alexryan

“The selfish gene” by Richard Dawkins

Once I came understand that human beings are survival machines built for the single minded task of gene survival, everyone’s behavior become much more predictable.

People who live in the Silicon Valley bubble either don't seem to understand just how terrified people are in the heartland, or they don't care, or they don't understand the consequences of not caring. If Silicon Valley firms continue to use their power to bend reality to reflect the world view of the privileged coastal elites, then elections will no longer be viewed as free and fair. If that happens, then civil war is a real possibility.

It's a strange world when stating the obvious is seen as an extreme position worthy of lynching.

There is no need for cherry picking. The scientific evidence that men and women have different interests and that those interests become more pronounced as the society becomes more egalitarian is overwhelming.

Why Can’t a Man Be More Like a Woman? Sex Differences in Big Five Personality Traits Across 55 Cultures http://www.bradley.edu/dotAsset/165918.pdf

This seminal paper has been cited over 3000 times and the findings have been replicated by numerous researches.

The blue church dogma that female underrepresentation in tech is due to oppression is not supported by the evidence.

James Damore should not have been lynched. He is owed a sincere apology.

> such managers can and should be targeted to answer for their bias

The point is that such managers are NOT being targeted. The lynching of James Damore was enthusiastically conducted by the very top of the management hierarchy and they are on record as having lied in public about what he actually said. Rather than correct their own bias, Pichai has stated that he has "no regrets" over his behavior and the legitimate concerns that were raised by James continue to remain unaddressed because they conflict with the dominant ideology.

If the moral system which you currently subscribe to is such that it is morally okay and perhaps even virtuous to demand that people who have voluntarily chosen to work together at higher level of work ethic should all be forced to lower their standards to be in accordance with your personal beliefs, then this moral judgement is valid. But you should seriously consider questioning that belief. People who voluntarily choose to work insane hours in Elon's companies are contributing an insane amount of value to this world and I for one am grateful for their sacrifices and contributions.

Agreed. I like the idea of cultivating "the resolve to resolve" conflicts by transforming them into positive sum games wherein the tribe commits to finding a way to meet everyone's needs and unifying behind of mission of contribution rather than allowing conflicts to devolve into zero sum games which suck the soul out of a once great company and pave the way for its corruption.

Uncomfortable situations can be perceived as “no-win” situations or as “huge opportunities” depending on what your aim is and how committed you are to achieving it. It could have been used as an opportunity to show the world how to resolve the polarization that plagues us by forcing the 2 sides to talk until a mutually acceptable resolution was achieved and the team could unify in support of a mission of contribution instead of turning against each other. The ability to bring people together is what makes you are leader. Even if you were on the winning side of the zero sum game, you will never rest well if you have weak leader. A man who will easily bend to the will of a handful of radical feminists is unlikely suddenly grow a backbone when facing a much stronger opponent like Donald Trump.

There is truth to this. I would suggest, however, that it is at least theoretically possible to maintain good will and strong relationships with the community, even as your power grows, so long as the bonds of trust are rock solid. The most effective way I know to do that is to refuse to contribute to the polarization and by always choosing to be on the side of the win-win solution.

By firing James Damore, by allowing YouTube videos to be demonetized for holding the wrong opinions, etc. Sundar Pichai has destroyed the bonds of trust. It takes backbone to stand up to the ideologically possessed who are determined to play the zero sum game and to persuade them that their needs can be more sustainably met by other means. Sundar Pichai has no backbone! Nobody has any respect for a weak leader who habitually chooses the easiest path without regard to the long term consequences.

I think you might be missing the bigger picture. 5 years ago these views would not have found any traction because nearly everyone loved Google. The general level of hatred in the community towards Google has increased significantly in that time. In my estimation this is due entirely to Google's own behavior since Sundar Pichai became CEO. When your CEO has an inability to resolve conflict in the direction of positive sum solutions, the losers of the zero sum game are going to hate you intensely and will certainly not come to your defense when you are attacked.

In Buddhist insight meditation, the first of the four foundations of mindfulness is "mindfulness of the body".

> According to the story, in general, older employees received good reviews but were discriminated against by a point system that gave an edge to new, young employees.

