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Yes, and this is the paradox right at the heart of 'Hacker' in 'Hacker News' aka an arbitrary usurping of established norms - notably without moral impetus. In

Yes, and this is the paradox right at the heart of 'Hacker' in 'Hacker News' aka an arbitrary usurping of established norms - notably without moral impetus. Institutionalists view the very word 'Hacker' as 'Wrong' because they're essentially 'Rule Breakers'. But sometimes rules are bad, and need to be broken. Libertarians view rules as constraints, so why not break them? More often than not, rules are there fore a reason. (Obviously it's complicated) There's a huge grey area there but what is not grey ... is the issue of the 'morally neutral' impetus that the author is talking about - the seed of which is right at the root of 'Hacker'. YC does not say 'build something useful and beneficial' - they say 'build something useful'. Aka no moral impetus towards the greater good. 'Build a gear that is useful to other gears, without concern for what the gears are actually doing'. It seems benign when there's no power involved - aka startups. But it's not benign when there's huge concentration of power. That system leads to endemic competition - which - at the highest levels is economic warfare, or even actual warfare. There is no flattening in these systems - those things end up in Feudal Power Structures - everyone 'somewhere on the pyramid'. If you're 'under Musk' right now - anywhere (and that includes literally almost every VC for whom it's too risky to say anything critical, or so many people in finance tangentially related to $1.5T IPO, or business etc) - you dare not speak out against him. That's the opposite of 'flat or decentralized' - it's just power without democratic impetus, techno authoritarianism, which is paradoxically the thing they seem to lament.

iamnothere 6mo ago
Hacking in its original sense is not about rule breaking (except maybe implied rules). It’s about finding ways around limitations. This could be finding unusual routes through a campus, as when the term was invented, or altering software to work the way you wanted it to. Often the only limits to using a tool the way you want to use it are in your mind. Hacking was distinct from phreaking (illegal use of the phone system/theft of services) and cracking (breaking copy protection). It’s only later that people started using “hacking” to be synonymous with these terms as well as attacking systems, stealing passwords, etc. “Hacking” in its original sense is a good thing. It’s applied creativity, nothing wrong with that. I think that maybe you understand this because you refer to hacking as breaking norms. The thing is, uncodified norms in a society are often tools of the powerful. “You violated the norm!” while the norm is flexible is a great way to shut down any and all competition. Especially when wielded by those with the resources to shape the media. Because of this, norms that aren’t codified will eventually be broken in a complex society. They don’t have to be codified by law, many norms in Japan for instance are defined by what it is to “be Japanese”. (But they are an ethnically homogenous society, so they are able to pull this off.) Hackers are just ahead of the curve.
- bluegatty 6mo ago
  Thoughtful. Yes 'hack and 'hacking' [1] (Google Ngram Viewer) The traditional use of 'hack' was meant to imply 'half baked' or 'not good' and often used as an insult 'that guy is a hack' etc. 'Hack' as in 'tinkering and improvisation' is relatively new - and it came about at roughly the same time as the 'Phreak' version of 'hack'. Yes - of course norms can simply benefit those with power, I hinted at that, but on the other end: "Hackers are just ahead of the curve" ... if the dissolution of society is 'ahead of the curve' ... For every rule that is broken, probably 95 times out of 100, it as broken for selfish or irresponsible or self aggrandizing reasons. 'Little Egos' are just as capable of acting callously as 'Powerful Egos' and usually without any self awareness. But yes - even in the moments were 'norms should probably be broken' - the 'new norms' can only possibly come about from the 5% which are creating positive new norms, and there underlies the 'Venture Capital' motivation and relationship to 'Hacking'. And that's exactly the essence of the fallacy of the libertarian creed -the churlish assumption that 'rules are the arbitrary imposition of those with power' and that somehow breaking them is more likely good than not, and that one should aspire to be 'ahead of the curve'. The only way out of that trap is a consistent application of a 'moral concern'. Obviously, we can argue about what 'moral' is forever, but at very minimum it's a consideration of the 'greater good', which is fundamentally at odds with the egoism at the root of 'breaking the limitations' which are seen to be constraining the desires of a given ego. [1] https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Hack%2Chacking%2Chack%2CHacking&year_start=1800&year_end=2022&corpus=en&smoothing=3 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Hack%2Chacking...
  - pdonis 6mo ago
    > the libertarian creed -the churlish assumption that 'rules are the arbitrary imposition of those with power' and that somehow breaking them is more likely good than not This is certainly churlish, but it's not at all "the libertarian creed". People who break rules just for the sake of breaking them aren't libertarians, they're idiots. I agree there are lots of those around, and that many, if not most, people who crow about "breaking rules" are doing it for selfish or irresponsible or self-aggrandizing reasons. But those people aren't libertarians. The libertarian creed is that there are different kinds of rules, and you treat them in different ways. And one key part of that is precisely the "moral concern" that you talk about. Libertarianism includes the non-aggression principle: don't violate other people's rights. (Some, including me, would say that's a bedrock tenet of libertarianism.) If breaking a rule would do that, you don't break the rule. And indeed lots of the rules we have in place in our society are there for that very reason--because breaking them would mean violating someone's rights. That doesn't just include obvious cases like the laws against things like murder. It includes rules about fiduciary responsibility when you're taking care of other people's money (someone mentioned Paypal upthread). And it includes norms that aren't codified into rules, like "don't take your users' data without their consent or even knowledge, and then sell it for profit". Doing it at scale to billions of people, as tech giants do, doesn't change that, and "libertarian creed" isn't a get out of jail free card.
danaris 6mo ago
> they say 'build something useful'. Do they? Or do they just say "build something that will make us money"? Seems to me even "useful" would be more moral than the reality.

