress others), for a saving of a whole four letters - per use! Gee!
libraryatnight 1y ago
It's sad to think as a high school student reading Wired articles about Google's wonder offices, Don't Be Evil,engineers getting time to work on projects and problems they wanted to work on, my geek friends and I really thought it was a case of the capitalists about to get a hacker/computer culture shake up - they'd penetrated the billionaire class and were going to be different. A lot of reasons my present day jaded self would call out my younger self for being naive there, but it's still just embarrassing how wrong I was and how quickly the tech community fell in line with standard corporate awfulness. Nothing survives shareholders.
- hydrolox 1y ago
  money corrupts
- linguae 1y ago
  I feel the exact same way about tech today as a 90s kid who embraced personal computing and who was inspired by the histories of Apple, Microsoft, Bell Labs, Xerox PARC, and other pioneering places. As late as 2014 I thought highly of FAANG and I was proud of the two summer internships I had at Google, which were enjoyable. Having been disillusioned by the state of the industry, I now teach computer science at a community college, and I get saddened when thinking about the world my students are to enter once they transfer and finish their bachelor’s degrees. There are still many good companies and good people in our field, but I’m saddened by the rise of tech oligarchs who use tech for dominating people instead of making life better for everyone.
- shortrounddev2 1y ago
  These companies also attract that sort of person. Most software engineers I've met aren't the "hacker" type. A huge number of them are in it for the mo ey and don't really have a hacker inclination. I feel that it's a culture in danger
  - giraffe_lady 1y ago
    Nah people with the "hacker inclination" are just as easy to buy but in other ways. There are people who will solve any interesting problem put in front of them and have a great time doing it without reflecting on why someone put it there or what it will be used for when they're done. Giving them more interesting problems, more autonomy to pursue intellectually stimulating solutions to them, is the reward you can use to keep them building your drone assassination algorithms or whatever. In fact the overwhelming consensus on this site has long been that skillfully solving problems that are personally interesting to you is at worst morally neutral. I'll bet significant number of the people who work at for example palantir are like this. Curiosity-driven "little eichmanns." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Eichmanns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Eichmanns
tombert 1y ago
I think when you get to a high-enough level of running a company, you figure out ways to turn off your empathy, and ignore your principles. Most of us develop a bit of the latter. I have worked for a bunch of questionable companies that kind of go against my values, but deep down I'm a bit of a whore and whether or not I keep to these principles isn't likely to make a huge difference, so I just shut up and cash my paychecks [1]. I would like to think if I became a billionaire, I'd maintain my empathy and would keep my principles because at that point I actually could do something, but I probably wouldn't be able to become a billionaire if I maintained my principles and empathy. Sort of a catch 22, which is why I probably won't be worth any significant amount of money unless there's some kind of Mr Deeds situation and I have a long lost billionaire uncle that I don't know about who dies. I don't think Tim Cook or Sam Altman are pure sociopaths in any kind of clinical sense. The vast majority of people aren't. I think that they actively taught themselves to value their respective companies instead of fellow humans. That, and the last two years of layoffs in these tech corporations has shown me that these people are extremely short-sighted. [1] Well, if I weren't unemployed :)
- siliconc0w 1y ago
  You can make millions and keep your empathy but I don't think you can be a billionaire unless you're just a voracious unsatiable machine without much empathy to begin with. You can get good at projecting a facade and saying the right things and maybe even actually doing some good in some cases but it's usually just in service of expanding your wealth or power. This isn't really a bad thing, we just need to make sure that society sets the right incentives to align these individuals properly to maximize prosperity. (e.g, preventing monopolies so value is generated via innovation vs rent seeking)
  - tombert 1y ago
    I agree that you can reach a few million without becoming too evil. Hell, having a decent-paying desk job and putting a good chunk of money into VOO (or something equivalent) has historically been a relatively surefire way of doing that if you're willing to wait a few decades. I honestly am not entirely convinced that billionaires should be allowed to exist, I kind of think we should start taxing like crazy when personal wealth gets above a certain number. If you're not happy with a billion dollars, you're not going to be happy with a trillion dollars, or a quadrillion, or a quintillion. I think after a certain amount of wealth, your interests aren't really aligned with what's good for society, because the only appeal at that point is seeing a number get bigger. It's not like you're "saving up for something" when you get to that much wealth.