So what? Why would you choose to continue working for a company where you were discriminated against? If you have been working hard to continue growing your skills all this time, you will have no problem finding a better job at a less corrupt company.

Arguably, one of the primary driving forces for the popularity of mindfulness in the west was the work done by Joh Kabat-Zinn with Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR).

Nice video of this: https://youtu.be/RuUSc53Xpeg

Walk away. If they use that specific phrase, they are playing dominance games with you. If you choose to sacrifice your self respect and enter into a relationship with an immature petty tyrant like that, you’re in for a world of pain.

If you have a problem with someone's behavior, the moral and healthy thing to do is to address it with that person directly and to not leave that conversation until the situation is fully resolved to the mutual satisfaction of both parties. Conflict can make a relationship stronger if it is genuinely pursued with a positive sum intent. What this woman did was to try to make herself look good to her boss and to make her team mates look bad.

Finding fault in others seems to be a conscious strategy for this woman. She has even written a book called "The Bozo Loop".

Who in their right mind would choose to hire someone this toxic?

I think of it this way: We are survival machines who evolved sensory-motor brains for the purpose of making ever better decisions about which moves will increase our ability to survive and thrive. Pain is a signal that our predictive model of the world is incorrect. We made a bad move. Our predictive model needs to be revised. Rumination is the way in which the brain seeks to discover a better predictive model. If instead of productively pondering we choose to think thoughts of powerlessness which disrupt the rumination process and bring forward momentum to a halt, we are subverting our forward momentum. We should strive to discipline our mind to feel intense aversion towards allowing such unskillful thoughts to form and harden into beliefs.

To claim that voting for the candidate who actually won the election is controversial is not rational. In my estimation this kind of intolerance is exactly WHY so many people voted for him despite his flaws.

People are scared. A few companies have the power to censor and promote what we see and do not see. This is a tremendous power and we all want the companies entrusted with this power to do so morally and consistently. Pointing out that other social networks are behaving badly as well does not address the fear that people feel.

One gets the sense that many people working at places like YouTube really are living in a bubble and are totally oblivious to the intensity of the fear that people feel about their power to censor and promote. I sincerely hope that this changes. It would be horrible for everyone if government had to step in to regulate this medium.

Fair. "Balancing the scales" is a laudable goal. I merely wish to point out that suggested mechanism of balancing carries a significant downside and we might want to consider alternative means of achieving the goal.

Innovation would be my preference. The more corrupt a monopoly becomes, the more motivated the best engineers are to join a startup with a "Don't be evil" mission to take them down. ;)

Lots of quick hacks lead can lead to the accumulation of technical debt which can seriously impair the ability of the system to function. This can be even more problematic if the technical debt becomes a living entity intent on surviving and thriving whilst being dependent on an ever growing number of quick hacks as its only means of sustenance. ;)

That's an interesting point. Are there any examples of "alternatives ways of controlling the behavior of their customers spending" which do not result in the customer feeling motivated to withdraw from the relationship?

This is where all corruption originates. One group seeks to use the state to impose their will on another group. The victimized group, in turn, seeks to defend itself by bribing the enforcers. Instead of capital flowing to those who are best able to convert it into the most happiness for the most people, it flows to those seeking to enrich themselves by pitting people against each other in order to extract ever larger bribes. The state grows ever more corrupt in this fashion. It might be wise to refrain from the impulse to use force long enough to consider alternative ways to remedy the perceived problem.

Nice reads.

I have this hypothesis that thinking is layered on top of our two primal emotional strategies for stress: connection and aggression become diffuse mode (how is it similar?) and focused mode (how is it different?). When i use the word “battle” I am suggesting repurposing aggression so that instead of directing it at each other in defense of our positions and ego (system 1 thinking) we are working together synergistically in a battle for the truth which will enable us to solve the problem (system 2 thinking).

i.e. Turning a zero sum game into a positive sum game.

