There's something a bit odd about confessing that you were part of an institutional attempt to cancel a specific person, without naming the person or what their specific concerns were, or what specific institution this was; and also claiming that the reason you regret this now is because they were "harmless" rather than "correct".
Someone who in 2015 was concerned about "authoritarianism in technology" possibly came from a cluster of political perspectives that is relatively close to my own; and also possibly came from a cluster of political perspectives that I am relatively opposed to. It's hard to tell which from just that wording and the fact that someone with institutional power in 2015 wanted to cancel them.
I'm certainly curious for more details about exactly what happened here. I imagine it would compromise your anonymity to say more, and depending on the details it might even be bad for that person.
I’m pretty sure I know who you are.
> it would compromise your anonymity to say more
Hopefully you’ve grown from that interaction, OP. Seems like you have some work to do still mending some bridges. Godspeed.
At the end of the day though, it’s just an out of touch person trying to pass on something in good faith. Their whistleblowing is an incidental side channel they probably didn’t really mean to get into.
Yours is an ironically awkward comment itself in how it takes on the author’s words given their statement about sock puppets being used to discredit…
Oh come on. We can quibble about the quality of the post and OP's character, but you're just blatantly misrepresenting their words. They did not say "get a dog," they said there are "few joys like having a dog." More importantly, it is incredibly obvious that when they say "all humans end up where I am," they're referring to facing death, not the specifics of their age, background, or present circumstances.
Ten years later, I'm still stuck thinking about this. Am I the kind of person who does shitty things? I was. Am I still? How would I even know?
Corporations and governments often get flak for doing shitty things, but ultimately it’s still people within those corporations and governments doing shitty things. “Just doing my job” is not really a legitimate shield to hide behind and I give OP credit for recognizing this even if a bit late.
Thanks for sharing the advice and best wishes with the surgery.
Companies and employees are truly an enigma when the shit hits the fan. It’s extremely rare to show any loyalty to anyone. People put their heads down and pretend like nothing is happening.
I hope the OP makes it through his surgery
Perhaps then he can find the time to apologise to those who he believes might deserve an apology
Of course you will make it, and if not, you wont care anyway. You'll make it. I'll wait for the pics.
PS: But take that existential eye-opener serious and use it (you might later forget and drift from that in everyday-default-mode). You could print and frame this post to make it unforgetable.
What have you done since then to mitigate this very egregious harm?
I have not found your success, and I suspect it's because I too am "anti-authoritarian" -- I had folks try to convince me to do "scholarshop for service" and act like I was crazy when I expressed worry if the presidency went from D to R, someone might do crazy shit like initiate a government shutdown making it impossible to fulfull my service, and then I'd get a bill for a degree I didn't want.
https://cyberscoop.com/government-shutdown-cybersecurity-wor...
In fact, every prediction I made about creeping authoritarianism down to a member of the national guard being shot dead outside where I used to toil away as a public interest lobbyist has come true.
I'm having one of the worst emotional nights of my life tonight -- and maybe I'll regret this post, but why do you feel you're in any way good, to put your boot on on the necks of others then say all the right things at the last second to ease your conscience while those of us who actually acted in the public interest are harassed and abused?
Jesus Christ, dude. I'm going to be honest with you. While I feel bad for you in your current state, this is a pretty disgusting thing to have done. Have you tried to make any of it better? I mean, you could name this programmer (assuming that wouldn't make it worse), and you could definitely name the incubator and everyone involved in this decision. I'm guessing this kind of thing is quite common.
If you just want someone to tell you that it's okay, I'm not going to be the one to do that. Be as sorry as you want, but what have you done to make it better for him? Even part of this post reads a bit patronizing ("In retrospect, he was harmless..."). Not "this was intrinsically wrong and we shouldn't have done this", just "he wasn't even a threat to take down". My God, dude.
I wish you well because there are vanishingly few humans I wish to see truly suffer. If you make it, I hope you work towards righting the wrongs you've done.
Just because someone might be dying, it doesn't make them nice people.
Aka the uncertainty collapse of effective altruism -- in which someone realizes they might die before getting to the altruism part, and have to confront the "effective" things they did without any moral counterbalance.
If someone feels guilty about the things they've done when facing death, then they should immediately take actions that try and redress them.
Otherwise, there's an almost certainty they'll revert to being the same asshole they were so uncomfortable facing in the mirror, after mortal peril has passed.
Being someone different requires action, not just thoughts.
Apropos, I recommend Taleb's Skin in the Game to both you and all others on the thread who may not have read it. (If you haven't, perhaps during your recovery.) But, as Taleb points out, talk is cheap, and so is reading and living vicariously through texts. Actions speak louder than words, and we must do and act in the world, not merely chat about it.
