> 3. Ethics matter. I don't believe there's any life after this one, but I find myself ruminating on what I've done. In 2015, I had a lot of interaction with a startup incubator you know well, and ended up sitting in the discussions and planning around banning and erasing a young programmer we considered a threat to our financial interests, due to his concerns about authoritarianism in technology. In retrospect, he was harmless, but an example had to be made. The decision was made to ban him here, try to get him fired though I don't know if we succeeded, and attack him with sockpuppets on Reddit, and it seems to have worked because you don't hear his name much.
There's something a bit odd about confessing that you were part of an institutional attempt to cancel a specific person, without naming the person or what their specific concerns were, or what specific institution this was; and also claiming that the reason you regret this now is because they were "harmless" rather than "correct".
Someone who in 2015 was concerned about "authoritarianism in technology" possibly came from a cluster of political perspectives that is relatively close to my own; and also possibly came from a cluster of political perspectives that I am relatively opposed to. It's hard to tell which from just that wording and the fact that someone with institutional power in 2015 wanted to cancel them.
I'm certainly curious for more details about exactly what happened here. I imagine it would compromise your anonymity to say more, and depending on the details it might even be bad for that person.
Something disturbingly similar happened to me in 2015. It took me a LONG TIME to build my life back after that. There are STILL certain opportunities that are off limits to me and likely always will be.
I'm sorry to hear about this. The mid-2010s were a dangerous time to be entering Silicon Valley or technology. The important roles were already taken, so there weren't any real opportunities except in crypto (disreputable even by Silicon Valley standards) and the turn toward authoritarianism was subtle but still present enough that, if you left and tried to speak out, you could easily be attacked as not really principled, but simply lashing out because you weren't successful.
This was, and probably still is, the standard anti-whistleblower playbook:
1. He's just lashing out because he was unsuccessful. (That is, claim moral equivalence. He would do the same things if he had won.)
2. He might have a point, but he's being egotistical and making it all about him. (Most whistleblowers are neurodivergent have a history of interpersonal conflict that is usually not damning, but can be dredged up. Now the conversation is all about him, and not in his favor.)
3. Sure, he does have a point, but his tone is shrill and his approach is off-putting. He's actually damaging his own cause by "acting out" and refusing to use official channels. (Never mind that "official channels" are always controlled assets. We are condemning him for not giving us advance notice.)
It's ugly, ugly work. I probably didn't cause any harm to anyone that wasn't already in the works, and maybe I couldn't have prevented any, but I wish I had done it all differently.
By saying he was part of these conversations, the people he talked to almost certainly already know who he is (if necessary, the fact he's undergoing through surgery definitely tells them). Not sharing the details about this sounds more like he doesn't want this individual to be rehabilitated. (Assuming this entire thing is not made up.)
> There's something a bit odd about confessing that you were part of an institutional attempt to cancel a specific person, without naming the person or what their specific concerns were, or what specific institution this was; and also claiming that the reason you regret this now is because they were "harmless" rather than "correct".
I misspoke. People around me seriously thought this person was a threat to the reputation of Silicon Valley. In reality, he was a mid-tier blogger with serious writing talent but only niche appeal, and Silicon Valley was the biggest threat to the reputation of Silicon Valley.
> I'm certainly curious for more details about exactly what happened here.
Unfortunately, there's as much misinformation about this story and this person as there is truth available online. I will say this: dang did not order the ban here and it was not even his idea. Paul Graham is also not, to my knowledge, the one who ordered it, though he did not reverse it and, in retrospect, he should have.
Imho that cancelling part was about “I still think about it, I don’t have it closed in my mind”. It was not about cancelling a specific person therefore he didn’t mention the name.
I was in the discussions, but I didn't play a major part in the decision. This is closer to "I should have said something" than "I wish I hadn't done that."
It's weird how you don't think of yourself as playing an active role when you are just agreeing with other people because they might be useful, but then find yourself ten years later wondering if you should have done everything differently.
Yup. Exactly. Most people including me have (had) to learn how to not being afraid speak up.
Otherwise unresolved issues catch up with a person until the end of life.
So everytime someone tells that I am too much activist I answer “yes, because I think I need to speak up so I don’t have to have unfinished stuff in my head”. And after ten years when we meet they ask me if I remember …something… And I tell them I don’t as it was finished and I don’t live in the past.
> had a lot of interaction with a startup incubator you know well, and ended up sitting in the discussions and planning around banning and erasing a young programmer we considered a threat to our financial interests, due to his concerns about authoritarianism in technology. In retrospect, he was harmless, but an example had to be made.
Don’t think for a second saying this so vaguely atones for what was done. You have a 50% chance of dying yet you will hide the names of the people that did this still? I still think you have an ethics problem…
I hope the best for you and your future though. There is room to still grow.
I mean if someone says “be kind to animals get a dog” you already know they don’t quite know what “being kind to animals” is. If they say “all humans end up where I am” (even just in terms of age) you already know they don’t quite know what “all humans” is.
At the end of the day though, it’s just an out of touch person trying to pass on something in good faith. Their whistleblowing is an incidental side channel they probably didn’t really mean to get into.
Didn’t mean to get into? The list seems like this was its main purpose, the rest only there to help in that effort. It can all have still been authentic but this isnt exactly a brief parenthetical tangent, and the author has demonstrated its importance by returning to comment further on it in much more detail.
Yours is an ironically awkward comment itself in how it takes on the author’s words given their statement about sock puppets being used to discredit…
> I mean if someone says “be kind to animals get a dog” you already know they don’t quite know what “being kind to animals” is. If they say “all humans end up where I am” (even just in terms of age) you already know they don’t quite know what “all humans” is.
Oh come on. We can quibble about the quality of the post and OP's character, but you're just blatantly misrepresenting their words. They did not say "get a dog," they said there are "few joys like having a dog." More importantly, it is incredibly obvious that when they say "all humans end up where I am," they're referring to facing death, not the specifics of their age, background, or present circumstances.
The decision was made to ban him here, try to get him fired though I don't know if we succeeded, and attack him with sockpuppets on Reddit, and it seems to have worked because you don't hear his name much.
Ten years later, I'm still stuck thinking about this. Am I the kind of person who does shitty things? I was. Am I still? How would I even know?
Corporations and governments often get flak for doing shitty things, but ultimately it’s still people within those corporations and governments doing shitty things. “Just doing my job” is not really a legitimate shield to hide behind and I give OP credit for recognizing this even if a bit late.
Thanks for sharing the advice and best wishes with the surgery.
Most people realize the shitty things they have done only at a time like this. The ones who actually care, take or at least try to take the necessary steps to prevent it from happening at all.
I agree with this point. I hate it when they say, for example, “Ford lays off 11,000 employees.” It really should say, “Jim Farley, the CEO of Ford, lays off 11,000 employees.
Companies and employees are truly an enigma when the shit hits the fan. It’s extremely rare to show any loyalty to anyone. People put their heads down and pretend like nothing is happening.
