Ask HN: Why do so many geniuses work for evil companies? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why do so many geniuses work for evil companies?

8 pointsthrowawaynay16 comments

I'm talking about most FAANGs, banks, finance...

Why is it that so many incredibly smart people who could literally do anything they want, work anywhere they want, build anything they want, maybe even the next revolutionary unicorns/decacorns, on their own terms, choose to work for companies who are actively choosing to destroy society and have a net negative impact on everyone?

Do they just don't care?

Is money/funding/prestige the only thing that matter to them?

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I didn't realize there was a list of "evil companies" and everyone agreed about precisely which companies are on that list.

Google literally removed their "don't be evil" motto. Facebook knowingly use software that destroy teens mental health according to their own research. Do I even need to talk about the atrocious working conditions in amazon's warehouses?

After that you have hedgefunds speculating on water and wheat, Nestlé literally murdering babies ( https://www.businessinsider.com/nestles-infant-formula-scand... ), Coca Cola hiring hitmen to murder political/climate change activists, any companies directly working with fossil fuels.

Besides that a lot of companies evilness is debatable, but definitely not those.

I think any sane person can agree that those companies are evil, if you think otherwise you're just lying to yourself.

I remember when usenet was awesome. I remember asking Raymond Chen questions about programming Windows and he would engage in conversation. I remember reading posts from C++ guys like Pete Becker and others who were incredibly knowledgable. I can't remember names, but people from Bell Labs would post and I learned so much from reading their discussions. But that is gone and dead. As a replacement, I have read HN for years and use this account occasionally to post, but lately have become quite disappointed. It isn't about snarky or mean comments, it is the shear number of comments that are just juvenile. This question could have some interesting perspectives and conversation, but is written in such a poor and, for lack of better work, stupid manner that is just lowers the standard of this site. I know nobody cares if I am here or not, but I just want to point out that I have been fortunate to be part of a large number of intellectual communities over the years and if HN wants to be considered one, they need to do some work because they are headed in the wrong direction.

Maybe their perspective is different ?

Generally, extreme excellence in one domain is balanced by a lower-than-average (for a given value of 'average') performance, or attention, in some others. It is related to single-mindedness (is that a word!?) and possibly to individual mental and social make-up.

E.g. great scientists don't necessarily make good home-keepers (also insert famous memes about 'scatter-brained' and/or unkempt genii/geniuses).

I hesitate to use the word 'genius' for mere software developers in order not to devalue its meaning :P [tongue in cheek grinning emoticon here]

However, many extreme performers need, prefer, or desire to operate inside an ecosystem (bubble) that looks after and caters for their other needs so as not to distract them from what they consider most important to focus upon. Consider top-class sports people and the 'teams' of non-athletic support people they're often surrounded by.

The resulting effect could likely be described as a by-product of tunnel vision - anything outside their primary interest is a secondary consideration, if at all.

The companies aren't that evil, and the people aren't that genius.

Also money. People want a decent day-to-day experience at their job and they want to be paid well.

The world and people's motivations are far more complex than you seem to understand.

How do you classify geniuses? How can you so broadly paint entire industries with the worst possible attribute? Why do you think these people aren't doing what they want? How do you think society is being destroyed?

Nearly every sentence you wrote has at least one naive assumption and a sweeping generality.

Ok I'm going to be more specific.

I started this thread after watching a course from Yann Le Cunn, I just started thinking about how a smart guy like him could accept to work for FB.

How can a man who revolutionize the field of AI, work for 20years as a professor in the best universities, decide to help a company that is knowingly destroying teens mental health, manipulating society, causing deaths with fake news, or more or less causing a whole freaking genocide in Myanmar.

You should ask him. See what he says.

Without power you can change nothing. Power is the ability to do work, this doesn't solely come from money but money is in a way, a form of stored work deferred in time.

Banks and finance isn't inherently evil but banks that don't optimise the allocation of capital will have less capital and so matter less. Much like in Norm chompskys Manafacturing consent, there is no need for evil actors. The system rewards particular things and that leads to a series of incentives.

What would the "Moral" activity of smart people be? Say you create some simple definition of the most moral action and run with it. Would improving the worlds access to knowledge (Google) not be a part of that? Would connecting communities (Facebook) not be a part of that? Would allowing small sellers of nice products to sell without the hassle of the logistics of online sales not be a part of that (Amazon)? Would creating original media content not beholden to the demands of advertisers not be a part of that (Netflix)?

Would creating the best expression of the mobile device by integrating the hardware and software giving as many people as possible access to leading technology without them having to understand much with regards to the technicalities (I guess that's the apple way?)

Would optimising the allocation of capital so that people can have things before they can afford them not be a part of that? The facilitation of the dream of having it all now while you are young enough to enjoy it rather than saving up for a retirement where you then have a stroke so can do anything with the money you saved. (The situation my grandfather ended up in) Facilitated by the finance industry.

Sure these companies are not monistries. (Although were the preists in those always so angelic) They are not charities, but unlike charities they generate (correctly or not) the resources to aim at their goals.

If a super smart person wanted to target the dreamy goals these companies claim to address but had a better way to address them, what would that way be?

How can you change the world if you do not have the power to allocate capital? The answer is you can't.

The simple answer: those companies aren't evil. They're not selling your data, or bringing the financial system down, or emptying the wallets of the poor. They're not god's gift to mankind or finding the cure to pancreatic cancer either. They're just fine.

>They're not selling your data, or bringing the financial system down, or emptying the wallets of the poor.

A lot of those companies are literally doing that though.

You’re being way too reductive assuming that genius level intellect also includes being highly industrious AND has the risk appetite to start a company that will likely fail.

Genius level intellect comes with a lot of problems - pessimism ranks highly because the foresight granted by intellect shows the huge combination of possible failures.

Negative emotion is felt more strongly than positive emotion in all humans so self doubt (illuminated by combinatorial scenario projections) tends to be higher in genius intellect.

Also many of them tend to have other problems at the extremes - anxiety, paranoia, mania, distrust, uncontrollable ego, combinations of these and more - this leads to many of the geniuses taking their paycheque and disappearing into escapism of drugs, alcohol, sex, video games, whatever - just to make it stop for a bit, just a little relief

And some geniuses aren’t industrial at all, and are happy with that, they are happy being kind and reliable and humble, they are not driven by money but the acquisition of knowledge for its own reward.

Maybe they just want comfort and know the statistics on how many startups fail and the insane amount of work and sacrifice a startup requires and it’s actually easier to get a well paying job and be more balanced.

The assumption that genius are always in the capitalistic, money driven, alert problem solving mode is a very American view of live, when indeed, just like intellect is NOT a single scalar dimension, genius is varied and colourful.

Most geniuses aren't able to do what you claim. at best they could work wherever they want.

FAANGs have developed incentives for geniuses to favor them over less evil employers.

This is so simplistic. You have a whole lot more reading to do before you can reasonably decide what’s evil.

Maybe they are evil geniuses?

"why do people get sick?""maybe because of diseases?"

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