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Comment by reitzensteinm | Hacker News Reader

A few years ago, I saw a documentary that broke my heart.

A woman in China had an unnecessary, experimental operation done at a hospital, without her consent. It caused kidney failure, and she needed a transplant.

There was a match with a family member, but the hospital refused to pay for it, even though it could have been sued into bankruptcy in the US. For the want of $7,000 USD, she was dying.

Watching her sit with her young children on her lap, deathly sick with her husband by her side, the expression of finality and despair on their faces - I'm not ashamed to admit that it made me tear up.

Now that, to me, is god damn heartbreaking. I don't disagree with the direction of your sentiment, just the magnitude of the word you are using. It's close to the strongest feelings you can have on a subject. Did you really feel a pang in your heart when you read the article?

Because to me, those two stories aren't even on the same planet.

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Your comment is one of those which I so very much hate about HN, because you already know it's wrong, you're just writing it because you like to argue and insult others.

By this stupid logic, you can never be happy, because there's always someone with more reasons to be happy, while the victims of a serial killer probably had it better off than a child who dies of starvation in Africa.

(Of course, you're a smart person, so I'm sure you're aware of how stupid this line of arguing is.)

You seem to be pretty strongly in support of someone who by all means cheated his employees. If that's the case, I certainly hope future employees have the foresight to do some research on who you are before agreeing to work for you.

You're misrepresenting reitzensteinm's position, which he put clearly: "I don't disagree with the direction of your sentiment, just the magnitude of the word you are using." His comment certainly seems to have been made in good faith even if you disagree with it.

Your tone on other hand is combative and patronizing. The HN guidelines say "When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names," and "Be civil."

I tend to agree with reitzensteinm that we in Silicon Valley should remember how good we have it compared to the rest of the world. Our fortune comes not only from hard work and talent, but from being born in the right decade in a prosperous country.

I was going to comment on reitz' original statement because something was off in the way it was put.

I didn't because every time I went over it and sliced it, there was too much scope to misunderstand what was said.

But there were 2 aspects that I knew were triggers -

1) His underlying assumption that the employees were there for playing the "startup lottery". Firstly this ascribes knowledge of the mind set of the emps. Secondly this ignores the fact that Zynga also was a "safer" firm given its history and at the time, certain prospects.

The employees for that firm which are hurting today aren't necessarily the same as your first batch or second batch hires in an untested startup.

(this is why I didn't comment - there are many ways to slice and dice this further, and suffer from badly drawn edges and subsets)

2) His description of it as startup lottery. The underlying philosophy here on HN, and in most places which discuss startups is strongly merit oriented. His statement carried the implication that all the discussions so far were eye wash - it was a lottery and people lost, bad luck.

His later clarifications were pretty crucial to explain his context, but I can completely see where he ticked people off.

That's reductio ad absurdum. Yes, taken to an extreme, it stops making sense, but all I'm arguing for is a little perspective on how lucky we are as gifted developers. I might be wrong, but I'm certainly not arguing just for the sake of it.

Your assertion that I support cheating employees just because I didn't explicitly say otherwise is quite insulting, and it's what makes me feel the need to reply to you. I think the deal they got it shitty, and I certainly wouldn't start taking money off the table before my employees could.

I think you're reading an attitude into my comments that just isn't there. I suggest we continue this conversation by email, to avoid polluting HN with what will no doubt be a long thread - mine is in my profile if you'd like to.

I think you're ignoring the role of psychology. I think you do this very explicitly in your first comment:

>some Silicon Valley developers, one of the highest paid professions in one of the highest paid areas of the world, only made a decent salary instead of a fantastic total compensation package?

The relevance of the integrity of the managers to the ways people make decisions that determine the course of their lives is not something to be taken lightly. This applies even if the consequences themselves do not appear to be so dire. There is a distinctly painful feeling that comes along with devoting your life to someone who abuses that. For those familiar with this perception, the idea that you could ignore it is preposterous. From your perspective, whatever it may be, it could beyond your imagination and experience.

You might say this:

>Is it really 'heartbreaking' when someone's 17-year-old cat dies? It's a normal and expected outcome; plus, not only were they lucky enough to afford a pet and keep it in good health, the animal itself hasn't lost much, considering it's limited cognitive capacity.

And yet anyone who has been through or even near this situation would find the argument to be incredibly callous, because the formation of human emotion has so much more to it than simply evaluating one's present situation.

I understand the sentiment that perhaps nobody is entitled to a fantastically large amount of money and that people living what we call the good life are a small minority in the world. However, that just isn't the story here.

Connections between humans are what make society possible. It's reasonable to care when they are abused.

The comment you quote was trying to point out that they will recover from this, and have a fantastic career ahead of them.

It was not meant to be a comment on how it feels today, or to suggest that we shouldn't feel empathy for them because of their future position.

I just meant that in a few years they'll look back on this and laugh, which makes it story much less sad. Do you disagree with that?

Look, I'm coming from the perspective of an outsider. OP seemed to suggest it is heartbreaking to read about Zynga, which is what I was responding to. If one of my close friends was working there, I would absolutely feel a different way.