>Ethics matter. I don't believe there's any life after this one, but I find myself ruminating on what I've done. In 2015, I had a lot of interaction with a startup incubator you know well, and ended up sitting in the discussions and planning around banning and erasing a young programmer we considered a threat to our financial interests, due to his concerns about authoritarianism in technology. In retrospect, he was harmless, but an example had to be made. The decision was made to ban him here, try to get him fired though I don't know if we succeeded, and attack him with sockpuppets on Reddit, and it seems to have worked because you don't hear his name much.
What have you done since then to mitigate this very egregious harm?
I have not found your success, and I suspect it's because I too am "anti-authoritarian" -- I had folks try to convince me to do "scholarshop for service" and act like I was crazy when I expressed worry if the presidency went from D to R, someone might do crazy shit like initiate a government shutdown making it impossible to fulfull my service, and then I'd get a bill for a degree I didn't want.
In fact, every prediction I made about creeping authoritarianism down to a member of the national guard being shot dead outside where I used to toil away as a public interest lobbyist has come true.
I'm having one of the worst emotional nights of my life tonight -- and maybe I'll regret this post, but why do you feel you're in any way good, to put your boot on on the necks of others then say all the right things at the last second to ease your conscience while those of us who actually acted in the public interest are harassed and abused?
Probably the kind of account who has read a lot of reddit creative writing exercises with the same structure as this. Makes vague, salacious claims, weaves a plausible motivation, and includes just enough details that people will see patterns and tie them to possible actual events. It's basically like writing horoscopes. I see no reason to believe this is anything other than that.
Get a dog ASAP after recovering and don't look back.
Mark my words and send the first pics with the puppy after you recovered elegantly.
Of course you will make it, and if not, you wont care anyway.
You'll make it. I'll wait for the pics.
PS: But take that existential eye-opener serious and use it (you might later forget and drift from that in everyday-default-mode). You could print and frame this post to make it unforgetable.
Get a dog. If you can and are willing to look after the dog for 15 years, be willing to train it well in the first 10 months, prepared for cost and vet bills etc. etc. I wouldnt want a puppy when in recovery unless someone else is fully looking after him.
Huh, I do recall a certain anti-corporate individual (with the initials MOC) that was fairly loud and prolific on both HN and Reddit around that time, including insisting that pg and other tech leaders were trying to get him canceled (well, before the term existed, I think). If this was him, perhaps he wasn't as much of a crackpot as many assumed he was.
The year was indeed 2015, and his political content would fit OP's description, but the reason for the ban was that he was repeatedly being a total asshole, not "YC is scared of anti-fascists".
You know... one of the charges leveled at Michael was creation of sockpuppet accounts in various media (Wikipedia, HN, Quora). I suppose it could be within the realm of possibility that this is another one of these, given the oddly specific example in the middle of general musings. The fact that all follow-on replies have to do with this particular incident and nothing else in the post, painting the victim in the most positive light, makes this especially questionable. If I'm wrong, I apologize and wish the OP well, but I gotta say, it looks pretty sus to this observer.
MOC used role accounts on Wikipedia, which was considered acceptable for a while, but refused to stop using them and was banned. There's no evidence at all that he used sock puppets here or on Quora, and a strong case to be made that he didn't.
YC found no drugs, no infidelity, no criminal behavior, no unethical business dealings. All they found was... weird posts online in the 2000s.
Capitalism is a scam against the working class. I dont know how people can read things like this and not want a huge reform. The OP "just following orders" is ridiculous.
Also, whenever the question "where are the tech unions at," comes up ,its because the system crushes anyone who is slightly left leaning in this regard.
Excerpt:
You’d be one of the best people they’ve seen in years, and unlike the people around them, you’re honest and ethical. The thing that’s holding you back is… a reputation problem. People Google you and think, “This guy’s going to start a union.”
This is going to make it hard to place you. Guys like [name] don’t like people they can’t buy. If I were you, I’d start blogging again and come out against unions. Do that for six months, and I can put you anywhere you want to go.
Follow up with a post one year from now. Tell us then how you will have acted in the world since the surgery — with regard to past, present, and future.
Apropos, I recommend Taleb's Skin in the Game to both you and all others on the thread who may not have read it. (If you haven't, perhaps during your recovery.) But, as Taleb points out, talk is cheap, and so is reading and living vicariously through texts. Actions speak louder than words, and we must do and act in the world, not merely chat about it.
Remember that when you leave this earth, you can take with you nothing that you have received, only what you have given: a full heart, enriched by honest service, love, sacrifice and courage.
>In 2015, I had a lot of interaction with a startup incubator you know well, and ended up sitting in the discussions and planning around banning and erasing a young programmer we considered a threat to our financial interests, due to his concerns about authoritarianism in technology. In retrospect, he was harmless, but an example had to be made. The decision was made to ban him here, try to get him fired though I don't know if we succeeded, and attack him with sockpuppets on Reddit, and it seems to have worked because you don't hear his name much.
Jesus Christ, dude. I'm going to be honest with you. While I feel bad for you in your current state, this is a pretty disgusting thing to have done. Have you tried to make any of it better? I mean, you could name this programmer (assuming that wouldn't make it worse), and you could definitely name the incubator and everyone involved in this decision. I'm guessing this kind of thing is quite common.
If you just want someone to tell you that it's okay, I'm not going to be the one to do that. Be as sorry as you want, but what have you done to make it better for him? Even part of this post reads a bit patronizing ("In retrospect, he was harmless..."). Not "this was intrinsically wrong and we shouldn't have done this", just "he wasn't even a threat to take down". My God, dude.
I wish you well because there are vanishingly few humans I wish to see truly suffer. If you make it, I hope you work towards righting the wrongs you've done.
There's a reason 'come to Jesus moment' is an expression.
Aka the uncertainty collapse of effective altruism -- in which someone realizes they might die before getting to the altruism part, and have to confront the "effective" things they did without any moral counterbalance.
If someone feels guilty about the things they've done when facing death, then they should immediately take actions that try and redress them.
Otherwise, there's an almost certainty they'll revert to being the same asshole they were so uncomfortable facing in the mirror, after mortal peril has passed.
Being someone different requires action, not just thoughts.
Thank you. I am hearing some things I needed to hear and I assume others are as well. I wish you the best of luck with your surgery and the road ahead. If I may, I've found that people who spend time wondering if they are a "good person" or not are some of the best people. You'd be surprised how many people never take time for introspection at all.
I will pray for you. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Hindsight is 20/20. I often try to think of the Last Things and I do think it helps me keep perspective a bit. Hoping you have many more opportunities to create good and to find peace. Metanoia is real!
The premise is that people are randomly notified of their imminent death, and variously decide that they have to make amends for things they did wrong, or make up for lost time, or stand up to their enemies, or do whatever they're most proud of, or make arrangements to provide for others, or create something for posterity.
Personally I think mortality makes everybody slightly crazy, and is best ignored, so I wouldn't want to react in any major way. I'd probably record the current state of my projects, in case somebody else felt like taking over. So I'd die doing admin chores.
> In 2015, I had a lot of interaction with a startup incubator you know well, and ended up sitting in the discussions and planning around banning and erasing a young programmer we considered a threat to our financial interests, due to his concerns about authoritarianism in technology. In retrospect, he was harmless, but an example had to be made. The decision was made to ban him here, try to get him fired though I don't know if we succeeded, and attack him with sockpuppets on Reddit, and it seems to have worked because you don't hear his name much.
