Not sure "code" belongs here. Even less sure about "illusion".
Take those away and what is left is "dismantled... by capital". Nothing new, really.
Sure, just like tank is backed by metallurgy and engineers.
>The kings and dictators of the past had a lot more capital than Silicon Valley, but could only dream of building such surveillance and propaganda capabilities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinal_Richelieu (and not only him most likely) would disagree.
Soviet union had surveillance and propaganda capabilities you can't even imagine without any of LLM etc.
Surely new tech makes things easier and cheeper, but doesn't change the basic principles.
My point is exactly this: code makes things move faster for everyone, so you can really remove if from the sentence and nothing will change. In adds no meaningful context. It mostly sells.
It can bolster democracies or undermine them. The real agency lies with those who wield it. And it's rarely the coders. It's the leaders, the platforms, the systems that choose how code is deployed.
1. How come people are able to accumulate so much capital?
2. How come people are able to use the capital to influence life of other people in all ways possible to their liking?
are more interesting and worth asking.
Yes code and capital are both "tools". But you can't just write some code and install cameras at every corner. You need some political influence to do so. And capital buys you this influence.
It’s kind of like asking why are there so many small quakes and why do there have to be great big quakes once in a while? Why don’t we just get millions more small quakes instead?
This sentence applies to "code" as well as to "capital"
Pretending code has no direct and obvious impact is rank naivety.
I do not disagree with the book's argument. I'm just pointing out (or rather expressing my doubt) that the word "code" brings no additional context to the sentence.
As others (and I) rightfully noted - code and modern tech does make things cheaper and easier, but this can be said about all advances.
The "nerd reich" is not possible without code, code is not possible without computers, computers are not possible without abacus etc.
As I see it the word "code" sells this book better than, say, "taxes". Because taxes are boring and obvious.
And isn’t social media that prefers rage over information a danger to democracy?
This is the right question.
I'll quote myself here:
1. How come people are able to accumulate so much capital?
2. How come people are able to use the capital to influence life of other people in all ways possible to their liking?
Yes code and capital are both "tools". But you can't just right some code and install cameras at every corner. You need some political influence to do so. And capital buys you this influence.
And to get this capital you should have laws that allow you to do so (tax rates, evasion etc).
Same goes for political influence.
You absolutely can. Tiny tweaks to social media feeds - what content gets promoted, what gets hidden - have massive impacts on opinions, votes, and society.
Of course “code” belongs here.
One day you're chasing terrorism, the next you're chasing ecologists, political opponents, unions, minorities, &c.
There are a huge number of threats to democracy and the biggest one is probably the total lack of principles and common sense possessed by the median voter. It is a real problem and a bigger one than some billionaire or even the consensus of the billionaires. Sometimes voters and capital come into actual conflict and generally the voters tend to win Pyrrhic victories when that happens.
Hard disagree.
The biggest problem is a misinformed electorate.
An accurate, honest and truthful press is vital for democracy; how else do people know whom to vote for! The fact this is being dismantled (often supplying deliberate misinformation) is truly worrying.
After all, the electorate is entitled to have a lack of principles and no common sense; nobody ever said democracy was perfect. However the electorate needs to be provided with an honest set facts on which they can base their decisions without cries of "fake news". Whatever their political leanings.
I agree with GP that a primary missing feature is a principled public - without principles people swing wildly in opinion depending on the topic and popular rhetoric.
I see this with much of my own family. They mostly consider themselves conservatives and Republicans of the small government and balanced budget era. Those presumed values go out the window though and when a particular political topic of the day comes up they seem to completely contradict it. The most egregious example in my family is a Ron Paul libertarian that somehow still holds those opinions while supporting virtually everything Trump does.
1) Spare us the US defaultism!
2) If we are going to make this conversation about the USA, didn't US broadcast media have a 'fairness doctrine' that was abolished some years back? Hence the growth in outlets providing heavily biased dishonest news on broadcast media? I suggest this has driven much of the popular rhetoric of which you speak.
