141–150 of 157 posts
Is there anyone here on HN who has non-news-article knowledge of what the situation was, around him, at NCSU?
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Yep. I often reflect on some of my career mistakes, especially when evaluating current decisions within the context of a job or interacting with other institutions, and what I wish I'd learnt earlier would be to "read a room". Sure, there is technically a process for reporting wrongdoing, but there's no process for reporting wrongdoing and keeping your job, and keeping your job is more important. What isn't your job…
> What isn't your job is taking moral stances on things, having political opinions, provoking what others might see as unnecessary conflict, in any form. This is wrong, and how you end up with flying drone face recognizing skullpopping murderbots. "I just work here" is an abdication of adult responsibility to self, family, and society. It's not some idealistic stance, it's the truth. It's how we ended up with concent…
In America, we've built our culture around collective abdication of responsibility for anything and everything, on almost any axis imaginable. The only way anyone with wealth and power ever faces justice is if they injure those with even more wealth and power.
It's easy to say, "if enough people just stood up for what was right, things would change", but how do you get from here to there without asking countless people to sacrifice their families on the altar of "maybe it will get better if you do, but don't count on it". At least in America, I think it will take widespread pain among the public before risking change becomes worth it.
It's awful to think about, but I think that's the heart of it: we (Americans) have built is a system where it is so easy to go from having everything (by historical standards) to having nothing (by current standards) that hardly anyone is willing to risk rocking the boat, even as it sinks and we all drown.
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> a lot of people bright enough to have been at the top of their field who for one reason or another are opposed to the status quo Sure. They should do more. My point is “watch out, you’ll wind up headless” is more self soothing than a threat. If America flips over, the billionaires will be fine. Maybe a couple unlucky or stupid millionaires will lose their coin or lives. Most will, at worst, preserve their wealth; m…
I admire your candor and persistence but I think I’m just wired a bit differently. I agree that the present oligarch class is every bit as powerful in relative terms as any before them. They also have the advantage of modern technology: ubiquitous domestic surveillance and militarized police are clearly not designed to prevent petty crime. And the last thing I want to see is chaos and bloodshed. But I do want working…
When has this worked in practice to the benefit of those making the threats?
(Versus bargaining for more rights by dividing the elite.)
> Extreme military power has failed against motivated populations almost without exception in all asymmetrical scenarios this century
Internally? Each of China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Myanmar, et cetera seem to be doing fine.
> end state on the current trend lines would be a catastrophic failure of our civilization
Sure. But a revolution just speed runs that. (And we aren't the only civilisation on the planet.)
> I’m not yet prepared to accept that as inevitable
It's not even probable. Going back to the original comment, Americans' standards of living have been rising across almost every class. On an income and wealth scale, a positive-sum game, almost every category of American is better off than before.
What's changed in the last 50 years is on the relative standard. And in the political domain, a zero-sum game, that's led to some issues. But nothing terminal, not even close--ordinary workers still swing elections.
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"If you are a certain kind of person who values truth and personal responsibility, you come to understand that the world is fundamentally incompatible with you" This logic is flawed in that you are assuming no one else shares the same values as you do.
And how long have you spent in academia? What do you think research universities produce at scale to keep their Carnegie category?
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Yep. I often reflect on some of my career mistakes, especially when evaluating current decisions within the context of a job or interacting with other institutions, and what I wish I'd learnt earlier would be to "read a room". Sure, there is technically a process for reporting wrongdoing, but there's no process for reporting wrongdoing and keeping your job, and keeping your job is more important. What isn't your job…
> Sure, there is technically a process for reporting wrongdoing, but there's no process for reporting wrongdoing and keeping your job, and keeping your job is more important. What isn't your job is taking moral stances on things, having political opinions, provoking what others might see as unnecessary conflict, in any form. Up to a certain point. That answer didn't hold up well at the Nuremberg trials. After a point…
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I admire your candor and persistence but I think I’m just wired a bit differently. I agree that the present oligarch class is every bit as powerful in relative terms as any before them. They also have the advantage of modern technology: ubiquitous domestic surveillance and militarized police are clearly not designed to prevent petty crime. And the last thing I want to see is chaos and bloodshed. But I do want working…
> that probably means a credible threat at least in abstract When has this worked in practice to the benefit of those making the threats? (Versus bargaining for more rights by dividing the elite.) > Extreme military power has failed against motivated populations almost without exception in all asymmetrical scenarios this century Internally? Each of China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Myanmar, et cetera seem to be doing fine…
Housing, energy, healthcare, education. All off the charts inaccessible relative to 60 years ago. The Boomers are the Worst. Generation. Ever. Full stop.
