Watch some leftist billionaire now cut them blank checks to get them away from DOGE. The Cyberpunk future is here.
The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE
551–560 of 1001 posts
Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE
#552Posts 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.
> 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.
I'm a bit confused because the stated goals, either the "digestible" ones or the ones they've stated outside of mainstream media, are all political in nature.
How could you get an answer about the motivation and goals of this behavior that isn't "political"?
Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE
#553Average 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…
So you are saying this is a team developing a tool to nuke the government?
Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE
#554Posts 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.
Between Elon's stated goals, the systems under scope and my personal experience from state & local finance, they are performing a strategic efficacy audit of treasury spending. The US Treasury normally doesn't audit transactions -- they execute requests for transfers from other agencies and defer governance to congressional oversight. The GAO doesn't even audit in the intuitive sense. They audit that spending is bein…
This is propaganda.
Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE
#555If 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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Then they should take it to court, yknow, like one does with evidence in countries that have rule of law.
Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE
#556Posts 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…
The goal is to enable cronyism and corruption as well as undermine resistance to legally and morally dubious acts.
Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE
#557Are 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.
> Are such drastic action appropriate given the current state of the US? With the debt ceiling ever increasing, approaching a trillion dollars in interest per year, nearing $6k/year per working individual, I would say the correct time to put any effort, whatsoever, into reducing spending, was 20 years ago. I think the fundamental problem is we lack adversarial systems within the government: it doesn't like to hurt it…
Haven't republicans been campaigning on reducing govt spending for like 50 years?
Aren't other countries adversarial enough?
I think these are made up concerns. By and large the US is dominant in the real world, and always will be given its size, location and cultural foundations. And that translates to being able to print and spent a large amount of money, which could be used to solve real world problems, such as:
- climate change and the need to transition energy, transportation over time with some urgency
- chronic housing shortage
- education costs
Instead they're focusing on fake problems and solutions that will make the real problems worse.
Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE
#558> Congress has no ability to really intervene and monitor what's happening because these aren't really accountable public officials.
Congress gets to make laws. They can intervene by making a law that allows them to intervene, which is the job we elected them to do. Apparently they prefer getting bossed around instead.
Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE
#559Average 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…
That's false, the average age was 29.4: https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/L... Here are the ages of the senior scientists: Oppenheimer: 38 Teller: 34 Lawrence: 41 Rabi: 44 Szilard: 44 Ulam: 33 Bethe: 36 Fuchs: 31 von Neumann: 39 So the younger people would have had plenty of supervision.
These are not the only 6 engineers working for DOGE, just the youngest. They have supervision as well.
Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE
#560Remember, if you can vote, vote the next time you can. Convince your friends and neighbors to vote, too. Apathy has real consequences.
Would it matter much? It seems like the election is fueled on false narratives and outright lies amplified by social media and technology that many of us here helped to build. Apathy is a real thing but at least close to half the population fully intended to and did vote for their choice of leadership. What can we (generalized we in the tech community) now combat this?