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Comment by baxtr | Hacker News Reader

>It's one thing to assume the most nefarious intent from the start and then look at everything from that lens. It mostly leads to paranoia, not insight.

That’s a marketing tactic that even works on HN I’m afraid. Create an enemy and then tell a story about that nemesis.

Our human storytelling brains need to hear tales of good and evil.

If you want to get an article like that ranking that’s one way to do it. Unfortunately.

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On the other hand if you have ever worked at a high level in these companies they are hardcore evil. Maybe not in this case but they 100% do the evil thing and press it to their advantage.

Sure but there are different kinds of evil. Some larger categories are:

  - Screw everyone if I get more money and power
  - Self-aggrandazing evil
  - Hurt people for fun evil
  - Comic-book style take over the world evil

I think these are sorted in order of commonality. The top one is also the kind boardrooms attract at the upper echelons, just because of how the game is played.

I think you've missed perhaps the most common one.

- get them before they get you/ we have to do it because our competitors will.

ie fear is the driver, 'survival' is the goal.

That reads like a bad rationalisation of evil. Survival at the expense of someone else is not survival, it's the law of the jungle. The law of the jungle in the jungle is not evil, but we can do better than that, and we broadly expect better than that from others. So we should do better, even if sometimes to the intentional detriment of our profits and bonuses.

Depends on whether you define evil by actions or motives.

I'd argue that the use of motives to define evil is often used as a - when they do it it's bad/ but when I do it it's fine - excuse.

For that reason I'm not really interested in the 'evil' part of this conversation - rather more what drives perceived bad outcomes.

So all I'm saying is fear is a big driver of many of those bad outcomes. That's not to justify it - but rather understand it as a first step to fixing it.

Note I'm also not saying whether the fear is rational or not.

Yes it’s primarily variations of your first one. At the owner level it has some flavor of the final one you list though.

I’d encourage you to have a conversation with Theil or Larry at some point and really hear in person how detached to the point of ‘evil’ they can get — and wrapped up in reshaping society for their own egotistical reasons.

What high level have you worked in these companies at? What things did you see? Can you post some examples?

That’s the story you’re telling yourself to make sense of the world.

I would call this "understanding" and reckon it you could use it as a reply to pretty much any comment. Unless you see things exactly as they are and apply no interpretation, then this is the mechanism by which humans "make sense" of the world.

I guess you mean that the story is harmfully reductive or demands further critical examination, but I just want to defend telling oneself stories as a thinking tool.

I agree that as human beings we can’t live without stories as thinking tool. Although I wouldn’t call it “understanding” but “interpreting”.

I wanted to say that good vs evil are hardly absolutes. No one at a large corporate comes to work saying: today I will be evil again.

Instead they tell themselves they’re helping investors getting a good return, or that they’re “smashing Google for copying iOS”.

There is a great quote by Shakespeare saying: “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

I’d say storytelling makes it so!

People committing genocide also presumably don't wake up saying they're going to be evil again. Being able to justify an act to yourself doesn't make it not evil.

You don't have to presume, you can interview them!

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

But then what does make something evil? Nature clearly doesn’t distinguish good vs evil. We humans do.

That's a much bigger question than whether one can commit an evil act without considering it evil.

No. It’s the exact same question. Good vs evil are created in your head. Unless you believe in God or something similar.

Think about recent Boeing adventures. I will put these doings definitely in the evil category.

I brokered some portion of the omnibus agreements between the big 4.

The many parts of the agreements were clearly net negative outcomes for markets and users. Basic forms of collusion and cartel making were common.

That is paranoia that the OP mentions.

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