Frankly, every country has seen a growth in biased social media "news" sources regardless as to the broadcast media fairness doctrines that still exist in those countries. Deliberate misinformation and a lack of trust in journalism is real.
2. Regarding the power of billionaires vs the power of the median voter, consider that each lever in a system deserves attention before pulling on it or reconfiguring it. How can one determine "the biggest threat to democracy" without digging into the details?
Silicon valley just happened to reside next to the hippies in the first decades
When you have too much money, it's kinda boring to keep making more of them. You want self-expression to the max extent the society will allow you.
I'm not disagreeing with you completely, but I would like to know more about what other factors you would consider to have been more impactful. I don't know that you really need hippies around to get that kind of 'california capitalist' mentality either tbf.
Recent events prove that there was nothing ideological about it. Once a positive feedback loop is established, it's difficult to break
It's less wildly successful as a political entity than Christianity or Islam.
It doesn't, although they would like you to believe so, so you avoid obtaining it.
But it definitely attracts those corrupted.
Like it's more a force than a destiny. Gravity pulls the moon down every day yet it doesn't fall on our heads.
Power is obtained through meeting people, gaining their favor, entering deals, providing them services, eventually joining their ranks and advancing to the next level on the ordinal scale. Especially in politics, "power corrupts" by definition; by the time you gain any, you're so thoroughly entangled in mutual deals and friendships with other players you're no longer an autonomous entity - and if you're not willing to do that, you will never be given the opportunity to advance.
--
[0] - Yes, there are caveats and strategems one can use to hold on to power - usually by playing people against each other to coerce ongoing support; every history period and every movie with a villain has plenty of examples. It's another discussion; my focus here is on what power is, and where it comes from.
I don’t know that I would position the USA in this way.
Different metrics lead to different “winners”:
Longevity: Imperial China
Institutional legacy: Rome
Global reach: British Empire
Scientific/cultural transmission: Islamic Caliphates
Modern dominance: United States
Another lens:
* Rome & China = stability, governance, internal cohesion.
* Britain & the US = networks, capital markets, technology leverage.
* Caliphates = knowledge platforms, cosmopolitan integration.
This book appears to be available only for preorder now, not yet published. Nobody here has read it, nobody here can read it, and even if they could, this submission will disappear off the front pages before commenters have a chance to order and read the book. Thus the comments section here is going to be useless (or at least more useless than usual).
The person who submitted the link already explained the submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46068363
Lord William Rees-Mogg being the father of Jacob Rees-Mogg, of Brexit fame.
Interesting how often you meet the same people if you just start digging a little.
> Interesting how often you meet the same people if you just start digging a little.
Endemic problem in UK politics, and a lot of other countries.
https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/60593/1/__lse.ac.uk_storage_LIBRAR...
Edit: or to put it differently, which of the two scenarios has been more likely in the past 500 years: the daughter of a blacksmith marrying a baron, or the son of a blacksmith becoming a baron through merit?
Sir Thomas More’s grandfather was a butcher - a highly stigmatized occupation. More rose to be Chancellor.
The fact that the British conquered a third of the world created many opportunities for advancement- military, commercial, artistic.
Sir John Major came from a family of musicians. When he ran for PM, his enemies said as a child he “ran away from the circus to become an accountant.”
Part of the issues is that people copy elites. A blacksmith from Birmingham would marry his daughter off to a banker, and the granddaughter off to a Baron. The family would spend money supporting artists, and build cathedrals. And eventually become “posh.”
A good example are the Rothschilds, who are currently at the height or British aristocracy, but were once grubby merchants.
Any ideology which says "the ends justify the means", or that it alone is scientific, is going to end up with a high body count.
It just so happens, tech is were the real money is now. If this was 40+ years ago, they would have ended up on Wall Street or Madison Avenue.
A lot seems about Curtis Yarvin and fans thereof.
Meaning: if you think the majority of people will be coerced to normalize this all insanity being pushed by a bunch of mindless Marxists living under the prosperity of capitalism, you will be sorely disappointed.
