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Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

> When did "profitable" become the sole metric…

You’re quoting a sentence with two adjectives.

> should the impressiveness someone's accomplishments make them a "titan" regardless of intent or outcome?

For a teenager? Barring violence, yes. An impressive, misguided teenager is a net asset to a community and society in the developed world.

I challenge anyone intelligent to honestly say they didn’t have any really stupid opinions or worldviews before their prefrontal cortex had finished developing.

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I certainly didn't say anything akin to the recent racist tweets from another Doge staffer, no.

There's also a very large unspoken piece left out of your sentence, which is that they are an asset if taught and guided well. Do you think Musk is likely to do that, or to instead encourage careless "technically impressive and profitable" behavior without regard to ethics or morals?

> certainly didn't say anything akin to the recent racist tweets from another Doge staffer, no

Were you on Twitter?

I don’t remember anything that heinous. But I do remember telling off-colour jokes. If I’d done that in public and received validation from someone I respected and admired, is it implausible I’d have gone down the rabbit hole?

> unspoken piece left out of your sentence, which is that they are an asset if taught and guided well

That’s my point. These kids show potential. It’s being squandered for the short-term gains of old men.

If you’d done something dumb and then lots of things even dumber then you would have done really dumb things and no, not everyone did or would.

> and then lots of things even dumber

The point is we have multiple layers of society working to turn small dumb things young men say and do into very dumb things.

Small dumb things stop being a valid excuse when they have material impacts on other individuals. Your right to fuck around stops when it impacts me.

Isn’t this basically the point they were making?

> We’re wasting our youth on the fever dreams of old men.

> I challenge anyone intelligent to honestly say they didn’t have any really stupid opinions before their prefrontal cortex had finished developing.

Usually there are negative consequences for stupid actions.

Teenager has been on positive feedback loop for possibly ”not so good actions”. How difficult it is to turn the tide?

Most of us had a spine, and stopped misbehaving before anything serious was done.

The guy didn't, and no one stopped him from collecting the very same data he could be using or will use to blackmail or worse.

Sorry to note that political allegiance beats common sense.

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