Similarly, if I read about a kid's cat dying on the internet, it might just make me feel a bit down. When my dog died, heartbroken was exactly how I felt.

Yes, I'm sure everyone will eventually recover from being worked to the bone and having faith in someone who essentially cheated them.

Well, okay, maybe some of them might have been under a lot of stress and that might affect their personal life and even health or life expectancy.

Maybe some of the talented people who might have a fantastic career ahead of them won't recover and become jaded or leave the industry altogether.

Maybe none of that is heartbreaking, strictly said. It's "highly unfortunate" or "really sad", perhaps.

What really grates is your decision to nitpick about the choice of words because you saw something that was even sadder on TV.

I don't know, I kind of read your comment to say that unless you're dying some horrible death you shouldn't be using the word "heartbreaking" to describe the plight of someone. I think it would be heartbreaking for someone to toil away their time with family and friends in the hopes of a payout only to have it blow up in their face. Relationships do die and health does suffer from the strain of some peoples endeavors. While you can say that these programmers and artists brought it upon themselves and took on that challenge, at the same time there is enormous pressure by employers and the culture itself which reinforces the notion of grinding away and sometimes poor work/life balances.

I think it's very hard to define exactly where your slippery slope of perspective begins and ends. Bottom line is that greater injustice is never an excuse for injustice. Neither are acceptable.

Reductio ad absurdum is a valid form of argument and not a logical fallacy. While the argument doesn't prove or disprove anything, it can show inconsistency. For example one person might say "I think taking the middle ground is always a good thing" and one might reply "So the middle ground between Hitler and Stalin is good then?", if the first person were to say "no" he would have exposed an inconsistency in his logic, rendering his first statement all but useless.

While there was a "reductio ad absurdam" in there, it appears that term was used in error. From the rest of the post, the complaint appears to have been about an alleged "straw man argument".

I have no comment on the issue, I just wanted to point out a terminology confusion.

You are both right. My use of the term was in error. I meant to say it was reduced to absurdity while being presented as an inevitable logical conclusion, which is a straw man argument.

Without the straw man, reductio ad absurdum alone is just a tool, not a fallacy, as you say.

By way of being pedantic -- reductio ad absurdum is not a fallacy. Showing extreme consequences by taking assumptions to their conclusions is perfectly valid. That's the whole point of reductio.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AppealToWorseProb...

Couldn't find some more official name for the "The "Children Are Starving In Africa!" argument.

Anyone willing to help out?

Is it the Four Yorkshireman defence? As in the python/at last the 1948 show sketch.

"Of course, when I were a lad, we had it tough..."

Love that idea, that would be a great addition to the true Scotsman.

I don't think there is anything wrong with that comment nor do I think it is insulting in any way.

EDIT: Maybe I should add I am currently in Asia. Many people here probably work harder then the people at Zygna and receive less compensation.

I think his point was about the wording, the vocabulary used in the previous comment. I see a lot of hyperbole in HN, and I find the abuse of inappropriate wording revolting (haha, just kidding here). This is probably HN is populated by a lot of very young people whose toughest thing that happened to them so far is to get a bad grade in school or worse to quit college, and who therefore consider that losing a lot of money over something that is nothing but a bet can be heartbreaking.

Using overly emphatic words for not so cruel-bad situations is a bad thing, since you will be at loss for words when something worse happen. That's just a sign of lack of culture. I am not talking about the person who said "heartbreaking" in the first place, just a general observation as to what language is changing into these days.

Commenter is right. It's almost foolish to find this heartbreaking. It could be anger, disgust (though it's not necessary they are always mutually exclusive) but it can certainly not be heartbreaking. Not in this case.

It wasn't like Zyanga kept them working while they were starving and kept them lured all along that they will be fed once Zynga stock booms up.

They always had the chance to jump ship. Esp. with many small/big ships steadily floating around ready to lift them aboard. It was a gamble for the extra cash (read bonanza) and they lost (just the bonanza).

While I genuinely believe that documentary saddened you, you're basically saying that skilled workers in the first world don't deserve words connoting sympathy or outrage when they're fucked over by their employer.

You don't think Elvis was taking his economic privilege into account when he wrote "Heartbreak Hotel"? Maybe he should have called it "Momentary Romantic Setback Hotel". Or maybe the word "heartbreaking" should be reserved for citizens of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where, all things considered, things are considerably more dire.

"The National Adjective Council must regrettably inform you that your first world documentary viewing experience was merely 'disheartening'."

How have they been "fucked over"? They've bet on equity and it did not turn out the way they hoped.

That the CEO cashed out before has nothing to do with that fact.

And with

"Pincus has a track record now of big IPO train wrecks. He founded Support.com and took it public for $14 a share during the first Internet bubble in 2000. The stock zoomed up by 133% in its first day of trading. It changed hands for more than $30 per share before tanking below $5 in 2001."

they might have should known what was comming.

>>How have they been...

Yes they make a mistake. That mistake is to bet on an unethical business man. The point is not that, the point is the CEO set different conditions for him and different for others.

