I haven't watched the episode, but I've been in a situation where I had to make the choice between taking the high road or getting money. For better or worse I've always made the choice to take the high road, and I've never regretted it.
Money only goes so far, and beyond a certain point it just doesn't matter if you make a little more. I'd rather keep my dignity and contribute positively to the world.
Also, my own life observations have told me that whenever people have chosen the money there's always some unforeseen attachment. It's never just the money. There's always at least one string attached that they either didn't anticipate or ignored the severity of.
Or when people choose the promise of money over principles and get neither, as something happens to take away the promise, either being outright cheated or eg stock options becoming worthless when the company implodes.
As much as I agree with you, the harsh reality is that the people who do choose the money end up having disproportionate influence over how the world operates. Money buys power.
It's sort of like finding honesty in politics. The reason politicians are dishonest is because it works.
The bug is that in order to make a difference, you have to have power. But in order to have power, you have to compromise your character. And thus, you compromise your ability to make a difference.
Obviously this is a wildly simplistic generalization, but it is a very powerful rule of thumb.
Counterpoint: I've taken the high road when I had the chance to compromise my principles and (maybe!) make a lot of money. And I ended up with a decent amount of money as a result. People with values look for and value other people with values, so it did open doors.
Now I'm not rolling in cash as a result, but I'm quite comfortable. And I ended up much better than some of the cut throat people involved in that enterprise who lost the game of thrones and ended up with nothing.
It works until it doesn't work anymore. Examples from mild to not-so-mild: Feds suing Bill; Madoff getting thrown in jail; Epstein losing his head.
I get what you mean by "bug", but I think it's less of a bug, and more of just how things work, and if we could have perfect information, it'd most likely all make sense.
At the end of the day, all of us are gonna have to choose our poison, because none of us are getting out of here alive. I think most people make the very reasonable choice to not end up in a situation where the past will come back to haunt them, since when it does come back it will be very difficult to control the how/when/where of it all.
Alternatively, earning as much money as possible and donating most of it will probably leave a greater positive impact than using your skills directly to impact the greater good, unless your skills are correctly aligned.
The Bill Gates effect. He's all Mr. Philanthropy now, and doing great work, but only thanks to the 90's-2000's ethically questionable shenanigans of Microsoft.
I am a believer in your overall point that people don't change easily, but the criticism against the Gates Foundation is pretty thin considering how long it's been around and how much money they've spent.
> Honest curiosity will lead you to understanding how the megalomaniac in Bill is still alive and well.
I'll bite. Where is your evidence of Bill Gates being an egomaniac in recent history? The 3 points made in your link are underwhelming.
https://jsis.washington.edu/news/the-aadhaar-card-cybersecurity-issues-with-indias-biometric-experiment/
https://www.epw.in/engage/article/aadhaar-failures-food-services-welfare
And in general - https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=Aadhaar+problems
The basic underlying idea being pushing surveillance tech under the guise of public welfare.
...and this is just with simple random google searches like 'gates foundation criticism' . There is a rabbit hole you can fall through if you're so inclined but the core idea of a megalomaniac comes through fairly quickly.
> donating most of it will probably leave a greater positive impact than using your skills directly
This is true only insofar as the vocational marketplace promotes skillsets that are highly valuable in-context, but over-all contribute to some very negative externalities.
According to the calculations I've done, my collusion in an environment-destroying military-industrial complex is far from well-enough-compensated to, well, compensate for the damage we've wrought.
Even in a simple dollar-scale, if I earn 1/10th what produce for the company, there's an outsized swath of profit spent against my philanthropic endeavors
We, as individuals, cannot outspend the corporations from whose pockets we're fed. Working for a corp it's two steps back for every one step of charitable spending.
Philanthropists give money to causes that do not result in the systemic changes necessary to reduce their wealth to a small multiplier of the average person's.
It's the old saying: "give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day, teach him to fish..."
Philanthropy will never solve the fundamental problems with our economy.
My wife went back to college in her early thirties. During one class, the grad student was trying to get the class to really question their moral certitude. "Would your loved one cheat on you a million dollars?"
My wife, however, was positive. When pressed, she said "Oh, he's done the math. I have nothing to worry about for less than 5 million. After that, sure, who knows, but until then...".
This was not the answer they expected. The students were horrified and the instructor was confused.
To rephrase your point (and the problem): Money can't buy happiness, but it can provide a lot of security against UNHAPPINESS. Depending on where I'm at, security-wise, different money amounts mean different things. Even if I'm very secure in all my personal needs, offer me a billion dollars and there's a lot of options at the top of Maslov's hierarchy. If I recall the math right, I could give a family $10,000/day, every day, for 216 years. Add in the effects of interest (and offset for inflation), and it's probably an infinite ability.
That's a lot of soul-soothing.
I too have made choices, at far less than the $1billion (or 1 million) level. And....
