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Comment by Jensson | Hacker News Reader

> You can plan for something you've never experienced. You read, or learn from other people's experiences.

Text doesn't convey emotions, and our empathy doesn't work well for emotions we have never experienced. You can see a guy that got kicked in the balls got hurt, but that doesn't mean you are prepared to endure the pain of getting kicked in your balls or that you even understand how painful it is.

Also watching politicians it looks like you can just brush it off, because that is what they do. But that requires a lot of experience, not anyone can do it, it is like watching a boxing match and think you can easily stand after a hard punch in your stomach.

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Ilya torched peoples' retirements by signaling that it would be very hard to cash out in OpenAI as it is now. You don't have to be emotional to understand the consequence of that action, just logical. You have to think beyond your own narrow perspective for a minute.

Torched retirements? Who is dumb enough to have his retirement portfolio that weighted to one company?

The OpenAI employees who are planning to resign en-masse for exactly this reason.

They'll squeak by.

Where did he do that? Genuine question.

The board vote did it! They had a tender offer in the works that would have made employees millionaires. The board clearly signaled that they viewed the money-making aspects of the company as something to dial back, which in turn either severely lessens the value of that tender offer or prevents it from happening.

I mean, he didn't have a button on his desk that said, "torch the shares", but he ousted the CEO as a way to cut back on the things that might have meant profit. Did he think that everyone was going to continue to want to give them money after they signal a move away from profit motives? Doesn't take a rocket scientist to think that one through.

I think he was just preoccupied with AI safety, and didn't give a thought to the knock on effects for investors of any stripe. He's clearly smart enough to, he just didn't care enough to factor it into his plans.

I do believe OpenAI clearly signalled from the very beginning what the (complicated) company structure is about and what risks this means for any potential investor (or employee hoping to become rich).

If you project your personal hopes which are different from this into the hype, this is your personal problem.

Well, with the hollowing out of OpenAI, it seems that someone else will easily take the lead! They're not my personal hopes - this move destroyed OpenAI's best chance at retaining control over cutting edge AI as well. They destroyed their own hopes.

> You can see a guy that got kicked in the balls got hurt, but that doesn't mean you are prepared to endure the pain of getting kicked in your balls or that you even understand how painful it is.

Sure, but you do your best not to be kicked in the balls.

Yep. Or, if you're running an immense, well-funded organization that is gauging the consequences of a plan that involves being kicked in the balls, you take a tiny sliver of those funds and get some advisors to appraise you of what to expect when being kicked in the balls, not just wing it/"fake it till you make it". (As it turns out, faking not being in severe pain is tricky.)

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