The USA just elected 2 communists for mayors (they don’t even hide it anymore) but here people are trying to tell us the real issue with present society is fascism.
I’ve seen how that game plays out: and it’s not pretty.
Italy had elected dozens of communist and socialist leaders, including mayors, in the 1940s. History does indeed blame the fascists for cooperating with the Nazis, not the minority parties.
If you think the historians framed the wrong guy, that's news to me. Show me some evidence that fascism is a smaller threat to America, I love a good argument.
But about my point. My point is not preferring fascism to communism: any kind of collectivism is equally bad and only brings pain and misery to the people.
My point is that presently, communism is a much bigger threat since you have a lot more communists in positions of power than fascists. Sure, it's fancy to now call fascist to anyone that defends basic common sense measures that were accepted by any Democrat as obvious under Clinton (you know, things like meritocracy, praising hard work, incarcerating violent offenders, keeping borders secure and expecting people to work in order to get money... all big red fascist flags nowadays), but you don't have single person in any real position of power of public exposure telling you proudly they are fascists.
But boy, you do have a bunch of them telling you they are "socialists", or "Marxists"... and now, you even have some telling you outright they are communists. Let's get this straight, the amount of propaganda reached such a degree of insanity in the USA, that you now have people, openly admitting they are communists without any repercussions. They are even getting elected for public office.
What's the endgame of a movement that seeks to discredit, overturn, and functionally control elections?
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Romanian_presidential_ele...
Le Pen is a particularly egregious example, given it's an embezzlement conviction and not some kind of "too racist" penalty or whatever we're imagining
The excesses of the Weimar Republic did not justify the subsequent events. Not even close.
It took me a long time to break myself out of it. I think key was getting into the deep details of passing actual policies that would have enough popular support to be sustainable, to realize its ultimately just naive/simplistic thinking, thats another impractical ideology under the hood, dressed up as something more meaningful.
Weren't the 'rules' of the United States of America written by wealthy white males who excluded women, non-whites, and the non-wealthy (eg non-land owning) from participating in the new nation?
As much as the worldwide turn to fascism worries me, I don't see the lives of most people in the world changing very drastically from any other time in history. Maybe the openness by which the privileged exercise their power is a bit higher on the historical scale, but the lives of the non-privileged, world wide, really don't change much over history. Sure, the invention of fire, electricity, etc benefitted all of mankind, but the distinctions of 'how life is lived' between the privileged and the non-privileged has always been dramatic.
When conditions change, cracks appear..
For many reasons we appear to be in an era of slower growth, but shareholders used to growth are still demanding it. That’s sticking business leaders in a really tough place.
The incentives need to change - whether through legislation, or market demands. Until then it’ll be less leg room on flights, more “offers” when you just opened your banking app to pay a bill, and more sanctioned spam in your inbox.
I truly believe plenty of folks are fed up and a backlash is coming that’ll be a mix of legislation and companies emerging that cater to informed customers. I’m optimistic!
That's a really naive take, for you to enjoy this "ideal capitalism" there are hundred thousands of people who've been seeing and feeling these cracks for decades if not centuries, it's just slowly reaching your neck of the woods
So which one is it? Oh wait, it's a modern progressive, "calling everything I don't like every bad name I remember from high school history"! Are they also nativist globalists and authoritarian libertarians? I bet they are!
skrebbel•2mo ago
scandox•2mo ago
skrebbel•2mo ago
I struggle to imagine that anyone not already sympathetic to the high school classic "nerds suck" world view is going to suddenly be swayed by this funny book title.
sach1•2mo ago
scandox•2mo ago
jamil7•2mo ago
jve•2mo ago
Edit: Oh, wow, mentioning this guy is surely controversial, sorry. However discussing whether he is a nerd, understands engineering on very deep level/gets his hands dirty OR he only manages people - there must be some psychological aspect related, a form of disagreement to discredit or have a hard time believing it can actually be true.
