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The Lost Chapter

aarongreenspan.com

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Re: The Lost Chapter

#201

Post by patrickk »

jamesaguilar wrote: post #162
corporalagumbo wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Greenspan is complaining - I think this is meant as a warning. He's not saying that Mark acted unfairly and that he should have been nicer to Aaron (which would come across as petulant, and I think Greenspan seems quite realistic and calm about what happened), but that Mark has acted with only ruthless, narrowly-defined "self-interest", displaying no loyalty or kindness, and this bodes very poorly for t…

Isn't this basically the same as saying tesla and spacex will fail because Elon Musk is a jackass?

You don't hear stories about Elon Musk shafting his friends and acquaintances, stringing them along and stealing their ideas.

Apparently Musk was a bit of a jerk when x.com merged with PayPal, and is supposedly difficult to work for even today (he works 100 hour weeks, probably demands the same high standards of his employees as he does of himself), but there's none of the skeletons in the closet with Musk as there is with Zuckerberg.

Plus there's the fact that Musk is tackling really difficult problems like online payments (fraud), mass-producing electric vehicles, making solar installations viable and aiming to make humans a multi-planetary species. Zuckerberg just created the latest social fad, IMO which is now in the process of self-destructing.

Re: The Lost Chapter

#202

Post by david927 »

corporalagumbo wrote: post #179
tptacek wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, Corporal A. Gumbo: Write it better. Do it and I'll donate $1000 that I promise I was not going to donate anyways to Partners In Health. There's an idea common to forums that I don't frequent that I recently learned of called an "ideological Turing test". The idea is to take a group of people divided along a controversy, and to get each side to anonymously write a coherent argument that capture's the other side's…

Okay, here you are: People should stop trying to make entrepreneurs feel guilty for not living up to their personal ethical standards. One of the advantages of our free society is that people can choose to work on weighty issues or fluffy diversions. As long as you abide by the law, you should not be criticised for the style of business you decide to pursue. If a lot of people can make money from social networking th…

Well done. Now let's see if tptacek puts his money where his mouth is. :-)

And for fairness sake I'll try to summarize your argument, Gumbo:

Endeavors that either add relatively nothing or have negative consequences, such as negative productivity, simply for pure financial gain, are not noble endeavors.

To paraphrase Gérard de Nerval, our industry is a hovel and a place of ill-repute. I'm ashamed that God should see me here.

How many great engineers are working on sites that allow people to share pictures of their cats? How many of our most talented minds don't even know who Ivan Sutherland is? How many are trying to tackle hard problems, and how many are trying to get rich putting what we know in a new dress? It's a rhetorical question but answer it to yourself anyway, because it's so sad.

Re: The Lost Chapter

#203

Post by kamaal »

tptacek wrote: post #149
corporalagumbo wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jeez, did you have to write all that? Anyway, although I think you are focusing on the weakest part of Greenspan's argument - the point where he comes closest to bitterness - I was wondering if you'd like to invest $20,000 in my new venture. I'd like to sell crack heroin to junkies in Detroit. I'm sure as a fellow champion of guilt-free founder consciences, you will support my endeavour as I give gangbangers the chan…

Ok, Corporal A. Gumbo: Write it better. Do it and I'll donate $1000 that I promise I was not going to donate anyways to Partners In Health. There's an idea common to forums that I don't frequent that I recently learned of called an "ideological Turing test". The idea is to take a group of people divided along a controversy, and to get each side to anonymously write a coherent argument that capture's the other side's…

Well you didn't get the point of his argument at all. The point really isn't against 'Pursuit of happiness'. It really is a very general term. And let me tell you criminals are pursuing their happiness too.

The point is photo sharing, status sharing, killing pigs with birds turned out to be made such a valuable thing that people felt it worth investing billions into it. That's fair too, because you are diverting investments towards where the demand is. But the core of the problem was that the 'actual innovations' got the short end of the stick.

When I look at Elon Musk, I see a person with a mission. As much as it may sound unpractical at times, the person worked on things that have solved genuine problems. Problems like making payments online easy, building electric cars, building cheap vehicles for luggage delivery into space. When I see Bill Gates, I see somebody who radically changed the desktop industry. Who is now investing time and energy fighting diseases, hunger an poverty around the world. All these great men, built business that genuinely changed things around us. Though I use Facebook, I feel no such respect for Zuckerberg. I am jealous of his money. But if I have to be that rich someday, I want to be doing work for a better cause.

I understand that games and stuff like that have their own value. But when they are glorified so much to make genuine work utter useless, unrewarding activity. Things begin to look bad.

