6 ms·

Still looking for the people on hn who eight months ago said that this would be a good thing to come out and admit not only that they were wrong, but the model

Still looking for the people on hn who eight months ago said that this would be a good thing to come out and admit not only that they were wrong, but the model of the world and their way of absorbing info that led them to such a conclusion is also wrong. Looking at you, geohot.

ohyoutravel 1y ago
The venn diagram of that group and the group that immediately, with zero evidence, following the Charlie Kirk incident, declared war on “the left” is a circle.
- SV_BubbleTime 1y ago
  > with zero evidence I mean… what additional evidence would it take? Police, DBI, his discord messages, the texts to his trans boyfriend?
  - ohyoutravel 1y ago
    I’m not sure what this is supposed to mean. At the time of the original post, where people were condemning “leftists” and saying “this means war against the left,” there was zero evidence. No one had been caught (I guess they may have piled drived a poor janitor or something at this point), no idea who it could even be. This was days before it was revealed to be some MAGA splinter group.
    - SV_BubbleTime 1y ago
      > This was days before it was revealed to be some MAGA splinter group. Wow, that’s amazing, can you please post a source for that completely made up nonsense?
nenenejej 1y ago
They will never admit they are wrong.
- k12sosse 1y ago
  Doge was a reward for the tabulator manipulation. See you in another 8 months.
  - ModernMech 1y ago
    It was a reward for the biggest campaign donation in US political history. Musk didn't rig the election, he's not that competent or powerful. Occam's Razor tells us what happened was the Democrats went with a strategy that has never worked before (changing candidate mid-race), and they ended up predictably losing. That's it.
    - Braxton1980 1y ago
      It's happened once post-ww2. Doesn't seem to be a large enough of a sample to make a point about the strategy. You're also ignoring the candidates themselves
- MisterTea 1y ago
  It's a point of pride to fight tooth and nail arguing a wrong point. I worked with a guy who out right admitted that he will argue with you even if he knows he is wrong. It's not a discussion, its a fight they must win. They will die on their hill of macho pride. THEY MUST DEFEAT YOU. Smart people admit they are wrong and learn, then move on for the better. The stagnant macho person will never learn anything and just wants status quo in perpetuity, so long as it benefits them.
  - ziml77 1y ago
    They might act like it's a macho thing to argue against you, but let's be real, it can be painfully embarrassing to admit you're wrong, especially if you were really dug in already. Since it's about avoiding pain, it's the weak route to take to continue to defend a position you know is wrong.
    - kjkjadksj 1y ago
sp4cec0wb0y 1y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43261941#43268908 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43261941#43268908 Man I love being right.
ugh123 1y ago
The spirit of the "program" leaned in the right direction, but Elon was absolutely the wrong guy to put in charge of it. Misplaced incentives, lack of interpersonal skills, lack of respect and empathy, lack of organizational skills when he does not have strong, professional lieutenants that will implement changes. Edit: and who TF would have thought putting "big balls doge kid" in a position of power would be a good thing? That kid, along with whomever hired him, would be tossed out of any professional corp env swiftly.
- dnissley 1y ago
  He also lacked the authority to realize the full vision, being only a guest of Trump. Hence the inevitable conflict when it came to the big beautiful bill.
- EasyMark 1y ago
  It was an effort in spirit only. It was aimed almost entirely at damaging those agencies that Trump hated and that Musk wanted to muck up so he could gain advantages from less government oversight and regulations. In the end it had almost no effect on overall government spending, but it certainly helped Trumps aims to damage the government departments he didn't like, undo what Biden had done, and gain some advantages for Elon's companies.
  - mlinhares 1y ago
    It’s still completely insane that people still think it was anything other than this. I can understand if you’re a musk fan you could have thought he was being serious on the bullshit (otherwise how could you be a musk fan?) but think today there was any plan or “spirit” behind it is pure delusion.
- jvanderbot 1y ago
  The whole thing seemed to me to be a quid pro quo for Elon to get Trump elected via Twitter. I'm fairly sure everyone but DOGE knew it would not accomplish anything.
- BLKNSLVR 1y ago
anthem2025 1y ago
[dead]
DashAnimal 1y ago
Yes. I'm not for calling out individual people, those who probably had hope and some may be young and didn't have the warning flags going off. I can only imagine they're disappointed and had no malice. But people who have some level of fame who put their name behind it, and who had some influence in inspiring others down this wrong path most definitely need to address it. If you truly believe the intelligence of tech people over others in every field which led you down this path, follow the proper postmortem process.
noncoml 1y ago
Waiting for history to vindicate us is usually a losing strategy. If we fail to persuade people in the moment, the fault is ours, not theirs. It reminds me of Ancient Greece and the Sophists: they mastered persuasion as an art at the expense of reason, logic, and truth.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
crystal_revenge 1y ago
But I suspect for most them their real desire was simply long lasting harm to the federal government and pain and suffering inflicted on those who work for the government. I'm not sure why you think any of them would believe they were wrong. I don't think any of them were hoping for some kind of transformation other than destruction.
