Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's brief ousting • Hacker News Board

Re: Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's brief ousting

#801

Post by WalterBright » Thu, May 30, 2024, 5:33 AM UTC

SantalBlush wrote: post #697

WalterBright wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> amoral wealth-hoarders They're not hoarding wealth. They don't have any Scrooge McDuck cash faults. Their money is all invested , i.e. put to work creating things that people want. > moralists ... capitalists History shows us that societies based on morals (religious, ideological) fare extremely poorly compared with societies based on rights (free markets). Like it or not, for a large, prosperous society you must h…

I think in order to have a productive discussion about morals and rights, it is essential that those two terms are defined precisely up front. Otherwise, it just leads to everyone talking in circles, because they have different ideas of what those two things mean. For example, if someone believes that the concept of rights isn't based on morals, I'd suspect they're using a very narrow definition of 'morals'.

As I mentioned before, rights are derived from human nature, which is determined by our genes, and are immutable.

Morals are something one learns.

Re: Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's brief ousting

#802

Post by WalterBright » Thu, May 30, 2024, 5:33 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #674

nvy wrote: post #642

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They're not hoarding wealth. They don't have any Scrooge McDuck cash faults. Their money is all invested, i.e. put to work creating things that people want. The Panama Papers showed this to be a myth. The ultra rich are in fact extracting wealth and hoarding it in tax havens.

Putting money in a bank is not hoarding it. The bank loans out the money to people who invest/spend it.

I.e. banks are not Scrooge McDuck cash vaults, either.

Re: Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's brief ousting

#803

Post by stonogo » Thu, May 30, 2024, 5:36 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #758

stonogo wrote: post #653

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Real estate is not cash. It's cash spent. No, it's an asset only barely less liquid than cash, generally deliberately shelved in a holding company for the exact purpose of hoarding wealth. You have fallen for the bullshit. > History also shows us that societies without wealth disparity end up poorly for everyone. As in starving. You left out "unbounded." Deliberate misinterpretation or failure to comprehend? We'll…

> it's an asset only barely less liquid than cash Have you ever tried to sell real estate? I have. It's nothing like the liquidity of cash. Cash I can spend right now. Real estate? It can be 6 months or more. Even borrowing against the equity takes a while. You have to spend time at the bank, get appraisals, get credit checks, and spend an afternoon at the escrow office reading 100 odd pages of contracts. Bleh. > Unb…

You're missing the holding company. I'm not going to teach you real estate as an asset-parking mechanism; there are plenty of articles about it you can find if you Google it instead of arguing with me about a topic you're clearly not familiar with. Here's a hint: the ownership of the property does not change. Only the holding company is modified, if even that.

Once again you're ignoring the word "unbounded." I guess we can know whether it's deliberate misinterpretation, after all.

My own agency as a human entitles me to have opinions what is or is not appropriate behavior. Your counterarguments to this are not even specious, just uninteresting scare tactics. For instance, who the hell is 'they'? It doesn't matter, because I don't have to justify the fact that I have opinions.

Humanity would be unquestionably better off without SpaceX; it's a pollution factory with a byproduct of further enriching its owner by literally setting precious resources on fire. I am not particularly impressed with Tesla's products, but at least it's not a pointless boondoggle like SpaceX. Your definition of success is apparently based entirely on financial gain, which is a bizarre starting point from which to map out an ethos.

I'm done engaging with this thread, as I no longer consider it possible that you're engaging in good faith. Good luck with your future endeavors.

Re: Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's brief ousting

#804

Post by tivert » Thu, May 30, 2024, 5:38 AM UTC

mattmaroon wrote: post #791

Retric wrote: post #766

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 95% of people threatened to fire themselves to follow him. That sounds extremely toxic on its own. Think about it for a second, someone went around asking people to sign their name on a document threatening to quit if he was fired for cause. Would you be comfortable if this was happening at your job?

If I were going to work for someone I would prefer to work for a person who is so beloved by his employees that they’d rather quit than not work for him, absolutely.

> If I were going to work for someone I would prefer to work for a person who is so beloved by his employees that they’d rather quit than not work for him, absolutely.

I think it's a stretch to assume he was "beloved by his employees," because they signed that document. Some of those very same people have resigned (https://www.fastcompany.com/91126785/openai-resignations-are...), which is not someone you typically do if you love your boss that much.

Other possibilities are far more plausible. Like fear of reprisal if Altman returned coupled with fear he could cause OpenAI to implode if he didn't, wanting to hit the startup jackpot instead of working for a nonprofit, etc.

Re: Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's brief ousting

#805

Post by WalterBright » Thu, May 30, 2024, 5:49 AM UTC

specialist wrote: post #617

nickpp wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With extreme inequity, who's gonna make all the smaller bets? The more large, visible winners you have in a society the more us little people are incentivized to buy those lottery tickets. Crowd funding, angel investing and small funds do exist. Or even Robinhood.

Since you mentioned Robinhood: What impact have they had? Are their users better for using Robinhood?

Robinhood enables anyone with a phone and a credit card to invest in stocks.

Of course, you can make or lose money investing in stocks. But you cannot claim that investing in stocks is only available to connected wealthy people.