Here is a list of credible persons commenting on Musk whether he understands engineering or not. With all the sources: https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/k1e0ta/eviden...
adev_•2mo ago
Spoiler: He is not. But he is very good at faking it.
Anytime he tries to give a serious opinion on anything related to computers: It is laughably bad and out of touch (SQL, compilers, languages, performance, etc... ).
He definitively has a scientific background but definitively not "Tech" as far as computer are concerned.
sam-cop-vimes•2mo ago
imtringued•2mo ago
Martin Eberhard was the technical co-founder of Tesla and Elon Musk is trying his best to erase his contributions to Tesla.
adev_•2mo ago
But that has nothing to do with the valley chips and computer nerdery
irthomasthomas•2mo ago
tim333•2mo ago
Eberhard wasn't that technical and was the CEO in the early years.
delichon•2mo ago
adev_•2mo ago
mikkupikku•2mo ago
delichon•2mo ago
tim333•2mo ago
mikkupikku•2mo ago
(Subtle things, like huge firetrucks parked straight across the road.)
ben_w•2mo ago
The AI isn't good enough. I'm starting to suspect that current ML learning rates can't be good enough in reasonable wall-clock timeframes due to how long it takes between relevant examples for them to learn from.
It's fine to lean on other sensory modalities (including LIDAR, radar, ultrasound, whatever else you fancy) until the AI gets good enough.
delichon•2mo ago
I predict a cusp to be reached in the next few years when safety advocates flip from trying to slow down self driving to trying to mandate it.
ben_w•2mo ago
Unfortunately, the only stats about Tesla's FSD that I can find are crowd-sourced, and what they show is that despite recent improvements, they're still not particularly good.
Also unfortunately, the limited geo-fencing of the areas in which the robo-taxi service operates, and that they initially* launched the service without the permits to avoid needing a human safety monitor, strongly suggests that it hasn't generalised to enough domains yet.
Lack of generality means that it's possible for you to be 100% right about Tesla's FSD on the roads you normally use, and yet if you took them a little bit outside that area you might find the AI shocking you by reliably disengaging for no human-apparent reason while at speed and leaving you upside down in a field.
* I'm not sure what has or hasn't changed since launch: all the news reporting on this was from sites with more space dedicated to ads than to copy, so IMO slop news irregardless of if it was written by an AI or not
Starman_Jones•2mo ago
ben_w•2mo ago
What I think went wrong with Musk/Tesla/FSD is that he tried to cut costs here to save money before it would actually save money.
trinsic2•2mo ago
fragmede•2mo ago
Treegarden•2mo ago
To be honest, I’m actually interested in this hypothesis: is he legitimately skilled/knowledgeable, or is he indeed faking it? And for either side I would like to see evidence. This question is interesting to me because some of his companies have made substantial contributions to pushing the frontier of technology (reusable landing, high launch cadence, electric cars, energy).
If he is really faking it, that might even be good, because the success of his companies might be replicable and could continue without him. But what if he is not?
adev_•2mo ago
On a domain side to nerdery: video games. There is zero doubt he is faking it entirely.
The streams he publishes on game like PoE or Elden Ring, have been long commented on online boards
https://www.reddit.com/r/EnoughMuskSpam/comments/1hwe0id/elo...
And honestly, I can understand it entirely.
He has a public image of "geek/need hero" that is honestly inspiring. And that benefits him a lot because it bring people to trust his decisions. He has all the interest of the world to maintain this image.
freilanzer•2mo ago
People he hired for these companies made contributions.
Treegarden•2mo ago
petra•2mo ago
anthem2025•2mo ago
n4r9•2mo ago
mikkupikku•2mo ago
I think it's fair to say he at least was a nerd. He was a dweeb getting beaten up in school, burying himself in books and computers at home. His skills are doubtlessly outdated now, but does that really mean much? Woz's skills (which to be perfectly clear, outclassed Musk's by miles) are doubtlessly out of date now too, but nobody would say Woz isn't a nerd.