by Havoc 1y ago

Mistletoe 1y ago

We found out that what they really worshipped all along was money. I’m sure this is self-evident to many, but I was optimistic and naive about it. I saw the good in people that have no good inside them.

kulahan 1y ago
To pretend someone has “no good in them” is weak, and essentially always incorrect.
- jagger27 1y ago
  Absolutism doesn’t tend to win long term, that’s fair, but I’m personally content to critique sama's ongoing lack of good actions and behaviour.
- vram22 1y ago
  J. F. C. ... And angels (how many) can dance on the head of a pin. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_many_angels_can_dance_on_the_head_of_a_pin%3F https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_many_angels_can_dance_on... (Something theologians debate about endlessly and absolutely uselessly. That is all they are good, er, bad, for.) Yeah, right. Pontificating much? Pathetic. How do you know he/she is "weak"? No argument provided. And the same for "incorrect". And who the hell are you to judge them? Let me apply some of your own judgement "ointment" on you: >essentially always incorrect. Your use of the word essentially in that phrase is essentially inessential. :) The meaning is equally well conveyed without that word. IOW, it's fluff, and can be done away with, fluffy kid. (wags wings at you. hi!) Grok what I mean? Grr. ;)
- immibis 1y ago
  Sometimes it's a sensible approximation. For example, Hitler had no good in him.
  - jjtheblunt 1y ago
    Hitler ironically was a vegetarian because he supposedly felt compassion for animals. (Such contradictions obviously)
    - vram22 1y ago
      well, that shows him up as being even more of a fool and/or hypocrite (apart from being an ultra-evil swine), because, gasp, humans are also animals, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler Read full article before yapping a reply.
- beloch 1y ago
  One of the chief arguments for low taxes on the 1% is that governments do dumb things with money. Billionaires are more likely to invest it in beneficial research, enterprise, etc.. If left to their own devices and not stripped of their resources, good billionaires will do great things for society. Or so the claim goes. The problem is, although much potential for good may exist in billionaires, the average billionaire spends next to nothing on philanthropy or research. It's only highly unusual exceptions who do. Next to nothing, even when well invested, accomplishes next to nothing. If billionaires won't open their purses to support the society that has provided them with opportunity, that's what taxes are for. If billionaires aren't lining up to fund research institutes, that's what tax-funded government research is for.
  - pfannkuchen 1y ago
    It sounds like you don’t think allocating capital to new business ventures or supporting the funding of existing businesses counts as supporting society? Businesses are made up of people, and last I checked all of the things I use on a day to day basis come from companies. Companies seem pretty important. Why do things like venture funding, which I think a lot of billionaires do engage in directly or indirectly, not count as supporting society?
    - beloch 1y ago
      Business ventures use long-term, curiosity driven research and educated workers to produce goods/services as a byproduct of generating profits for their owners. If the owners are not paying taxes that fund education or long-term research, nor directly funding same, then they're both short-sighted and parasitic.
    - srean 1y ago
      In a free market with competition, probably yes. The market is far from free, big money is near impossible to compete against. In effect, when they pour tens of billions the work that gets done could have been done perhaps with millions. Take a look at Chinese AI accomplishments and at what point it has been achieved. Granted plagiarism might be reducing some of the costs, but in a free market, things would have been a lot cheaper. Similar example India's accomplishments in space.
- const_cast 1y ago
  A lot (most?) people have good in them for themselves. We've done a pretty good job at making sure the best thing for you also happens to be a pretty good thing for humanity as a whole. For the ultra-wealthy, this is almost never the case. If I chose to be evil, right now, my life would implode. Now that's not the only thing keeping me from going evil, but it certainly helps. The same is not true for people with the world's biggest safety net and infinite get out of jail free cards.
- vram22 1y ago
  You are perfectly right. Just like you are weak, and essentially always incorrect, when you judge others, without substantiation of your statements - as you did above. So, you are no better than the person you replied to above. And apart from your use of the word "essentially" being essentially redundant, and hence adding nothing of value to your statement, did you know about the word "wrong"? It can easily replace your use of the word "incorrect" (which fancy-pants people tend to use, when simpler equivalent ones exist, probably to impress others), for a saving of a whole four letters - per use! Gee!