You should set this right while you still can. God or the afterlife isn’t a reason to try and be less shit. The reason is that our shit accumulates and makes a hellish cesspool on Earth if we don’t. Good luck.
I appreciate your insight. I have done this and that and am also most pleased with my shed.
I am a christian and do believe in heaven. I'm going to say a prayer now in my little office and ask that you find your way there, whether today or another day. God bless.
Godspeed. Wishing you a favorable outcome and more time ahead. We can’t change the past, we can only learn from our mistakes and try to do better in the future. We win or we learn. Appreciate you candidly sharing your thoughts.
What is important or right today might not be tomorrow. The problem that you think today did not exist at the moment of decision. Even if you turn back time, you would likely do the same (unless with today knowledge). Why resent?
Regarding point 3, instead of writing such posts on HN, you'd do better by contacting that person, apologizing, and making sure you make up for all wrong you did.
Good look on your surgery, and thank you for your insights.
Supporting authoritarianism to protect financial interests harms society in the long run - and you can't eat money nor buy a society pleasant to live in.
You are still not caring about ethics. You can fix the problem, you can expose the people responsible for this, you can contact the person and explain to them what you all did. That is a way to start to atone for the mistakes, but does not look like that is what you want to do, you want to fix things in your mind, not what you broke.
> 3. Ethics matter. I don't believe there's any life after this one
Serious, non-troll question: why bother?
If there isn't any scope outside of the current perceived existence, and we're all so much "smart dirt", then the difference between kindness and malevolence seems moot.
Note: I do subscribe to an explicit meaning to life, so this is posed more to express bewilderment at the alternative than reveal any anxiety on my end.
I personally don't think belief in an afterlife should be necessary to believe it's worthwhile to not be shitty to people.
"What goes around comes around" suffices for me.
Call it "ethics", call it "maximizing outcomes for all involved stakeholders", call it "karma", "good business", or "kindness"...whatever you call it, I don't think it's difficult to find your own personal justification for it if you want to.
The universe is meaningless and the world is cursed. Sentient beings are the ones ascribing meaning to the meaningless, uncaring universe. You have only a short amount of time while you can do this. Once life is finished, you just become inert matter.
Curiously enough, I don't think this invites nihilism. The opposite, really. The difference between kindness and malevolence exists because we perceive a difference, and give meaning to actions - they are either kind or malevolent.
If we can give meaning to things, it is imperative that we do so, and act accordingly. It is out little defiance to the great enveloping cosmic nothing.
You seem to assume that you can only have a meaning to life if there is an afterlife.
Most people judge themselves against a narrative that matters to them. Most people do not want to cast themselves as a villain in their story.
You may ask "but what does it matter if we are all dirt". It matters to them, even if there is no godlike perspective above it all. To be honest, I'm not actually sure why having an afterlife or some super-being would create any more explicit meaning for an individual life.
One can make the argument that certain religious practices would help a person realize what OP is feeling all the time about morals, not just in front of their death bed.
Lots of replies here about after life, and just doing the right thing because you're supposed to or "empathy", yet there are a set of people like OP who only observe this when their life is put in front of them for review, maybe they do need religion?
How does extra scope (like an afterlife) solve the problem of purpose? Now you have two problems of purpose. If I remember rightly, C.S. Lewis in his sci-fi made heaven into an endless series of adventures, which is the minimum necessary to make it attractive. But this still doesn't resolve to an ultimate purpose any more than a finite life does.
Often the question "what is the purpose of my existence?" is a proxy for some less abstract question, I think. Consider Young Frankenstein, and the gag where characters sing "Oh, sweet mystery of life at last I've found you! At last, I know the secret of it all!" because they got sex. Less cynically, it may simply be a matter of identifying comfortable values, in terms of the possible values available in the human condition in the present day. I mean you're unlikely to be honestly asking a question with a giant universal scope, if you claim that it bothers you personally.
I don't find it contradictory to subscribe to both an individual Destiny and an "universal scope" Destiny of which the individual Destiny is a component.
This Destiny is in tension with Free Will (in my telling).
In retirement, my hope is to produce a lengthy, pretentious exploration of a few ideas that will doubtless help someone's insomnia.
Right, but any identification of the Ultimate Purpose is going to be a very vague bad guess. I kind of like "to learn", but besides that I tend to keep returning to a string bag of mixed values that won't boil down to anything neat.
The reason I don't think Destiny can amount to more than a "very vague bad guess" as an intellectual matter is that such a solution would tamper with Free Will.
When friends and family and acquaintances think of your name after you are gone, will they miss you? Then congratulations, you probably lived a good life and contributed in positive ways to humanity.
I guess the question is: Do you want your time here to have impacted others in a positive way or not?
>I don't believe that faith is an out, or that you can apologize or donate your way out of past behaviors. You will always be the person who has done what you have done.
Although you can't completely undo the past, you can choose to do things to make it right. People do change. Your attitude is self-defeating and is setting you up to act on more bad impulses in the future.
Good luck with the operation! I haven’t been in this situation but there’s every possibility that you’ll come through this and to prepare for your live after perhaps you can think of a few small changes that would improve how you feel about your life?
I’d think that would also give you peace of mind. Sending you strength.
I’m sorry you have to go through this. Of course it doesn’t matter what I feel or think. I’m a random stranger…
Except I’m another human of your kind who found this post. It moved me. So there is meaning in your suffering that goes beyond you and reflects in someone else’s experience.
We are all doomed, but at least we can see each other along the way, clap hands and cry “we lived!”
The decision was made to ban him here, try to get him fired though I don't know if we succeeded, and attack him with sockpuppets on Reddit
I was on the receiving end of similar treatment for several months on StackOverflow. It made me angry but eventually I just accepted and kinda felt bad for the people doing it. Your admission makes it seems like it wasn't worth it.
So, basically, it all boils down to this: Don’t be a miserable person. People will pretend to like you or care about you because "it’s their job" (just look at LinkedIn: no one complains about anything; people are even afraid to point out the elephant in the room).
The problem is that systems like incubators and financial structures reward this kind of behavior. Look at the billionaires we have now (Elon, Donald...) and what they’re doing to the world—making it a worse place.
To everyone: Remember, you will die someday. Think about whether the world you leave behind is better or worse because of you. No matter how monumental your achievements, you will leave this world, and your legacy will fade over time (just as it did in Ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, and even in more modern societies). Look at who is remembered and what remains of them. We don’t realize it because a century seems like an eternity to us.
Because other people matter and building a caring and just society means we’ll all get further in the one life we have. If you require the threat of eternal punishment to do the right thing and be a good person I’d question if you truly are.
Of course not everyone can or will do the right thing without being threatened with punishment... but I think it's possible to make the world a better place in general if we can at least tone down the amount of bad things happening, even if it requires "threatening" the people that need it to behave.
But if there is no afterlife, why does building caring and just society matter? If you (and everyone else, and the universe) is going to die, you might as well train your conscious and trample on the lives of others if it leads to success in life.
