5 ms·

No, I suspect that "I kind of think of ads as a last resort" was doublespeak for "ads are coming eventually". I would tend to think of someone like him as a pe

No, I suspect that "I kind of think of ads as a last resort" was doublespeak for "ads are coming eventually". I would tend to think of someone like him as a person who uses words to achieve a specific goal, rather than someone who speaks whatever is truly on their mind. Whether those words are lies or truth or somewhere in between is irrelevant; what matters to them is the outcome. It's likely a waste of time trying to unpick the meaning, because there is none. "But Sam Altman said..." to me has about as much value as "ChatGPT told me...".

kakacik 6mo ago
Exactly this. Words are cheap these days, people do say various things to further their goals. Days where leaders stood by their words as sort of moral testament of their character are gone, probably for good. As we see many people will do or say just about anything to get more money, prestige or power.
- gleenn 6mo ago
  So what is the best system to get people to be invested in the general welfare of all people? What are we supposed to do?
  - Antibabelic 6mo ago
    Some problems don't have solutions.
    - customguy 6mo ago
      This one does though. These issues are solely created by humans, so of course humans can solve them, that's not even a question. People who care need to keep speaking up and reaching out to each other, get together; and by doing so expose the people who don't care, or actively are against the general welfare of humans, like rocks on the beach when the tide recedes. It takes so much work, so much criminal energy, so much money and campaigns, to divide people. Whereas the opposite, people getting to know each other and working together, happens "by itself" all the time, for the most banal of reasons. Just give them some time and space together; no lobbying required, no bribes or blackmail, no psy-ops; just our innate desire to live and let live. Humans who prey on humans are sick, it's as simple as that. Humans who don't want to stand up to humans who prey on humans may not be sick, but they're not our best, that's for sure, and they must not be our gatekeepers or our compass.
      - Antibabelic 6mo ago
        People getting to know each and working together to genocide another group of people that's slightly different from them does indeed have many precedents in history. The problem with your idea is that you see "humans" as some kind of abstract unified whole. People care about their peers far more than they do about "humans" in the abstract. When you're a powerful venture capitalist, these peers are other venture capitalists for example. Some call this "class consciousness".
        customguy 6mo ago
        > The problem with your idea is that you see "humans" as some kind of abstract unified whole. No, I don't, which greatly goes together with that not following from anything I said. I simply care about humans that are not predators way more than predators.
  - greggoB 6mo ago
    Your question seems to imply that people have to be corralled towards a specific action, which to me comes across as rather cynical. Why is it not possible to lay out your arguments honestly and let people decide on the merits?
    - iugtmkbdfil834 6mo ago
      I think, part of the issue is that, as a mass of humans, we tend to be rather dumb. And they certainly don't decide on merits, in aggregate. It is somewhat questionable if they decide on merits even as individuals ( unless we expand the definition somewhat ). But it is possible I got too cynical.
      - greggoB 6mo ago
        It's a paradox: on the one hand, if we were dumb en masse, it's hard to see how we could have developed so far technologically and cultivated such complex societies. On the other: I have to agree with you, there is too much of a pattern of bewildering behaviour not to. I think what irks me is this idea that deceiving people to push them towards a specific outcome is a reliable and sound strategy, when we've seen many instances of it having the opposite effect.
- notarobot123 6mo ago
  For now but not for good. Neglecting moral character works as a shortcut for maybe a generation or two. But that path leads to destruction and decay eventually. It can't last.
  - iugtmkbdfil834 6mo ago
    Thank you. Agreed. There are some practical limits to that path. It works in the current ecosystem partially because the resulting degradation is slow, but it is built upon societal trust. Once it is gone, it will be rather painful to restore. A new new deal will be needed, so to speak ( political evocation is accidental, but it is too late for me to coherently rewrite ).
  - samiv 6mo ago
    Hard men create good times. Good times create soft men. Soft men create hard times.
- threepts 6mo ago
  There were never any days where leaders stood by their words. People have always used lies as tools to maintain their power whether it is the Roman Empire or 21st century AI companies. It is just human nature.
3form 6mo ago
I think doublespeak is more along the lines of calling ads a "product recommendation strategy". This was either a) a plain lie b) they're actually at their last resort.
- danparsonson 6mo ago
  > This was either a) a plain lie b) they're actually at their last resort. That's thinking like a normal honest human :-) My point is that it was likely not a statement about reality (true or false) at all, but rather a phrase designed to elicit some response in the listener, such as the idea: 'Sam Altman isn't the kind of CEO who would put ads in his products unless he really had to'. He's not describing how things are, but how he wants you to think about them.
  - 3form 6mo ago
