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Comment by refulgentis | Hacker News Reader

Those are street view photos, they don't have anything about Google Maps steering, stories about people being shot on a Google Maps route, or someone getting killed, or someone getting shot with an AK-47.

I'm not sure what you're referring to with Google Maps deciding to direct people through low-income areas.

There was a recent thread, maybe a month ago, about how they don't do that, only do the most straightforward route, because redirecting traffic would cause as much bad as good. Unintended consequences and all that.

For what it's worth, a few more straightforward things:

- Google HQ is in Mountain View, not Palo Alto

- Google uses Google Slides, not PowerPoint

- ESG stands for "environmental, social, and governance" and refers to investors allocating money based on longer-term criteria beyond next quarter's results.

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> ESG stands for "environmental, social, and gas" and refers to investors allocating money based on longer-term criteria beyond next quarter's results.

Gas?! ESG stands for environmental, social, and governance.

Someone had too many beans at lunch (: Corrected, ty!

>[...] and refers to investors allocating money based on longer-term criteria beyond next quarter's results.

That's a slightly misleading way of characterizing ESG. "allocating money based on longer-term criteria beyond next quarter's results" is just "investing", or "long-term investing". ESG refers specifically to considering or changing company's environmental (eg. pollution) and social impact (eg. workforce diversity), as well as improving its governance practices. Sure, its proponents think doing the aforementioned things will improve the company's financial performance as well, but your characterization deliberately obfuscates what ESG actually involves.

A: "ESG stands for environment social impact governance"

B: "ESG refers specifically to considering or changing company's environmental (eg. pollution) and social impact (eg. workforce diversity), as well as improving its governance practices"

B: "[thus showing] A is deliberately obfuscating"

!?!?, two sets of !? for two different levels, one is there being precious little air between what I said and what you said. I frankly don't see any at all, is the idea that saying it comes from finance / investing is misleading??

The other is for the personal attack via mindreading.

>one is there being precious little air between what I said and what you said. I frankly don't see any at all, is the idea that saying it comes from finance / investing is misleading??

I called it "slightly misleading" because 1/3rd of what you wrote was devoted to explaining what it actually is, but the rest is (seemingly) trying to defend it by discussing the most banal/non-central aspect of it. The reason why investors care about ESG isn't because "allocating money based on longer-term criteria beyond next quarter's results", neither is that why ESG detractors hate on it. What you're doing is similar to describing redlining as "banks deciding where to lend money, and refers to them trying to trying to manage risk". Sure, everything in that statement is technically true, and redlining ostensibly was about managing risk, but describing in that is misleading because it mischaracterizes what the controversy surrounding it is.

Ah, the glorious bailey. Though, a little warm for me this time of year, at least in the US :)

So I wasn't wrong, I just left out the controversy? Please, do share the controversy! Please, let it be more than the Palo Alto PowerPoint ESG presentation that required Brazil Google Maps to route people into gang controlled territory to be killed by AK47s.

Any more thoughts on the "deliberately misleading" part? Or are you leaving it there?

>So I wasn't wrong, I just left out the controversy? Please, do share the controversy! Please, let it be more than the Palo Alto PowerPoint ESG presentation that required Brazil Google Maps to route people into gang controlled territory to be killed by AK47s.

I'm not sure how you got the impression that I thought the google maps ESG claim was true. If you check my other comments you'd see that I expressed skepticism about it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40909047

>Any more thoughts on the "deliberately misleading" part? Or are you leaving it there?

"deliberately misleading" was never something I wrote. I did write "deliberately obfuscating", which I stand by for the reasons mentioned in my previous comment.

> I'm not sure how you got the impression that I thought the google maps ESG claim was true. If you check my other comments you'd see that I expressed skepticism about it.

I'm not sure how you got the impression that I thought you thought the google maps ESG claim was true. If you check my other comments, you'd see I never said that.

Any ideas on what the controversy is that I deliberately obfuscated?

I'm bored and tired of inviting you to explain your mind-reading. I'll skip to why sharing your mind-reading is not only rude, but irrational:

Is it possible people use "ESG" as a boogie-man when complaining?

Put another way: am I deliberately obfuscating, or are you steel-manning nonsense?

Put another way, longer:

Imagine someone complains: "This restaurant's new menu is clearly pandering to ESG trends!"

Person A (steel-manning): "They must be referring to the complex interplay between sustainable sourcing, labor practices, and pandering to DEI values in the restaurant industry."

Person B (simple interpretation): "They probably just added a few vegan options and are upset about it."

In this case, Person A's attempt to find depth in a shallow complaint leads them far astray from the actual, much simpler issue at hand.

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