The year was indeed 2015, and his political content would fit OP's description, but the reason for the ban was that he was repeatedly being a total asshole, not "YC is scared of anti-fascists".
Also, whenever the question "where are the tech unions at," comes up ,its because the system crushes anyone who is slightly left leaning in this regard.
Excerpt:
You’d be one of the best people they’ve seen in years, and unlike the people around them, you’re honest and ethical. The thing that’s holding you back is… a reputation problem. People Google you and think, “This guy’s going to start a union.”
This is going to make it hard to place you. Guys like [name] don’t like people they can’t buy. If I were you, I’d start blogging again and come out against unions. Do that for six months, and I can put you anywhere you want to go.
Huh, I'm looking around at my large house, wonderful life I've provided for my family, nice car, fun job, sure doesn't seem like a scam.
I've noticed that people who have failed a lot or things aren't going well like to blame external factors, and often reach for simpler ones.
Is it perfect? no. Is it better than everything else because of Capitalism? Yup...
In some scenarios capitalism can work really, really well. but lose a job, have a health issue and you then see that it is just a house of cards that generally works for small fraction of the population. not that other systems don’t have their own issues (and more) but capitalism is always good in the eyes of the beholder and over time there are less and less happy stories (USA is perfect example, see graphs of income inequality/gaps over time…)
The premise is that people are randomly notified of their imminent death, and variously decide that they have to make amends for things they did wrong, or make up for lost time, or stand up to their enemies, or do whatever they're most proud of, or make arrangements to provide for others, or create something for posterity.
Personally I think mortality makes everybody slightly crazy, and is best ignored, so I wouldn't want to react in any major way. I'd probably record the current state of my projects, in case somebody else felt like taking over. So I'd die doing admin chores.
You should set this right while you still can. God or the afterlife isn’t a reason to try and be less shit. The reason is that our shit accumulates and makes a hellish cesspool on Earth if we don’t. Good luck.
I am a christian and do believe in heaven. I'm going to say a prayer now in my little office and ask that you find your way there, whether today or another day. God bless.
Seems like it's time to say who you did what to, and face the music for those actions?
Supporting authoritarianism to protect financial interests harms society in the long run - and you can't eat money nor buy a society pleasant to live in.
I wish your surgery goes well.
Serious, non-troll question: why bother?
If there isn't any scope outside of the current perceived existence, and we're all so much "smart dirt", then the difference between kindness and malevolence seems moot.
Note: I do subscribe to an explicit meaning to life, so this is posed more to express bewilderment at the alternative than reveal any anxiety on my end.
"What goes around comes around" suffices for me.
Call it "ethics", call it "maximizing outcomes for all involved stakeholders", call it "karma", "good business", or "kindness"...whatever you call it, I don't think it's difficult to find your own personal justification for it if you want to.
As you say. Best wishes, in any case.
Curiously enough, I don't think this invites nihilism. The opposite, really. The difference between kindness and malevolence exists because we perceive a difference, and give meaning to actions - they are either kind or malevolent.
If we can give meaning to things, it is imperative that we do so, and act accordingly. It is out little defiance to the great enveloping cosmic nothing.
Certainly a possibility.
Most people judge themselves against a narrative that matters to them. Most people do not want to cast themselves as a villain in their story.
You may ask "but what does it matter if we are all dirt". It matters to them, even if there is no godlike perspective above it all. To be honest, I'm not actually sure why having an afterlife or some super-being would create any more explicit meaning for an individual life.
Lots of replies here about after life, and just doing the right thing because you're supposed to or "empathy", yet there are a set of people like OP who only observe this when their life is put in front of them for review, maybe they do need religion?
This is a reasonably assertion as far as it goes.
At the risk of being a dripping faucet, I'm poking at "Why?", given an inevitable return to the dust from which all came.
Possibly I'm guilty of over-reading the word.
Often the question "what is the purpose of my existence?" is a proxy for some less abstract question, I think. Consider Young Frankenstein, and the gag where characters sing "Oh, sweet mystery of life at last I've found you! At last, I know the secret of it all!" because they got sex. Less cynically, it may simply be a matter of identifying comfortable values, in terms of the possible values available in the human condition in the present day. I mean you're unlikely to be honestly asking a question with a giant universal scope, if you claim that it bothers you personally.
This Destiny is in tension with Free Will (in my telling).
In retirement, my hope is to produce a lengthy, pretentious exploration of a few ideas that will doubtless help someone's insomnia.
Free Will, in this telling, exists on the logos/eros plane of the individual.
