Comment by somenameforme | Hacker News Reader

Comment by somenameforme | Hacker News Reader

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One reason I think Machiavellianism is dumb is because the grand utopia people hope to achieve never come to pass, yet all the awful actions they do in the mean time most certainly do. And I also view this in the opposite way. I do not agree with you about Chinese leadership having ulterior motivations, but I'd say that even if they did it wouldn't be a problem.

When they're engaged in actions that are uplifting the lives of hundreds of millions and making the world an overall better place, I couldn't really care less if there's some grand evil scheme behind the curtain. I'd be rather happy to see a world filled with 'evil' people doing good things, than the current reality we live in filled with 'good' people doing evil things.

We should judge people much more by what they do, instead of by the rhetoric or inferred intent, because the former is all that matters.

This one I do disagree. It is hard to recognize what is going on in people's mind but it doesn't mean one should disregard it. Because the motivation decides the long term outcome, what seems to be uplifting might well become agonizing in near term like the other reply in this thread said, the tech is so intrusive that people can't get rid of it. Like the recently exposed massive uploading of screen recordings in Xiaomi and a bunch of other phones, there's nothing much that can be done to undo this kind of crap to actually uplift people's lives.

Motivation doesn't decide anything. Actions decide the long term outcome of actions.

And the things you're mentioning are non sequiturs similar to the initial point. China (and the US and most of every major power) is a surveillance state. That has nothing to do with whether or not they are uplifting the lives of people. Uplifting while protecting the privacy of individuals would be ideal, but that's an ideal that unfortunately does not exist anywhere.

Motivation decides, at least partially, action, here's the missing link that should be considered, in my opinion.

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