6,770 karma · joined February 26, 2009
Another thing that rubs me wrong is the recurring notion that we need to get rid of the text as a representation of code. I've yet to meet a mathematician who wants to get completely rid of formulas because coming up with a proof is slow and cumbersome.
I understand that the incentives are drastically different between academia and business, but perhaps we've gone too far in this particular direction. Perhaps it's okay to admit that programming isn't as easy as we all want it to be and it's okay to take the time to change things carefully instead of moving fast and breaking stuff.
Well, at least you're finally willing to address my points about their letter not being about the morality, instead of hoping those points would go away ;)
When his political leanings "shifted", that's when his behavior started going against the company's own rules and actively damaging the company. Now, you might believe that the former is okay, because he signs their paychecks -- which is just another way of saying "might makes right" -- but I don't know how you justify the latter to yourself. That's another point you keep dodging: Musk's behavior is actively damaging the company.
You can shift the blame to "cancel culture", if you want, but the fact remains that certain behaviors can, and do, affect any company not just in terms of morale, but in terms of its ability to do business. This has been well known for ages and has, in fact, been exploited by one extreme of the political spectrum. It only got labeled "cancel culture" when it got turned against that extreme.
And that's the political aspect of this whole conversation that I was trying to avoid, because discussing politics with strangers is about as pleasant as a root canal, but since you can't let it go, then let's go: yes, regardless of whether the letter itself was about the employees' morality or not, certain "political leanings" are, in fact, intolerable.
When you say "all lives matter", for example, that's where you cross the line into outright racism. It's not like "all lives matter" is a new thing someone invented yesterday and that's why people are being fooled into taking it at face value. It's been around for quite a while, and it's extremely easy to understand that it's only ever brought up as a response to "black lives matter" and why that response is racist.
Racism should be intolerable.
And that's just one of the things Musk did on Twitter. So yes, regardless of whether or not this letter is about morality, his shift in political leaning should be considered intolerable. If you really think that "racism is not okay" is something that is being forced on everyone in SpaceX against their wishes, then you're basically saying the majority of SpaceX employees are racists.
It's not okay for a small group of employees to try to impose their chosen morality, but it's okay for one person to impose his own morality on the whole company, because he owns the controlling interest in it.
More importantly, that same person who owns the controlling interest has no responsibilities or obligations towards the company as a whole.
Did I get that right?
And while we're on the topic of what each of us finds ridiculous, how about the fact that whenever someone suggests that a publicly traded company should do something slightly idealistic, people always bring up fiduciary duty towards the shareholders, but it gets overlooked when we're talking about one billionaire's "right" to drive his company's value into the ground by shitposting on social media, because "he's the owner, he can do what he wants".
Regardless of all that, one point that keeps being overlooked -- and at this stage of discussion, where it has been pointed out repeatedly, it's pretty obvious that it's being overlooked on purpose -- is that they're not trying to impose any morality. They're asking for two things: 1) hold Musk accountable for harming the company, 2) define what "no-asshole" and "zero tolerance" policies actually mean and enforce them.
That's not morality. That's common sense and consistency.
EDIT: Also, what's more likely to bring the company morale go down: seeing its owner sabotage it because of his ego, or an internal letter criticizing him for doing that?
You asserted that he has a moral right to destroy the company because he built it. He might have built it, but it doesn't matter if he now owns 54% or 90% or 10% of it, it stopped being just his. He can't just say "screw it, I'm bored, let's just burn it down to the ground".
That responsibility is even greater when it comes to the people who depend on you, who put their livelihood in their hands because they believe in your company. Not necessarily in you, but certainly in what you created.
Let me put it this way: if you knew that the person in charge of company X is a volatile, irresponsible person incapable of putting the good of the company before their own ego, someone who doesn't care enough for the company, would you go work for that company?
Musk's behavior is damaging the company. His employees are objecting to that, among other things. They are right to do so.
As for whether he has the moral right to fire his employees indiscriminately solely by virtue of having created the company? No, he doesn't, for the same reasons I described above.
Does he have the right to fire his employees for the right reasons? Of course, but that's not the case here. That's what I was pointing out when you asserted that he certainly has the right to fire them just because he built the company.
Those are just two examples. There are more.