Yes. I can see how that term might have a negative connotation for some people. We do indeed live in a world where most people more highly value their current beliefs and their ego than they do the truth. Those people, unfortunately, battle with the intent to defend their beliefs and ego and that kind of battle is admittedly unproductive. But there are other people, like myself, who genuinely value truth more highly than those things. For us, there is a hunger to get to the truth AFAP, to solve problems AFAP, to accelerate innovation AFAP by leveraging collective intelligence more efficiently because it could mean saving lives or solving really important problems. Currently I know of no forum which meets this need but hacker news does seem to attract a lot of really smart people who do indeed value truth more highly than beliefs and ego.

I really like Jonathan Haidt's ideas about encouraging people from 2 different sides of an issue but who are both genuinely committed to the truth to battle each other with the intent of letting the truth emerge from the argument. This is extremely beneficial because we are all blinded by our own biases and it is very helpful when the other side helps us to see past them. This is admittedly difficult to achieve in a forum like hacker news but IMHO it would be amazing if someone could make this happen. The biggest improvements to my own predictive model of the world have always come when arguing with someone who held a contrary view and I'd like to believe that I have returned that favor from time to time as well.

I couldn't agree more. Contrarian posts and comments which challenge the dominant beliefs are often the most interesting because that's where the innovation is. It would be interesting to see, say a contrarian view of a post where down-voted comments actually rose to the top. Because of the way down-voting lowers rank, I tend to view hacker news as "the view of the establishment". It's a shame because there are a lot of smart contrarian people on here, and it would be great if it were easier to zero in on their contributions.

"unfair distribution of wealth"? What is wealth? If you offer me something that meets my needs, I will feel grateful and offer you something in exchange for it. You have earned that wealth. If you are really good at meeting the needs of others, then you will be better at earning wealth. There is nothing unfair about that. You do not deserve to be looted and I would defend you from the looters.

It is true, that amongst the looters some are significantly more successful in their looting than others. They attain power and use that power to further their looting. There is no disputing that. I agree with you.

I am simply suggesting that generalized looting is not a solution which will ever yield a corruption free system because looting itself is the problem. There is plenty of evidence from the past hundred years to support that conclusion.

Fair. I was referring to how corruption most probably "originates" in a system that is theoretically free of corruption.

I suspect that you are absolutely correct that the perception of victimhood is the trigger which compels individuals to feel morally justified in violating moral systems.

My intuition is that once the moral foundations of an institution have been corrupted, then the corruption tends to spread like a disease until the entire system collapses.

The question that interests me is: How do we build a system which is resilient to corruption?

I dispute that corruption is inevitable and propose that its origins lie the violation of a foundational moral at the heart of most religions:

In Christianity, this is the commandment: Thou shall not steal. In Buddhism, the precept is more explicit: Do not take that which has not been freely given.

If we live in a society where the majority of people are willing to violate this rule by directing the state to steal from those who have more and redistribute to those who have less, those who are being robbed will naturally seek to find a means to defend themselves and their families from the predation of the majority.

Being outnumbered, they do not have the votes to defend themselves at the polls. Naturally, they will use the resources they do have. They can bribe those who are tasked with committing the theft. This is entirely rational. No matter how many prohibitions against corruption are erected, those who are being preyed upon will seek to defend themselves and there will always be people willing to help them, especially in exchange for cash.

The origin of corruption lies in the decision to violate the prohibition against theft. The violation of the prohibition against theft creates a need for bribery which would not otherwise exist. When a need is created, market forces will move to ensure the need is met.

One way to create a society free of corruption is for the majority to voluntarily commit to the prohibition against theft and to enforce the prohibition against those who choose to violate it.

I would further propose that this could lead to a more general replacement of zero sum games with positive sum games. This, in turn, would serve to further accelerate the rate of innovation and thus speed the rate at which all,human needs are met. When trust is strengthened, instead of seeking to meet our needs at the expense of each other, we are naturally more willing to work together to solve the larger problems which afflict us all.

We are survival machines for genes who evolved brains in order to predict which moves will improve the probability of the survival of our genes. The survival machines who evolve the better predictive models fastest are the ones who win. The best way that I know how to evolve my predictive model quickly is to argue with those who hold views that are different than my own. In the majority of these cases, both parties benefit by improving their predictive models. I’m not sure why, but hacker news seems to filter out a lot of unpopular opinions. This slows the rate by which we evolve our predictive models. This slows the rate of innovation. IMHO this leaves us all poorer both individually and collectively.