When the LAPD beat Rodney King half to death on camera and all of the officers wielding the batons were acquitted?
Los Angeles burned.
Detroit. Watts. Harvey Milk was assassinated for a reason.
I will always strongly prefer a negotiated settlement between classes of society.
But one guy self-immolation in Tunisia kicked off regime change in 11 countries.
I abhor violence but I make no difference between violence in person and violence by economic or policy proxy.
I grew up in San Diego, half the guys I grew up with are former JSOC and even angrier than I am. Private equity people operate at our pleasure if it really came to it.
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Absolutely, and 90% of people will happily do so. So your personal ‘line in the sand’ is just completely and utterly irrelevant (aside from your own satisfaction)
I think this stance is mired in the big picture but ignores small altruism. Neighbors who sheltered jews during the holocaust didn’t alter the system, but they saved real lives. Clandestine action for the better, in line with one’s convictions, can be genuinely worthwhile.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t take that stand anyway, it’s just frustrating and doesn’t bring any actual benefit to the people impacted by the thing you refuse to do.
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I've been in two situations like this where I eventually "WON". You don't simply heal. You don't accept that that just wasn't the place for you and move on. What you do is have your perspective on other humans permanently and irrevocably changed. If you are a certain kind of person who values truth and personal responsibility, you come to understand that the world is fundamentally incompatible with you, and are faced…
"If you are a certain kind of person who values truth and personal responsibility, you come to understand that the world is fundamentally incompatible with you" This logic is flawed in that you are assuming no one else shares the same values as you do.
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Arrogant? You guys think you’re immune from consequences. You think everyone smart and relentless enough to represent any challenge is either already bought or easily sidelined. There are more of us than you think who walked straight out no education and no connections and trivially operated at comparable levels to privileged and credentialed peers. But the values are different: when you combine a street kid’s skepti…
> think you’re immune from consequences I’m saying they can get away and get their resources out faster than before, and even before they were mostly fine. > you get implacable enemies with extreme tolerance for adversity who play for keeps in a way no one can who ever benefitted from the system These are never the beneficiaries in revolution. Ever. That doesn’t stop revolution. Folks say “fuck you” when enough is en…
A Reaper drone with Hellfire missiles can go just about anywhere that bilateral money laundering legislation and agreements can’t. If Bill Gross or Larry Summers manages to get gold bullion into the DPRK? Yeah, maybe he’s beyond the long arm of the American public.
I’m reticent to even mention this peripherally because it’s a troll magnet but the example is too compelling to pass by. I’m not a native of the region and I don’t feel fit to moralize about it, but I am an avid student of asymmetrical multi-axis warfare with an emphasis on countermeasures to state-sponsored digital surveillance and militarized domestic police forces because the only way the peace will be kept is if the arch-Randian villains back down after a robust force assessment.
Whatever the morality of this or that actor in the region, the strategy and tactics of the IDF and Mossad are basically a masterclass in flipping the ostensible balance of power over with ease and a sneer: and while the details are many people’s life’s work, the terminal game theory node is that they’ll do anything. They will always dramatically overreact with punitive collateral damage and flawless execution and there’s no upper bound. No one bluffs the IDF into accepting a status quo they don’t like over any meaningful period of time.
I’m pretty skeptical that this is a good posture for a nation state armed to the teeth, but again, not my lived experience.
