[flagged]
The people arguing the other side are not talking about reversible mistakes with minor fallout. They are claiming that taken as a whole the damage will be very difficult to undo. Countering this simply by accepting that there will be mistakes doesn't quite suffice. As pg tried to remind Musk on twitter (I'm paraphrasing): Countless startups come into being and die within the system. But this is the system we're talking about. There is only one.
I take it you want the others to believe this administration geniunely cares about providing the public efficient services without fraud and corruption by establishing highly-efficient meritocratic institutions. There's overwhelming evidence in the events of the past few weeks that this not the case. Just looking at the Eric Adams fiasco and, say, the cabinet picks of Hegseth, Gaetz, Bondi (straight of the movie Idiocracy) show this administration does not care about fighting corruption or hiring people that are most qualified for the job.
A lot of people and Democrats in STEM fields who voted for Kamala in the elections, including pg who publicly stated he was voting for Kamala, thought the corporate DEIA initiatives were counterproductive to their stated goals. It's not a extreme minority position in the tech crowd, nor is there a complete lack of criticism of corporate DEIA in the progressive media either.
I also give pg credit for being one of the rare VCs who posts "pro-Palestinian" viewpoints on occasion. So he does buck the trend from time to time. Calling David Sacks, Musk's unwavering eternal sychophant, possibly "the most evil person in Silicon Valley" was also a great line in the sand for him. But the basis for this opinion was more from his knowledge of how terrible Sacks treated founders as an investor rather than from Sacks being a Musk acolyte.
Yep, but as opposed to a startup those "mistakes" will be deadly.
Literally so.
Well, these mistakes are also deadly if it’s a move fast and break things startup in medtech. And these mistakes are deadly in healthcare.
I am calling this out because I see this complete myopia of abstracting people’s lives as OK to ever lose on purpose.
Statements like “no one thinks that!!!” “Most people are XYZ!!!” are thrown around because computer scientists start being computer scientists - we try to solve problems the way we do at work. Big O notation is not an acceptable way to manage other people’s lives.
In computer science, 100,000 people in the global population converge to zero. If you are counting DAU… OK.
If you are estimating the number of people you might accidentally kill… not OK.
If you are trying to reduce corruption and you don’t actually know if you will kill people or not, and you do it anyway… I don’t see how anyone can consider that ethical.
Yes, I definitely can blame him and anyone who wants to 180 the government in that time - that's stupid, childish, short sighted, and suicidal for keeping the lights on.
I do blame him. What harm of 2 years of status quo could be greater than the risks of completely breaking safety organizations?
> Elon who has to get rid of underperformers without credible data
No, this is not a valid solution to the problem, if there even are significant performance problems. “We don’t know exactly who the problematic people are, so let’s just fire every probationary employee, you know the ones who haven’t even been around long enough to be chronic underperformers?”
It’s either a very foolish attempt to solve the problem, and/or he actually just wants to destroy government.
> the real blame for this is with the previous administrators who neglected this problem for years
Trump was in charge 5-9 years ago, does he get some blame too?
What problem?
The problem of how people are fired? You dont fix that specific problem by firing everyone!
Somw other problem? Show us evidence that there was a problem, before you fire. That's how you do it in a democracy.