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Comment by snapcaster | Hacker News Reader

No it isn't. It's a competition, making moves that benefit you and attempting to deprive your opponent of the same move is just called competing

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Wait, are you saying that it's not hypocritical for my chess opponent to try to protect their king while trying to kill mine? :mind-blown:

Tech people are funny, with these takes that businesses do/should adhere to absolute platonic ideals and follow them blindly regardless of context.

No, it's ethical people pointing out that if you toss aside ethics for success at all costs, you aren't going to find any sympathy when people start doing the same thing back to you. Live by the sword, die by the sword, as they say.

There is a reason we don't do things. That reason is it makes the world a worse place for everyone. If you are so incredibly out of touch with any semblance of ethics at all; mayhaps you are just a little bit part of the problem.

The funny thing about ethics is there is no absolute, which makes some people uncomfortable. Is it ethical to slice someone with a knife? Does it depend if you're a surgeon or not?

Absolutism + reductionism leads to this kind of nonsense. It is possible that people can disagree about (re)use of culture, including music and print. Therefore it is possible for nuance and context to matter.

Life is a lot easier if you subscribe to a "anyone who disagrees with me on any topic must have no ethics whatsoever and is a BAD person." But it's really not an especially mature worldview.

Categorical imperative and Golden Rule, or as you may know it from game theory "tit-for-tat" says "hi". The beautiful thing about ethics is that we philosophers intentionally teach it descriptively, but encourage one to choose their own based on context invariance. What this does is create an effective litmus test for detecting shitty people/behavior. You grasping on for dear life to "there's no absolutes" is an act of self-soothing on your own part as you're trying to rationalize your own behavior to provide an ego crumple zone. I, on the other hand, don't intend to leave you that option. That you're having to do it is a Neon sign of your own unethicality in this matter. We get to have nice things when people moderate themselves (we tolerate eventual free access to everything as long as the people who don't want to pay for it don't go and try to replace us economically at scale). When people abuse that, (scrape the Internet, try to sell work product in a way that jeopardizes the environment we create in) the nice thing starts going away, and you've made the world worse.

Welcome to life bucko. Stop being a shitty person and get with the program so we have something to leave behind that has a chance of not making us villains in the eyes of those we eventually leave behind. The trick is doing things the harder way because it's the right way to do it. Not doing it the wrong way because you're pretty sure you can get away with it.

But you're already ethically compromised, so I don't really expect this to do any good except to maybe make the part of you you pointedly ignore start to stir assuming you haven't completely given yourself up to a life of ne'er-do-wellry. Enjoy the enantidromia. Failing that, karma's a bitch.

Whenever I see someone on HN preaching about how it's all dog-eat-dog and zero-sum, I imagine them being lonely.

No real friends, no trusted life partner, no kids, no unconditional love. Alone.

Just another soul traveling on an infinite road with lots of signs that point to "happiness," planted there by fellow travelers, never reaching their destination.

Would you feel the same way if a professional athlete was saying it? are you just anti-competition in general?

Yeah man I would love to play poker against these people

It's definitely still hypocrisy.

No it isn't, have you never played any game or sport? do you fundamentally not understand the concept of competition?

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