kafkaesq

The church he founded was one of the major annoyances of the latter half of the 20th century. If you're interested in the general history of Really Bad Ideas (and how they draw otherwise warm sensitive, intelligent people into their fold), you might want to look into it.

Let's just say I've considered the works of a lot cranks and crackpots, over the years - and a lot of viewpoints that, while not quite in that category, are just muddled and inflammatory and don't have a lot to offer to the discussion. Enough to develop a pretty reliable sense of "smell" as to whether a given piece of work merits further exploration beyond a few paragraphs or so.

So whether or not one thinks he should be fired for it -- his "manifesto" definitely does not pass that smell test.

That's my view. If you view his work differently, that's fine for you.

Recall that the employee that was fired is an adult (and apparently in his 30s, at least).

Let's just say this - whatever one thinks about Google's snap decision to fire that guy, he ain't no Kolmogorov. Or even a "little Kolmogorov". And as to the suggestion that there might be some thematic overlap between his "struggle for the truth" and the struggles against Stalin or the Nazis... let's please not go there.

No one stopped and offered a third option: actually discussing his argument, acknowledging where he was right, and discussing what he got wrong.

Probably because it wasn't cogently presented, and has some quite glaring gaps in the basic logic of what it does present. And in its tone, was more than a bit inflammatory.

Did you ever actually read L. Ron Hubbard's seminal work, Dianetics? I mean, really read it? Cover-to-cover?

No, you say? And yet you dismiss it?

That's crazy.

Whether a claim (or other statement) someone makes is "scientific" or not is, fundamentally, a matter of the soundness and logical coherence of the overall argument they're making. And about the aspects of the issue they sidestep and ignore (and this guys ignores a whole lot in his manifesto, actually) as much as the aspects they cite.

Not the number of footnotes, quote or diagrams it has.

No, it's called "assessing it qualitatively as well as quantitatively".

Which is a very useful skill, actually.

That's what this "manifesto" was.

And as to "organizing for better workplace conditions" - well yeah, there's some overlap, there. But his campaign went quite a ways beyond that, as well.

That is, "really read" a select paragraph or two. Enough to make a basic determination as to what he's driving at -- and to note that we've seen variants of this message from other sources, before -- and make a decision about how much of one's attention resources it merits, moving forward -- accordingly.

As one does with any rant, or other poorly thought-out screed.

Proving once again that on HN, sometimes downvotes are really upvotes.

Google's decision was most definitely not in response to that graphic you linked to.

Actually I found his piece to be distinctly unscientific.

It parades as scientific, for sure. But when you break it down, and consider the whole of the message it imparts... at it's core, it was very unscientific.

And I bet that those at Google who decided to terminate his employment felt pretty much the same way.

Maybe some people are calling for stuff like that.

But that's not what Google's doing to him. Google's just saying: "You can't do that here."

-- then black holes would, in effect, be (our) universe's GC mechanism. Or at least, its "janitors" in some form.

Pretty cool.

It's just that, wording-wise "the leading open source X" exudes marketing-speak, which I find language geeks tend to have robust antibodies against.

This kind of lingo work (sort of) for the market, say, MongoDB is in. But for the users of these tools, I suspect not so much.

Agreed, the description is definitely cringe-worthy.

As if whoever wrote that wasn't aware that these are language geeks they're marketing to.

Yes, by making the retail price reflect the true environmental costs of producing it.

And if that means that the supply is drastically curtailed (as it inevitably will be, as we increasingly recognize that the environmental cost is simply too high) - then so be it.

But in terms of information content, it's a horrible headline (for the reasons you so succinctly describe).

Sorry, but saying "it's stupid to do X" really is basically the same as saying... "people who do X are stupid". Or at least "they are, in that context, being stupid".

Either way, you said what you said -- and presumably you meant what you said -- so there's no point in trying to wiggle away from it.

Is not "lacking in evidence, yet deliberate" the very definition of... rash and impulsive?

BTW I wouldn't say these people are arrogant (for making these kinds of judgements), per se.