I think the part where he grew into an unstable dirtbag might be influencing the way people see him now. Saying that is is, or at least was, a genuine nerd shouldn't be seen as any sort of excuse for his scamming, lying, etc.
sidibe•2mo ago
mikkupikku•2mo ago
I do believe he read a lot of sci-fi in his youth, if only because that would fit the pattern of a young boy who doesn't get along well with their peers and turns towards solitary pursuits like computer programming. He seems exactly the sort to have read lots of Heinlein.
ben_w•2mo ago
The only real crimes are reading/writing someone's brain without permission (at which point others may call you names and stop inviting you to social events) or destroying a consciousness without backups (where you'll get permanent supervision to make sure you don't do it again). Most biological citizens have a full-brain computer interface for backups and general fun, called a "neural lace".
The AI Minds in charge of everything give themselves fanciful names, which Musk has used for his SpaceX drone ships.
For the reverse:
Almost every biological citizen is gender-fluid, can change physical gender by willing it, and there's a certain expectation that you try things both ways around so you know how to be a good lover. They dislike explosive population growth regardless of if it's organic or machine reproduction, and as everyone can get pregnant if they want to (because everyone can be a woman if they want to and it all works), it's considered quite scandalous to have more than one child.
It's sufficiently post-scarcity that money is considered a sign of poverty. They mostly avoid colonising planets, instead living on ships, or on habitats so large that if one was located at any Earth-Sun Lagrange point (including the one on the far side of the sun), we could see it.
tim333•2mo ago
xg15•2mo ago
And possibly a genuine obsession with (rightwing-ish) meme/youth culture, which I think got him a lot of his initial followers on twitter/reddit/4chan/etc.
actionfromafar•2mo ago
tim333•2mo ago
ben_w•2mo ago
Smart, but not as smart as he thinks he is. Not good with anything interpersonal. Flair for the dramatic (and dad jokes) at the expense of those working with him.
shawn_w•2mo ago
happymellon•2mo ago
Just a savvy investor, and as far as I understand, hasn't really worked on any of it. His contributions were rants until he just took ketamine.
His work was making a yelp clone.
tim333•2mo ago
beAbU•2mo ago
tim333•2mo ago
youngtaff•2mo ago
happymellon•2mo ago
(Boring company...)
FranzFerdiNaN•2mo ago
robocat•2mo ago
Aside: I don't understand why they even mention what journalists think - only engineers opinions matter when judging engineering ability.
jve•2mo ago
Or append &t=1h2m3s to the link to prevent writing long sentences on where to seek and save users from manual seeking :)
sam-cop-vimes•2mo ago
If profit maximisation is the ultimate goal every smart individual chases, the current trajectory seems inevitable?
disgruntledphd2•2mo ago
I think that you definitely need to count him. He's always been a massive nerd, his attempts to bulk up and become a MMA competitor notwithstanding.
lagniappe•2mo ago
a lot of us nerds value physical strength, it's 2025, we're not mouthbreathers anymore.
RealityVoid•2mo ago
lagniappe•2mo ago
PNewling•2mo ago
Well, we can't completely prove that...[0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_in_a_vat
disgruntledphd2•2mo ago
Sure, I don't disagree. I just put that in to prevent people from claiming he was a jock now because of that (which would clearly be absurd).
JuniperMesos•2mo ago
(Who wrote all those 80s movies? Bookworms! Who acted in them? Theater kids!)
tekla•2mo ago
lo_zamoyski•2mo ago
There is an unspoken presumption many people live believing that the various qualities people can have must be evenly divided among people, because somehow it would otherwise be “unfair”. Got brawn? Can’t have brains. Got X? Can’t have Y. Etc. It’s a coping strategy for weak people with big egos.
The fact is that in primary school, a “nerd” wasn’t necessarily all that “intelligent” even in some narrow sense. If you are inept at something or insecure about it, you might gravitate toward things that avoid it. So you invest time in that activity.