> But if there is no afterlife, why does building caring and just society matter?
Because some (most?) of us are empathetic and compassionate people. We care about others and hurt when they hurt. We want to live in a just society and want to leave behind a just society for others after us.
The fact that it requires „training your conscience“ to „trample on the lives of others“ suggests that such an outlook is not a default state of being.
Most of us are egoistic a-holes, and most of us like to build false picture of them in their minds so we can have nice time thinking that we are good persons.
Even without believing in a life after this one, a lot of people seem to find immense value in living ethically/morally for its benefits in this life: a clear conscience, building trust, strengthening relationships, etc.
Even though life can be cruel, there seems to be an overarching goodness built into the universe that benefits those who float in its current.
Faith, ethics, etc., can be considered survival mechanics of a higher-level organism relative to individual human. These matters will by definition not make sense if you view them only from the perspective of a standalone individual—and it is fine, because humans really do not exist as standalone individuals.
Do you care about people _now_, even though their existence is finite and at some point anything you may or may not have done to affect them will cease mattering?
Good luck, bud. I found I wasted a lot of time in my youth and only stopped as I aged; took time to find purpose, I think. That purpose also evolves and becomes both "wider" and "kinder" with age, I think; to move from zealotry into a kind of zen progression.
I'm writing this 38 hours before I go into my workplace on Monday that I will surely survive, and while I am told I have a better than 99% chance of making it to this time next year, I still feel, though I am too old (late 20s) to deal with these things, that I have wasted too much time. I'd like to impart some lessons.
1. Relax. Go home, smoke weed, play video games. During my first job I worked from home but I was still young and horny 24/7 so I spent most of my time just gooning. I lived in a shitty rental apartment so I didn't care at all about keeping it clean. Best time of my life.
2. If you haven't done something difficult yet, probably there's a good reason why. Most motivated, hard-working people fail. Just chill the fuck out. You know those old men in poor countries who sit entire day just talking and playing boardgames that have already been mathematically solved? This is winning at life. Be like that.
3. I love all those hippie visions where together we push humanity forward, but the truth is, compassion is scarce, and most people are dangerous morons. If you want a romantic story of a brave soldier who kept fighting despite being surrounded sure, go ahead, but in real life the only thing that counts is power. If you are in power don't be afraid of exercising it.
4. Animals can be cute. The evolutionary reason why we love them is that they're "practice babies" before we get real ones. Speaking of babies, just don't. Your instincts are lying to you.
5. You are going to die sad and alone. That's how it is. Deal with it.
That's probably enough for now. My mind goes between periods of racing and long spells of languid acceptance. All humans end up in the place where I am, and I hope you reach it with fewer regrets than I have.
Seems the author meant the relationship with HN is supposed to be self evident, but in another reply they also stated clearly the ban was in relation to HN, PG was aware and didn’t make the call but didn’t go against it— just paraphrasing from their reply though.
> I had a lot of interaction with a startup incubator you know well, and ended up sitting in the discussions and planning around banning and erasing a young programmer we considered a threat to our financial interests, due to his concerns about authoritarianism in technology.
And… this wasn’t immediately seen as being deeply unethical and downright evil? Most of the western world punched Nazis on purpose 80 years ago… that doesn’t get to stop, because authoritarianism never goes away.
>In retrospect, he was harmless, but an example had to be made.
Wow. Just… wow. To destroy a life simply because of greed and because a person’s passion of fighting evil made you uncomfortable.
You need to understand you are very much the bad guy, here.
> And… this wasn’t immediately seen as being deeply unethical and downright evil?
Oh, these people know it's evil - from the second they suggest it. The personality types associated with SV leadership are simply wired for rationalising evil as a means to any business end. It's just implicitly accepted that it's an appropriate tool to be wielded.
You're the weird one who "just doesn't get it" if you push back. Push back hard enough and you'll quickly find yourself on the receiving end.
If you want to know the key to Heaven is asking God for forgiveness for your sins with the intention of becoming better. Repent and believe in the Gospel, go to the traditional Latin mass if you can
> The decision was made to ban him here, try to get him fired though I don't know if we succeeded, and attack him with sockpuppets on Reddit, and it seems to have worked because you don't hear his name much.
I am going to be uncivil but I hope the odds beat you.
Deserved. In retrospect, it was deeply strange to hear venture capitalists who are now billionaires get so worried about the writing of one outsider. They were in crisis management mode over so little.
I also feel bad because Dan G had to be the face of a decision that wasn't his, and he took a lot of flak for it.
> 3. Ethics matter. I don't believe there's any life after this one, but I find myself ruminating on what I've done. In 2015, I had a lot of interaction with a startup incubator you know well, and ended up sitting in the discussions and planning around banning and erasing a young programmer we considered a threat to our financial interests, due to his concerns about authoritarianism in technology. In retrospect, he was harmless, but an example had to be made. The decision was made to ban him here, try to get him fired though I don't know if we succeeded, and attack him with sockpuppets on Reddit, and it seems to have worked because you don't hear his name much.
There's something a bit odd about confessing that you were part of an institutional attempt to cancel a specific person, without naming the person or what their specific concerns were, or what specific institution this was; and also claiming that the reason you regret this now is because they were "harmless" rather than "correct".
Someone who in 2015 was concerned about "authoritarianism in technology" possibly came from a cluster of political perspectives that is relatively close to my own; and also possibly came from a cluster of political perspectives that I am relatively opposed to. It's hard to tell which from just that wording and the fact that someone with institutional power in 2015 wanted to cancel them.
I'm certainly curious for more details about exactly what happened here. I imagine it would compromise your anonymity to say more, and depending on the details it might even be bad for that person.
Something disturbingly similar happened to me in 2015. It took me a LONG TIME to build my life back after that. There are STILL certain opportunities that are off limits to me and likely always will be.
I’m pretty sure I know who you are.
I'm sorry to hear about this. The mid-2010s were a dangerous time to be entering Silicon Valley or technology. The important roles were already taken, so there weren't any real opportunities except in crypto (disreputable even by Silicon Valley standards) and the turn toward authoritarianism was subtle but still present enough that, if you left and tried to speak out, you could easily be attacked as not really principled, but simply lashing out because you weren't successful.
This was, and probably still is, the standard anti-whistleblower playbook:
1. He's just lashing out because he was unsuccessful. (That is, claim moral equivalence. He would do the same things if he had won.)
2. He might have a point, but he's being egotistical and making it all about him. (Most whistleblowers are neurodivergent have a history of interpersonal conflict that is usually not damning, but can be dredged up. Now the conversation is all about him, and not in his favor.)
3. Sure, he does have a point, but his tone is shrill and his approach is off-putting. He's actually damaging his own cause by "acting out" and refusing to use official channels. (Never mind that "official channels" are always controlled assets. We are condemning him for not giving us advance notice.)
It's ugly, ugly work. I probably didn't cause any harm to anyone that wasn't already in the works, and maybe I couldn't have prevented any, but I wish I had done it all differently.
> There's something a bit odd about confessing that you were part of an institutional attempt to cancel a specific person, without naming the person or what their specific concerns were, or what specific institution this was; and also claiming that the reason you regret this now is because they were "harmless" rather than "correct".
