So a kind of lack of empathy? Do these guys have this image of "autists" and are basically filtering for them, cause this criteria seems to be favoring oppositional defiance disorder.

I mention this specifically because I remember mark andreseen comment something similar in lex fridman's podcast, something along the lines of getting "those creative people" together to build on ai.

The problem is this line:

> They delight in breaking rules, but not rules that matter.

The question becomes "what rules matter?". And the answer inevitably becomes "only the ones that work in my favor and/or that I agree with".

I think someone trying to defend this would go "oh come on, does it really matter if a rich actress gets slightly richer?" And no, honestly, it doesn't matter that much. Not to me, anyway. But it matters that it establishes (or rather, confirms and reinforces) a culture of disregard and makes it about what you think matters, and not about what someone else might think matters about the things in their life. Their life belongs to them, a fact that utopians have forgotten again and again everywhere and everywhen. And once all judgement is up to you, if you're a sufficiently ambitious and motivated reasoner (and the kind of person we're talking about here is), you can justify pretty much whatever you want without that pesky real-world check of a person going "um actually no I don't want you to do that".

Sometimes I think anti-tech takes get this wrong. They see the problem as breaking the rules at all, as disrupting the status quo at all, as taking any action that might reasonably be foreseen to cause harm. But you do really have to do that if you want to make something good sometimes. You can't foresee every consequence of your actions - I doubt, for example, that Airbnb's founders were thinking about issues with housing policy when they started their company. But what differentiates behavior like this from risk-taking is that the harm here is deliberate and considered. Mistakes happen, but this was not a mistake. It was a choice to say "this is mine now".

That isn't a high bar to clear. And I think we can demand that tech leaders clear it without stifling the innovation that is tech at its best.

it seems most of the big companies try to break the rules while in the process become so strong they trade it off for what becomes a marginal fine & cost of doing business. Facebook, Uber come to mind first. This may just be the same.

Everyone let Uber get away with breaking taxi rules because those rules were only good for the people with the taxi medallion monopoly.

(Which wasn't even the taxi drivers, although they were plenty bad enough on their own.)

> They delight in breaking rules, but not rules that matter.

To them*

Which is the whole problem. These narcissistic egotists think they, alone, individually, are capable of deciding what's best not just for their companies but for humanity writ large.

Sure, a bit of rebellion can fuel innovation in founders, but as they gain power, it's important to keep things ethical. What seems charming at the startup phase might raise eyebrows as the company expands.

The more accurate (though somewhat academic) term for this trait is 'narcissism'.

This quote actually makes me disgusted. I don't think this is a quality to encourage on, especially since despite the tone it reads more as abuse.

It's actually the most rational thing I've heard quoted from him. You have to be willing to open the box to see what's inside to know if you can do it better/cheaper/faster/smaller. There's ways of doing that without breaking laws, or doing something unethical with the what you learn. There's also ways of doing it without destroying something or violating anyone/anything. It also allows you to hear their response to see if where person is in that rationale. Do they toe the lines, do they run right across it, do they bend but not break, do they scorched earth everything they touch?

Makes me glad there aren't people betting on how far I'm willing to go to bend the law. When you lay it all out like that you make PG sound like a cockfighter paying to get his champion bloodied.

Those are the same people who break the laws and exploit people if they know they can't fight back.

Usually those people are considered sociopaths.

Maybe it's time to ask the employees of OpenAI who fought to get Altman back, How this behavior is compatible with their moral standards or whether money is the most important thing.

Is that something that needs to be asked? I thought it was pretty evident when the coup was happening.

You are on "Hacker News", surely it's not that much of a surprise?

It’s a different type of hacking. This was about hacking a system for one’s advantage, not the computer type of hacking.

I always interpreted the hacker in HN as a spirit, irrespective of vocation.

What is endearing and admirable as the underdog very easily becomes contemptible abuse in the biggest dog of the pack. It's not a contradiction - the hacking spirit is a trait that causes more damage the more power you have.

The persistent belief in the tech industry as some kind of underdog I think explains much of the recent deplorable behavior by some of the richest people on the planet. A bunch of unbelievably wealthy nerds are mentally trapped in the past and too out of touch to realize they have become the bullies.

personally I think it completely sums up silicon valley perfectly

I think governance is overly restrictive and stifles innovation. For example I love that Uber and Airbnb exist even though they both sort of skirt or acceptably break rules in place that a complete rule follower wouldn’t have violated.

Taking taxis 15 years ago was an absolute scammy shitty experience and it’s only marginally better now thanks to an actual competitive marketplace