The internet evolved as programming became a sought after path. But with the internet, a irreversible change happened in our society. Old facts are being questioned and it is imho just a matter of time until they materialize „in the real world“. This might include questions of status, achievement, the idea of self worth and the role of work.
We should not insist to measure new things with old rulers.
Some valid points, but the compiler isn't Xcode and Swift isn't able to check the expression. Imho in these cases it's the developers lack of insight into how SwiftUI works, but otoh Apple often doesn't help with obtaining the insight..
They will also silently stop supporting some piece of library you rely on, leave it broken in some way or another, and just leave you on your own.
However, it has its good sides. The profiling tools are great for example. And I would rather work on 10 difficult problems with Xcode than on 1 with Visual Studio..
I think people will come to the conclusion that they don’t want to post anything online. Private chats, if they exist, will stay but already, if you generate a work of art, you donate it more or less to the shareholders of Google or Meta. This is even before the thought policing and similar implications.
At this point, it is really important for everyone in the industry to recognize that the industry leaders (in terms of "running the most successful companies") should not be considered ethical or moral leaders.
It's a categorical error. Like expecting a boat captain to be Descartes because they're good at leading people to operate a boat (or, for that matter, expecting Descartes to take first in a marathon because he was really good at applying logic to philosophical questions).
And the key thing to recognize is that there's nothing in the system to enforce that standard. "Good at making money" or "Good at running a business" doesn't mean one is good at anything else, or, indeed, is good.
I think it's easy for people to make this error because humans like heroes; heroes simplify things. We want to believe that the people who are succeeding are succeeding because they're virtuous, not because (just spitballing here) the mechanisms we use to evaluate success are fundamentally detached from (if not opposed to) "virtue" as most people would understand the concept. if the latter is true, the world is far messier.
Sometimes it takes all those people voluntarily sitting at the same table as a convicted, unrepentant, and unpunished sexual abuser for the outside observer to "get" it.
Perhaps the still-open question is "Now what should one do with that knowledge?"
> And the key thing to recognize is that there's nothing in the system to enforce that standard. "Good at making money" or "Good at running a business" doesn't mean one is good at anything else, or, indeed, is good.
I’m well aware of that, no need to get all pedagogical. The system is quite far from what I favour. I’m saying that we shouldn’t be shrugging and saying “well that’s just what they are”, it’s no excuse.
Oh, agreed. If anything, I'm asking people to stop shrugging and saying "that's just what they are." Physicists had their come-to-Pugwash moment two (three?) generations ago and I'm hoping this generation of computer scientist can get there without waking up one day to discover their research was directly contributory to removing a quarter-million people from the face of the planet.
Their forebears, sadly, did not. Specifically the ones who worked at IBM, but others as well.
Moral neutrality is one thing. It may be disappointing (but not unexpected) for the CEO of your favorite company to wine and dine the leader of an unsavory political party. But... this person is currently all over the news for being best friends with one of the most prolific pedophiles in America, as well as trying desperately to suppress the release of documents where he and prominent members of his circle may be implicated. This meeting is not just morally neutral, not just immoral, but utterly depraved.
This is devastating enough on its own. But what makes it even more troubling is that the United States has a president who demands such transparently false praise. What's going on in this man's head? Does he not understand that these people are lying to him because they are afraid of what he will do to their companies? Or does he know, and that is the point?
This is what kissing the ring looks like. It's a loyalty test.
In Soviet Union it was a sign of loyalty not to question obviously false statistics and news. In Joe Rogan's circles is laughing at his shit jokes and praising his comic abilities in his podcast.
It's about enforcing a power dynamic. Groveling and empty praise is about showing loyalty and control. Trump thinks enforcing this level of control over others is what success looks like.
let it be the curtain pulled back on how this class of people operates. just because we can see it now doesn't mean this kind of thing hasn't been happening behind the scenes for... ever.
not to excuse the brazenness of it - i'm as disgusted as you are.
The troubling fact is that the country's owners no longer feel the need to put on a show of democratic values. It's like witnessing Diocletian do away with the republican pretense of earlier emperors.
I feel like this curtain drop started in earnest in tech as well, when Musk took over Twitter and declared (along with certain VC) that engineers are no longer "special" and need to be treated like cattle.
The entire industry gladly dropped their masks. Quite the irony, for a group of people that takes so much pride in "thinking different" and "changing the world".
A key factor in this calculus is that the current president holds a grudge whereas the vast majority of consumers, shareholders, and workers do not.
Unless a nontrivial number of the people who are outraged either boycott Apple, Alphabet/Google, OpenAI, Microsoft, Meta/Facebook, or sell their shares, or stop applying to work there then it'll prove that these CEOs were indeed making the right (financial) decision.
The Western system has roots in the Norman conquest of England. After 1066, land wasn’t held communally or with meaningful checks on aristocracy, as under the Anglo-Saxons. Instead, William the Conqueror carved up the country and handed it to his allies, creating a feudal landlord class that had no attachment to 'their' conquered peasants/community and whose only mandate was to extract maximum rent, so long as the higher lords and the crown got their cut. Instead of vanishing that rentier system evolved. Over centuries, the same logic of conquest and extraction was repackaged as “the market,” and eventually exported to the world through finance, trade, and empire.
What began as feudal rent-seeking in England scaled into global capitalism, a system where those at the top still practice Norman-style exploitation for maximum extraction with no care about those being extracted from. It's all Norman-style exploitation for maximum extraction, stripped of any sense of community, obligation, or service.
This is routine; businesses don’t follow laws because they are laws, they follow laws to the extent that the perceived cost of violations exceed the perceived benefits. The whole reason the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act exist is to impose a domestic cost on foreign bribery by US entities to dissuade them from engaging in corruption abroad where enforcement is weak. But this President, who is explicit against that, is also very obviously, if less explicitly, also against enforcement of the laws against domestic corruption when it is him or his friends benefiting. So, there is literally no cost to weigh against the benefits.
> if you are a CEO in 2015 and you aren’t flattering this idiot to profit then you are violating your duties to your shareholders
Ah yes, because that's the only thing that matters. Nihilistic capitalism at its finest – there no morality beyond economics. Everything that makes economic sense is moral because it makes economic sense. Whether it actually does is rather dubious by the way, as all of this has the very real possibility of massively damage these businesses in the medium to long term – so also nihilistic short-termism at its finest.
We should not insist to measure new things with old rulers.
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