There are basically three problems the open letter highlights and asks the leadership to address. They're wrapped in polite, corporate-appropriate language, but I'll express them here in plain, blunt, non-PC words:
- SpaceX is supposed to be bigger than just Elon Musk. Elon's shitposting on social media is harming the whole company, and the employees will end up suffering because Elon keeps putting his ego before the company.
- The so-called leadership, as it happens all too often, keeps talking the talk, but they don't walk the walk. They say they care about making SpaceX a great place to work, but that's just bullshit as long as they turn a blind eye to the toxic fuckery at SpaceX.
- The company policies are bullshit. Using words like "asshole" to sound cool and non-PC does not replace having an actual policy. "Zero tolerance" means fuck-all if you selectively tolerate stuff, and "no-asshole policy" is either too vague or isn't enforced.
Basically, it boils down to being sick of the toxic corporate LARPing you see in a certain kind of techbro companies, where suits pretend to be cool and down with the techies by using words like "asshole" to show how they value "straight talk" and therefore you can totally trust them not to fuck you over.
I hope that was non-PC enough to help explain what the letter says, for anyone who hasn't actually read it.
On the off chance that you did read the letter and you really decided that it's no different from "a bunch of hyper fundamentalist evangelical Christian SpaceX employees" demanding that their CEO behave according to their values, then I would like to point out two details you might have overlooked:
1. That would be perfectly understandable if the company itself claimed to hold and represent those values. If the employees of the hypothetical Every-Zygote-Is-Sacred LLC wrote a letter complaining about how their CEO kept tweeting about how much they loved and supported Planned Parenthood, then they would have a point, regardless of whether you or I were pro- or anti-abortion.
2. Regardless of what company policies say about the company values, many companies have a policies about social media, along the lines of "don't tweet anything that would negatively affect the company, not even on your personal account". People can, and do, get fired for breaking that policy. Complaining about how the CEO of the company keeps blatantly breaking that policy and actively harming the company in the process might be naive, but it's certainly understandable.
In conclusion: yeah, I think it's right and acceptable for SpaceX employees to complain about the unprecedented level of toxicity from their CEO.
EDIT: I accidentally a word in the last paragraph.
The first thing that comes to mind when reading this is "So what?"
Yes, it's predictable. I don't believe people who wrote the letter haven't thought of this potential consequence and haven't felt any trepidation whatsoever.
So what if it's "predictable"? So what if it's legal? The point is not whether it's currently legal and whether it's predictable. The point is whether it's right.
How does stating that "it's predictable" address the very real and ugly problems in this whole situation?
I already know that sexual harassment and abuse of power are bad. If someone uncovers such behavior in a living writer, I will react appropriately, by demanding justice for the victims and doing all I can to change the writer's behavior. Finding out about Asimov's behavior doesn't change that.
As for Asimov, he is dead. There's nothing I can do to change his behavior anymore. And I'm not going to stop admiring his literary works because of his bad behavior.
The only real solution is to completely abolish privatized healthcare. No more discrimination between the poor and the rich when it comes to something as critical as that. When everyone has to row the same boat, then the rich will finally have a good reason to make sure the poor don't drown.
EDIT: I don't remember Chile having that much cheaper healthcare, either. I lived there for 14 years and it was just as much of a constant drain on my salary as it is here in the US. And those who couldn't afford good insurance were pretty much screwed, just like here in the US. And the real costs were buried deep and obscured by insurance waffle, just like here in the US.
If you look at the rest of my comments in this discussion, you'll see that I'm not pushing the moral panic you mention -- on the contrary, I'm pushing against it strongly -- and that it's definitely not true that I "know next to nothing" about this condition.
It wouldn't surprise me to find that ADHD is being simultaneously over- and under-diagnosed, because it's new enough that we're still discovering more and more about it. That's why I don't dispute that there's probably some degree of overdiagnosis, but I strongly object to pushing the narrative that it's some kind of an overmedication epidemic or crisis.
[1]: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...
As for where the society is currently tilted, it's possible -- and likely -- that ADHD is being both overdiagnosed and underdiagnosed at the same time. Like I said, it was discovered recently enough that we, as a society, don't yet have a perfect solution for it and we're still learning more and more. The approach is still evolving.
And yeah, going from 5.5% in 1997 to 9.8% in 2018 is the jump everyone loves to quote and panic about, but it doesn't constitute a crisis. Especially if you frame it as "more than a tenth of children are so psychologically flawed they need mind-altering medication to address what's wrong with them". That's exactly the hyperbole I'm objecting to here.