- calvinmorrison 1y ago
  > simply long lasting harm to the federal government and pain and suffering inflicted on those who work for the government. sounds about right
- samdoesnothing 1y ago
  Why do you suspect this? Is it your view that right wingers are inherently evil as opposed to, say, having different opinions about how things should be done? I urge you to find some empathy.
  - thunderfork 1y ago
    [dead]
  - kjkjadksj 1y ago
    To be fair, many are evil and hold evil opinions about their fellow humans. How do I find empathy with someone who doesn’t subscribe to the same reality and does not value lives of even their own neighbors?
    - samdoesnothing 1y ago
      I think if you actually spoke with them, many would make the same claims about the left. Many right wingers see the left as being equally evil, that doesn't mean it's true.
      - Braxton1980 1y ago
        Where does the empathy come in to play?
samdoesnothing 1y ago
I thought it was a good idea in spirit although I wasn't sure how effectively it would be done. To be honest I'm still not sure how effective it was. Almost all criticism I've seen of DOGE has been from those biased against it already. Obviously federal employees will be negative about a program designed around reducing their scope and funding...
- acdha 1y ago
  All you have to do is look at the non-serious initial claim of $2T savings. That is wildly high, and told you that the people running it had no interest in success. It’s like if we have a startup founder here saying they’re going to have AGI by Christmas and be the first $10T company.
  - samdoesnothing 1y ago
    That's a non-sequitur. Plenty of serious AI companies have made predictions about AGI or replacing programmers which have not come to fruition. That doesn't mean they don't have interest in success.
    - Braxton1980 1y ago
      Your argument was about success not interest in success.
    - acdha 1y ago
      I said serious in the sense of something they seriously believe they can deliver. Those wild predictions on unrealistic timeframes are for the stock market. For an example: Sergei Brin, Sebastian Thrun, and Elon Musk were all interested in self-driving cars. Musk has been making materially misleading statements promising to deliver L5 in the next year or so many times since 2013, and still doesn’t have more than L2. Waymo did not promise things they couldn’t deliver, treated safety as a top priority, and is expanding L4 taxi services around the country. They’re all interested, Waymo is serious, but Musk’s strategy has made him enormously rich and I think that’s always been his top priority.
b8 1y ago
geohot has/had a weird obsession with Elon for a few years now. He copied what Elon did a lot and is sort of like an Elon Stan. Which led to him agreeing and competing with Elon a lot. However, after geohot interned at Twitter/X I think he moved on from Elon and liking his views etc.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
rpmisms 1y ago
It helped. Not enough, needs to be a permanent office that is simply antagonistic to government spending.
thordenmark 1y ago
I said it would be a good thing and still do. Dismantling USAID alone was worth it. It's easy to spend taxpayer money, it's harder to make cuts, no matter how you do it you'll be the bad guy. But government needs to live within its means.
- ink_13 1y ago
  Dismantling USAID has condemned hundreds of thousands of people (if not millions) to literal death through a loss of famine relief and life saving medications for diseases like HIV and tuberculosis. It has diminished the soft power of the United States, destroyed the credibility of the country for a generation or more, and didn't even save that much money. It has profited the average American not at all and likely made everyone less safe. I have no idea what kind of person thinks that was a good idea.
  - thordenmark 1y ago
    Borrowing billions of dollars when you are $37 trillion in debt and giving that borrowed money to people who hate you is insane. And most of that money goes to warlords and dictators. USAID needed a complete overhaul. And do you accuse the countries who don't give aid of causing famine and death? Why just America? You are welcome to give out of your own pocket if it assuages your guilt.
    - Braxton1980 1y ago
      The $37t is debt owned by the public and government. The US government debt is $7t. >money to people who hate you is insane -Do all the people who receive the money hate us? -Why does it matter if some people receiving help hate us? Why is this insane? >And most of that money goes to warlords and dictators How do you know?
- Braxton1980 1y ago
  >Dismantling USAID alone was worth it. I Why? >But government needs to live within its means. Which is what? No deficit? That's not possible so if you will allow some debt then why not USaid but other programs are left?
ckemere 1y ago
There are multiple generations of folks who've been trained to believe that Ronald Reagan was delivering divine wisdom when he said "Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem" / "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government, and I'm here to help." I know many folks that don't have any animus to individual people. They just have been brainwashed since early childhood...
- Braxton1980 1y ago
  Republicans think the government is the problem but currently control all three federal branches and multiple states.
ZeroGravitas 1y ago
One of the strange joys of this site is reading the insane takes of otherwise intelligent right-wingers as they try to bend reality to fit with their beliefs. At the very best you'll get "the left forced them to do it" but blank denial of reality and invention of entirely fake parallel worlds is much more likely. They've been doing that for climate, renewables, COVID, Trump etc. far longer than for DOGE with no sign of giving up.

ohyoutravel 1y ago

The venn diagram of that group and the group that immediately, with zero evidence, following the Charlie Kirk incident, declared war on “the left” is a circle.