Destiny is some target on the plane out there at infinity toward which one navigates over time.
The origin of this coordinate system is the heart, and one may or may not hold a connection to the Creator via the thymos.
Otherwise, it's just so many chemical reactions.
I guess the question is: Do you want your time here to have impacted others in a positive way or not?
This seems thin gruel.
You are still not caring about ethics. You can fix the problem, you can expose the people responsible for this, you can contact the person and explain to them what you all did. That is a way to start to atone for the mistakes, but does not look like that is what you want to do, you want to fix things in your mind, not what you broke.
Although you can't completely undo the past, you can choose to do things to make it right. People do change. Your attitude is self-defeating and is setting you up to act on more bad impulses in the future.
Except I’m another human of your kind who found this post. It moved me. So there is meaning in your suffering that goes beyond you and reflects in someone else’s experience.
We are all doomed, but at least we can see each other along the way, clap hands and cry “we lived!”
I hope you pull through.
These are the kinds of questions I’m pretty familiar with. It’s entirely possible to reset, but it takes work and courage.
Good luck!
I was on the receiving end of similar treatment for several months on StackOverflow. It made me angry but eventually I just accepted and kinda felt bad for the people doing it. Your admission makes it seems like it wasn't worth it.
Hope the surgery works out in your favor.
> Ethics matter.
> I don't believe there's any life after this one...
> I don't believe that faith is an out, or that you can apologize or donate your way out of past behaviors.
Why would it matter if there is no life after this one? If there is no life after this one, maybe you should just "get over it".
Otherwise I think laws wouldn't exist.
Because some (most?) of us are empathetic and compassionate people. We care about others and hurt when they hurt. We want to live in a just society and want to leave behind a just society for others after us.
The fact that it requires „training your conscience“ to „trample on the lives of others“ suggests that such an outlook is not a default state of being.
Even though life can be cruel, there seems to be an overarching goodness built into the universe that benefits those who float in its current.
Because for as long as we are capable of caring, we should care that other people have to live with the consequences of our actions.
But that's my question: if there is no afterlife, why?
The answers so far are a little snark, however this topic has been debated for a long time and most of the pro/cons can be listed rather easily.
The problem is that systems like incubators and financial structures reward this kind of behavior. Look at the billionaires we have now (Elon, Donald...) and what they’re doing to the world—making it a worse place.
To everyone: Remember, you will die someday. Think about whether the world you leave behind is better or worse because of you. No matter how monumental your achievements, you will leave this world, and your legacy will fade over time (just as it did in Ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, and even in more modern societies). Look at who is remembered and what remains of them. We don’t realize it because a century seems like an eternity to us.
Hopefully the op goes sideways.
1. Relax. Go home, smoke weed, play video games. During my first job I worked from home but I was still young and horny 24/7 so I spent most of my time just gooning. I lived in a shitty rental apartment so I didn't care at all about keeping it clean. Best time of my life.
2. If you haven't done something difficult yet, probably there's a good reason why. Most motivated, hard-working people fail. Just chill the fuck out. You know those old men in poor countries who sit entire day just talking and playing boardgames that have already been mathematically solved? This is winning at life. Be like that.
3. I love all those hippie visions where together we push humanity forward, but the truth is, compassion is scarce, and most people are dangerous morons. If you want a romantic story of a brave soldier who kept fighting despite being surrounded sure, go ahead, but in real life the only thing that counts is power. If you are in power don't be afraid of exercising it.
4. Animals can be cute. The evolutionary reason why we love them is that they're "practice babies" before we get real ones. Speaking of babies, just don't. Your instincts are lying to you.
5. You are going to die sad and alone. That's how it is. Deal with it.
That's probably enough for now. My mind goes between periods of racing and long spells of languid acceptance. All humans end up in the place where I am, and I hope you reach it with fewer regrets than I have.
And… this wasn’t immediately seen as being deeply unethical and downright evil? Most of the western world punched Nazis on purpose 80 years ago… that doesn’t get to stop, because authoritarianism never goes away.
>In retrospect, he was harmless, but an example had to be made.
Wow. Just… wow. To destroy a life simply because of greed and because a person’s passion of fighting evil made you uncomfortable.
You need to understand you are very much the bad guy, here.
Oh, these people know it's evil - from the second they suggest it. The personality types associated with SV leadership are simply wired for rationalising evil as a means to any business end. It's just implicitly accepted that it's an appropriate tool to be wielded.
You're the weird one who "just doesn't get it" if you push back. Push back hard enough and you'll quickly find yourself on the receiving end.
Reminds me of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBay_stalking_scandal
I am going to be uncivil but I hope the odds beat you.