It’s precisely the right posture for oppressed majorities in modern great power settings where none of the elected or appointed or confirmed officials can give Gates a parking ticket if he crashed a Tesla into Gary Gensler and somehow shouted a transphobic slur.
The Black community in America didn’t claw back some semblance of dignity via some condescending hand out: they scrupulously operated within the law until it was clear that the law was exhausted if not adversarial as a recourse and then Malcolm X and the Audubon Ballroom made it very clear that Afghanistan is a cakewalk next to Atlanta if some bargain isn’t struck. From Emmett Teal to LA 92 that community is a shining example of patriotism in both a dramatic preference for abiding the law and not fucking around on soft treatments of tyrants or collaborators when the missile goes up.
Amazon pays OSHA fines because it’s cheaper than obeying the law, there have been fatalities and countless injuries and Genghis Khan seems restrained and enlightened in terms of how those people should be handled if you want a meaningful deterrent. I’d happily settle for prison and call it a compromise. It’s difficult to point to a billion dollar line item on an invoice or a balance sheet anywhere and not see at least one moral felon giving you the finger in fucking Atherton or Los Gatos.
The rich and powerful and sociopathic can do exactly what the public will tolerate before we kill them, and not a Planck length more. They will export assets and shop for tax structures as far as they can before they cease to be a factor.
It astounds, perplexes, depresses, confuses, and enrages me that anyone anywhere would make an argument to egg them on to ever greater heights of brinksmanship with the most dangerous thing in the world: a vast public better armed than credible militaries and facing eviction via a letter from some walking atrocity like whoever does that for The Carlyle Group.
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> think you’re immune from consequences I’m saying they can get away and get their resources out faster than before, and even before they were mostly fine. > you get implacable enemies with extreme tolerance for adversity who play for keeps in a way no one can who ever benefitted from the system These are never the beneficiaries in revolution. Ever. That doesn’t stop revolution. Folks say “fuck you” when enough is en…
> I’m saying they can get away and get their resources out faster than before, and even before they were mostly fine. A Reaper drone with Hellfire missiles can go just about anywhere that bilateral money laundering legislation and agreements can’t. If Bill Gross or Larry Summers manages to get gold bullion into the DPRK? Yeah, maybe he’s beyond the long arm of the American public. I’m reticent to even mention this pe…
I say it here because many people in this community are a coffee break away from telling curly-haired Zuck with a chain to “lay low, let the bullshit blow over. shear a sheep don’t skin it.”
The GP is both articulate and exceptionally brazen in the standard operating procedure of Vichy pribclings with micro clout: to state as fact the inevitability of some outcome where Goldman Sachs defrauds even more customers by shorting the products they sell as fiduciaries even faster and somehow less than zero people go to jail now based on a theory of economics that can charitably be analogized to a giant clock on the inside of a sphere: exigent shock, Laffer Curve, supply side, rational agent, strong efficient. Wazy woozy fairy dust never landed not on the elemental chart. Goldman quants know this.
It’s a low key flex/threat that belongs to Weinstein or something, not our aristocracy of merit and nobility: this is happening and it’ll be a lot less painful if you just lay as still as possible.
The GP correctly states that it coming to blows will be bad for everyone, it’s wild speculation that the harm will skew a certain way, it’s not ridiculous but it’s also a sleight of hand: it’s an argument that the working public should back down before it goes to hell.
Irrelevant, spurious, adversarially stated with malice aforethought.
And also just deeply wrong at the level of a sign bit: the kleptocracy has a lot to lose and any robust pricing would see them more inclined to compromise than the recently evicted or in some places the shopkeeper who douses himself in gasoline and lights a fire that’s still burning.
This tired song is the lazy propaganda bedazzled with GSElevator wit and sneer and the implication of secret hidden knowledge. I spent a regrettable amount of time getting drunk at Catch in the Meat Packing district in 2017 and after three gin and tonics they’ll happily tell anyone who can get past the Face Kontrol how much contempt they regard the rest of us with. They think it’s fucking hilarious that we fold hand after hand.