SV_BubbleTime 1y ago
> with zero evidence I mean… what additional evidence would it take? Police, DBI, his discord messages, the texts to his trans boyfriend?
- ohyoutravel 1y ago
  I’m not sure what this is supposed to mean. At the time of the original post, where people were condemning “leftists” and saying “this means war against the left,” there was zero evidence. No one had been caught (I guess they may have piled drived a poor janitor or something at this point), no idea who it could even be. This was days before it was revealed to be some MAGA splinter group.
  - SV_BubbleTime 1y ago
    > This was days before it was revealed to be some MAGA splinter group. Wow, that’s amazing, can you please post a source for that completely made up nonsense?

nenenejej 1y ago

They will never admit they are wrong.

k12sosse 1y ago
Doge was a reward for the tabulator manipulation. See you in another 8 months.
- ModernMech 1y ago
  It was a reward for the biggest campaign donation in US political history. Musk didn't rig the election, he's not that competent or powerful. Occam's Razor tells us what happened was the Democrats went with a strategy that has never worked before (changing candidate mid-race), and they ended up predictably losing. That's it.
  - Braxton1980 1y ago
    It's happened once post-ww2. Doesn't seem to be a large enough of a sample to make a point about the strategy. You're also ignoring the candidates themselves
MisterTea 1y ago
It's a point of pride to fight tooth and nail arguing a wrong point. I worked with a guy who out right admitted that he will argue with you even if he knows he is wrong. It's not a discussion, its a fight they must win. They will die on their hill of macho pride. THEY MUST DEFEAT YOU. Smart people admit they are wrong and learn, then move on for the better. The stagnant macho person will never learn anything and just wants status quo in perpetuity, so long as it benefits them.
- ziml77 1y ago
  They might act like it's a macho thing to argue against you, but let's be real, it can be painfully embarrassing to admit you're wrong, especially if you were really dug in already. Since it's about avoiding pain, it's the weak route to take to continue to defend a position you know is wrong.
  - kjkjadksj 1y ago

sp4cec0wb0y 1y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43261941#43268908 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43261941#43268908 Man I love being right.

ugh123 1y ago

The spirit of the "program" leaned in the right direction, but Elon was absolutely the wrong guy to put in charge of it. Misplaced incentives, lack of interpersonal skills, lack of respect and empathy, lack of organizational skills when he does not have strong, professional lieutenants that will implement changes. Edit: and who TF would have thought putting "big balls doge kid" in a position of power would be a good thing? That kid, along with whomever hired him, would be tossed out of any professional corp env swiftly.

dnissley 1y ago
He also lacked the authority to realize the full vision, being only a guest of Trump. Hence the inevitable conflict when it came to the big beautiful bill.
EasyMark 1y ago
It was an effort in spirit only. It was aimed almost entirely at damaging those agencies that Trump hated and that Musk wanted to muck up so he could gain advantages from less government oversight and regulations. In the end it had almost no effect on overall government spending, but it certainly helped Trumps aims to damage the government departments he didn't like, undo what Biden had done, and gain some advantages for Elon's companies.
- mlinhares 1y ago
  It’s still completely insane that people still think it was anything other than this. I can understand if you’re a musk fan you could have thought he was being serious on the bullshit (otherwise how could you be a musk fan?) but think today there was any plan or “spirit” behind it is pure delusion.
jvanderbot 1y ago
The whole thing seemed to me to be a quid pro quo for Elon to get Trump elected via Twitter. I'm fairly sure everyone but DOGE knew it would not accomplish anything.
BLKNSLVR 1y ago

anthem2025 1y ago

[dead]

DashAnimal 1y ago

Yes. I'm not for calling out individual people, those who probably had hope and some may be young and didn't have the warning flags going off. I can only imagine they're disappointed and had no malice. But people who have some level of fame who put their name behind it, and who had some influence in inspiring others down this wrong path most definitely need to address it. If you truly believe the intelligence of tech people over others in every field which led you down this path, follow the proper postmortem process.

noncoml 1y ago

Waiting for history to vindicate us is usually a losing strategy. If we fail to persuade people in the moment, the fault is ours, not theirs. It reminds me of Ancient Greece and the Sophists: they mastered persuasion as an art at the expense of reason, logic, and truth.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

crystal_revenge 1y ago

But I suspect for most them their real desire was simply long lasting harm to the federal government and pain and suffering inflicted on those who work for the government. I'm not sure why you think any of them would believe they were wrong. I don't think any of them were hoping for some kind of transformation other than destruction.

