111–120 of 123 posts
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In a morally-flexible environment You're assuming your conclusion. Punctiliously following convention doesn't make you good. It just safely ensconces you near the mean. Not a promising place for startup founders to reside. Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes is naughty. He's not evil or even "morally-flexible".
Perhaps you should look to real business rather than comics for examples. It would be more convincing.
This is probably the single most discouraging thing I've ever read about startups, but at least it's honest. Entitlement? "Naughtiness"? I think after Google, the idea got out there that it's possible to succeed by just being good . Technically and morally. This sounds like a return to status quo. Not saying he's wrong. He's almost certainly right, it's just depressing.
Google is at least a little naughty. Remember, at the dawn of the Internet, there was quite a bit of ambiguity with regards to IP rights. Many newspapers sent out Cease and Desists just for deep-linking to their articles. There was still quite a bit of presumption about how much control of use copyright gave you. Google walks into this minefield and says "You know, we're going to crawl and cache everything , then exp…
I also think Google broke and still breaks rules, just your example is not very good. Interesting that this reply of yours is upvoted over paul, pg and tlb in this thread.
This is probably the single most discouraging thing I've ever read about startups, but at least it's honest. Entitlement? "Naughtiness"? I think after Google, the idea got out there that it's possible to succeed by just being good . Technically and morally. This sounds like a return to status quo. Not saying he's wrong. He's almost certainly right, it's just depressing.
Google is "good"? http://www.schneier.com/essay-306.html http://money.cnn.com/2005/08/05/technology/google_cnet/ https://www.recordedfuture.com/ ( Google and In-Q-Tel both major investors ) http://thestockmarketwatch.com/stock-market-news/recent-even... http://xsreviews.co.uk/2011/05/google-to-lose-500m-to-antitr... Could keep going for a while. My point is simple: It is easy to forget the "bad" when everyone focuses…
The closest the is the anti-trust settlement, but the reporting around that is kind of murky. I've never seen a proper report of exactly what it related to.
The others are arguably good. For example, the Schneier article is about how Google has a interface to Gmail to allow it to retrieve data when it receives a warrant. That was what got hacked, but I think saying that makes it evil is a pretty long stretch.
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/1108/best-small-companies-...
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I understand the positive qualities of being Kirk-esque and creating one's own rules (see Kobayashi Maru). I also understand the qualities of being single-minded in purpose, determination and the will to succeed. These are qualities needed to survive in the uncertain, risky and scary environment of an entrepreneur. However, I wonder when we begin to cross the fine-line between naughtiness, white-lies, small-rule brea…
I think that you're zooming into this too much and missing the point. Think about the difference between success in the military versus success in a small business. In the Army, a protocol faux pas or a single ill-considered statement can implode your career path. Understanding of and adherence to the rules is job 1. In a startup mode, you can ignore conventions/rules, because those things are often not relevant to a…
I have to disagree. Some Armed Forces employ quite different type of organization, called Auftragstaktik.
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I think you're looking for decision theory. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision_theory
What I'm interested in though isn't what makes a decision by a person ethical or rational or whatever, but rather what makes a social system itself (or an algorithm that interfaces with people) ethical or unethical. E.g. looking at the ethics of the design the social system behind the Zimbardo prison experiments, rather than looking at the decisions of the individual actors once they're already in that environment. I…
I'm sure there were otherwise nice people that were Nazi soldiers. And there are probably a few nasty people who work for Google to create products millions of people love.
As social systems, as you call them, grow larger and more connected it may make the ethical positions of systems more important. The problem is that most corporations are inherently amoral, and governments almost always think they are the good guys.
"The total value of YC companies is now around $3 billion — YC has invested a total of around $5 million." Damn, that's a good return, if you assume all positions were held and an 8% stake taken then that should yield $240 million, or an ROI (CAGR) of 116% since 2005. (This assumes the 5 million was all invested in 2005). Anyone have a good metric to factor dilution from future rounds?
We assume (probably conservatively) that we'll end up with 2% after dilution.
I know other YC-a-like organisations have started up elsewhere: have any of them been running long enough to get any idea of long term success yet?
This is probably the single most discouraging thing I've ever read about startups, but at least it's honest. Entitlement? "Naughtiness"? I think after Google, the idea got out there that it's possible to succeed by just being good . Technically and morally. This sounds like a return to status quo. Not saying he's wrong. He's almost certainly right, it's just depressing.
You're confusing naughtiness with evil. Naughtiness has to do with breaking conventions, evil with hurting others. If you followed PG's record, you'd know how strong an advocate he is that startups be good.
Video: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/14928956