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We're hearing about troubles at Nest

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Re: We're hearing about troubles at Nest

#251
post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

timely.. "On this day (February 15) 2415 years ago, Socrates was sentenced to death by people of Athens. " https://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy/comments/45wefo/on_this_...

We should really get rid of those myths. Yes Socrates was executed. Yes he was teaching students philosophy/science (there was no difference in antiquity). The guy who told his story was a student of his, a big fan of him, and absolutely did not agree with the judgement of the people, but there's a huge but here: You may want to google "thirty tyrants" and read a bit and you'll quickly see there's more to the story.…

what myths are you referring to?

it may be more help to link sources that support your conclusions

i admit a lack of historical context to many texts i have read and my only exposure to 'the thirty' is through plato without any supplemental research of my own on the subject so my prejudices are his

because of this i did as you suggested and did a search for 'thirty tyrants' and i only found material that conflicted and confused your comment as here stated

from the wiki(o):

    Due to their desire to remain in complete control 
    over Athens, the Thirty sought to exile or kill anyone
    who outwardly opposed their regime. Socrates was one of
    the several citizens who chose to oppose the oligarchy,
    and with that opposition came the endangerment of his life.
which appears to state the opposite of what you claimed

also from the wiki you can see that the leader of the thirty, critias, was indeed a former pupil of socrates, but the relationship seems to have ended and as such noting critias was a pupil of socrates seems to be judging the teacher for the ills of the student

plato talks about the thirty a number of times..

from his seventh letter(i):

    In my youth I went through the same 
    experience as many other men. I fancied
    that if, early in life, I became my own 
    master, I should at once embark on a 
    political career. 
    
    And I found myself confronted with the 
    following occurrences in the public 
    affairs of my own city. The existing 
    constitution being generally condemned, 
    a revolution took place, and fifty-one men 
    came to the front as rulers of the 
    revolutionary government, namely eleven in 
    the city and ten in the Peiraeus-each of 
    these bodies being in charge of the market 
    and municipal matters-while thirty were 
    appointed rulers with full powers over 
    public affairs as a whole. 
    
    Some of these were relatives and acquaintances 
    of mine, and they at once invited me to share 
    in their doings, as something to which I had 
    a claim. The effect on me was not surprising 
    in the case of a young man. 
    
    I considered that they would, of course, so 
    manage the State as to bring men out of a bad 
    way of life into a good one. So I watched them 
    very closely to see what they would do. 
    
    And seeing, as I did, that in quite a short time 
    they made the former government seem by comparison 
    something precious as gold-for among other things 
    they tried to send a friend of mine, the aged 
    Socrates, whom I should scarcely scruple to describe 
    as the most upright man of that day, with some other 
    persons to carry off one of the citizens by force to 
    execution, in order that, whether he wished it, or not, 
    he might share the guilt of their conduct; but he 
    would not obey them, risking all consequences in 
    preference to becoming a partner in their iniquitous 
    deeds-seeing all these things and others of the same 
    kind on a considerable scale, I disapproved of their 
    proceedings, and withdrew from any connection with 
    the abuses of the time.
here we have a politically minded plato with a sudden opportunity to become a politician because his friends, socratic pupil associations, and family just performed a coup on what was considered a generally reviled existing governing body

but decided to wait a bit and found his reluctance supported as they quickly became tyrants making the previously reviled government 'seem by comparison something precious as gold'

then he goes on to recount how socrates put himself at great risk to refuse to gather dissidents for execution

a story that plato recounts in socrates' apology(ii) in first person through socrates:

    But when the oligarchy of the Thirty was in power,
    they sent for me and four others into the rotunda, 
    and bade us bring Leon the Salaminian from Salamis, 
    as they wanted to execute him. 
    
    This was a specimen of the sort of commands which 
    they were always giving with the view of implicating 
    as many as possible in their crimes; and then I 
    showed, not in words only, but in deed, that, if I 
    may be allowed to use such an expression, I cared 
    not a straw for death, and that my only fear was the 
    fear of doing an unrighteous or unholy thing. 
    
