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Greg Brockman interview [video]

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Re: Greg Brockman interview [video]

#211

Post by CuriouslyC »

sumedh wrote: post #178
7thpower wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you please define what “best” is and why the market is a measure for it.

Money is the most honest transaction, if people are paying money to anthropic it means its solving their pain. Its the same reason OpenAI and others are copying Anthropic.

This is some late-stage capitalist cope. Money goes to the person who can hoodwink people into thinking their product will do something they care about, not the person with the product that actually does something people want. There are a litany of examples of people swearing up and down by products that have been scientifically proven to __DO NOTHING__. The correlation between popularity and quality is tenuous AT BEST.

Re: Greg Brockman interview [video]

#212

Post by jesterson »

p1esk wrote: post #186
jesterson wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn’t want. I have enough. Not everyone is wanting money. But it is not the point. The point is, when you take high moral ground and talk about bug problems to help humanity, and then your own diary exposes you as avaricious simpleton, the whole high moral ground crumbles. And you expose yourself as another grifter. That’s what happened to Brockman. Although smart people could see these qualities in altman, broc…

Why can't I want both earning 1B and do good things for the world? Unless his diary directly contradicts what he has said in public (like "I don't care about money"), I see zero moral issues here.

Because goal of earning 1B and doing good for the world are goals having very little overlap.

Re: Greg Brockman interview [video]

#213

Post by tasuki »

sumeno wrote: post #144
tasuki wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The person you were replying to said: > There is nothing wrong with wanting 1B. Anybody who said they wouldn't want it is lying. You said: > I'd spend 95% of it making the lives of others better Again, well done you. And... I don't think that's a counter example? Being this virtuous, wouldn't you love to give away a billion? Wouldn't you enjoy it very much? You could write comments about it and people would upvote yo…

I do not want a billion dollars, there is no ethical way to get a billion dollars. If I accidentally had a billion dollars I would get rid of the billion dollars as quickly as possible. The op thinks that I, as well as most of the other responses to them, are liars

> there is no ethical way to get a billion dollars.

I don't buy that at all. One ethical way is to marry someone random who later becomes a billionnaire. Another is to eg create Bitcoin. And I suspect there are ethical ways to create a business that earns a whole lot of money.

What unethical things did Yvon Chouinard do to get his billions? Chuck Feeney? What about Mackenzie Scott (formerly Bezos)? Hansjörg Wyss? Craig Newmark of Craigslist?

Re: Greg Brockman interview [video]

#214

Post by avazhi »

gambiting wrote: post #209
avazhi wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That isn’t how causation works. By your logic you could argue that if anybody on this planet starves to death then Americans can be blamed and ‘engineered it’, since they had the economic means to prevent it. You’re essentially trying to argue that inaction is a positive act, which it is not as a matter of logic and law universally. Your logic is laughable on its face, obviously. Americans have no more duty to look a…

If I provide cancer drugs to someone, and then suddenly stop, am I to blame for them dying of cancer? That doesn't imply that I have a moral duty to provide the drugs. But if I am providing them and then withdraw them, then there is some responsibility on my part? >>You’re essentially trying to argue that inaction is a positive act You've assumed I have a certain position then argue against it, not against what I act…

Unilateral voluntary foreign aid is not in any way analogous to medical care that creates strict legal obligations when the doctor-patient relationship commences.

Re: Greg Brockman interview [video]

#215

Post by giantfrog »

tasuki wrote: post #124
tcp_handshaker wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about stealing 12 million books of copyrighted human culture, at massive scale, and then enclosing the value created inside proprietary, investor-backed systems? Something wrong with that? What happens if you go tomorrow, downtown San Francisco, and leave a bookstore with one book without paying? "Behind every great fortune there is a crime" - Honoré de Balzac

> What about stealing 12 million books Who's missing the books? 12 million books is a rather large warehouse! I thought HN was in the "information wants to be free" camp...

I think there might be a difference between “I’m violating copyright law to enjoy a work of art” and “I’m violating copyright law on a global, species-wide scale to create a trillion dollar company and enrich myself.” Maybe you can argue the former is wrong but there’s no way it’s equivalent to the latter.

Re: Greg Brockman interview [video]

#217

Post by tomhow »

avazhi wrote: post #206
tomhow wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don’t post snarky, shallow dismissals on HN. It only serves to make the place seem miserable.

That quote of his is relevant for everything Brockman says. That’s the lens through which he views the world. Also, this is not the first time I’ve seen HN staff inexplicably rush to defend Altman or Brockman - I wonder why that is. Maybe stick to being objective moderators instead of displaying blatant bias in favour of people previously associated with YC (or perhaps current YC investments). It’s actually laughable…

As anyone can see, there are plenty of criticisms of Brockman and OpenAI in this very thread (some of them even reference the very thing you referenced), as there are in many other HN threads all the time. We have no problem with that.

The problem with your particular comment is the caricatured/mocking portrayal of it and the mike-drop/this-explains-everything energy to it, which you explicitly invoked in your reply to me.

Any time you assert that a single quote from a long time ago explains everything about a person or event, you’re on weak ground on HN. The truth is never that simple, no matter who it’s about, and the guidelines explicitly ask us to avoid snark and shallow dismissals, because HN’s entire purpose is to host discussions that are better than that.

Re: Greg Brockman interview [video]

#219

Post by kvgr »

wahnfrieden wrote: post #55
applfanboysbgon wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, gee. When you put it like that, Hitler existed, so really we can't fault anybody for anything short of orchestrating the genocide of 12 million people.

Musk engineered the deaths of 14 million people https://time.com/article/2026/05/15/usaid-shutdown-rise-glob...

The quote is "could lead to 14 million additional deaths by 2030" and i dont like musk. But this is big difference.

Re: Greg Brockman interview [video]

#220

Post by _zoltan_ »

exfalso wrote: post #157
_zoltan_ wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Set up a nice investment vehicle with maybe 400m so I can get 1.6m in dividends a year which would be better enough to comfortably travel the world, have a private chef, someone who organized travel so I don't have to.. A nice 12 person yacht on the Mediterranean is 400k eur for 2 weeks (with staff) so I'd realize it's not enough and invest the rest so I could get comfy. Along the way help friends and family, pay off…

What's the point of that? That sounds like the most boring life. You want to rot away on a yacht? Private chef? Are you kidding? Help family? Sure, although you don't need that much money for that. Friends? Ehh not very smart, just think about the changes in the friendships' authenticity.

Rot away? See the world. It's such a big place.

Private chef, absolutely. Like some people rot away managing Linux as a desktop or putting together 3D printers instead of buying one that works and using a Mac, I enjoy food.

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