    I agree with your point. Mine was about the word doublespeak for this, which I think it's not - it's a lie in effect, but I think it is something like what you say, for which I don't know a term of. A bunch of sentences that are said in a complete disregard for truths and untruths; instead they are supposed to get you to believe something. This also kinda fits the profile of Altman that I'm getting from what I have seen - admittedly without looking in-depth. A person who is on surface a pathological liar, but in fact in a closer look he just says things. They just _happen_ to be complete lies, because that's what you need to do to achieve the goal in the set of circumstances. It's just that because it's as morally objectionable as outright lying, some people would pause and think before doing it, while he seems to just have no qualms at all.
    - danparsonson 6mo ago
      Ah, got it. Maybe 'gaslighting' cuts more to the point?
      - 3form 6mo ago
        I think gaslighting is more sinister and deliberate, but it's in a similar spectrum of manipulative behavior. Perhaps, as his statements are less filled with the style of Musk's bravado on topic of FSD, and they feel overall mid, I can propose MID: Manipulative-Impulsive Disorder?
bambax 6mo ago
> "But Sam Altman said..." to me has about as much value as "ChatGPT told me...". Or Trump. Same profile. There is something to be admired in this kind of people. They are not bound by their own words. It simply doesn't matter to them what they said a month ago, or a minute ago. Their words are attached to the instant they are pronounced; they don't concern the future, or the past. They die immediately after they have been said. It's amazing to watch.
- danparsonson 6mo ago
  For certain values of 'admired'... It is impressive, in a diabolical way, and seems to be very effective.
- 21asdffdsa12 6mo ago
  Its might makes right.. as a individual.. as a boolean bully..
- kubb 6mo ago
  Altman must be much more strategic and calculated in his communication than Trump who just kind of blurts out whatever.
kqp 6mo ago
This is something I’ve long believed to be true and important to understand, yet rarely see anybody else argue, so it makes me happy to read. I think of it like the kissing noise we make to make a pet come. You could call it the truth or a lie depending on what the pet is expecting and whether you then do it, but both judgements miss what actually happened: it didn’t even occur to us to think about whether it’s “true”, we just made that noise because we expected it to produce the desired behavior. CEOs and politicians are usually like this with humans.
- idiotsecant 6mo ago
  There is a thin layer of high functioning sociopath at the top of all human social structures. Never trust anyone who wants to lead at that level. You have more in common with a colossal squid at the bottom of the deepest trench than you do with that kind of human.
  - fluoridation 6mo ago
    Nah. People are just more adaptable to their circumstances than you think. Something I think about from time to time is sacking during war, where soldiers are allowed to do as they please with a conquered civilian population. If I applied your same reasoning, I'd have to conclude that on average there's a great number of people who are not committing atrocities just because of the fear of repercussions. What I think happens is that getting desensitized to violence and being constantly made to make violent decisions makes anymore more likely to commit a violent act that they never would have otherwise. It doesn't need a special kind of brain, it just needs special circumstances. Same for anyone in a position of power, except it's shamelessly lying and making decisions that affect hundreds or thousands of people, instead of direct violence.
    - idiotsecant 6mo ago
      There are lots of soldiers that don't rape and pillage when afforded the option to. There are plenty of good leaders who aren't sociopaths, it's just a career limiting feature. There are, in fact, a substantial proportion of us that aren't doing horrible things because they are comfortable enough that risking that comfort is worse than what they would gain.
locknitpicker 6mo ago
> No, I suspect that "I kind of think of ads as a last resort" was doublespeak for "ads are coming eventually". I don't think so. Resorting to ads is an obvious step but one that profoundly degrades the credibility of the whole service. It's a pyrrhic monetization strategy, and one that's pulled when all other options failed. It's a kin to scraping the bottom of the barrel to extract the remaining bits of value left. The reason why the statement was "I kind of think of ads as a last resort" is clearly because they were a last resort move. And here they are.
glitchc 6mo ago
> I would tend to think of someone like him as a person who uses words to achieve a specific goal, rather than someone who speaks whatever is truly on their mind. Whether those words are lies or truth or somewhere in between is irrelevant; what matters to them is the outcome. I wouldn't put Sam on some kind of pedestal, everyone seems to talk this way nowadays.
Barbing 6mo ago
>a person who uses words to achieve a specific goal “I can’t change my personality.”
latexr 6mo ago
Your assessment lines up with the assessment of the people who know Sam personally. https://archive.ph/20260414023627/https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/04/13/sam-altman-may-control-our-future-can-he-be-trusted https://archive.ph/20260414023627/https://www.newyorker.com/...
xnx 6mo ago
Sam Altman is trying to out-huckster Elon Musk. Remember when Sam said he needed $7 trillion? https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/sam-altman-seeks-trillions-of-dollars-to-reshape-business-of-chips-and-ai-89ab3db0 https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/sam-altman-seeks-trillions-of-do...
vlan0 6mo ago
[dead]
Dragonai 6mo ago
Super great analogy!