But it does seem that they're biting off more than they can realistically chew.

These kinds of snap judgements I find very problematic. As if anyone -- even if they're an "industry leader", even if they've interviewed hundreds of candidates; heck, even if they're a truly towering figure in their field (or otherwise a truly brilliant person that no one knows about yet) -- can make that kind of an assessment from a (highly contrived and stressful) 45-minute or so interaction with someone.

Maybe after working alongside someone for several months, you could say that. But from their off-the-cuff answers to your made up puzzle problems (or even from unstructured conversation)? I just don't buy it.

BTW you should be doing a lot more to anonymize these profiles. Blurring the school name is a good start, but you definitely should not include company names either; and the gender should be obscured, as well. Even from just a small tuple of attributes like these, it wouldn't be too hard to identify, and perhaps cause considerable harm to some of these candidates.

When the company is Google (or of a similar scale) -- and that company claims to care about privacy (but sometimes engages in practices that suggest otherwise) -- then clearly that association is quite relevant. (Its not a huge oversight, but really, if you had put a standard disclaimer at the end of your comment it would have come off a lot more nicely).

But calling people "stupid" for pointing out that this association matters (when it obviously does) is just... "Google-y", I guess.

Nothing weird about that situation at all. In fact it's the way much of planet is organized.

These people are assholes.

Nothing of the sort. They're long-term residents looking out for what's best for their community.

And it's exactly the kind of completely gratuitous negativity (project by outsiders, who otherwise couldn't begin to care what goes on in their town), exemplified above, which shores up this instinct that many of them have to protect what they have. Because they know that you're definitely not concerned about what impact projects like these will have on their quality of life and long-term fiscal interests.

By looking into one's heart, and deciding what one really wants out of life.

Financial constraints are one thing. But one really shouldn't sacrifice truly important life goals (like having children; or even moving to the same city to be with one's partner) for the sake of this industry's (really quite shallow and ego-aggrandizing) "meritocratic" standards. Or even weigh them on the same scale.

To put it another way: By all means, don't give up your creative and intellectual goals -- and don't foolishly neglect your baseline financial goals, either. But really, just screw this idea of "achieving a senior title", or "becoming an industry leader", or any of that stuff.

I mean, these things OK if they come as the result and after-effect of creative and productive work. But the moment one starts to think "Wait, should I have kids with this wonderful person like I've always been dreaming of, or... should I keep plugging away in the hopes being... recognized and chattered about in major media outlets" -- I'd suggest that that's not only where one starts to lose perspective on what's really important in life; one also starts to lose perspective on what it really means to be genuinely creative and successful (by personal, or any other standards) in the first place.

Which after all comes down to: throwing caution to the wind, and putting all your energies into what you think is important and meaningful - and not what other people think is important. (And certainly not what journalists in the business media think is important).

Should a really ambitious person seriously consider not having children at all?

I would put it this way: decide what your ambitions really are, and act accordingly.

If having kinds happens to fall into the space of "ambitions" for you - that's great. If not, that's fine also.

But the "should I have kids or follow my ambitions?" line of analysis seems like a mental trap.

No, it wasn't simply a matter of his doing drugs and "hanging around" with younger women. You might want to give the article a closer read.

The "in their private lives" part stops (not just stops - comes to a screeching halt) when we have incidents in which other people's lives are directly (and callously) endangered. By someone in a high-profile position in the medical profession, on top of that. In fact, that's precisely the point at which we star to call it a "legitimate public interest story".

So it's not a story about puritanical moralistic standards -- or about this guy's "party animal" life on the side (per se) - at all.

Heard in the context of many competitive activities.

E.g. at a jazz club, someone might say "He's killing it, man!" if they were really connecting to what the trombonist was doing.

Because for some people, it's not enough to think of others as misinformed, or not so well-spoken.

They need to be thought of as blundering idiots, and castigated accordingly.

Nothing is unacceptable. Except faulty generalizations like the above.

An informed society is better than a society that doesn't let you play football.

Is anyone here saying we shouldn't "let" people play football?