I misspoke. People around me seriously thought this person was a threat to the reputation of Silicon Valley. In reality, he was a mid-tier blogger with serious writing talent but only niche appeal, and Silicon Valley was the biggest threat to the reputation of Silicon Valley.
> I'm certainly curious for more details about exactly what happened here.
Unfortunately, there's as much misinformation about this story and this person as there is truth available online. I will say this: dang did not order the ban here and it was not even his idea. Paul Graham is also not, to my knowledge, the one who ordered it, though he did not reverse it and, in retrospect, he should have.
Imho that cancelling part was about “I still think about it, I don’t have it closed in my mind”. It was not about cancelling a specific person therefore he didn’t mention the name.
I was in the discussions, but I didn't play a major part in the decision. This is closer to "I should have said something" than "I wish I hadn't done that."
It's weird how you don't think of yourself as playing an active role when you are just agreeing with other people because they might be useful, but then find yourself ten years later wondering if you should have done everything differently.
Yup. Exactly. Most people including me have (had) to learn how to not being afraid speak up.
Otherwise unresolved issues catch up with a person until the end of life.
So everytime someone tells that I am too much activist I answer “yes, because I think I need to speak up so I don’t have to have unfinished stuff in my head”. And after ten years when we meet they ask me if I remember …something… And I tell them I don’t as it was finished and I don’t live in the past.
Ram Dass would appreciate it. Be here and now.
I understand. I think many people do. It sounds like this individual was proven right in the retaliation.
It's an obvious troll post.
It could be, but there are two dozen people this thread could be about.
> had a lot of interaction with a startup incubator you know well, and ended up sitting in the discussions and planning around banning and erasing a young programmer we considered a threat to our financial interests, due to his concerns about authoritarianism in technology. In retrospect, he was harmless, but an example had to be made.
Don’t think for a second saying this so vaguely atones for what was done. You have a 50% chance of dying yet you will hide the names of the people that did this still? I still think you have an ethics problem…
I hope the best for you and your future though. There is room to still grow.
Ruins some innocent man's life, shows up to the forum of the likely-incubator wanting back pats for feeling sorry. Unreal.
He was worried about them being authoritarian - then they promptly prove him right.
Hopefully you’ve grown from that interaction, OP. Seems like you have some work to do still mending some bridges. Godspeed.
I mean if someone says “be kind to animals get a dog” you already know they don’t quite know what “being kind to animals” is. If they say “all humans end up where I am” (even just in terms of age) you already know they don’t quite know what “all humans” is.
At the end of the day though, it’s just an out of touch person trying to pass on something in good faith. Their whistleblowing is an incidental side channel they probably didn’t really mean to get into.
Didn’t mean to get into? The list seems like this was its main purpose, the rest only there to help in that effort. It can all have still been authentic but this isnt exactly a brief parenthetical tangent, and the author has demonstrated its importance by returning to comment further on it in much more detail.
Yours is an ironically awkward comment itself in how it takes on the author’s words given their statement about sock puppets being used to discredit…
> I mean if someone says “be kind to animals get a dog” you already know they don’t quite know what “being kind to animals” is. If they say “all humans end up where I am” (even just in terms of age) you already know they don’t quite know what “all humans” is.
Oh come on. We can quibble about the quality of the post and OP's character, but you're just blatantly misrepresenting their words. They did not say "get a dog," they said there are "few joys like having a dog." More importantly, it is incredibly obvious that when they say "all humans end up where I am," they're referring to facing death, not the specifics of their age, background, or present circumstances.
Passat it's not real
The decision was made to ban him here, try to get him fired though I don't know if we succeeded, and attack him with sockpuppets on Reddit, and it seems to have worked because you don't hear his name much.
Ten years later, I'm still stuck thinking about this. Am I the kind of person who does shitty things? I was. Am I still? How would I even know?
Corporations and governments often get flak for doing shitty things, but ultimately it’s still people within those corporations and governments doing shitty things. “Just doing my job” is not really a legitimate shield to hide behind and I give OP credit for recognizing this even if a bit late.
Thanks for sharing the advice and best wishes with the surgery.
Most people realize the shitty things they have done only at a time like this. The ones who actually care, take or at least try to take the necessary steps to prevent it from happening at all.
Recognition is cheap without implementing a fix.
I agree with this point. I hate it when they say, for example, “Ford lays off 11,000 employees.” It really should say, “Jim Farley, the CEO of Ford, lays off 11,000 employees.
Companies and employees are truly an enigma when the shit hits the fan. It’s extremely rare to show any loyalty to anyone. People put their heads down and pretend like nothing is happening.
>Ethics matter. I don't believe there's any life after this one, but I find myself ruminating on what I've done. In 2015, I had a lot of interaction with a startup incubator you know well, and ended up sitting in the discussions and planning around banning and erasing a young programmer we considered a threat to our financial interests, due to his concerns about authoritarianism in technology. In retrospect, he was harmless, but an example had to be made. The decision was made to ban him here, try to get him fired though I don't know if we succeeded, and attack him with sockpuppets on Reddit, and it seems to have worked because you don't hear his name much.
What have you done since then to mitigate this very egregious harm?
I have not found your success, and I suspect it's because I too am "anti-authoritarian" -- I had folks try to convince me to do "scholarshop for service" and act like I was crazy when I expressed worry if the presidency went from D to R, someone might do crazy shit like initiate a government shutdown making it impossible to fulfull my service, and then I'd get a bill for a degree I didn't want.
https://cyberscoop.com/government-shutdown-cybersecurity-wor...
In fact, every prediction I made about creeping authoritarianism down to a member of the national guard being shot dead outside where I used to toil away as a public interest lobbyist has come true.
I'm having one of the worst emotional nights of my life tonight -- and maybe I'll regret this post, but why do you feel you're in any way good, to put your boot on on the necks of others then say all the right things at the last second to ease your conscience while those of us who actually acted in the public interest are harassed and abused?
One can only imagine what kind of HN account flags a comment like this one
I hope the OP makes it through his surgery
Perhaps then he can find the time to apologise to those who he believes might deserve an apology
Probably the kind of account who has read a lot of reddit creative writing exercises with the same structure as this. Makes vague, salacious claims, weaves a plausible motivation, and includes just enough details that people will see patterns and tie them to possible actual events. It's basically like writing horoscopes. I see no reason to believe this is anything other than that.
Unflagged, thank you
Get a dog ASAP after recovering and don't look back. Mark my words and send the first pics with the puppy after you recovered elegantly.
Of course you will make it, and if not, you wont care anyway. You'll make it. I'll wait for the pics.
PS: But take that existential eye-opener serious and use it (you might later forget and drift from that in everyday-default-mode). You could print and frame this post to make it unforgetable.
Please don’t get a dog just because you’re having an existential crisis. Dogs are lifelong responsibilities.
Get a dog. If you can and are willing to look after the dog for 15 years, be willing to train it well in the first 10 months, prepared for cost and vet bills etc. etc. I wouldnt want a puppy when in recovery unless someone else is fully looking after him.