kakacik 6mo ago

Exactly this. Words are cheap these days, people do say various things to further their goals. Days where leaders stood by their words as sort of moral testament of their character are gone, probably for good. As we see many people will do or say just about anything to get more money, prestige or power.

gleenn 6mo ago
So what is the best system to get people to be invested in the general welfare of all people? What are we supposed to do?
- Antibabelic 6mo ago
  Some problems don't have solutions.
  - customguy 6mo ago
    This one does though. These issues are solely created by humans, so of course humans can solve them, that's not even a question. People who care need to keep speaking up and reaching out to each other, get together; and by doing so expose the people who don't care, or actively are against the general welfare of humans, like rocks on the beach when the tide recedes. It takes so much work, so much criminal energy, so much money and campaigns, to divide people. Whereas the opposite, people getting to know each other and working together, happens "by itself" all the time, for the most banal of reasons. Just give them some time and space together; no lobbying required, no bribes or blackmail, no psy-ops; just our innate desire to live and let live. Humans who prey on humans are sick, it's as simple as that. Humans who don't want to stand up to humans who prey on humans may not be sick, but they're not our best, that's for sure, and they must not be our gatekeepers or our compass.
    - Antibabelic 6mo ago
      People getting to know each and working together to genocide another group of people that's slightly different from them does indeed have many precedents in history. The problem with your idea is that you see "humans" as some kind of abstract unified whole. People care about their peers far more than they do about "humans" in the abstract. When you're a powerful venture capitalist, these peers are other venture capitalists for example. Some call this "class consciousness".
      - customguy 6mo ago
        > The problem with your idea is that you see "humans" as some kind of abstract unified whole. No, I don't, which greatly goes together with that not following from anything I said. I simply care about humans that are not predators way more than predators.
- greggoB 6mo ago
  Your question seems to imply that people have to be corralled towards a specific action, which to me comes across as rather cynical. Why is it not possible to lay out your arguments honestly and let people decide on the merits?
  - iugtmkbdfil834 6mo ago
    I think, part of the issue is that, as a mass of humans, we tend to be rather dumb. And they certainly don't decide on merits, in aggregate. It is somewhat questionable if they decide on merits even as individuals ( unless we expand the definition somewhat ). But it is possible I got too cynical.
    - greggoB 6mo ago
      It's a paradox: on the one hand, if we were dumb en masse, it's hard to see how we could have developed so far technologically and cultivated such complex societies. On the other: I have to agree with you, there is too much of a pattern of bewildering behaviour not to. I think what irks me is this idea that deceiving people to push them towards a specific outcome is a reliable and sound strategy, when we've seen many instances of it having the opposite effect.
notarobot123 6mo ago
For now but not for good. Neglecting moral character works as a shortcut for maybe a generation or two. But that path leads to destruction and decay eventually. It can't last.
- iugtmkbdfil834 6mo ago
  Thank you. Agreed. There are some practical limits to that path. It works in the current ecosystem partially because the resulting degradation is slow, but it is built upon societal trust. Once it is gone, it will be rather painful to restore. A new new deal will be needed, so to speak ( political evocation is accidental, but it is too late for me to coherently rewrite ).
- samiv 6mo ago
  Hard men create good times. Good times create soft men. Soft men create hard times.
threepts 6mo ago
There were never any days where leaders stood by their words. People have always used lies as tools to maintain their power whether it is the Roman Empire or 21st century AI companies. It is just human nature.

3form 6mo ago

I think doublespeak is more along the lines of calling ads a "product recommendation strategy". This was either a) a plain lie b) they're actually at their last resort.

danparsonson 6mo ago
> This was either a) a plain lie b) they're actually at their last resort. That's thinking like a normal honest human :-) My point is that it was likely not a statement about reality (true or false) at all, but rather a phrase designed to elicit some response in the listener, such as the idea: 'Sam Altman isn't the kind of CEO who would put ads in his products unless he really had to'. He's not describing how things are, but how he wants you to think about them.
- 3form 6mo ago
  I agree with your point. Mine was about the word doublespeak for this, which I think it's not - it's a lie in effect, but I think it is something like what you say, for which I don't know a term of. A bunch of sentences that are said in a complete disregard for truths and untruths; instead they are supposed to get you to believe something. This also kinda fits the profile of Altman that I'm getting from what I have seen - admittedly without looking in-depth. A person who is on surface a pathological liar, but in fact in a closer look he just says things. They just _happen_ to be complete lies, because that's what you need to do to achieve the goal in the set of circumstances. It's just that because it's as morally objectionable as outright lying, some people would pause and think before doing it, while he seems to just have no qualms at all.
  - danparsonson 6mo ago
    Ah, got it. Maybe 'gaslighting' cuts more to the point?
    - 3form 6mo ago
      I think gaslighting is more sinister and deliberate, but it's in a similar spectrum of manipulative behavior. Perhaps, as his statements are less filled with the style of Musk's bravado on topic of FSD, and they feel overall mid, I can propose MID: Manipulative-Impulsive Disorder?

