Live data from Hacker News

Garry Tan, the CEO of YC, accused me of unethical reporting

radleybalko.substack.com

61–70 of 231 posts

Re: Garry Tan, the CEO of YC, accused me of unethical reporting

#61
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything is politics. Which food you eat (are you vegan? carnivore diet? Both have implications in regards to animal welfare, climate change, soil use, identity etc etc), which media you consume (obvious), which job you have (which power structures do you strengthen with it? who benefits from your labor? who do you try to disrupt?). To say one is "apolitical" is just voicing a preference for the status quo. To decr…

That's a pretty depressing worldview. Children playing in the park aren't being political. It's possible to just exist sometimes.

The children playing in a park aren't being political, and are largely insulated from the politics of playing in a park... but those circumstances are surrounded by all kinds of political process. As another commenter said, the park's existence is probably due to politics; as are the rules the children need to follow, what activities are permitted, the safety and maintenance of park equipment and facilities, curfews, etc. It is also a choice on the part of the parents to let their kids play in a park, and which parks their kids play in, and those choices aren't made in a vacuum. Perhaps the perspective of the adult should not be to view children in the park as apolitical, but to be cognizant of the processes that influence their children and try to ensure that they work for the children's benefit.

Re: Garry Tan, the CEO of YC, accused me of unethical reporting

#62
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an extremely charitable read of a DA's office alleging lawbreaking. I really think you have to kind of slant your head and squint to come away with the impression that that section isn't about Lim, but rather the unnamed medical office.

As i said, neither of us is lawyers. Neither of us are experts in what a DA's office has written, and what that writing should be interpreted as under the law. Perhaps a more charitable reading is what is called for, given we're not experts in the domain. i don't know about you, but i'm pretty confident a DA's office has a much better idea than me about what each of the HIPAA sentences in the document translate to in…

The question you're raising isn't a legal one, at least as I understand it. I read you to be saying "the reasonable take on this document is that they are saying SOMEONE violated HIPAA, but not Lim".

That's a question about messaging, not the law.

Re: Garry Tan, the CEO of YC, accused me of unethical reporting

#63
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, you can. But don't pretend that's not a political choice.

[flagged]

You're almost there and then you give up on original thought at the last minute.

>“Care because I think you should!”

Welcome to politics. Not only do I demand that you care because I think you should, but I will smash you with the full force of the law if you don't.

Now, if you decide to do nothing, well, you're getting your ass smashed by the full force of the law and whining like a little bitch saying "I'm not political, why did this happen to me".

"If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice".

And "There are no neutrals in the reality, entropy forbids it".

Re: Garry Tan, the CEO of YC, accused me of unethical reporting

#64
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, you can. But don't pretend that's not a political choice.

[flagged]

You seem to have fundamentally misunderstood my point.

I never said “If you don’t participate in politics you’re evil”.

My point is that there is no not participating in politics. The lack of participation is a political choice in itself.

Re: Garry Tan, the CEO of YC, accused me of unethical reporting

#65
post #56
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kind of a category error to suggest there's a stark difference. Over the last 100 years, enormous amounts of excellent journalism has been informed by political objectives on the part of reporters.

Yikes. Vastly outweighed by the ruination of journalism by politics.

There's abusive intersections of politics and journalism just like there are abusive intersections of all sorts of other things and journalism. The idea of a truly neutral reporter though is a fiction.

Re: Garry Tan, the CEO of YC, accused me of unethical reporting

#66
post #51
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't great reporting. It's politics.

Kind of a category error to suggest there's a stark difference. Over the last 100 years, enormous amounts of excellent journalism has been informed by political objectives on the part of reporters.

It’s weirder than that. Even the idea of an apolitical journalism is ahistorical.

Apolitical journalism started with the telegram wire services as a _marketing_ approach, not a moral one. It allowed them to sell to more local papers which were all politically aligned. You can see that in some of the surviving names. But local reporting stayed political in those individual papers the whole time. We have like a whole chapter in basic us history classes on the political implications of the Spanish American war journalism empires.

Apolitical tv was similarly a market condition. The airwaves were limited, so the content was controlled. That was apolitical in that it tried to appease both parties, but you wouldn’t see any topical coverage on political issues they both opposed.

So when people talk about politics entering journalism they are telling on themselves. They prefer a very narrow set of journalism that wasn’t ever some universal norm, and was itself political.

Re: Garry Tan, the CEO of YC, accused me of unethical reporting

#67
post #51
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't great reporting. It's politics.

Kind of a category error to suggest there's a stark difference. Over the last 100 years, enormous amounts of excellent journalism has been informed by political objectives on the part of reporters.

This article isn't that -- nothing excellent is achieved. It's pure intra-party squabbling between leftist and centrist factions of California Dems. Balko is just trying to score points for his faction.

Re: Garry Tan, the CEO of YC, accused me of unethical reporting

#68
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, you can. But don't pretend that's not a political choice.

[flagged]

“If you don’t participate in politics you’re evil” is an argument that you completely made up.

You don't like to be called selfish for not considering how your actions might affect others, but others are supposed to care about how their actions might affect you? Seems like a pretty self centered attitude to have.

Re: Garry Tan, the CEO of YC, accused me of unethical reporting

#69
post #57

[flagged]

It's a requirement to reach the levels they have reached. Someone with empathy would get enough money to take care of their family (maybe even for multiple generations) and then be satisfied and focus on reducing the suffering of others instead of running up the score on net worth

I mean, after I racked up a two digit number of milions of dollars I believe I'd find myself thinking "why the fuck do I need more, it's time to go fuck off and do anything else".

Musk at one time said something like "I work 80+ hours a week, so the people around me should work that much too". They are completely blind to how sociopathic they are. It's a totally unhealthy amount to work for one, but for two is Musk himself will likely earn billions from those workweeks while the people around him will earn almost nothing except stress and then getting randomly fired by him on a whim.

They are not connected to the same world we are.

Post reply on HN