Huh, I do recall a certain anti-corporate individual (with the initials MOC) that was fairly loud and prolific on both HN and Reddit around that time, including insisting that pg and other tech leaders were trying to get him canceled (well, before the term existed, I think). If this was him, perhaps he wasn't as much of a crackpot as many assumed he was.
Here is dang's comment back when they banned Michael O' Church: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10017538
The year was indeed 2015, and his political content would fit OP's description, but the reason for the ban was that he was repeatedly being a total asshole, not "YC is scared of anti-fascists".
You know... one of the charges leveled at Michael was creation of sockpuppet accounts in various media (Wikipedia, HN, Quora). I suppose it could be within the realm of possibility that this is another one of these, given the oddly specific example in the middle of general musings. The fact that all follow-on replies have to do with this particular incident and nothing else in the post, painting the victim in the most positive light, makes this especially questionable. If I'm wrong, I apologize and wish the OP well, but I gotta say, it looks pretty sus to this observer.
MOC used role accounts on Wikipedia, which was considered acceptable for a while, but refused to stop using them and was banned. There's no evidence at all that he used sock puppets here or on Quora, and a strong case to be made that he didn't.
YC found no drugs, no infidelity, no criminal behavior, no unethical business dealings. All they found was... weird posts online in the 2000s.
https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2016/04/ looks like it.
Capitalism is a scam against the working class. I dont know how people can read things like this and not want a huge reform. The OP "just following orders" is ridiculous.
Also, whenever the question "where are the tech unions at," comes up ,its because the system crushes anyone who is slightly left leaning in this regard.
Excerpt:
You’d be one of the best people they’ve seen in years, and unlike the people around them, you’re honest and ethical. The thing that’s holding you back is… a reputation problem. People Google you and think, “This guy’s going to start a union.”
This is going to make it hard to place you. Guys like [name] don’t like people they can’t buy. If I were you, I’d start blogging again and come out against unions. Do that for six months, and I can put you anywhere you want to go.
Let me be honest. Most of us would just follow along...
Follow up with a post one year from now. Tell us then how you will have acted in the world since the surgery — with regard to past, present, and future.
Apropos, I recommend Taleb's Skin in the Game to both you and all others on the thread who may not have read it. (If you haven't, perhaps during your recovery.) But, as Taleb points out, talk is cheap, and so is reading and living vicariously through texts. Actions speak louder than words, and we must do and act in the world, not merely chat about it.
Remember that when you leave this earth, you can take with you nothing that you have received, only what you have given: a full heart, enriched by honest service, love, sacrifice and courage.
>In 2015, I had a lot of interaction with a startup incubator you know well, and ended up sitting in the discussions and planning around banning and erasing a young programmer we considered a threat to our financial interests, due to his concerns about authoritarianism in technology. In retrospect, he was harmless, but an example had to be made. The decision was made to ban him here, try to get him fired though I don't know if we succeeded, and attack him with sockpuppets on Reddit, and it seems to have worked because you don't hear his name much.
Jesus Christ, dude. I'm going to be honest with you. While I feel bad for you in your current state, this is a pretty disgusting thing to have done. Have you tried to make any of it better? I mean, you could name this programmer (assuming that wouldn't make it worse), and you could definitely name the incubator and everyone involved in this decision. I'm guessing this kind of thing is quite common.
If you just want someone to tell you that it's okay, I'm not going to be the one to do that. Be as sorry as you want, but what have you done to make it better for him? Even part of this post reads a bit patronizing ("In retrospect, he was harmless..."). Not "this was intrinsically wrong and we shouldn't have done this", just "he wasn't even a threat to take down". My God, dude.
I wish you well because there are vanishingly few humans I wish to see truly suffer. If you make it, I hope you work towards righting the wrongs you've done.
Sociopaths also get sick.
Just because someone might be dying, it doesn't make them nice people.
There's a reason 'come to Jesus moment' is an expression.
Aka the uncertainty collapse of effective altruism -- in which someone realizes they might die before getting to the altruism part, and have to confront the "effective" things they did without any moral counterbalance.
If someone feels guilty about the things they've done when facing death, then they should immediately take actions that try and redress them.
Otherwise, there's an almost certainty they'll revert to being the same asshole they were so uncomfortable facing in the mirror, after mortal peril has passed.
Being someone different requires action, not just thoughts.
Thank you. I am hearing some things I needed to hear and I assume others are as well. I wish you the best of luck with your surgery and the road ahead. If I may, I've found that people who spend time wondering if they are a "good person" or not are some of the best people. You'd be surprised how many people never take time for introspection at all.
I will pray for you. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Hindsight is 20/20. I often try to think of the Last Things and I do think it helps me keep perspective a bit. Hoping you have many more opportunities to create good and to find peace. Metanoia is real!
I've been reading an old manga called Ikigami: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikigami:_The_Ultimate_Limit
The premise is that people are randomly notified of their imminent death, and variously decide that they have to make amends for things they did wrong, or make up for lost time, or stand up to their enemies, or do whatever they're most proud of, or make arrangements to provide for others, or create something for posterity.
Personally I think mortality makes everybody slightly crazy, and is best ignored, so I wouldn't want to react in any major way. I'd probably record the current state of my projects, in case somebody else felt like taking over. So I'd die doing admin chores.
> In 2015, I had a lot of interaction with a startup incubator you know well, and ended up sitting in the discussions and planning around banning and erasing a young programmer we considered a threat to our financial interests, due to his concerns about authoritarianism in technology. In retrospect, he was harmless, but an example had to be made. The decision was made to ban him here, try to get him fired though I don't know if we succeeded, and attack him with sockpuppets on Reddit, and it seems to have worked because you don't hear his name much.
You should set this right while you still can. God or the afterlife isn’t a reason to try and be less shit. The reason is that our shit accumulates and makes a hellish cesspool on Earth if we don’t. Good luck.
I appreciate your insight. I have done this and that and am also most pleased with my shed.
I am a christian and do believe in heaven. I'm going to say a prayer now in my little office and ask that you find your way there, whether today or another day. God bless.
Godspeed. Wishing you a favorable outcome and more time ahead. We can’t change the past, we can only learn from our mistakes and try to do better in the future. We win or we learn. Appreciate you candidly sharing your thoughts.
What is important or right today might not be tomorrow. The problem that you think today did not exist at the moment of decision. Even if you turn back time, you would likely do the same (unless with today knowledge). Why resent?
3) You could always do want you can to make up for this, it never will but you can try, and that means more than just an offer or worthless words
Is the "young programmer" you mentioned Jacob Appelbaum?
No, it isn't.
Well I have empathy for your situation despite your shortcomings. I hope you can redeem yourself in some way.
> you don't hear his name much.
Seems like it's time to say who you did what to, and face the music for those actions?
Regarding point 3, instead of writing such posts on HN, you'd do better by contacting that person, apologizing, and making sure you make up for all wrong you did.
I wish your surgery goes well.
Good look on your surgery, and thank you for your insights.
Supporting authoritarianism to protect financial interests harms society in the long run - and you can't eat money nor buy a society pleasant to live in.
How does the surgery go? Hope you are doing fine.
> 3. Ethics matter.
