Comment by amsilprotag | Hacker News Reader

Comment by amsilprotag | Hacker News Reader

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From your text: Then Anand shares the thoughtful and profound email he sent to Ito & Co and others at MIT Media Lab, from which it is crystal clear Anand is unambiguously trying to do the right thing.

You're giving Giridharadas way too much credit. His e-mail resignation is an implicit ultimatum (if you don't fire him, I will go public), to which Hoffman counters by saying how he will try to frame Giridharadas as trying to personally gain from this scandal (which, clearly he will).

By publicly stating Hoffman's weak threat, while reserving the future threat of revealing their correspondence, Giridharadas makes it harder for Hoffman to follow through on the threat without public backlash.

So Giridharadas targets this tweetstorm to inflict maximum damage to Ito supporters and MIT admins. The hush money line is harder to prove and channels frustration towards the hushers more than the facilitators. The cash for prestige line places all the blame on Epstein and Ito. Then he publicly shares the list of Ito supporters [0] and creates public knowledge of their thinning numbers. When the firing eventually occurs, Giridharadas will have collected the spoils of a successful cancellation, the public knowledge that he can make very credible threats.

If you are correct, we should expect Giridharadas to place more emphasis on the hushers for the sake of justice. If I am, we should expect him to put all effort into bringing down Ito.

[0] https://twitter.com/AnandWrites/status/1170025167063605250

>If you are correct, we should expect Giridharadas to place more emphasis on the hushers for the sake of justice. If I am, we should expect him to put all effort into bringing down Ito.

in "we should expect",

1) "should" means "would" or

2) "should" means Anand "should if only he saw the bigger picture of hush money / cloack of charity" ?

if 1) this assumes Anand has the same interpretation I have (that its not prestige-for-cash but hush money), but as I wrote in my text it mostly seems like Anand does not realize this at all.

it 2) of course the hushers, but also the hush money enablers, which would include Ito & Co, if no one lets Anand know of this hush money interpretation one can not expect Anand to focus on the hushers! I don't have twitter, again could someone mention this to Anand?

>If I am, we should expect him to put all effort into bringing down Ito.

Anand's prediction goes further than just Ito: he also predicts MIT will investigate itself and absolve itself, so he doesn't just condemn Ito as you claim, and given Anand's own admission from the start that he used to respect Ito largely explains his disappointment in Ito specifically!

Yes, surely the villain here is the guy trying to hold people to account for knowingly associating with and taking money from a convicted child predator, and shining a light on all the ass covering they are now engaged in, and not the people who did all this heinous stuff in the first place. Truly a case of cancel culture run amok.

I think Giridharadas is very good and says good things and picks good targets. But there is a strange attitude here and on twitter that he is guileless, when clearly he is making very calculated moves. This is especially apparent in seeing the Hoffman comment as a threat but not the resignation letter. Maybe the gp came off as harsh, but I'm trying to explain why the ggp should not expect the husher line of attack to be immediately adopted.

> clearly he is making very calculated moves

A very good person can also be someone who makes calculated moves. The two characteristics are not mutually exclusive.

Yes, this. Doing the right strategically for maximum effect is better than merely doing it for performative effect.

I can't imagine how confusing the world must be when one only sees things in the world such childish black-and-white terms, where the existence of evil automatically means that anyone in opposition is a morally-unimpeachable angel.

To be clear, there's no comparison between the parent comment's model of Ghiridaradas's actions and those of Ito et al, and AG's telling of their actions is pretty damning regardless of his motivations.

But responding to someone trying to flesh out a better understanding of the situation by mentioning his motivations (without excusing one iota the far-worse actions of others) with "NO THERE CAN ONLY EVER BE ONE SIDE DOING BAD THINGS" is about as simple-minded a take as I can imagine.

could you clarify Anand's supposed ulterior motives? He resigns and he proposes Joi Ito cede his position to one of the women in the group?

If one does not want to be associated with the scandal, because he has nothing to do with it, surely he should have the liberty to distance himself without having to also play the secret keeper for others? He never signed up to be their secret keeper. He tries to give the benefit of the doubt, and begs for explanations of their silence, for explanations of their decisions. So when none are provided, surely his right to free speech permits him to speak about whatever he witnessed from his perspective?

Sometimes the only identifiable "ulterior motive" is the freedom one has maintained by not becoming complicit...

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