Re: Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's brief ousting

#806

Post by WalterBright » Thu, May 30, 2024, 5:51 AM UTC

marcus_holmes wrote: post #382

WalterBright wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> amoral wealth-hoarders They're not hoarding wealth. They don't have any Scrooge McDuck cash faults. Their money is all invested , i.e. put to work creating things that people want. > moralists ... capitalists History shows us that societies based on morals (religious, ideological) fare extremely poorly compared with societies based on rights (free markets). Like it or not, for a large, prosperous society you must h…

I think the question is more "do you have to be amoral to run a large organisation?" There are endless numbers of idiots in black turtlenecks being absolute dicks to other co-working space members because they believe that being a dick is a prerequisite to commercial success. They are clearly cargo-culting something. Most CEOs of large organisations appear to be psychopaths. Is this because you need to be a psychopat…

> clearly in Musk's antics at X

I like Musk's version of twitter better than the old version. His tweets often make me laugh.

Re: Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's brief ousting

#807

Post by frankzinger » Thu, May 30, 2024, 5:59 AM UTC

tim333 wrote: post #691

bookaway wrote: post #608

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> calling one guy a „pedo” Yes, and just to be clear -- That one guy was a diver who put his life at risk to save trapped children from an underwater cave, a rescue operation in the span of which a Thai Navy Seal actually died. Furthermore, Musk went on record stating that he had took a further step of hiring a private investigator to dig up dirt on the guy, not before he called the guy a pedo, but after when the rea…

And a guy who insulted Musk first.

I think responding to "shove your submarine" with "you're a pedo" is somewhat disproportionate.

Re: Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's brief ousting

#808

Post by marcus_holmes » Thu, May 30, 2024, 6:05 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #806

marcus_holmes wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the question is more "do you have to be amoral to run a large organisation?" There are endless numbers of idiots in black turtlenecks being absolute dicks to other co-working space members because they believe that being a dick is a prerequisite to commercial success. They are clearly cargo-culting something. Most CEOs of large organisations appear to be psychopaths. Is this because you need to be a psychopat…

> clearly in Musk's antics at X I like Musk's version of twitter better than the old version. His tweets often make me laugh.

That's kinda sad, though, isn't it? Someone with that much power and influence, running the de-facto platform for all our journalism and politics, and he's just laughable. I find that sad.

Like watching a clown performing a slapstick routine and then realising that that isn't a clown and the slapstick is an important part of our societal infrastructure.

Re: Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's brief ousting

#809

Post by sudoanon » Thu, May 30, 2024, 6:20 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #755

CPLX wrote: post #749

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. As I’m sure you well know the estate tax exemption is measured in 8 figures at this point, so no, you don’t “pay 40%” to the federal government. And that’s leaving aside the fact that the dead person can make billions in capital gains, spend it wildly (via loans) and never pay a fucking dime of taxes on it at all. Nobody ever does, that’s the basis issue. It’s a fucking travesty that it’s the current law. 2. I’m r…

It's $13 million for the federal estate tax exemption, and the top rate for Washington's is 20% of the amount over $9 million (it starts being taxed at $1m). It's a meaningless exemption if your net worth is $1b. > that’s the basis issue Basis is the amount paid for the stock. The basis boost happens at death. It has nothing to do with margin debt. Margin debt isn't free. There are limits to how much one can margin.…

> If you look at history, however, confiscating the wealth of the wealthy has never done much of anything to elevate the poor.

Looking at history we find that confiscating the wealth of the poor has done much to elevate the wealthy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure

Re: Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's brief ousting

#810

Post by tarsinge » Thu, May 30, 2024, 6:31 AM UTC

mike_hearn wrote: post #730

tarsinge wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He is diminishing his achievements all by myself on Twitter. Like before there was doubts he was technical. Now it's clear he is not and was acting (at least regarding software). If Steve Jobs was claiming he also did the iPhone engineering don't you think people would challenge that? He lies, he gets caught up, that's it. Look at his recent exchange with LeCun, is it really politics or has he simply too much ego and…

> Like before there was doubts he was technical. Now it's clear he is not and was acting (at least regarding software) ... He lies, he gets caught up, that's it Says you, random HN poster. Here's the assessment of a NASA astronaut who spent time on the ISS and who has a PhD in mechanical engineering and a degree in applied mechanics: "[Musk is] able to have conversations with our top engineers about software, and the…

Curious for your take on this: https://venturebeat.com/ai/elon-musk-and-yann-lecuns-social-...

Or this: > I personally wrote the first national maps, directions, yellow pages & white pages on the Internet in the summer of 1995 in C with a little C++. Didn't use a "web server" to save CPU cycles (just read port 8080 directly). Couldn't afford a Cisco T1 router, so wrote an emulator based on a white paper.

Or maybe this: > I mean, man, you’re in charge of the servers and the programming and whatever,” Brown continued. “What is the stack, Elon? Take me from top to bottom. What does the stack look like right now? What’s so crazy about it? What is so abnormal about this stack versus every other large-scale system on the planet, buddy? C’mon!

To which he answered: > Jackass

Or this: > They took one look at Zip2’s code and began rewriting the vast majority of the software. Musk bristled at some of their changes, but the computer scientists needed just a fraction of the lines of code that Musk used to get their jobs done. They had a knack for dividing software projects into chunks that could be altered and refined whereas Musk fell into the classic self-taught coder trap of writing what developers call hairballs—big, monolithic hunks of code that could go berserk for mysterious reasons.

Again I’m not speaking for rocket science, but as for software engineering and ML it seems he only has surface knowledge but does enough name dropping to maintain the illusion.