iamnothere 6mo ago

Hacking in its original sense is not about rule breaking (except maybe implied rules). It’s about finding ways around limitations. This could be finding unusual routes through a campus, as when the term was invented, or altering software to work the way you wanted it to. Often the only limits to using a tool the way you want to use it are in your mind. Hacking was distinct from phreaking (illegal use of the phone system/theft of services) and cracking (breaking copy protection). It’s only later that people started using “hacking” to be synonymous with these terms as well as attacking systems, stealing passwords, etc. “Hacking” in its original sense is a good thing. It’s applied creativity, nothing wrong with that. I think that maybe you understand this because you refer to hacking as breaking norms. The thing is, uncodified norms in a society are often tools of the powerful. “You violated the norm!” while the norm is flexible is a great way to shut down any and all competition. Especially when wielded by those with the resources to shape the media. Because of this, norms that aren’t codified will eventually be broken in a complex society. They don’t have to be codified by law, many norms in Japan for instance are defined by what it is to “be Japanese”. (But they are an ethnically homogenous society, so they are able to pull this off.) Hackers are just ahead of the curve.

bluegatty 6mo ago
Thoughtful. Yes 'hack and 'hacking' [1] (Google Ngram Viewer) The traditional use of 'hack' was meant to imply 'half baked' or 'not good' and often used as an insult 'that guy is a hack' etc. 'Hack' as in 'tinkering and improvisation' is relatively new - and it came about at roughly the same time as the 'Phreak' version of 'hack'. Yes - of course norms can simply benefit those with power, I hinted at that, but on the other end: "Hackers are just ahead of the curve" ... if the dissolution of society is 'ahead of the curve' ... For every rule that is broken, probably 95 times out of 100, it as broken for selfish or irresponsible or self aggrandizing reasons. 'Little Egos' are just as capable of acting callously as 'Powerful Egos' and usually without any self awareness. But yes - even in the moments were 'norms should probably be broken' - the 'new norms' can only possibly come about from the 5% which are creating positive new norms, and there underlies the 'Venture Capital' motivation and relationship to 'Hacking'. And that's exactly the essence of the fallacy of the libertarian creed -the churlish assumption that 'rules are the arbitrary imposition of those with power' and that somehow breaking them is more likely good than not, and that one should aspire to be 'ahead of the curve'. The only way out of that trap is a consistent application of a 'moral concern'. Obviously, we can argue about what 'moral' is forever, but at very minimum it's a consideration of the 'greater good', which is fundamentally at odds with the egoism at the root of 'breaking the limitations' which are seen to be constraining the desires of a given ego. [1] https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Hack%2Chacking%2Chack%2CHacking&year_start=1800&year_end=2022&corpus=en&smoothing=3 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Hack%2Chacking...
- pdonis 6mo ago
  > the libertarian creed -the churlish assumption that 'rules are the arbitrary imposition of those with power' and that somehow breaking them is more likely good than not This is certainly churlish, but it's not at all "the libertarian creed". People who break rules just for the sake of breaking them aren't libertarians, they're idiots. I agree there are lots of those around, and that many, if not most, people who crow about "breaking rules" are doing it for selfish or irresponsible or self-aggrandizing reasons. But those people aren't libertarians. The libertarian creed is that there are different kinds of rules, and you treat them in different ways. And one key part of that is precisely the "moral concern" that you talk about. Libertarianism includes the non-aggression principle: don't violate other people's rights. (Some, including me, would say that's a bedrock tenet of libertarianism.) If breaking a rule would do that, you don't break the rule. And indeed lots of the rules we have in place in our society are there for that very reason--because breaking them would mean violating someone's rights. That doesn't just include obvious cases like the laws against things like murder. It includes rules about fiduciary responsibility when you're taking care of other people's money (someone mentioned Paypal upthread). And it includes norms that aren't codified into rules, like "don't take your users' data without their consent or even knowledge, and then sell it for profit". Doing it at scale to billions of people, as tech giants do, doesn't change that, and "libertarian creed" isn't a get out of jail free card.

danaris 6mo ago

> they say 'build something useful'. Do they? Or do they just say "build something that will make us money"? Seems to me even "useful" would be more moral than the reality.