    For the strong arm of that oppressive power did not 
    frighten me into doing wrong; and when we came out 
    of the rotunda the other four went to Salamis and 
    fetched Leon, but I went quietly home. 
    
    For which I might have lost my life, had not the 
    power of the Thirty shortly afterwards come to an 
    end. And to this many will witness.
so according to plato, and apparently many who will bear witness, socrates refused a call from the thirty to execute one who spoke against their tyranny

from salamis' wiki(iii):

    From these texts, it is clear that Leon of Salamis 
    had an honorable reputation, he was put to death by 
    the Thirty, and his execution was publicly recognized 
    as unjust and unwarranted.
and a widely believed wrongful execution at that

investigating your claims has found me wholly opposing conclusions

i am indifferent to the righteousness of socrates the man but your slander stands unsupported

there is plenty in plato that could be argued the work of lunacy but i am unable to find your purported support for this tyranny

this quote from the apology(ii) is one of my favourites:

    Is there not here conceit of knowledge, which is a 
    disgraceful sort of ignorance? And this is the point 
    in which, as I think, I am superior to men in general, 
    and in which I might perhaps fancy myself wiser than 
    other men, - that whereas I know but little of the 
    world below, I do not suppose that I know
i free myself from thinking i know that which i am without knowledge of

(o) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Tyrants

(i) http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/seventh_letter.html

(ii) http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/apology.html

(iii) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_of_Salamis

Re: We're hearing about troubles at Nest

#252
post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can't tell for sure, but it teaches us something, and that's the best we can hope for.

Socrates also taught that we should fight to kill democracy because it effectively means that the state is not run according to what is "morally right", but instead is run by idiots who don't think they're idiots. Socrates also claims the fact that his students overthrew the government and implemented this idea of governing by "moral right" and proceeded to kill thousands of people. He claims that the fact that they…

i addressed your seeming confusion on the subject in another thread.. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11109040

Re: We're hearing about troubles at Nest

#253
post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should really get rid of those myths. Yes Socrates was executed. Yes he was teaching students philosophy/science (there was no difference in antiquity). The guy who told his story was a student of his, a big fan of him, and absolutely did not agree with the judgement of the people, but there's a huge but here: You may want to google "thirty tyrants" and read a bit and you'll quickly see there's more to the story.…

what myths are you referring to? it may be more help to link sources that support your conclusions i admit a lack of historical context to many texts i have read and my only exposure to 'the thirty' is through plato without any supplemental research of my own on the subject so my prejudices are his because of this i did as you suggested and did a search for 'thirty tyrants' and i only found material that conflicted a…

You have most of the data there. I think you just need to read through it again. You will find that Socrates taught the thirty tyrants, that he was a fierce enemy of democracy (which was most definitely not a reviled body at the time, unless you mean reviled by Socrates and his pupils. It was generally agreed that the democracy was less effective than "something else", but very little agreement on which exact "something else" would be better. For Socrates, morals, as defined by the philosophers (ie. him) was superior).

It is true that a while after the coup had happened Socrates at one point refused to cooperate with them. But what happened there was that he made an enemy of one (or perhaps more) of the thirty tyrants, who then challenged him to bring Leon of Salamis for execution (which, to me seems to indicate he was part of the thirty tyrants government, but that isn't the general interpretation). Shortly after that the thirty tyrants were overthrown.

Next there was a decision by the new government, that Socrates was not directly guilty, but was never to teach again, never to have students again. He immediately violated it, and after a while there was another incident by his students against the state. They were executed and immediately after so was Socrates.

My issue is that while Socrates getting executed "for teaching science", while technically correct, fails to mention that his teaching of science was closely related to a mass murder that happened in Athens, followed by him committing an immediate violation of the outcome of a "court case", which was clearly related to yet another incident, an attack on "parliament".

Would you have let Socrates continue his teaching after such events, after one in 20 of the people you knew got executed by his students, and he is involved in an attempt to repeat that experience ? Whilst of course the decision to execute him does not pass a 21st century moral test, don't you think that if this happened in America today that he would disappear behind bars for a few decades ? It is hard, I think, to argue the case that Socrates should have gone free here.

