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The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

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Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

#471
post #122

Posts here talk about the legality of this, that what they are doing is not allowed, or that they're doing something naively without understanding. But what is the goal? Maybe what goal to they think they're pursuing? This is hacker news, so I'm asking for an answer without political rhetoric.

Ever seen "Johnny English Strikes Again"? I'm sure Musk did, and is now implementing Jason Volta's plan as just retribution for the not-so-subtle reference hidden in the villain's electric name.

Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

#472

Average age of engineers and scientists in the Manhattan Project was 25. Our current gerontocracy is ahistorical. Perhaps one reason startups work so well is they are one of the few places that still let young people exert agency. The average age of NASA’s mission control team during the Apollo era was 27— they put humans on the moon. Young people bring a force of curiosity and creativity that can disrupt the status…

All of those people you listed as examples were legally and duly appointed/hired for their roles and not given carte-blanche over agencies without oversight.

Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

#473

If DOGE wants to be effective it really should be going after the big ticket items like medicare or defense, some estimates have medicare at 40% fraud and waste and the DoD can't even pass an audit so no one really knows what %. And that is just getting what we've paid for, not even evaluating if what we've paid for is effective. Of course to do that would require actual coalition building, hard choices that upset vo…

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If they have evidence, show us. I'm not inclined to take anything Musk or Trump says on faith.

Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

#474

“Keep calm, they said on television. Everything is under control. I was stunned. Everyone was, I know that. It was hard to believe. The entire government, just like that. How did they get in, how did it happen? That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn’t even any rioting in the streets. People stayed home at night, watching television, looking for some direction. There…

>How did they get in, how did it happen?

Over half of US was apathetic and didn't vote.

You can blame the MAGA for everything that is happening, but they literally said this is what they were gonna do. Over half of the US, implicitly said, "Given all of that, and Kamala, it really doesn't matter who is the president".

Which is worse than MAGA IMO

Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

#475

They have interesting pedigrees: Meta, Palantir, Neuralink, xAI, SpaceX, Databricks, Energize AI. It seems clear where this is going. Data mining and algorithmic (claimed!) efficiency improvements while working on an essential and critical production system. Since these people claim that "AI" does not need to respect privacy and copyright, perhaps they'll also train a model on this. Where are the Democrats on all thi…

I guess Elon believes that long wait times for government services is because of an O(n^3) function somewhere... > Where are the Democrats on all this? There is hardly any opposition I think because this is so unprecedented the structures to oversee simply don't exist. The article mentions that congress has no mechanisms for oversight, and Elon is moving too quickly in this area for any checks to take place.

It's utterly wrong to give Elon any benefit of the doubt in terms of his motives right now.

He's helping destroy the Federal government because doing so aligns with his interests as a billionaire.

Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

#476

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Ah yes, USAID, the agency that provides foreign aid (disaster relief, combatting poverty, providing technical advice) to create a strong, positive impression of the US is "working against your interests".

Please tell me what you have against USAID.

Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

#477
post #73

Are such drastic action appropriate given the current state of the US? The US probably hasn't been this economically dominant since after WWII. Feels like Chesterton fences are getting torn up left and right by people too young and incurious to possibly understand why those fences might be there.

Agreed - it’s arguably as much a risk-on behavior as the excessive spending they’re warning about. They are using a similar cut-first mentality to what has been done in the private sector, but in the govt there are more considerations than the direct economic impacts of the actions. In an ideal world the better route is likely to spend more time on analysis before making cuts and to try and reduce variance, but it’s fair to say that might impede the initiative entirely plus they are trying to act quickly before the opposition wakes up.

Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

#478

Curious european here. Do you think we will see some serious mass protests in big USA cities if this continues? By this I mean "reckless" action by Musk and Trump.

The vast majority of Americans either voted for this, or don't care. Will there be some protests? Sure. Nothing will come of it, though. The only thing that will enact any real change is if big corporations start losing any profits due to all this upheaval, in which case they may put pressure to get things settled down.

A lot of voters didn't turn out, so it's not accurate to say most Americans voted for this. There's also the issue of Trump saying Musk helped him win two key states during his inauguration speech, which some consider just short of an admission to rigging the election.

Only something like 3% of the population needs to actively strike and protest to start affecting corporations.

Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

#479
post #174
post #122

Posts here talk about the legality of this, that what they are doing is not allowed, or that they're doing something naively without understanding. But what is the goal? Maybe what goal to they think they're pursuing? This is hacker news, so I'm asking for an answer without political rhetoric.

The goal is to find government waste and to trim the fat. The goal is to make the US government lean, efficient, and effective at improving the lives of Americans while not prioritizing improving the lives of citizens of other nations. The view is that the government of those other nations should be responsible for taking care of their own citizens. The goal is to uncover fraudulent payouts, stop more from going out…

Those are the stated goals. I’m not sure they are the actual goals.

Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

#480
post #122

Posts here talk about the legality of this, that what they are doing is not allowed, or that they're doing something naively without understanding. But what is the goal? Maybe what goal to they think they're pursuing? This is hacker news, so I'm asking for an answer without political rhetoric.

This will sound like a conspiracy theory, but this is the playbook of Curtis Yarvin, specifically the "RAGE" step - Retire All Government Employees. Some references: Watch the whole video (posted months ago predicting all these actions), but here is the relevant section: https://youtu.be/5RpPTRcz1no?t=1201 NYT interview: https://www.nytimes.com/video/podcasts/100000009910862/curti... Gil Duran did a lot of the report…

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