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It's always hilarious watching online fights between tech industry billionaires, sort of like the geek version of UFC. The weirdest part is how regular people p

by nradov 8mo ago

It's always hilarious watching online fights between tech industry billionaires, sort of like the geek version of UFC. The weirdest part is how regular people pick sides and defend their billionaire against the other guy.

derwiki 8mo ago
Why is that weird? If we do that for UFC and other sports
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
neya 8mo ago
> The weirdest part is how regular people pick sides and defend their billionaire Someone told me in another comment that it's possibly bot activity. I suspect so too, because in a tech forum like HN, a top voted comment can shift the entire focus/narrative of any given issue. I know there are a lot of mods on here to prevent this sort of thing, but given how good LLMs have gotten, I wonder if we are at a point where humans can even discern cases where this a mix of human and AI involvement in online activity (such as commenting).
- sixothree 8mo ago
  It's not only single comments, but if you surround people in a sea of opinion, they will definitely start swimming in your direction. Thought, that's probably more important on reddit.
  - gottorf 8mo ago
    > that's probably more important on reddit. I don't know if you've noticed, but HN has been full of Reddit-tier comments, most especially around hot-button political topics, for a while now.
    - neya 8mo ago
      It's been this way for the last 6-7 years IIRC
- mrguyorama 8mo ago
  Naw HN has been like this for a decade at minimum. None of the temporarily embarrassed billionaires here needed a bot to simp for rich people. The entire point of the forum is to talk about rich "idea people" and the businesses they start to get richer.
retsibsi 8mo ago
It's very easy to adopt a posture of above-it-all cynicism, and to think that anyone who sees an important distinction between two flawed powerful people is a sucker. But it's not particularly smart or sophisticated, and it's not helpful. In politics, the assumption that they're all equally corrupt and sociopathic is exactly what the worst of them want us to default to. In rich-guy PR wars, too, it's only going to work to the benefit of the ones with 0 principles, at the expense of the ones with some principles. (Or, if the maximally cynical perspective is correct and 'principles' always actually means 'a company culture and public image that depends on the appearance of having principles, and which requires costly signals of principledness to maintain' -- well, why on earth shouldn't we favour the ones who have that property over the ones who are nakedly unprincipled, and the ones who have a paper-thin veneer that doesn't meaningfully affect their behaviour? It would be stupid to throw away the one bit of leverage we have to make powerful people behave better than they otherwise would.)

by nradov 8mo ago

derwiki 8mo ago

Why is that weird? If we do that for UFC and other sports

deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]

neya 8mo ago

> The weirdest part is how regular people pick sides and defend their billionaire Someone told me in another comment that it's possibly bot activity. I suspect so too, because in a tech forum like HN, a top voted comment can shift the entire focus/narrative of any given issue. I know there are a lot of mods on here to prevent this sort of thing, but given how good LLMs have gotten, I wonder if we are at a point where humans can even discern cases where this a mix of human and AI involvement in online activity (such as commenting).

sixothree 8mo ago
It's not only single comments, but if you surround people in a sea of opinion, they will definitely start swimming in your direction. Thought, that's probably more important on reddit.
- gottorf 8mo ago
  > that's probably more important on reddit. I don't know if you've noticed, but HN has been full of Reddit-tier comments, most especially around hot-button political topics, for a while now.
  - neya 8mo ago
    It's been this way for the last 6-7 years IIRC
mrguyorama 8mo ago
Naw HN has been like this for a decade at minimum. None of the temporarily embarrassed billionaires here needed a bot to simp for rich people. The entire point of the forum is to talk about rich "idea people" and the businesses they start to get richer.

retsibsi 8mo ago

It's very easy to adopt a posture of above-it-all cynicism, and to think that anyone who sees an important distinction between two flawed powerful people is a sucker. But it's not particularly smart or sophisticated, and it's not helpful. In politics, the assumption that they're all equally corrupt and sociopathic is exactly what the worst of them want us to default to. In rich-guy PR wars, too, it's only going to work to the benefit of the ones with 0 principles, at the expense of the ones with some principles. (Or, if the maximally cynical perspective is correct and 'principles' always actually means 'a company culture and public image that depends on the appearance of having principles, and which requires costly signals of principledness to maintain' -- well, why on earth shouldn't we favour the ones who have that property over the ones who are nakedly unprincipled, and the ones who have a paper-thin veneer that doesn't meaningfully affect their behaviour? It would be stupid to throw away the one bit of leverage we have to make powerful people behave better than they otherwise would.)