bambax 6mo ago

> "But Sam Altman said..." to me has about as much value as "ChatGPT told me...". Or Trump. Same profile. There is something to be admired in this kind of people. They are not bound by their own words. It simply doesn't matter to them what they said a month ago, or a minute ago. Their words are attached to the instant they are pronounced; they don't concern the future, or the past. They die immediately after they have been said. It's amazing to watch.

danparsonson 6mo ago
For certain values of 'admired'... It is impressive, in a diabolical way, and seems to be very effective.
21asdffdsa12 6mo ago
Its might makes right.. as a individual.. as a boolean bully..
kubb 6mo ago
Altman must be much more strategic and calculated in his communication than Trump who just kind of blurts out whatever.

kqp 6mo ago

This is something I’ve long believed to be true and important to understand, yet rarely see anybody else argue, so it makes me happy to read. I think of it like the kissing noise we make to make a pet come. You could call it the truth or a lie depending on what the pet is expecting and whether you then do it, but both judgements miss what actually happened: it didn’t even occur to us to think about whether it’s “true”, we just made that noise because we expected it to produce the desired behavior. CEOs and politicians are usually like this with humans.

idiotsecant 6mo ago
There is a thin layer of high functioning sociopath at the top of all human social structures. Never trust anyone who wants to lead at that level. You have more in common with a colossal squid at the bottom of the deepest trench than you do with that kind of human.
- fluoridation 6mo ago
  Nah. People are just more adaptable to their circumstances than you think. Something I think about from time to time is sacking during war, where soldiers are allowed to do as they please with a conquered civilian population. If I applied your same reasoning, I'd have to conclude that on average there's a great number of people who are not committing atrocities just because of the fear of repercussions. What I think happens is that getting desensitized to violence and being constantly made to make violent decisions makes anymore more likely to commit a violent act that they never would have otherwise. It doesn't need a special kind of brain, it just needs special circumstances. Same for anyone in a position of power, except it's shamelessly lying and making decisions that affect hundreds or thousands of people, instead of direct violence.
  - idiotsecant 6mo ago
    There are lots of soldiers that don't rape and pillage when afforded the option to. There are plenty of good leaders who aren't sociopaths, it's just a career limiting feature. There are, in fact, a substantial proportion of us that aren't doing horrible things because they are comfortable enough that risking that comfort is worse than what they would gain.

locknitpicker 6mo ago

> No, I suspect that "I kind of think of ads as a last resort" was doublespeak for "ads are coming eventually". I don't think so. Resorting to ads is an obvious step but one that profoundly degrades the credibility of the whole service. It's a pyrrhic monetization strategy, and one that's pulled when all other options failed. It's a kin to scraping the bottom of the barrel to extract the remaining bits of value left. The reason why the statement was "I kind of think of ads as a last resort" is clearly because they were a last resort move. And here they are.

glitchc 6mo ago

> I would tend to think of someone like him as a person who uses words to achieve a specific goal, rather than someone who speaks whatever is truly on their mind. Whether those words are lies or truth or somewhere in between is irrelevant; what matters to them is the outcome. I wouldn't put Sam on some kind of pedestal, everyone seems to talk this way nowadays.

Barbing 6mo ago

>a person who uses words to achieve a specific goal “I can’t change my personality.”

latexr 6mo ago

Your assessment lines up with the assessment of the people who know Sam personally. https://archive.ph/20260414023627/https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/04/13/sam-altman-may-control-our-future-can-he-be-trusted https://archive.ph/20260414023627/https://www.newyorker.com/...

xnx 6mo ago

Sam Altman is trying to out-huckster Elon Musk. Remember when Sam said he needed $7 trillion? https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/sam-altman-seeks-trillions-of-dollars-to-reshape-business-of-chips-and-ai-89ab3db0 https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/sam-altman-seeks-trillions-of-do...

vlan0 6mo ago

[dead]

Dragonai 6mo ago

Super great analogy!