Re: The Lost Chapter

#204

Post by kamaal »

corporalagumbo wrote: post #179
tptacek wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, Corporal A. Gumbo: Write it better. Do it and I'll donate $1000 that I promise I was not going to donate anyways to Partners In Health. There's an idea common to forums that I don't frequent that I recently learned of called an "ideological Turing test". The idea is to take a group of people divided along a controversy, and to get each side to anonymously write a coherent argument that capture's the other side's…

Okay, here you are: People should stop trying to make entrepreneurs feel guilty for not living up to their personal ethical standards. One of the advantages of our free society is that people can choose to work on weighty issues or fluffy diversions. As long as you abide by the law, you should not be criticised for the style of business you decide to pursue. If a lot of people can make money from social networking th…

>>If a lot of people can make money from social networking then that is definitionally a good thing

A lot of people make money selling drugs too.

Demand, doesn't automatically make the item in demand good.

Re: The Lost Chapter

#206

Post by blang »

philwelch wrote: post #115
spitx wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Walmart, even when it's potential for misuse of customer data is taken to it's negative extreme, is just a vendor. Not a repository of your most private data. Walmart cannot deduce from your pictures printed at their photo kiosk if you are having an extra-marital affair. It doesn't have that kind of "putting together two and two" power. Plus it doesn't share that with your other family members or suggest to them that…

> Walmart cannot deduce ... if you are having an extra-marital affair. Sure they can. Let's suppose my purchasing history fits the profile of a married couple, maybe even with telltale signs like feminine hygiene products. The purchases are made on weekends, at whatever time married couples go shopping for groceries and other household essentials. But suddenly there's a new pattern--at previously unexpected times, I…

article to back this up: http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-targe...

Re: The Lost Chapter

#207

Post by jdrake3 »

kamaal wrote: post #204
corporalagumbo wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, here you are: People should stop trying to make entrepreneurs feel guilty for not living up to their personal ethical standards. One of the advantages of our free society is that people can choose to work on weighty issues or fluffy diversions. As long as you abide by the law, you should not be criticised for the style of business you decide to pursue. If a lot of people can make money from social networking th…

>>If a lot of people can make money from social networking then that is definitionally a good thing A lot of people make money selling drugs too. Demand, doesn't automatically make the item in demand good.

The post did not say that the item had any inherent value, it simply stated that making money from demand was a good thing. Additionally, the post qualified "As long as you abide by the law".

Re: The Lost Chapter

#208

Post by Tomis02 »

corporalagumbo wrote: post #187
lotharbot wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are people on HN who will vigorously downvote you for unnecessary disparaging comments like "Jeez, did you have to write all that?" , "laughably verbose" [0], or "I thought I was finished with primary school." While those lines may not technically violate the letter of the guidelines [1], they violate the spirit of the section that says "please reply to the argument instead of calling names" . Note that the nex…

You're right. I just read that first Matroshka sentence ("There needs to be a label placed on the idea of feeling the need to bow to the wishes of critics who try to limit the idea of valid entrepreneurship to activities deemed "beneficial to society."") and I couldn't help myself. I did "grok" his argument but I rushed and left some of my assumptions implicit. So yes, I could have set out my rebuttal more cogently.

I have a crystal ball... I.. I see the future. You are... banned :)

Re: The Lost Chapter

#209

Post by huffer »

feeding the tinfoil hats industry: the European Commission blocked this website and flagged it as illegal/scam :)

I apologise for not contributing, but I can't access the page so I have no idea what it says.. but by the amount of extensive comments here, I'm dying of curiosity

Re: The Lost Chapter

#210

Post by law »

zingahgud wrote: post #152
ChuckMcM wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this lacks a bit of compassion. It's one thing to have some idea, not work on it, and then later see someone who made it happen. It is another thing entirely to work on an idea for years, bring someone into the group that is working with you on it (or at least advising) and then have them roll off with it and become one of the richest people in the country. Sure a zen master might take some comfort in validat…

It's one thing to study others' work and take ideas from it. Everyone does that. It's another thing to actively engage others, talk to them as if you are friends or enter into agreements to work together, and then take ideas from their work. It's the betrayal of people's trust that's gotten him the reputation for being a con and a thief.

In one of the most telling IMs of their entire correspondence (see page 62 of The Complete Timeline), Zuckerberg stated: "i kind of view you as a friend." This came up when Zuckerberg was annoyed that Greenspan made a security hole public. Greenspan handled the situation with immense professionalism, while Zuckerberg simply could not accept responsibility. Mark's friends are only entitled to the appellation when it's convenient for Mark.
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