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Careless People

pluralistic.net

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Re: Careless People

#401

Post by xivzgrev »

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #9

> There's Zuck, whose underlings let him win at board-games like Settlers of Catan because he's a manbaby who can't lose (and who accuses Wynn-Williams of cheating when she fails to throw a game of Ticket to Ride while they're flying in his private jet). Why does this seem to be a recurring pattern among the modern ultrawealthy? Does anyone who fails to bend over backwards for them just end up getting exiled? Have th…

The need to dominate can be a favorable trait for success. It can also be all consuming that you can't easily turn off. Like...ok Zuck, you won the f'ing lottery. You could spend the rest of your life on an island or helping orphans, but you still work at Facebook - why? Because he's wrapped up in it. It's a miracle Bill Gates managed to step down.

It can also be unsettling to know that, just as easily as you killed off competitors, competitors could unseat you.

So yea, you might sleep a bit easier at night if you can just win at the things you can control, like that darn Settlers of Catan game.

Also someone who reflexively accuses the other of cheating while playing a game likely has a hard time admitting they failed at something. Not an admirable trait in a leader.

Re: Careless People

#403

Post by selkin »

This review is as naive as Wynn-Williams portrays herself in her memoir (which I enjoyed!)

In the book, Wynn-Williams described herself as a wide-eyed, almost helpless person, which doesn't align with her pre-Facebook career as a lawyer in the a diplomatic corps. And when at FB, she was in the rooms where it happened, and had a job enabling some of it. She could've quit, but did not.

She was one of the titular careless people at the time, and excuses it now by pointing at others who were even more careless. It's not atonement, it's whitewashing.

Re: Careless People

#404

Post by brcmthrowaway »

drdrek wrote: post #83

This is exactly the type of people the cultural purge in big tech came to flush out. Trying to change a multi billion dollar company from the inside is delusional, self serving, narcissistic and ineffective. Who the hell do you think you are in the great machine of 100,000+ employees companies, of billions invested in them. The change is going to be political, regulatory. These companies always can't change until reg…

Lina Khan just needed a couple more years.

Re: Careless People

#405

Post by nyarlathotep_ »

hnpolicestate wrote: post #313
remus wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect talent and hard work are pretty well correlated with becoming wealthy (say >$10m), but I think you then need a big injection of luck to take you from wealthy to ultra wealthy.

I think it was a Steve Jobs quote, paraphrase "it's 5% the idea, 95% implementation". Lots of very intelligent and talented people out there. But when you have the good fortune of coming up with a great idea (Facebook in the mid 00's) you have to use your talent to relentlessly implement it. This is what separates the plebs from the ultra wealthy. Intelligence + talent + idea + implementation = success

> Facebook in the mid 00's

Timing plays a huge role in this too.

Re: Careless People

#406

Post by bena »

acyou wrote: post #336

Zuckerberg and co. always seem so basic. Settlers of Catan and Ticket To Ride? I can't imagine more flavorless, generic games. Wait, those are the games that I play... I remember listening to Zuckerberg speak at length about the various epochs of Facebook including the fast pivot to global, it's overall a fascinating and compelling story that the book surely capitalizes on well.

I'm not a big fan of Catan. Players can get locked out of the game with no way to meaningfully play.

Ticket to Ride is decent though. Simple, straight-forward rules. Enough strategy and randomness to make playing interesting. No one can gum up the game by being intransigent.

Re: Careless People

#407

Post by const_cast »

sershe wrote: post #376
const_cast wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither talent nor hard work have anything to do with helping humanity. The reality is that our measurements of success don’t correlate with “goodness”, they correlate with getting stuff done. And you can do lots of evil stuff pretty easily. The reason so many rich people seem evil is because they are. You don’t become rich via charity. You become rich by exploiting others and siphoning their success to yourself. It’…

Are you sitting in a room while typing this? At the margin to reduce the odds of heart attacks, you should be at a walking desk outdoors, or ideally not arguing on the internet at all. Someone trying to "help humanity" should decide the threshold of acceptable self harm for you, just like you feel free to decide it for smokers; then after determining how you should live, they can declare that the alternatives make th…

> If I was asked about the best correlate for being evil, honestly trying to make the world a better place by determining how specifically others should live would be on top of the list by a huge margin.

Really? Telling people, "hey, don't give other's poison, that's bad"... is worse than giving other's poison? You actually believe that?

To give some context, I used to smoke. For a long time!

Nobody wants to smoke. The only people that want you to smoke are the people literally extracting value out of your rotting corpse.

Look, if you actually think those people are better, then whatever. Clearly this isn't something I can dispute or even try to argue against so who cares. Just... find some medication or something, I don't know. This pathetic, self-destructive method of thinking can't be right.

Re: Careless People

#408

Post by bena »

vmurthy wrote: post #17

I read the book. It’s a very interesting read. A few things stood out ( no spoilers ) - Casual indifference at exec level to atrocities happening because of FB/ Meta. - Money/power does make you insensitive - Tech bro view of the world permeates most decisions that Meta takes. - Casual sexual harassment for women ( follows from the tech bro worldview I guess ) - US centric world view influencing how execs treat world…

> - Money/power does make you insensitive

This is something I try to be acutely aware of in myself. Not that I have any level of wealth worth mentioning.

I started working at a company where they just give me stuff. I can go to work in clothes my employer gave me, eat my meals there, use the phone they pay the plan for, etc.

It does affect you. I first noticed it when I went to buy some triviality. Something small I needed for something or the other. Something that would have been just given to me at work. The line to checkout was long and while waiting, I just thought "Why can't I just fucking go? It's not even $10. What does it matter?"

So now I try and be mindful of what I receive and to be sure to acknowledge it at least mentally.

Re: Careless People

#409

Post by losvedir »

K0nserv wrote: post #14

The book is a good read and she also testified in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee[0], repeating many of the claims from the book under oath. One of the striking things is that it's clear that Mark and several others from Facebook perjured themselves in prior hearings. I expect there will be no consequence for this. 0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3DAnORfgB8

I mean, I guess the obvious question is if one person lied under oath (her) or several (all the people that her testimony implies perjured).

The book sounds pretty outlandish. That's not to say that Zuck and co aren't just a whole gang of melodramatically evil and stupid people, but it a priori it seems just as probable to me that she's the one that is? I don't know much about her. Is she a reliable witness?

Re: Careless People

#410

Post by belval »

rubzah wrote: post #292
HexPhantom wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The casual indifference part really got to me too.

Then you realize that Facebook has been extraordinarily active banning Palestinian posts and accounts over the last year. So the "casual indifference" is at the very least selectively applied.

> Kaplan fires off an email stating that he's just realized that refugees don't have any money

Maybe they just realized that Palestinians don't have any money.

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