Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Careless People

pluralistic.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

441–450 of 575 posts

Re: Careless People

#441

Post by hinkley »

kashunstva wrote: post #182
hermitcrab wrote: post #134

>Zuck learns Mandarin. He studies Xi's book, conspicuously displays a copy of it on his desk. Eventually, he manages to sit next to Xi at a dinner where he begs Xi to name his next child. Xi turns him down. I do wonder what the point of amassing all that money and power is, if it means you end up grovelling to a despot like Xi (or a would-be despot like Trump).

Just riding that hedonic treadmill, probably. Once you have bought all the properties you want, airplanes, helicopters and yachts, I imagine your hedonic set-point adjusts to that level and you begin to cast about for what's missing. (What's missing of course, is what all these people can't seem to find, which is an unwavering set of human-centred values.)

Chronologically, this event happens a good bit before Mark realizes just how much power he has. I don’t know if he would repeat that behavior now.

Re: Careless People

#442

Post by gchamonlive »

lordnacho wrote: post #96
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…

You've won the lottery, but you don't want to acknowledge that you won the lottery. You want to feel they you deserve your position through hard work and talent. You're living in a society where people are credulous, to some degree they believe that hard work and talent are related to success. So what will happen? Everyone you hire ends up patting you on the back, telling you what a great guy you are.

> You've won the lottery, but you don't want to acknowledge that you won the lottery.

Yes, but where does this drive come from?

I haven't the faintest idea, however we can extrapolate from some facts.

One fact is that they have a lot of money. Duh... But also money is the key metric to measure success, so a lot of other people flock around those who have money so that it rubs a bit off of them, that Midas touch.

Suddenly these ultrawealthy are surrounded by an endless wave of gold diggers. The immediate thing that follows is flatter, and then echo chamber.

Now imagine that goes for years and years. Slowly this metaphorical richy's whole world views -- and also how he view himself, his identity and his relationship with the things around him -- gets tied absolutely to that notion that he is right.

For this imaginary person, losing a game isn't just am innocent loss anymore. It's a direct question of his own identity.

I think this explains a lot, but I'm not psychologist so it's just a wild guess.

Re: Careless People

#443

Post by hinkley »

throw4847285 wrote: post #247
yubblegum wrote: post #211

"Careless" is doing some seriously heavy duty lifting here.

I assumed the word choice was a reference to this line from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald: “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.” Given the way the novel is written, this is intentional understatement.

That’s what she is referring to.

That line is quoted either in the foreword or the first chapter.

Re: Careless People

#444

Post by disqard »

akudha wrote: post #427

Wynn-Williams gets Zuck a chance to address the UN General Assembly. As is his wont, Zuck refuses to be briefed before he takes the dais Holy moly! No matter what your feelings are towards the effectiveness of U.N, addressing the general assembly is a huge opportunity to stand out, send a message, do something good etc. What a waste

"Zuck it! We'll do it live!!"

Re: Careless People

#445

Post by grandempire »

aoanevdus wrote: post #419
technothrasher wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh. I remember being miles ahead of my peers in computer science in high school. When getting to college and finding people most definitely better than I was, I was incredibly excited to finally find such people, not scared away.

In pure math at a school like Harvard, the standout kids like the ones in that quote are probably trying to become tenured math professors. There are very few such positions available. You can shoot for the stars, and if you succeed, make about the same as the average software engineer. More likely, get stuck a postdoc. So most students give up pure math at some point. If you realized you weren’t cut out for it in fr…

Math can also be taught very young with compounding effect, but you’re very unlikely to be exposed to the coaching and expertise at a young age. Of course the few in the world who combine aptitude with exposure are the kind of people you will find at Harvard. If you’re not one of them you may be a decade behind.

I also had a math professor who believed in extreme differences within the research community. He said only a top advisor would actually be engaging with real research and be able to bring you with them.

> More likely, get stuck a postdoc.

I still can’t understand why the outcomes for math Phds are so bad. They have extremely general intelligence which is applicable to any jobs I’ve had. I think it’s some combination of being unable to sell, unable to explain what they do, and still having their aspirations defined by professors.

Re: Careless People

#446

Post by grandempire »

marcianx wrote: post #106
rottc0dd wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there are some similar remarks on Bill Gates in another good memoir by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen [1]. Even on his school days, Gates was so sure he will not have a competition on Math, since he was the best at math at his school. When he went to Harvard, (which I somehow remember as Princeton(!) as pointed out by a commenter) and saw people better than him, he changed to applied math from Pure math. (Re…

A less unflattering interpretation might be that once they saw the level of skill required to contribute to a field, they switched to a field that they could more meaningfully contribute to.

Especially for smart kids who are used to getting in that positive feedback cycle of rewards and admiration.

Re: Careless People

#447

Post by sershe »

const_cast wrote: post #407
sershe wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. T…

Yep, I used to smoke too. I wanted to smoke and i still sometimes miss social and contemplative aspects of it 17 years after stopping, even though any chemical cravings stopped in a couple months

On the later part, your comment was very insightful too, cause you are a perfect example of what I'm talking about.

1) You decide for others what is good for them, implicitly treating their judgements with contempt.

2) When someone suggests that people might have different thresholds and tradeoffs and you probably wouldn't like it if someone who disagrees with you would make life decisions for you with the same moral certitude as you do in 1, you respond with "This pathetic, self-destructive method of thinking can't be right.", dismissive contempt.

The person coming across in these comments is a self-important possibly power-hungry psychopath - exactly what I was talking about. A mini version of the people behind everything from great leap forward and collective farms to white man's burden. I mean you gotta tell these wrong-thinking people how to live their lives correctly, cause you are right and their objections are just some mental defect!

Re: Careless People

#448

Post by corimaith »

tux3 wrote: post #16
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…

Success has a part of skill, and a part of luck. It hurts to be reminded about skill issues. Board games aren't as simple as time invested. I could spend my whole life studying chess, and some 13yo prodigy will handily beat me blindfolded, while juggling three other boards. Board games cannot be conquered with wealth or a successful business. Or, rather, they can, but only by pressuring your underlings into letting y…

Board Games in the same vein as grand strategy/4x with a dizzying number of rules like Catan or HOI4 are very much initially a function of time invested, otherwise you literally have no idea what you're doing.

Re: Careless People

#449

Post by acyou »

bena wrote: post #406
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.

My Ticket To Ride games are usually very passive, everyone has a sort of truce that lasts essentially throughout. But sometimes someone gives up on a big route and devotes themselves to messing up other people, and then things get spicy. Then again, I think we play wrong, because we don't ever use Stations (I think those are only in Ticket To Ride Europe though)?

Re: Careless People

#450

Post by 3np »

sokoloff wrote: post #318
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do. 108 Billion humans have ever lived on planet earth. 8 billion-ish currently. Most of them live lives that in no way reflected on their hard work and talent, but rather their circumstances, starting with where and when they were born but encompassing a million different contingencies outside the control of their hard work or talent. So do you think you have talent and hard work greater than 99% of those many bil…

Pick any of those 8 billion. Have them work half as hard. Have them have half as much talent. Do their outcomes remain the same , get better, or get worse? You’re arguing that there are other factors that also influence outcomes (and that those other factors are stronger forces). I agree with that point, but that’s not a refutation to the notion that the coefficients on talent and hard work are positive, nor a convin…

Saying it's literally 0 implies a belief that free will doesn't exist (predeterminism), right? If so, who are you trying to convince here? :p

It's complex.

Post reply on HN