Hacker News Reader

Comment by sillysaurus3 | Hacker News Reader

It's possible, but Occam's Taser (I've decided that's a cooler name) seems to apply.

Either Sam and reddit employees and everyone else are risking their public reputation of being trustworthy people by saying things that were obviously untrue (like "Yishan really did resign because he felt like it"), or Yishan left because he chose to.

I have a lot of respect for you, and you're not just some random person. Do you feel there's a nonzero chance we're living in a world where nobody can say the truth, and everyone chooses to play along with a social game of "Oh, yes, this is what I really believe, wink wink"? I mean, it's possible, but why believe that? Isn't the simplest explanation that Yishan didn't want the job anymore?

If this is a case where the simplest explanation is mistaken, is there any evidence?

View on HN

Notwithstanding any relevance here, the entire concept of 'manipulation' is to put forth an easy to follow line of logic that is at once intuitively appealing and deliberately false.

With respect to context, the principals involved are too sophisticated to be treated as simpletons-- the principal owners of Reddit are the owners Conde Nast et al.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance_Publications

Only simpletons would simply tell the truth? I don't understand what you mean.

All I'm saying is that I have direct, personal experience with Sam, and it seems more likely that we didn't visit the moon than that Sam is manipulative in a "I'm telling real lies that people would care about if discovered" sort of way. That'd make pg manipulative by definition, for one, since he appointed Sam as his successor. Everyone is manipulative to an extent, but going on record with "Yes, this really did happen in this way" is the line between social graces and the type of manipulation people spend their lives trying to avoid.

So are we fools for believing them? Or, given the propensity of people to call people sheeple, do you think that maybe the simplest explanation might be the better one here?

PG and SAMA have good facts I'm sure -- but those are not interchangable with their public writings. Divining one from the other is at best a speculative enterprise. And in this case, poor logic is not a substitute for good facts.

> it seems more likely that we didn't visit the moon than that Sam is manipulative in a "I'm telling real lies that people would care about if discovered" sort of way

All the best manipulators seem that way; most people vastly overestimate their own ability to judge character.

(I don't have a viewpoint on the larger question, but "seemed decent when I personally met him" is not at all convincing)

There are many ways to tell an incomplete, partial truth. It's still truth. It just isn't the whole story.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com