I feel leaving this critical context out does disrespect to the story and paints a wholly wrong picture of both who Socrates was and even to an extent leaves out critical context when it comes to his teachings. Socrates believed in there being one correct answer to any and all questions (maybe unknown, but still a singular correct answer, a grand truth), to be provided by philosophers, that had to be imposed on everyone. His disagreement with the thirty tyrants was not the manner of their governing, but the content.

Re: We're hearing about troubles at Nest

#254
post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not usually. People who do that think they're saying something that someone needs to hear, but they're usually either wrong, or saying it in a manner that does make them an asshole.

I disagree. Most people don’t want to hear the truth and will take anything they don’t want to hear as a personal attack against them. I’ve seen it time and time again.. and then pushed out on social media to make the person that said it look like the bad guy...and since it’s usually one person against another, it’s impossible to defend. This is why when the technology gets cheap enough, I will have a secret body cam…

Speaking of the truth: Sterling lost his basketball team because of private recordings of him being a racist, not hearsay. Then he proceeded to dig a deeper hole publicly. That is: a lapel-camera would not have exonerated him.

Here's some advice, since you think you can take it. When striving to correct others: (a) Make sure you're actually correct (b) make sure you're doing it to reach a common goal, rather than to uplift yourself and (c) understand that a defensive reaction is not a weakness, it's an entirely normal human reaction, and try to empathize with the person as you deliver the hard news.

A lot of people think that others don't want to hear the truth, but it's not that. Most people want to know what's going on. What most people don't want to endure is the embarrassment of being wrong in front of someone -- which is an entirely different thing.

People get corrected on stuff all the time and take it in stride. It's when there is a blow to their ego or you're actually wrong that they get upset. So, you need to either make it clear it's not about them in particular (it usually isn't, hence the "common goal"), and even if it is, you need to make sure they know it's about making them better, not tearing them down. And, you have to be willing to consider counter-arguments -- that is, not pretend you are the sole arbiter of truth.

Bluntly stating an uncomfortable truth (or opinion!) with no quarter is not what people who seek the truth do, it is what people who want to be in control do.

Re: We're hearing about troubles at Nest

#255
post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I currently have non-Wi-Fi programmable thermostats. I have no experience with Nest directly, but from the description of how it determines when to turn the temp up or down I don't see how it would be that "smart" for me. I work from home, but my office is nowhere near the downstairs thermostat. So any motion detection it might do would assume that nobody is home, when I in fact am. On the other hand, my simple Honey…

Even the basic nonprogrammable Honeywell digital thermostat is smarter than most people realize. It is actually monitoring how well the system has been working and planning ahead so that it will not cycle too fast or switch over to the second fuel source unnecessarily. They have put a lot of thought into these.

Agreed. I thought that feature was fascinating, it worked extremely well. The Honeywell in my midwest home did a perfect job of learning how long the 17-year-old furnace took to heat up the house in the mornings.

The heat was set to go back to the daytime temperatures at 6 AM, and I began to wake up at about 5:47 every morning when, like clockwork, the furnace kicked on to reach 64 degrees before I rolled out of bed. Well played, Honeywell engineers.

Re: We're hearing about troubles at Nest

#256
post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for sharing your experience. We, as a community, should point out these so-called "leaders" who build their fortune on the efforts of other people.

All leaders build their fortune on the efforts of other people, pretty much by definition.

With the difference that true leaders work on making others the future leaders.

Re: We're hearing about troubles at Nest

#257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because behaving like this is moderately correlated with success. You don't have to be an asshole to succeed in business, but it can help.

Yes but I'm asking how. If you piss off your employees and they leave, how do you grow your business into a multibillion-dollar company?

Because the net employee flux is positive. You have to be a total utter asshole to lose all your employees, it turns out (like, criminally abusive or just not pay them kind of bad). Being just a moderate asshole however tends to produce more work output from the employees you do manage to retain. So on balance its a win.