You are still not caring about ethics. You can fix the problem, you can expose the people responsible for this, you can contact the person and explain to them what you all did. That is a way to start to atone for the mistakes, but does not look like that is what you want to do, you want to fix things in your mind, not what you broke.
> 3. Ethics matter. I don't believe there's any life after this one
Serious, non-troll question: why bother?
If there isn't any scope outside of the current perceived existence, and we're all so much "smart dirt", then the difference between kindness and malevolence seems moot.
Note: I do subscribe to an explicit meaning to life, so this is posed more to express bewilderment at the alternative than reveal any anxiety on my end.
I personally don't think belief in an afterlife should be necessary to believe it's worthwhile to not be shitty to people.
"What goes around comes around" suffices for me.
Call it "ethics", call it "maximizing outcomes for all involved stakeholders", call it "karma", "good business", or "kindness"...whatever you call it, I don't think it's difficult to find your own personal justification for it if you want to.
> "What goes around comes around" suffices for me.
As you say. Best wishes, in any case.
The universe is meaningless and the world is cursed. Sentient beings are the ones ascribing meaning to the meaningless, uncaring universe. You have only a short amount of time while you can do this. Once life is finished, you just become inert matter.
Curiously enough, I don't think this invites nihilism. The opposite, really. The difference between kindness and malevolence exists because we perceive a difference, and give meaning to actions - they are either kind or malevolent.
If we can give meaning to things, it is imperative that we do so, and act accordingly. It is out little defiance to the great enveloping cosmic nothing.
> The universe is meaningless and the world is cursed.
Certainly a possibility.
You seem to assume that you can only have a meaning to life if there is an afterlife.
Most people judge themselves against a narrative that matters to them. Most people do not want to cast themselves as a villain in their story.
You may ask "but what does it matter if we are all dirt". It matters to them, even if there is no godlike perspective above it all. To be honest, I'm not actually sure why having an afterlife or some super-being would create any more explicit meaning for an individual life.
One can make the argument that certain religious practices would help a person realize what OP is feeling all the time about morals, not just in front of their death bed.
Lots of replies here about after life, and just doing the right thing because you're supposed to or "empathy", yet there are a set of people like OP who only observe this when their life is put in front of them for review, maybe they do need religion?
> Most people judge themselves against a narrative that matters to them. Most people do not want to cast themselves as a villain in their story.
This is a reasonably assertion as far as it goes.
At the risk of being a dripping faucet, I'm poking at "Why?", given an inevitable return to the dust from which all came.
What's wrong with "because of social and evolutionary pressure"?
"Evolitionary" implies some direction and execution scope, does it not?
Possibly I'm guilty of over-reading the word.
How does extra scope (like an afterlife) solve the problem of purpose? Now you have two problems of purpose. If I remember rightly, C.S. Lewis in his sci-fi made heaven into an endless series of adventures, which is the minimum necessary to make it attractive. But this still doesn't resolve to an ultimate purpose any more than a finite life does.
Often the question "what is the purpose of my existence?" is a proxy for some less abstract question, I think. Consider Young Frankenstein, and the gag where characters sing "Oh, sweet mystery of life at last I've found you! At last, I know the secret of it all!" because they got sex. Less cynically, it may simply be a matter of identifying comfortable values, in terms of the possible values available in the human condition in the present day. I mean you're unlikely to be honestly asking a question with a giant universal scope, if you claim that it bothers you personally.
I don't find it contradictory to subscribe to both an individual Destiny and an "universal scope" Destiny of which the individual Destiny is a component.
This Destiny is in tension with Free Will (in my telling).
In retirement, my hope is to produce a lengthy, pretentious exploration of a few ideas that will doubtless help someone's insomnia.
Right, but any identification of the Ultimate Purpose is going to be a very vague bad guess. I kind of like "to learn", but besides that I tend to keep returning to a string bag of mixed values that won't boil down to anything neat.
The reason I don't think Destiny can amount to more than a "very vague bad guess" as an intellectual matter is that such a solution would tamper with Free Will.
So, how does this outlook work? What's free will (or Free Will)?
What I will argue is something like Plato's Tripartite Soul[1] with the proviso that these are orthogonal dimensions.
Free Will, in this telling, exists on the logos/eros plane of the individual.
Destiny is some target on the plane out there at infinity toward which one navigates over time.
The origin of this coordinate system is the heart, and one may or may not hold a connection to the Creator via the thymos.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato%27s_theory_of_soul
Possibly you're over-reading, but definitely you didn't answer my question.
More explicitly, then, "evolutionary" implies some grasp of a direction toward which things evolve.
Otherwise, it's just so many chemical reactions.
Evolution does not imply direction at all. Only change under selection pressure. There is no direction things are moving towards.
that's what I thought if you don't believe in God then the only sensible option is to maximise your function while you still breathe.
What I'm questioning is how we got to 'sensible' here.
When friends and family and acquaintances think of your name after you are gone, will they miss you? Then congratulations, you probably lived a good life and contributed in positive ways to humanity.
I guess the question is: Do you want your time here to have impacted others in a positive way or not?
> Then congratulations, you probably lived a good life and contributed in positive ways to humanity.
This seems thin gruel.
Sorry you feel that way.
>I don't believe that faith is an out, or that you can apologize or donate your way out of past behaviors. You will always be the person who has done what you have done.
Although you can't completely undo the past, you can choose to do things to make it right. People do change. Your attitude is self-defeating and is setting you up to act on more bad impulses in the future.
Good luck with the operation! I haven’t been in this situation but there’s every possibility that you’ll come through this and to prepare for your live after perhaps you can think of a few small changes that would improve how you feel about your life? I’d think that would also give you peace of mind. Sending you strength.
I’m sorry you have to go through this. Of course it doesn’t matter what I feel or think. I’m a random stranger…
Except I’m another human of your kind who found this post. It moved me. So there is meaning in your suffering that goes beyond you and reflects in someone else’s experience.
We are all doomed, but at least we can see each other along the way, clap hands and cry “we lived!”
I hope you pull through.
Why would this be flagged?
Wish you all the best, I totally can fell you. I ruminated a lot, thanks for letting me know what is truely valuable.
We look forward to your redemption post next year. Sounds like you have a lot of unaddressed things you need to sort out. You know what to do.
> Ten years later, I'm still stuck thinking about this. Am I the kind of person who does shitty things? I was. Am I still? How would I even know?
These are the kinds of questions I’m pretty familiar with. It’s entirely possible to reset, but it takes work and courage.
Good luck!
Wishing you a good recovery and a long life to have fun and to pass on your learnings
The decision was made to ban him here, try to get him fired though I don't know if we succeeded, and attack him with sockpuppets on Reddit
I was on the receiving end of similar treatment for several months on StackOverflow. It made me angry but eventually I just accepted and kinda felt bad for the people doing it. Your admission makes it seems like it wasn't worth it.
Hope the surgery works out in your favor.
So, basically, it all boils down to this: Don’t be a miserable person. People will pretend to like you or care about you because "it’s their job" (just look at LinkedIn: no one complains about anything; people are even afraid to point out the elephant in the room).
