Comment by mmirate
8 years ago
> Really, without the metaphor, what's going on is that Larry Ellison has modified himself to hold the values that a corporation holds, in order to more efficiently drive said corporation toward optimizing on its corporate goals (i.e. increase share value, etc.)
Hmm. I wonder why this augmentation is newsworthy/nontrivial/frightening. Perhaps our human frailty makes this feat truly difficult even for an average CEO?
I suppose because (like the Paperclip Maximizer analogy mentioned in this thread) maximizing your immediate profits is not the same thing as maximizing shareholder value. It is unlikely that trying to get a professor sacked does anything but reduce your shareholder value. This kind of behavior does not make you the ultimate CEO and other humans know it, it makes you an asshole. So it's not difficult, it's just worse.
Ah, so it's that only Ellison has managed to make such a PR blunder under this modification (and thusly reveal he is modified). Makes sense.
Why is it frightening for somebody to focus solely on accumulating lucre and not to care about other people or society at all? Because hurting people is bad.
In our society, hurting people is usually expensive, so it goes against the first goal unless it is done in a way which isn't expensive.