Re: We're hearing about troubles at Nest

#258
post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what myths are you referring to? it may be more help to link sources that support your conclusions i admit a lack of historical context to many texts i have read and my only exposure to 'the thirty' is through plato without any supplemental research of my own on the subject so my prejudices are his because of this i did as you suggested and did a search for 'thirty tyrants' and i only found material that conflicted a…

You have most of the data there. I think you just need to read through it again. You will find that Socrates taught the thirty tyrants, that he was a fierce enemy of democracy (which was most definitely not a reviled body at the time, unless you mean reviled by Socrates and his pupils. It was generally agreed that the democracy was less effective than "something else", but very little agreement on which exact "someth…

again, i am indifferent to the righteousness of socrates the man

    he was a fierce enemy of democracy 
[citation needed] seriously, what are you talking about? democracy the idea? dare i say democracy's platonic ideal? if i oppose a democracy's policy does that mean i oppose democracy?

    (which was most definitely not a reviled body at the
    time, unless you mean reviled by Socrates and his pupils
[citation needed] show me a source that states the pretyrant governing body that was overthrown that plato states was 'generally condemned' was in truth 'generally accepted'?

    Would you have let Socrates continue his teaching 
    after such events, after one in 20 of the people 
    you knew got executed by his students
well, yes, but that is because i support freedom of speech

if you want to make it an argument of militanism then i suppose you would have to show that all of these people were students of socrates, stead solely the one noted as critias, and further that their efforts were weaponised from ideas which were planted and sowed by socrates

what things did socrates teach these people that you would actively censor from the public forum?

    Socrates believed in there being one correct 
    answer to any and all questions (maybe unknown,
    but still a singular correct answer, a grand 
    truth), to be provided by philosophers, that had 
    to be imposed on everyone.
[citation needed] also, if you can explain, if this even were the case, how it demonstrably leads to killing?

    I feel leaving this critical context out does 
    disrespect to the story and paints a wholly wrong
    picture 
can you cite the context i left out? if i did, it was completely unintended and i encourage any greater context you can lend

i take grave issue with your editorial exposition

stop telling people how they should think and offer up the sources that led you to your conclusions and let people think for themselves

Re: We're hearing about troubles at Nest

#259

I worked there. It was literally the worst experience of my career - and I have worked at all of the hardest charging blue chips and two successful startups - so it is not about high expectations - but abuse. I still wake up with something like PTSD occasionally from getting yelled at and bullied by Tony Fadell almost literally every day while I was there. I have a distance from it now -- and a way better job. It mad…

Did anyone here work under him at Apple? I'm curious whether it was the same situation back then, or was better balanced by the rest of the management team, or if this is new thing.

Yeah, I did. He did shout at Apple too, and people in his software teams (ie, non-iOS iPods) did work ridiculous hours 7 days a week for months before each iPod shipped. It was less of an issue because less things went wrong, though.

IMO this was because Apple knew how to make hardware, generally, and hence things didn't go far off the rails - he got a lot of support from Apple.

However, Tony didn't know the first thing about software and appeared to assume that it was something you threw new grads at because they'd hammer at it until it got through QA. Each year the teetering pile of crap grew higher and harder to ship...

Now he's master of all he surveys, he's worked out that actually consistently delivering complex projects (which have rather more complex software than an iPod) is damn hard. Shouting is his reflex reaction when this doesn't go well.

Re: We're hearing about troubles at Nest

#260

I worked there. It was literally the worst experience of my career - and I have worked at all of the hardest charging blue chips and two successful startups - so it is not about high expectations - but abuse. I still wake up with something like PTSD occasionally from getting yelled at and bullied by Tony Fadell almost literally every day while I was there. I have a distance from it now -- and a way better job. It mad…

I second your opinion about Tony Fadell. Worked indirectly on few projects he managed. Disgusting human being always looking at profits and cutting corners. I recall one phone-meeting with engineer where he praised her for 10 minutes how great her programming skills were and how he "looks forward for many more years of working together". When the conversation was over, on the same breath, he told us (team of 5 in the…

I never saw that at Apple. There were literally no budget restrictions on engineering as long as you got the job done.

Was that back in pre-Apple days?

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