The problem is that systems like incubators and financial structures reward this kind of behavior. Look at the billionaires we have now (Elon, Donald...) and what they’re doing to the world—making it a worse place.
To everyone: Remember, you will die someday. Think about whether the world you leave behind is better or worse because of you. No matter how monumental your achievements, you will leave this world, and your legacy will fade over time (just as it did in Ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, and even in more modern societies). Look at who is remembered and what remains of them. We don’t realize it because a century seems like an eternity to us.
I hope for your recovery, and that you will be able to live a long and fulfilling life. However, I want to challenge you with one thing:
> Ethics matter.
> I don't believe there's any life after this one...
> I don't believe that faith is an out, or that you can apologize or donate your way out of past behaviors.
Why would it matter if there is no life after this one? If there is no life after this one, maybe you should just "get over it".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqNTT0E_T70
Because other people matter and building a caring and just society means we’ll all get further in the one life we have. If you require the threat of eternal punishment to do the right thing and be a good person I’d question if you truly are.
Of course not everyone can or will do the right thing without being threatened with punishment... but I think it's possible to make the world a better place in general if we can at least tone down the amount of bad things happening, even if it requires "threatening" the people that need it to behave.
Otherwise I think laws wouldn't exist.
But if there is no afterlife, why does building caring and just society matter? If you (and everyone else, and the universe) is going to die, you might as well train your conscious and trample on the lives of others if it leads to success in life.
> But if there is no afterlife, why does building caring and just society matter?
Because some (most?) of us are empathetic and compassionate people. We care about others and hurt when they hurt. We want to live in a just society and want to leave behind a just society for others after us.
The fact that it requires „training your conscience“ to „trample on the lives of others“ suggests that such an outlook is not a default state of being.
Most of us are egoistic a-holes, and most of us like to build false picture of them in their minds so we can have nice time thinking that we are good persons.
Even without believing in a life after this one, a lot of people seem to find immense value in living ethically/morally for its benefits in this life: a clear conscience, building trust, strengthening relationships, etc.
Even though life can be cruel, there seems to be an overarching goodness built into the universe that benefits those who float in its current.
Some people don't need a deity to treat others the way they would like to be treated.
Faith, ethics, etc., can be considered survival mechanics of a higher-level organism relative to individual human. These matters will by definition not make sense if you view them only from the perspective of a standalone individual—and it is fine, because humans really do not exist as standalone individuals.
> Why would it matter if there is no life after this one? If there is no life after this one, maybe you should just "get over it".
Because for as long as we are capable of caring, we should care that other people have to live with the consequences of our actions.
> we should care...
But that's my question: if there is no afterlife, why?
Do you care about people _now_, even though their existence is finite and at some point anything you may or may not have done to affect them will cease mattering?
Are you asking really to ask, or is this a entrance into a philosophical debate?
The answers so far are a little snark, however this topic has been debated for a long time and most of the pro/cons can be listed rather easily.
for one, it is just rhetorical, nobody knows if there is really no afterlife. Every bad you did might be a Jira ticket in hell now.
Personal growth is a great goal and it looks like you've done that throughout your life. Hope things go well.
good reminder that we all have to live with our actions, and we might not have the perspective to evaluate them until death comes a knockin'
Best of luck with your surgery and thank you for your advice.
Why is this flagged?
Good luck, bud. I found I wasted a lot of time in my youth and only stopped as I aged; took time to find purpose, I think. That purpose also evolves and becomes both "wider" and "kinder" with age, I think; to move from zealotry into a kind of zen progression.
I'm writing this 38 hours before I go into my workplace on Monday that I will surely survive, and while I am told I have a better than 99% chance of making it to this time next year, I still feel, though I am too old (late 20s) to deal with these things, that I have wasted too much time. I'd like to impart some lessons.
1. Relax. Go home, smoke weed, play video games. During my first job I worked from home but I was still young and horny 24/7 so I spent most of my time just gooning. I lived in a shitty rental apartment so I didn't care at all about keeping it clean. Best time of my life.
2. If you haven't done something difficult yet, probably there's a good reason why. Most motivated, hard-working people fail. Just chill the fuck out. You know those old men in poor countries who sit entire day just talking and playing boardgames that have already been mathematically solved? This is winning at life. Be like that.
3. I love all those hippie visions where together we push humanity forward, but the truth is, compassion is scarce, and most people are dangerous morons. If you want a romantic story of a brave soldier who kept fighting despite being surrounded sure, go ahead, but in real life the only thing that counts is power. If you are in power don't be afraid of exercising it.
4. Animals can be cute. The evolutionary reason why we love them is that they're "practice babies" before we get real ones. Speaking of babies, just don't. Your instincts are lying to you.
5. You are going to die sad and alone. That's how it is. Deal with it.
That's probably enough for now. My mind goes between periods of racing and long spells of languid acceptance. All humans end up in the place where I am, and I hope you reach it with fewer regrets than I have.
The title alone made me think this should be more of a thing: People writing "life reviews" of the time they've spent so far.
I nearly died a few weeks ago and it's amazing how much of a shift it has caused in my mental state and overall outlook. Good luck on Monday.
Good luck!
What is exactly the point of this post? How is related to HN? Wish you best of luck in your surgery but this post if off topic.
Seems the author meant the relationship with HN is supposed to be self evident, but in another reply they also stated clearly the ban was in relation to HN, PG was aware and didn’t make the call but didn’t go against it— just paraphrasing from their reply though.
Good luck. Recoveries are hell too. Buck up for that too.
Good luck.
> I had a lot of interaction with a startup incubator you know well, and ended up sitting in the discussions and planning around banning and erasing a young programmer we considered a threat to our financial interests, due to his concerns about authoritarianism in technology.
And… this wasn’t immediately seen as being deeply unethical and downright evil? Most of the western world punched Nazis on purpose 80 years ago… that doesn’t get to stop, because authoritarianism never goes away.
>In retrospect, he was harmless, but an example had to be made.
Wow. Just… wow. To destroy a life simply because of greed and because a person’s passion of fighting evil made you uncomfortable.
You need to understand you are very much the bad guy, here.
> And… this wasn’t immediately seen as being deeply unethical and downright evil?
Oh, these people know it's evil - from the second they suggest it. The personality types associated with SV leadership are simply wired for rationalising evil as a means to any business end. It's just implicitly accepted that it's an appropriate tool to be wielded.
You're the weird one who "just doesn't get it" if you push back. Push back hard enough and you'll quickly find yourself on the receiving end.
Reminds me of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBay_stalking_scandal
If you want to know the key to Heaven is asking God for forgiveness for your sins with the intention of becoming better. Repent and believe in the Gospel, go to the traditional Latin mass if you can
This is not the right context to try to push your religious views on others.
> The decision was made to ban him here, try to get him fired though I don't know if we succeeded, and attack him with sockpuppets on Reddit, and it seems to have worked because you don't hear his name much.
I am going to be uncivil but I hope the odds beat you.
Deserved. In retrospect, it was deeply strange to hear venture capitalists who are now billionaires get so worried about the writing of one outsider. They were in crisis management mode over so little.
I also feel bad because Dan G had to be the face of a decision that wasn't his, and he took a lot of flak for it.