libraryatnight 1y ago

It's sad to think as a high school student reading Wired articles about Google's wonder offices, Don't Be Evil,engineers getting time to work on projects and problems they wanted to work on, my geek friends and I really thought it was a case of the capitalists about to get a hacker/computer culture shake up - they'd penetrated the billionaire class and were going to be different. A lot of reasons my present day jaded self would call out my younger self for being naive there, but it's still just embarrassing how wrong I was and how quickly the tech community fell in line with standard corporate awfulness. Nothing survives shareholders.

hydrolox 1y ago
money corrupts
linguae 1y ago
I feel the exact same way about tech today as a 90s kid who embraced personal computing and who was inspired by the histories of Apple, Microsoft, Bell Labs, Xerox PARC, and other pioneering places. As late as 2014 I thought highly of FAANG and I was proud of the two summer internships I had at Google, which were enjoyable. Having been disillusioned by the state of the industry, I now teach computer science at a community college, and I get saddened when thinking about the world my students are to enter once they transfer and finish their bachelor’s degrees. There are still many good companies and good people in our field, but I’m saddened by the rise of tech oligarchs who use tech for dominating people instead of making life better for everyone.
shortrounddev2 1y ago
These companies also attract that sort of person. Most software engineers I've met aren't the "hacker" type. A huge number of them are in it for the mo ey and don't really have a hacker inclination. I feel that it's a culture in danger
- giraffe_lady 1y ago
  Nah people with the "hacker inclination" are just as easy to buy but in other ways. There are people who will solve any interesting problem put in front of them and have a great time doing it without reflecting on why someone put it there or what it will be used for when they're done. Giving them more interesting problems, more autonomy to pursue intellectually stimulating solutions to them, is the reward you can use to keep them building your drone assassination algorithms or whatever. In fact the overwhelming consensus on this site has long been that skillfully solving problems that are personally interesting to you is at worst morally neutral. I'll bet significant number of the people who work at for example palantir are like this. Curiosity-driven "little eichmanns." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Eichmanns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Eichmanns

tombert 1y ago

I think when you get to a high-enough level of running a company, you figure out ways to turn off your empathy, and ignore your principles. Most of us develop a bit of the latter. I have worked for a bunch of questionable companies that kind of go against my values, but deep down I'm a bit of a whore and whether or not I keep to these principles isn't likely to make a huge difference, so I just shut up and cash my paychecks [1]. I would like to think if I became a billionaire, I'd maintain my empathy and would keep my principles because at that point I actually could do something, but I probably wouldn't be able to become a billionaire if I maintained my principles and empathy. Sort of a catch 22, which is why I probably won't be worth any significant amount of money unless there's some kind of Mr Deeds situation and I have a long lost billionaire uncle that I don't know about who dies. I don't think Tim Cook or Sam Altman are pure sociopaths in any kind of clinical sense. The vast majority of people aren't. I think that they actively taught themselves to value their respective companies instead of fellow humans. That, and the last two years of layoffs in these tech corporations has shown me that these people are extremely short-sighted. [1] Well, if I weren't unemployed :)

siliconc0w 1y ago
You can make millions and keep your empathy but I don't think you can be a billionaire unless you're just a voracious unsatiable machine without much empathy to begin with. You can get good at projecting a facade and saying the right things and maybe even actually doing some good in some cases but it's usually just in service of expanding your wealth or power. This isn't really a bad thing, we just need to make sure that society sets the right incentives to align these individuals properly to maximize prosperity. (e.g, preventing monopolies so value is generated via innovation vs rent seeking)
- tombert 1y ago
  I agree that you can reach a few million without becoming too evil. Hell, having a decent-paying desk job and putting a good chunk of money into VOO (or something equivalent) has historically been a relatively surefire way of doing that if you're willing to wait a few decades. I honestly am not entirely convinced that billionaires should be allowed to exist, I kind of think we should start taxing like crazy when personal wealth gets above a certain number. If you're not happy with a billion dollars, you're not going to be happy with a trillion dollars, or a quadrillion, or a quintillion. I think after a certain amount of wealth, your interests aren't really aligned with what's good for society, because the only appeal at that point is seeing a number get bigger. It's not like you're "saving up for something" when you get to that much wealth.