Of course, if the brain is the seat of intelligence, and the brain is just a part of the body, and an intelligent brain is a healthy brain, then it follows that a healthy body overall is more likely to have a healthy brain and thus an intelligent brain. Conpare this with the ancient expression “Mens sana in corpore sano”.
pyuser583•2mo ago
I have a relative who is illiterate despite graduating from HS and attending a reputable college (for 2 years).
Very bright man, and able to use technology to hide his illiteracy. Listens to very dense books on Audible.
Der_Einzige•2mo ago
lo_zamoyski•2mo ago
expedition32•2mo ago
My dad died from a heart attack in his fourties and my mom only has 30% lung capacity left thanks to smoking.
Your health always catches up with you and it's better to prevent trouble.
alecco•2mo ago
lagniappe•2mo ago
orzig•2mo ago
lagniappe•2mo ago
JuniperMesos•2mo ago
myvoiceismypass•2mo ago
nmfisher•2mo ago
pjc50•2mo ago
Wozniak is still alive and seemingly not in the rightwing set, although also too retired to count as "leadership".
sillyfluke•2mo ago
Though I'm curious what the take of "founders first" type of VCs like YC on the Figma IPO is, after the acquisition by Adobe was blocked. Whatever the stock price of Figma is now, would they specifically argue that of the two outcomes the Figma IPO was worse for the founders? To be clear, if that acquisition wasn't blocked the IPO wouldn't have happened.
Lerc•2mo ago
The thing that seemed really inconguous to me was that he actually made the amazing tech. I don't think I have ever encountered a personality like that who actually made things. Certainly I've seen them talking about how great the thing they made is, but invariably, to them, I made means 'my employees made'
Which is not to say that there aren't toxic people who do actually make things. They exist, but it presents somewhat differently to the 'Tech bro' archetype.
tim333•2mo ago
ycombigrator•2mo ago
His driving interest was always games (master standard in chess at 13, five-time winner of the all-round world board games championship, video game programmer in his teens then his own studio in his 20s).
He's the end game boss of nerdland.
tim333•2mo ago
myvoiceismypass•2mo ago
wtcactus•2mo ago
nephihaha•2mo ago
sillyfluke•2mo ago
rolandog•2mo ago
One must not be so cowardly as to deny that materials and technology can be misused or deny that their purpose is of oppression for fear of being attacked by group-thinkers.
"The unexamined life is not worth living" as Socrates put it. So, I invite you not play the usual game of narrowly looking at a single if statement and conclude "there's nothing political in this"; but rather look at the bigger picture... the asymmetry in access to information, resources, weapons, and how that impacts everyone's lives...
If we don't admit that there's a couple dozen people with immeasurable wealth and resources who have questionable intentions and opinions that affect our day-to-day lives, then we won't be able to prevent worse outcomes in a timely manner.
tim333•2mo ago
A lot of the uber-nerds are just regular nerds who got lucky, not part of some evil genius cabal. By all means keep an eye on them but I think for the most part they are regular people.
array_key_first•2mo ago
paulryanrogers•2mo ago
lo_zamoyski•2mo ago
sgnelson•2mo ago
pigpop•2mo ago
anyone can be evil, anyone can be good, anyone can be both even on the same day or be seen as one contemporarily and the other historically
so perhaps painting specific groups of people as the incarnation of pure evil is not a good idea
unless you're trying to sell a book or get ad revenue
lo_zamoyski•2mo ago
whattheheckheck•2mo ago
mc32•2mo ago
Arainach•2mo ago
It is comforting to think that there is a group of "evil people" who are innately different, but most evil is done by people similar to people you know.
Just because your neighbor Joe or your aunt Bertha is a "great person" who coaches the local sports team doesn't mean they aren't evil if they also spend their days working to target minorities and get them thrown in jail or worse - or building the tools used for authoritarians and voting for them.
b0Ring•2mo ago
They're typical biology like everyone else but politically and economically able to influence everyone else's lives.
rolandog•2mo ago
In statistics, they'd be outliers and they'd be deleted from the dataset. In the news, it would be called bias. In a trampoline, they'd pierce the thing and drill down the ground; so, any outsized influence they have literally stamps out the life of a (trampoline) party.
rolandog•2mo ago
Not to be dismissive of your point, but this may be a thought-terminating cliché. That's not an argument that would hold up in court against pedophiles and murderers; I would argue that it shouldn't also hold for fascists.
