The devil is intelligence without love | Hacker News Reader

The devil is intelligence without love

ggnotes.com

30 pointspmzy27 comments

Thanks a lot.

My take on the subject: Intelligence without compassion is, basically, hell. Compassion to others that is not rooted in compassion to oneself is shallow and will not last.

Do you mean as in "You shall love your neighbor as yourself"?

No. I mean that compassion grows out of recognizing yourself in suffering of the other. Suffering is humane, part of our nature. If/when I have compassion to myself (maybe, to my past self, for example), I can be truly compassionate to the other.

We celebrate winning. Second place deserves our scorn.

I strongly disagree with this value system, but that’s mostly where we are.

Edit: Additionally, we mostly celebrate competition over collaboration. Again, it’s a messed up ideology.

Maybe the quote in the essay was pulled out of context, but it seems to suggest a false dichotomy between valuing technical knowledge and ethics.

Edit: Other than that, lots of nodding while reading the essay.

It doesn't actually suggest "love without intelligence" though.

I think the quote underline that if ethics isn't taught prior tech knowledge, it's unlikely to be given any importance later on. I don't take it to say that one can't value both.

This is better generalized as not just intelligence, but pride - everything that promotes self.

That said, I can see the "intelligence" formulation taking off more easily - anti-intellectualism is a mainstream idea already, whereas humility is verboten across all kinds of social contexts.

Since "love" is often debated, it's worth noting that the (relevant) Latin word for "love" gave rise to not just English "charity" but also "caring".

the essay is about intelligence, something we value in others. While pride is when we value our own intelligence.

I agree with you that pride is a big issue (it is, after all, a capital sin).

Humility --believing in one's lesser importance compared to others-- is the only ethic we need to live together.

Sadly, the self-esteem movement teaches people just the opposite, essentially keeping them in that infantile state where the most important person in the room...

The author has this mostly backwards:

"promotion is given to the smartest or most performant, with often no regard to how they behave towards others."

Instead promotion is given to those who best seek it--often because of how they behave towards other competitors for the scarce resource of the next promotion and always because of how they behave towards the people with the power to give them the promotion.

OP here, I agree with you. Though what I wrote doesn't contradict this; consider that the smartest is the person who knows how to play corporate politics.

There are different kinds of smart so it's hard to disagree, but if it's "smart that enabled better execution of corporate goals", the Machiavellian smart isn't in the running

Tillich argues a stronger point in "Love, Power, and Justice"[0]

Power without love is tyrannical, binary harshness.

Power without justice is foppish sentimentality.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Love-Power-Justice-Ontological-Applic...

Love in this article is defined by voluntary self sacrifice for the sake of others.

There are unfortunately a few definitions of love floating around.

I like Bishop Barron's definition (inspired by Saint Thomas Aquinas): "Love is willing the good of the other as other"

It's not complicated. For most people, love is how you treat your family, ergo your loved ones. Extending it to the world shouldn't be that big a deal.

I think this is a huge oversimplification. Just as intelligence can be either effective or ineffective or even destructive, so can love or emotionalism. We can do things in the name of love or compassion that are actually harmful.

A classic example would be cultural traditionalism trying to hold onto some kind of authenticity but really just creating tyranny and repression, or attempts to rein in the worst parts of capitalism that backfire and impoverish people.

Meanwhile the coldest reason can deliver a lot of compassion. The Haber process for cracking atmospheric nitrogen probably saved more lives than all the saints in history.

This could be expressed as "the devil is <anything> without love". The <anything> was a tool for doing good, or a heuristic approximation to Good, or a necessary defense against harm, but it becomes demonic when it is mistaken for Good itself. (Or "God", if you prefer—evil is idolatry.)

Maybe the devil is either intelligence without love or love without intelligence. The latter can do just as much harm.

Yeah, I tend to think conversations about evil elide the distinction between two kinds of "harm". The first is like pride or the devil or idolatry, the second like "material harm". The purpose of intelligence is to predict the future and solve problems, of course, so too little of it leads to preventable mistakes. The two are related: love can direct the intelligence towards noble ends and guard against its overreach. But intelligence is needed to prevent an overreach of love and trust that would lead to loss and grief.

OK, so there is a balance, but the article posits that we are currently unbalanced in how much more we value intelligence over kindness.

yes, that. And how we often mess up the order; ethics should come first. I'd pin this comment if I could :)

There's a general rejection of intelligence as a superseding quality taking hold in tech across the board. The results have been mixed.

Kindness is a good quality and one we should all strive to display especially in the most difficult times. However, the level of kindness one should expect in an academically or commercially competitive context depends on the role that one is playing. It is not always appropriate for a CEO, for example, to be kinder than he or she is smart as a static property. If we are stack ranking on raw ability, don't expect to come out at or even close to the top with consistency or at all. That's life. It is not unkind.

I think that the current "everyone's walking on eggshells" moment in tech is a direct consequence of the "no assholes rule" we saw become the HR mantra over the past decade-ish.

Very few people would opt to work with someone who is disrespectful and/or berating people -- causing high stress and a psychologically unsafe environment. However, no one wants to work with highly passive-aggressive people who abuse social conventions to avoid being challenged either. Many of the people who view any form of perceived aggression (often in the form of merit based competition) as unkindness simply desire to be #1, and don't want to compete with anyone to earn it.

Sometimes what appears to be kindness is anything but -- and often what appears to be unkindness is just someone doing their job. For me personally, when I'm on the clock, generally all I care about is the work-product. I do want to make great memories with people -- particularly of shared achievement. But the work product comes first and I believe that is an important way to operate if you want to do great things -- especially hard things. If you are in a role where you're just cruising -- doing what you do best with relative ease, this post is not about you. I fully believe HR should create a cocoon around you and protect your mental peace. Accountants, lawyers, jr-sr devs, etc do not usually need to be pushed in the same way that elite tech product ICs do. Sorry I said elite. Don't burn me at the stake please.

Let's be kind to each other, but let's not forget to push others and also develop a thick enough skin to be pushed by others if we are going to call ourselves competitive innovators.

To continue to outdo ourselves as the human race, we need all types of people -- but most of all, we need the smartest people we can find.

Why do we need to "outdo ourselves as the human race" though? I understand why this is a compelling core belief, but it wouldn't hurt to challenge it.

When asked to describe the philosophy of each major religion in a single world, here is how GPT describes them:

1. Christianity - Love

2. Islam - Submission (see note 1)

3. Hinduism - Dharma (duty, righteousness)

4. Buddhism - Enlightenment

5. Judaism - Covenant (see note 1)

6. Sikhism - Equality

7. Taoism - Harmony

8. Shinto - Kami (spiritual essence) (see note 2)

9. Baha'i - Unity

10. Jainism - Ahimsa (non-violence)

11. Confucianism - Ethics

11. Zoroastrianism - Purity

Note 1: in relation to god, but this makes it open to abusive interpretation.

Note 2: not a philosophy in any sense.

Jacob sought wisdom to please God, and Esau sought knowledge to subjugate the world.

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