While the senior execs were allowed to cash out, guys down the ladder weren't.

Which does not mean they have been "fucked over", or in which way have they?

How does the fact that senior execs cashed out relate to the fact that they don't get rich b/c their company has no sustainable business model and the stock crashed?

Well, I think the definition applies when the thought was that the reason the CEO was able to cash out was because he set different rules for himself from his employees, as was explained, and that he knew the true outlook of the company which was bad, as was explained. What more do you require to understand the situation?

I mean, if the CEO told everyone up front about the tactics he was going to use to allow him to cash out early that also prevented everyone else from doing the same at the same time and also that the future of the company was all downhill; then maybe you have a point.

Maybe saying they were cheated is a better phrase for you?

If you don't agree that that's fine. Which, by the way, I have a bridge for sale you might be interested in...

You consider employees that don't have the same rules as the CEO "fucked over?"

Depends on the rules we're talking about.

If we're talking about pay structure and access to the executive washroom, then no.

If we're talking about employees and the CEO having equity in the same company but the CEO can cash his equity any time he feels like it while the employees cannot then there's a problem. Especially when said CEO seems to be doing questionable things to pump up the value of his stock that later collapses so that when employees finally can get money there's no money to be had.

I find it disturbing that you seem to think there's nothing wrong in this situation. There's no way you can say that the actions and behaviors of this CEO and company are the norm. If you don't understand that at this point then I'm unable to explain it to you. In this case we'll just leave it with you have your opinion and I have mine.

I never said I find it ok what the CEO did, but that's not the reason the stocks crashed, the reason being that Zygna just does not work as a business model.

And the reason they've lost their "money" is not because of the CEO having different rules.

Because, regardless of whether the company performed well or not the senior execs and the CEO considered their right to cash out.

But didn't hold the employees to have the same right.

Which actually speaks a lot about the intentions of those senior execs, which is clearly to play a hit and run game.

You consider employees that don't have the same rights as the CEO "fucked over?"

Don't be obtuse. The primary insiders of Zynga sold like there was no tomorrow immediately after the IPO. They should have had the same lock-up period as the employees. The entire company just reeks of sleaze. You don't have to be a crackpot to notice these things.

Feelings are not negotiable. Poor people feel poor-people problem pains, rich people feel rich-people problem pains. The problems may be different, but the intensity of the pain felt by them can be of the same magnitude.

If you're in America, have $0, can't pay rent, can't buy food for your kids; the fact that kids in Africa are dying from some non-1st world disease is completely irrelevant to the pains you're having.

It's a completely different thing for an impartial third party to say person X's pain is more than person Y's pans (that's relative to the observer).

I'm going to be cold-hearted here for a moment.

We put far too much emphasis on prolonging life and not enough on quality of life. I have no clue who this lady was or what her background was, but $7k goes a long ways in China. Imagine if she could have instead guaranteed a solid education for every one of her children.

We spend a ton of money on end of life care that could do much more good spent elsewhere. Which would you rather have- $50k in end of life care or a free college education?

Kidney failure and a transplant, chances that the transplant doesn't work, complications following it, issues remaining for the rest of her life, etc. It's not all roses and medicine isn't as magic as it is in the movies.

I totally agree with you, logically; but I also don't really have any problem with the earlier poster saying it was "heartbreaking", either. Certainly to the people involved at Zynga, the situation is heartbreaking — and our sympathy/empathy responses are based on our ability to "feel" (in some way) a similar experience to that which we imagine others are feeling.

Whenever I read about these documentaries, I ask myself what the guys doing the documentary did about the case.

I hope they did get the woman the U$ 7.000.

Sadly, there are stories much like that, or worse, every single day. My SO works for the state child care agency here in Uruguay, now that's a thankless job if there is one. She gets to see the worst of human beings (child rape, uncaring mothers, a mother putting her 12 year old girl into prostitution), fortunately balanced by a little of the best too (kindhearted adoptive mothers for example, and lots of supportive people).

I've always wondered if they give them the money after shutting off the cameras, since it's such a small amount.

More likely, they shut off the cameras, thank the people, and then fly away, shaking their heads that such a tragedy could occur.

If you debate semantics on Hacker News, you're gonna have a bad time.

Personally, I would use heart-wrenching for your documentary, rather than heartbreaking.

When you think of it, those two stories are the consequence of one huge problem. Globalization, and financial empires don't give a fuck about human beings. This poor mother in China is dying because a whole chain of power/money holders don't give a dman about what could be an insect for all they care. Same for Zinga : no respect for the human beings whose income depends on what decisions the leaders make. Only, yes, i agree with you, nobody died at Zinga yet. That chinese mother did die.

Now that is hyperbole..

You aren't contributing here.

This is why i support private gun ownership. In such a situation, I think a little lead coercion is necessary.

Or... instead of people shooting each other (or threatening to), maybe China could just have more robust rights to sue.

This is radical. We will end up all blind this way. Because it will be impossible to determine the threshold scenario when to pull the trigger.

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