The last one... well, we thought that decent people were the norm and that people would understand the nuance and spirit of laws; however, that hasn't been the case, so you see evil fascists skirting by because they're convinced that "the letter" of the law didn't specifically ban something, so it must be permissible.
> so perhaps painting specific groups of people as the incarnation of pure evil is not a good idea
Sorry to burst your bubble, but people consistently doing evil things that don't course-correct once exposed to new information are evil; those are the people we're referring to... (i.e. "a turd by any other name would smell as shit").
"We live in a society", we have a sort of social contract with each other (meaning, it's in our best interest to be nice to one another) and laws that we follow (in case someone isn't following the former).
I think most people would agree that 10 or 20 years ago, we'd be (mostly) lineally progressing towards peace and unity (glossing over some wars, as most people wanted to believe that "once that is over, we can proceed with 'progress'")...
Most people believed it so, that we didn't really give any attention to people that asked "what do we do if the fascists rise to power?"... Many laughed it off! "Fascists!? That's SO 1930's Europe! Besides, everyone knows that fascists are evil, and no one wants to be evil, right?".
So, you can imagine that almost nobody had "coordinated fascist international takeover" nor "brainwashed pedophile-apologist fascist takeover of the US" on their bingo cards. Interesting times...
leobg•2mo ago
Bettina Stangneth, “Eichmann Before Jerusalem” (2014)
https://newcriterion.com/article/the-profundity-of-evil/
spopejoy•2mo ago
sunrunner•2mo ago
tim333•2mo ago
leobg•2mo ago
nkmnz•2mo ago
blurbleblurble•2mo ago
hulitu•2mo ago
With the help of the CIA. /s
e40•2mo ago
I also witnessed many other founders doing really terrible things. It’s a meme around here that technical founders mostly get screwed by the time IPO or M&A proceeds are divvied up. I saw that time and again. Yes, there are exceptions, bit they are rare.
EDIT: was on mobile, wanted to add more:
IMO, the system we have sorts for sociopaths. The people with the power (politicians, CEOs, etc) are far more likely to be sociopaths than in the regular population because the rewards are so great. Look at the Paypal "mafia" (as they are called by many), and their exploits after Paypal.
Here's the way I look at whether someone got lucky or not: were they a 1-hit wonder or did they serially create companies with vast wealth? The former are people that got lucky. I've known some. The latter are mostly sociopaths. I've met many. They are predators. Some of them actually triggered my flight/flight response, and until that happened the first time, I had never in my life (in a business setting) experienced that. I now know what it means, when I feel that feeling. What is interesting is that my body sometimes knows it before my brain.
SergeAx•2mo ago
sillyfluke•2mo ago
Everyone usually has this stance by default until they think some batshit crazy redlines have been crossed regardless of what end of the political spectrum they reside in and decide to adopt an "us vs them, hope for peace, prepare for war" approach.
I'm sure you have some "if they actually do <xyz> then I'll adopt a more alarmed stance" line in the sand, it's just drawn at a different point probably. That's why it's best to talk specifics of the case instead of declaring an abstract high-road stance.
skrebbel•2mo ago
As a nerd running a startup, I dislike the tendency of many journalists to blanket blame “nerds” for the behavior of nutjobs like Musk. It’s pure “us vs them” thinking, blaming the group for the behavior of a few.
sillyfluke•2mo ago
skrebbel•2mo ago
Though then again, who could the “them” be if not “nerds” and “Silicon Valley”? That’s who the book calls the enemy.
zrn900•2mo ago
tremon•2mo ago
> There is a war between those who say there is a war and the ones who say there isn't
- Leonard Cohen, 1974
dialup_sounds•2mo ago
sigwinch•2mo ago
zrn900•2mo ago
kgwxd•2mo ago