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I think PG is conflating the personal spite of Internet trolls with the ruthless drive to acquire wealth that marks out investment bankers, warlords and drug de
by PaulAJ 12y ago
I think PG is conflating the personal spite of Internet trolls with the ruthless drive to acquire wealth that marks out investment bankers, warlords and drug dealers. The latter might do some very nasty or underhanded things, but they regard it as "just business", as opposed to the personal bile you get from trolls.
Trollery is certainly not conducive to success because it destroys trust between you and the people you need to work for you. But if you can create a trusting circle of cronies then together you can lead them to do great but terrible things.
- tormeh 12y agoConclusion: Being mean doesn't pay, being ruthless does.
- regency 12y agoMean is an umbrella term that could be a lot of things, including ruthless. I'll use parallel analogies to make my point: Mean is to Martial Arts as Ruthless is to Goju Ryu Karate.
- crimsonalucard 12y agoIsn't ruthlessness just a type of meanness?
- YuriNiyazov 12y agoIt's not PG that's doing that conflating, it's the rest of the commenters on this thread. Edit To Downvoters: I am not being randomly flippant. Larger explanation here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8674961 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8674961