Let's start by acknowledging that 9.8% of children diagnosed does not equate 9.8% of children medicated. Once we hopefully agree on that, I'm also hoping we can agree that ADHD is not this binary thing that manifests exactly the same and in the same degree in every patient. Just like we've discovered that autism is not a binary thing but rather a spectrum (and even more nuanced than that), ADHD can't be reduced to "either you have it and you'll forever medicate, or you don't have it".
So yes, we're still dealing with a developing situation and there's more work to be done. That's not something I dispute and I'm not trying to "silence" that opinion. As I already explained repeatedly, I am objecting to the way you presented that. Or rather, I'm objecting to the way you didn't present that at all.
You just tossed out a judgmental, dismissive comment and got upset when people pointed out that it wasn't constructive -- or even true, on its own. It didn't come across at all as what you're claiming you wanted to say, but instead of recognizing that you communicated wrongly, you're now claiming I'm trying to silence you. Given that, I'm starting to form an impression that we could go back and forth like this forever and nothing will come out of it.
And yes, it's a trope. I said very clearly that this is not about rising rates of ADHD diagnoses and medication. The trope I'm referring to is the tendency to not only jump to a conclusion that it means we have an overdiagnosis crisis, but to present that conclusion as a fact and a significant problem.
The reason why I'm furious about it is because this narrative has been pushed for years and it has a negative impact on those of us who wish to help our children. In my personal case, it created a strong urge to avoid addressing the issue and just hope it would go away with "better parenting". If it hadn't been for the stigma of "you just want to drug your kids into submission", I would have started helping my kid earlier -- not with medication, but by finding a psychologist to help us.
Again, the focus on "school is boring and kids misbehave, so they get drugged" is too narrow and damaging to those who are affected by ADHD. Imagine being interested in many things, but not being able to advance in any of them beyond initial interest because your brain doesn't let you overcome simple obstacles that require concentration and it only lets you do so if you become somewhat obsessed by a particular random thing it settled on.
Yes, the study I (belatedly) linked in my previous post does indicate that there might be some overdiagnosis and overmedication of milder ADHD cases. And yes, that's something that we need to be aware of and work to improve.
I'm not objecting to raising that awareness. I'm objecting to the utterly irresponsible and damaging way to do so.
It is remarkably difficult to find any figures even estimating the overdiagnosis and overmedication rates for ADHD. Most of the talk around this issue tends to make a big deal out of the rising rate of ADHD diagnoses.
Those who talk about it responsibly and rationally recognize right away that this doesn't necessarily mean we have an overdiagnosis crisis on our hands, and seek additional information. The best study I've been able to find about this [1] does indicate that there may be some overdiagnosis and overmedication going on, but even there it's not framed as "parents, teachers, and doctors are basically conspiring to drug kids to keep them from acting up in schools", nor does it lend any credibility to that claim.
Are there bad parents who don't want to deal with their kids' behavior and try to get them "drugged into complacence"? Yes, definitely. Do we know how many and how that number compares to other kinds of parental abuse? No, we don't. Is it a problem of epidemic proportions? There's no evidence for that, and the onus is on those of you who make that claim.
More importantly, if we distance ourselves from the sensationalist tropes about "drugging kids into complacence", we can ask a better question: are there currently any perverse incentives in the medical community to overdiagnose ADHD and overprescribe medication? This might be the case, but it remains to be proven and it should be dealt with just like any similar case of perverse incentives.
So what do I object to? I object to the sensationalist "Will Nobody Think Of The Children" overstatement and hyperbole. I object to people bringing up the same trope over and over again, out of ignorance, and doing their best to stigmatize the vast majority of us who are doing our best to provide our kids with the best life we can. I object to not trying to constructively work to slowly evolve the best approach to dealing with a concrete, real and potentially debilitating problem that was discovered too recently to have a perfect solution to it, just because drumming up outrage and spreading FUD is easier and more gratifying.
And yes, school can be a pretty boring and restrictive place, but that's just the tip of the ADHD iceberg. Reducing the whole problem space to just that is not helping, either.
[1]: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...
EDIT: I realized that I forgot to provide the link for [1], so I'm adding it now. My apologies for the oversight.