calvinmorrison 1y ago
> simply long lasting harm to the federal government and pain and suffering inflicted on those who work for the government. sounds about right
samdoesnothing 1y ago
Why do you suspect this? Is it your view that right wingers are inherently evil as opposed to, say, having different opinions about how things should be done? I urge you to find some empathy.
- thunderfork 1y ago
  [dead]
- kjkjadksj 1y ago
  To be fair, many are evil and hold evil opinions about their fellow humans. How do I find empathy with someone who doesn’t subscribe to the same reality and does not value lives of even their own neighbors?
  - samdoesnothing 1y ago
    I think if you actually spoke with them, many would make the same claims about the left. Many right wingers see the left as being equally evil, that doesn't mean it's true.
    - Braxton1980 1y ago
      Where does the empathy come in to play?

samdoesnothing 1y ago

I thought it was a good idea in spirit although I wasn't sure how effectively it would be done. To be honest I'm still not sure how effective it was. Almost all criticism I've seen of DOGE has been from those biased against it already. Obviously federal employees will be negative about a program designed around reducing their scope and funding...

acdha 1y ago
All you have to do is look at the non-serious initial claim of $2T savings. That is wildly high, and told you that the people running it had no interest in success. It’s like if we have a startup founder here saying they’re going to have AGI by Christmas and be the first $10T company.
- samdoesnothing 1y ago
  That's a non-sequitur. Plenty of serious AI companies have made predictions about AGI or replacing programmers which have not come to fruition. That doesn't mean they don't have interest in success.
  - Braxton1980 1y ago
    Your argument was about success not interest in success.
  - acdha 1y ago
    I said serious in the sense of something they seriously believe they can deliver. Those wild predictions on unrealistic timeframes are for the stock market. For an example: Sergei Brin, Sebastian Thrun, and Elon Musk were all interested in self-driving cars. Musk has been making materially misleading statements promising to deliver L5 in the next year or so many times since 2013, and still doesn’t have more than L2. Waymo did not promise things they couldn’t deliver, treated safety as a top priority, and is expanding L4 taxi services around the country. They’re all interested, Waymo is serious, but Musk’s strategy has made him enormously rich and I think that’s always been his top priority.

b8 1y ago

geohot has/had a weird obsession with Elon for a few years now. He copied what Elon did a lot and is sort of like an Elon Stan. Which led to him agreeing and competing with Elon a lot. However, after geohot interned at Twitter/X I think he moved on from Elon and liking his views etc.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

rpmisms 1y ago

It helped. Not enough, needs to be a permanent office that is simply antagonistic to government spending.

thordenmark 1y ago

I said it would be a good thing and still do. Dismantling USAID alone was worth it. It's easy to spend taxpayer money, it's harder to make cuts, no matter how you do it you'll be the bad guy. But government needs to live within its means.

ink_13 1y ago
Dismantling USAID has condemned hundreds of thousands of people (if not millions) to literal death through a loss of famine relief and life saving medications for diseases like HIV and tuberculosis. It has diminished the soft power of the United States, destroyed the credibility of the country for a generation or more, and didn't even save that much money. It has profited the average American not at all and likely made everyone less safe. I have no idea what kind of person thinks that was a good idea.
- thordenmark 1y ago
  Borrowing billions of dollars when you are $37 trillion in debt and giving that borrowed money to people who hate you is insane. And most of that money goes to warlords and dictators. USAID needed a complete overhaul. And do you accuse the countries who don't give aid of causing famine and death? Why just America? You are welcome to give out of your own pocket if it assuages your guilt.
  - Braxton1980 1y ago
    The $37t is debt owned by the public and government. The US government debt is $7t. >money to people who hate you is insane -Do all the people who receive the money hate us? -Why does it matter if some people receiving help hate us? Why is this insane? >And most of that money goes to warlords and dictators How do you know?
Braxton1980 1y ago
>Dismantling USAID alone was worth it. I Why? >But government needs to live within its means. Which is what? No deficit? That's not possible so if you will allow some debt then why not USaid but other programs are left?

ckemere 1y ago

There are multiple generations of folks who've been trained to believe that Ronald Reagan was delivering divine wisdom when he said "Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem" / "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government, and I'm here to help." I know many folks that don't have any animus to individual people. They just have been brainwashed since early childhood...

Braxton1980 1y ago
Republicans think the government is the problem but currently control all three federal branches and multiple states.

ZeroGravitas 1y ago

One of the strange joys of this site is reading the insane takes of otherwise intelligent right-wingers as they try to bend reality to fit with their beliefs. At the very best you'll get "the left forced them to do it" but blank denial of reality and invention of entirely fake parallel worlds is much more likely. They've been doing that for climate, renewables, COVID, Trump etc. far longer than for DOGE with no sign of giving up.