Comment by rl3
5 days ago
On the contrary, not justifying nor condoning anything of the sort.
The main point I was trying to make was in highlighting the perceptual and emotional disconnect between knowing and working with someone personally, versus those who haven't (myself included).
Most people's perception of Sam was shaped in recent years, by press coverage that tends to treat him as the face of AI, with sentiment that usually goes something like: "hey, this guy's stealing all your water so he can take your job too, and by the way he lies a lot."
A couple follow-on points there were:
a) Dan shouldn't take it personally for not being able to control a tidal wave of negative sentiment stemming from that dynamic playing out.
b) I don't think it does anyone any good to dismiss the negative sentiment driving that as mere mob mentality. Even Sam appears to understand this quite well, in the very blog post the submission links to.
To echo another comment[0]:
>... while the vast majority of us think "holy crap, that's horrible" but aren't adding it because of course that's already been said and there just isn't any more nuance needed.
I agree; explicit condemnation just felt performative and hollow.
For what it's worth, I'm actually rooting for Sam assuming his words ultimately line up with his actions, and my opinion of him is neutral or slightly positive. I don't think it's widely appreciated just how crazy a position the guy is in; there's no way he can make everybody happy.
To touch on the hollow part: this is someone pg once described in so few words as more than capable of handling himself. [1]
I recall reading that years ago he insisted offices be swept for bugs after a visit by Musk, and he hangs out with similarly powerful people.
In other words, you don't operate in that world without your security already being excellent, and it's probably going to get even better now. Give it a couple years and he'll probably have a humanoid robot perimeter that'll smoke anyone on sight with a level of efficiency that is comical.
So, in that context taking a thoughts and prayers tone felt a little unnnecessary.
It shouldn't matter how many lies a guy tells, or how he runs his business. People shouldn't throw molotov cocktails at his house, and people shouldn't act like his behavior is potentially justification for people throwing molotov cocktails at his house.
Anybody whose perception of Sam Altman was "he deserves for me to throw a molotov cocktail at his house" is a horrible person. I don't care if Paul Graham says he's a tough guy.
Explicit condemnation is only hollow if you don't mean it.
To be clear I'm not saying any of it is justified and generally agree with everything you wrote. The fact that happened to Sam and his family is indeed horrible.
That said, please don't twist my words. I think there's utility in understanding why people feel and act the way they do.
Otherwise, everybody just takes the de facto stance of "those people are intrinsically bad people, and not good people like us!" which is pretty useless and typically just leads to more escalation.
You could also spare me the one-line zinger at the end.
I didn't mean it as a zinger; I meant it as a rebuttal of the line from your comment. If you felt zinged by it, maybe it's worth considering why.
You keep writing comments where you try to wiggle between it being really important to think about the context in which people commit crimes and the context in which people are OK with crimes being committed based on not liking the victim, but also you keep clarifying that you don't condone what they're doing or saying.
What is your actual point? The best I can try to pluck out, the summation of the above is that the people throwing molotov cocktails, and the people saying it's justified, are bad people but they're bad for understandable reasons?
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I disagree with almost all of this but I'm not here to single you out.
Appreciated, but I would hope that it at least changes your initial read.