Maybe that seems like an over the top comment, and on any individual case, who knows? But I think it explains a good number of these sorts of scandals. Sometimes, the people who get on top are not "ambitious"... sometimes they are actual monsters.
Internet threads are like tag-team wrestling: the first guy drags a metal chair into the ring and then the second guy bashes a third guy over the head with it. Keep the chair out of the ring.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14837253 and marked it off-topic.
This is a phenomenon that studies show occurs at something like 2-3% in the population at large... but more common among CEO's. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/mar/15/silicon-v... Interesting how you ban my argument because I don't have a credential (do you even know which logical fallacy that is?) but when an article in which experts take the same opinion, HN bans it with a different excuse.
Do you think that, just perhaps, this could have an effect on the amount of abuse of people by some companies, that we see day-to-day? Especially when it seems to go to an absurd point, as in this case?
It doesn't require a degree to detect people who are willing to treat those around without scruple, as long as they're not exposed. It's a fairly simple definition and these people disproportionately cause abuse... so censoring mention of this, or suggesting that a degree is needed to even contemplate recognizing this sort of bad actor, means you are acting to ensure people are ignorant about it, to their potential harm. I hope you never encounter one of these people close up, dang.
I'm not all that surprised that HN's despicable form of soft-censorship was used here... as I realize the statement I made was sort of controversial. But I'm looking forward to more people realizing how rotten you guys have become at censorship, at which point the interesting conversation will finally move elsewhere. Unfortunately, you can't keep doing it with such a heavy hand and have people not catch on, over the long term.
In fact, the level of censorship has gotten so high here (or I have finally noticed how bad it is) that I don't want to participate anymore. Maybe this is a marginal case, but I've realized you guys are just rotten overall. I don't really think it's ethical to participate in a form that's so dramatically manipulated, especially so often in the direction of SV companies. I'm going to kill my account, if that's possible.
Or, since it looks like HN is too arrogant implement this feature https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7841742 I'll just, you know, stop using it and monitor the potential security hole for the rest of my life.
IIRC the book was written by the scientific wing of the Polish Resistance movement during authoritarian occupations of the 20th Century. Apparently, many of the people involved in sourcing the data (and, oh yeah, who had secretly diagnosed many of the Nazi/Communist leaders as psychopaths) were killed, when the first edition of the book was discovered in progress. And that first manuscript was destroyed, but the lead author wrote it again -- not once, but two more times -- and ultimately, had to wait for the fall of Communism in order to get it out of Poland. It was finally translated and published during the Bush administration, by New York liberals.