That is a problem that both the public and the medical community are aware of. I agree with maintaining awareness of that, but I strongly disagree with going to the extremes and stigmatizing ADHD medication and everyone involved.
Look at the comment I objected to. Does it read like a rational, polite way to maintain awareness of that problem? Or does it look like a knee-jerk judgment that's parroting a popular trope?
Yes, the medication alters brain chemistry and one's "natural state". Do you honestly think that we have the science to realize that it alters brain chemistry, but we don't have the science to realize that some brain chemistries are drastically different from others?
As for the whole "natural state" thing, let's not indulge in appeals to nature here. I forgot where I heard "dog poop and arsenic are both found in nature, but you wouldn't eat either", but it stuck with me. Schizophrenia is a "natural state" for some people. So is depression, or autism. Should we just leave everyone in their "natural state", because it's sacred for some reason? Hence my comment about glasses: some people are naturally short-sighted, too, but they enjoy being able to see better.
Sure, school is an unnatural environment. Civilization is mostly an unnatural environment, too.
What infuriates me, though, is that people who haven't had to walk in my son's shoes -- or mine, but his are more important -- have the audacity to judge from their position of ignorance and declare all the effort and care we went through "a crime that future generations will be rightly horrified by".
My son has ADHD. There are other ADHD cases in the family, so we knew that could be the case with him, but we waited until he was in middle school to even try to check, because we didn't want him to "depend on drugs", as the trope goes.
We got the diagnosis from two different doctors, to be absolutely sure.
The medication makes a stunning difference, and it has nothing to do with complacency at all. It has to do with being able to focus better and to overcome an obstacle that people like me don't have.
And the medication shouldn't be the only thing to use for ADHD. It should be used as a tool to help, but that's just the start. It's important for the parents to work with a psychologist, for two reasons: 1) to help the child develop their own tools and strategies to overcome the cons of ADHD, and 2) to help the parents understand the child better.
Like I said, I don't have ADHD. The things my son has to struggle with are often difficult for me to understand and identify with. The medication helps so he doesn't have to struggle as hard. And he's less "complacent" than ever, and that's a good thing.
What you're saying is the equivalent of "it's horrifying to me that so many children are forced to wear glasses so they become more complacent in school".
In fact, I would go so far as to say that anyone who feels like they have no control over their religion -- the same way they have no control over which color of skin they were born with -- should seek help because they're being abused by someone.
What I was trying to do is have a conversation with you about why people "steal" or whatever the correct word for this thing is. Just like there are reasons people steal in real life, there are reasons for this behavior, too. You can try to understand it, or you can keep throwing everyone in the same bin, slap a label on that bin, and feel morally superior.
One of those two will lead to improvement for everyone. One of those two is easy. I'll leave it an exercise for you to figure out which one is which.
We're living in a society where a huge number of people has experienced a good solution to the demand for that enrichment, and that good solution has been deliberately sabotaged so that a small, rich group of people could become even richer at the expense of everyone else.
Just like you argue people are not entitled to art and entertainment, so I would argue that those who deliberately restrict access to it in completely unnecessary ways are not entitled to the additional profits they squeeze out that way.
As for the comments about luxury of pumping the entertainment to our homes instead of enjoying it at little to no cost at the venues you mention, I'm reminded of Arthur Dent being told that the plans to demolish his house were on display all the time. Suffice it to say that your vision of how the majority of people live is very distorted.
Amazon used to let me buy anything, and the Prime was there to entice me so I don't have to pay for individual catalog items, but that's not the case anymore.
Now I have a choice between:
1. paying for a crapton of streaming services so I can watch a handful of things I'd like
2. pirating
3. not watching most of the stuff I think I would like to watch
I'm not picking option 1 for what I hope are obvious reasons. I really don't want to pick option 2 because I empathize with people like you, who would be affected by that. For the moment, I'm picking option 3.
However, if you really want to "educate consumers", you might be more successful if you change your tone so it doesn't sound like aggressive victim-blaming. People like you and people like me are being screwed by a third group.
Even the ease of use has declined, and the affordability is down the toilet. And as usual, we have people at the top reaping record profits and making victims of their greed blame each other at the same time.
EDIT: Fixed a grammar error.
I found "The Peripheral" to be refreshingly good. I would recommend giving it a read.