241–250 of 298 posts
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The line between good and evil runs through every human heart.
Which means we need to blatantly and explicitly call out the ones who are choosing to use their evil side for outsized material gains at the expense of a huge majority?
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Perhaps the nuance is in the eye of the beholder? I don't think it's sustainable to go about our lives wearing blinders and averting our gaze from the misuse of technology because one might be afraid of unhappy feelings creeping in. One must not be so cowardly as to deny that materials and technology can be misused or deny that their purpose is of oppression for fear of being attacked by group-thinkers. "The unexamin…
>deny that their purpose is of oppression... A lot of the uber-nerds are just regular nerds who got lucky, not part of some evil genius cabal. By all means keep an eye on them but I think for the most part they are regular people.
With the help of the CIA. /s
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Say what you want about "woke" (assuming you can define it), but its worst excesses were curbed by democratic elections. What's the endgame of a movement that seeks to discredit, overturn, and functionally control elections?
Do you mean that the things like annulling the elections when the "wrong" candidate won [1] or barring the opposition candidates from running [2],[3] are not the worst excesses? 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Romanian_presidential_ele... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominique_Strauss-Kahn 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_Le_Pen
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Elon Musk must be one. Seems enough techy to me: Tesla, SpaceX, Starlink - software being used for the hardware in innovative ways. Edit: Oh, wow, mentioning this guy is surely controversial, sorry. However discussing whether he is a nerd, understands engineering on very deep level/gets his hands dirty OR he only manages people - there must be some psychological aspect related, a form of disagreement to discredit or…
The list is missing my #1 quote from Jim Keller (an epic engineer type) although unfortunately quote is in middle of a long YouTube vid. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33662764 Aside: I don't understand why they even mention what journalists think - only engineers opinions matter when judging engineering ability.
Or append &t=1h2m3s to the link to prevent writing long sentences on where to seek and save users from manual seeking :)
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>deny that their purpose is of oppression... A lot of the uber-nerds are just regular nerds who got lucky, not part of some evil genius cabal. By all means keep an eye on them but I think for the most part they are regular people.
Is there anything 'regular' about walking onto stage wearing a cap and sunglasses and then brandishing a chainsaw as a 'symbolic' gesture (at anything other than a chainsaw conference)?
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>deny that their purpose is of oppression... A lot of the uber-nerds are just regular nerds who got lucky, not part of some evil genius cabal. By all means keep an eye on them but I think for the most part they are regular people.
See: banality of evil
Bettina Stangneth, “Eichmann Before Jerusalem” (2014)
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I don't know what happened to this website but stuff like this keeps hitting the front page more and more often despite having close to zero value. It feels like SEO spam to me.
"Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html The person who submitted the link already explained the submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46068363
>democracy is being dismantled not by coups or tanks, but by code, capital, and the illusion of innovation Not sure "code" belongs here. Even less sure about "illusion". Take those away and what is left is "dismantled... by capital". Nothing new, really.
One day you're chasing terrorism, the next you're chasing ecologists, political opponents, unions, minorities, &c.
Unfettered capitalism is great under certain conditions. Amazing things get invented & rolled out to the world. When conditions change, cracks appear.. For many reasons we appear to be in an era of slower growth, but shareholders used to growth are still demanding it. That’s sticking business leaders in a really tough place. The incentives need to change - whether through legislation, or market demands. Until then it…
That's a really naive take, for you to enjoy this "ideal capitalism" there are hundred thousands of people who've been seeing and feeling these cracks for decades if not centuries, it's just slowly reaching your neck of the woods
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See: banality of evil
it's almost like the people you call evil are just regular people anyone can be evil, anyone can be good, anyone can be both even on the same day or be seen as one contemporarily and the other historically so perhaps painting specific groups of people as the incarnation of pure evil is not a good idea unless you're trying to sell a book or get ad revenue
They're typical biology like everyone else but politically and economically able to influence everyone else's lives.