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Comment by kevinskii | Hacker News Reader

"The first conversation is with investor and philanthropist Sam Altman. He has been one of the leading Silicon Valley figures helping the entire biotech industry make a complete pivot to working on solutions: vaccines, therapies, and eventually a cure."

Ok, no disrespect to Sam Altman, but come on.

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The entire biotech industry? Surely you kid.

My wife works in biotech in SV and has never heard of him.

Let's be a bit careful here. That quote doesn't imply that anyone has heard of SA, only that he has been helping. Sometimes people help behind the scenes. Similarly, the claim about the industry is simply that it has pivoted. I have zero idea if either claim is true, but let's at least not replace them with claims that no one made.

This is in the HN guidelines btw: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The quote clearly claims he's helping the entire biotech industry, which is overstated to say the least.

Also no idea why you aren't responding to the GP instead. My post is within the the guidelines, even if you choose to disagree with its point.

I totally agree with you, and I'll add that the quote also implies that the entire industry is "pivoting" to work on this effort when, no it isn't. People who have built the ability to work on viruses or with technology that is applicable are all pitching in to do their part. And they're doing it on their own prerogative, not by the "leadership" of some silicon valley tech types. Altman and all is doing good work by funding some covid responses etc, as is YC and are other tech VCs, and talk about that to whatever extent you want. But dont take credit for what the industry is doing.

Sorry to be a stickler, especially since Eric changed his wording, but your post wasn't within that guideline. You picked a weak interpretation of the quote you were objecting to. There was no inconsistency between "My wife works in biotech in SV and has never heard of him" and what it actually said. If you wanted to refute the quote, something like "My wife works in biotech in SV and that industry has definitely not pivoted to working on covid" would (if true) have fit the bill.

You're right that the GP comment was also bad and that I could have replied there also.

I appreciate your excellent work in maintaining the discourse, but there just isn't any serious interpretation of that quote which could have been more charitable. You'd really have to stretch to get away from the clear implication that SA's work has been essential to the COVID-19 response.

I also appreciate Eric's polite clarification in this thread, but as of now the original text remains on his site. It's a legitimate point of discussion for reasons that others in this thread have explained.

I appreciate this comment and the child comments below. Thinking about it, this was poor phrasing on my part. I smashed together three points:

1. Sam is a leader in SV 2. Sam has done a lot to invest/donate in biotech and nonprofits working on COVID 3. Many biotech companies have pivoted to COVID

The error was mine, not his. Thanks for the feedback.

That makes a lot of sense, and as I tried to say in my comments, no disrespect to altman, he is genuinely doing a lot and it was just the way it was phrased seemed to be off. Thanks for acknowledging it and the thoughtful response.

By the way, I love your book! It's what made me think maybe making a little side business selling computers wasn't so impossible when I was in high school.

Thank you!

It’s an unfairly inflated statement even limited to the scope of SV biotech, which is only a part of the entire industry.

Yeah, he's cool and his efforts admirable, but you can talk about people's accomplishments without essentially downplaying the role of others. Yes hes helping with covid, but he didn't go single handedly convince J&J to develop their vaccine platform that they developed years ago. He didn't convince gilead to develop remdesivir, something they developed years ago for hep c. He didn't convince moderna to work on rna vaccines. He didn't convince the fda to fast track diagnostics. And I love how in the list of things, a cure is treated as the ultimate goal, which vaccines and therapies are on the path to. Therapies are essentially cures if they work (since currently you either cure yourself or you die, this is not a chronic infection). And a vaccine is the real end goal since that stops the disease from spreading in the first place and normalizes society again by creating herd immunity etc. Prevention > treatment

It is hurtful to say the least. Some of the real heroes are the scientists doing lab work here. And they're not being paid millions to do it.

Altman has zero training in immunology and is riding the coattails of their work with this kind of phony PR.

Yeah. Take credit for the work you do (and altman isn't doing nothing, he's helping in the effort). But don't take credit for leading the entire industry. Dont take credit for things you didn't earn the credit for. And to another commenters point, attempting to qualify it with the word "helped" doesn't make it better if you're saying he "helped" with leading an entire industry pivot. He didn't. There was no silicon valley led biotech pivot. Biotech did its job and is foing its job. He's helping with covid, but not with leading the biotech industry. And hes not leading those amazing homegrown efforts like the one in smartereveryday's latest video detailing his effort to 3d print PPE in huntsville.

Leading the tech industry to pivot to work on covid though? Maybe - I could buy that. If hes been working with tech companies to join the effort.

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