I'm still torn. I'm glad my current job isn't one I'm ashamed of, but those past jobs provided a lot of security for my wife and I. We have physical and mental health specialists able to attend to our needs.
I will disagree with anyone that says money/security is all that matters, but I can't say the choice is easy or clear.
> For better or worse I've always made the choice to take the high road, and I've never regretted it.
How high of a road do you think you've really taken? This whole industry is super-connected to some unacceptable atrocities, from plastic pollution to the torture-at-scale perpetrated by the military industrial complex.
You may feel as though your hands are clean, but what about your customers and suppliers? How far down/up the dependency chain are you from materially supporting real suffering?
There are a lot of folks on high horses in this industry, but unless you're dead set against the bulk of it, you're colluding in some really, really nasty–not to mention undignified–exploitation, violence, and depravity.
It started getting pretty formulaic, and some of the characters changed in ways that made no sense, Richard being the main one. Early on, he wasn't OK with paid users padding the usage metrics for Pied Piper and completely ruined Bachman's fundraising, but then like 2 seasons later he's totally OK installing software on everyone's phones at a tech conference? Totally inconsistent character development.
TJ Miller leaving was another huge setback for them, he really was the perfect foil for all of the characters around him.
I personally believe that having TJ Miller on the cast after all of the disciplinary stuff he got himself into (calling the bomb hoax on the AMTRAK train / the person whose friend is called "Cunty" revealing that he was a prick to everyone on the set) would have drawn a lot of smack towards the production team. Miller just made things horrible for himself.
Agreed but I also have to agree with GP; Bachman was a really entertaining part of the show and I've personally had a hard time feeling as invested in it with him gone.
“We just sat down this season and started writing and just felt it out and just decided we had a really good way to go out this season,” Judge said. “So that was that” (https://www.slashfilm.com/why-silicon-valley-is-ending/)
Most* European shows follow an arc and then stop. It helps that there isn't really an overwhelming obsession with reaching for syndication(~100 shows). Not much point either as rewards for non US syndication are tiny fractions of US.
After a few seasons, I feel like people's characters aren't really growing or have much of an arc. Bachman is gone, BigHead seems to be doing his normal things after losing all his money, Gilfoyle and Dinesh are doing the same things. Jared is at least seeming to go back to his roots as a startup loving character, saying that Pied Piper has changed so much in getting big...
Although the character that I didn't expect to have much of an arc, is having a great one. I'm of course talking about Jian Yang! Now I wish he would have his own show. That guy is not only hilarious, but a kind of evil mastermind in the classic SV way, where you wonder how someone so seemingly incompetent could do such things.
The plot I feel is still pretty good, and mostly just a normal parody of what is going on in SV, which makes it hilarious, but I don't know if other people would really get it as much as tech insiders would.
As the article notes, it's weird Silicon Valley went with a Chilean VC instead of a more direct Saudi VC/Softbank analogue. Would that have been too on the nose?
Usually on their show they derive much of their humour from being so “on the nose” where many folks don’t realize the farce on-screen actually happened in real life.
Using Saudis would have been very much part of their style.
• Items surrounding Gilfoyle’s workstation include “Shadowrun” and “Magic the Gathering: Ravnica” from the Dungeons & Dragons world.
Actually, Shadowrun is an RPG set in a cyberpunk world completely unrelated to D&D and Magic is a card game set in a fantasy universe also completely unrelated to D&D (though Magic and D&D have the same publisher).
I once pitched at an investor meeting, and the only bite I had, offered me all the money I wanted, at great terms.
He had a "warehouse of Chinese developers" and would simply throw 10 developers at it working on the exact same thing, and use the best code of the 10. That was his pitch.
More interesting to me was the Gilfoyle subplot of trying to get him to catch up on his work and sticking him with a team. That was just sheer brilliance, and having seen similar things come out in real job life, only made it more hilarious.
I thought this was a homage to Yahoo offering Zuckerberg 1 billion for Facebook early on. To which he replied something along the lines of “I may never have an idea this good ever again”
55 comments
[ 0.24 ms ] story [ 198 ms ] threadMoney only goes so far, and beyond a certain point it just doesn't matter if you make a little more. I'd rather keep my dignity and contribute positively to the world.
It's sort of like finding honesty in politics. The reason politicians are dishonest is because it works.
It's just a bug in society, I guess.
It's a nice bug. If enough people were guilty of having that mindset, maybe those nice things could make sense?
Obviously this is a wildly simplistic generalization, but it is a very powerful rule of thumb.
The only sensible inner practice I've found is refinement of character. It works both when practiced publicly and when practiced privately.
And aspects of character can be built, sustained and recycled. Like anything.
Now I'm not rolling in cash as a result, but I'm quite comfortable. And I ended up much better than some of the cut throat people involved in that enterprise who lost the game of thrones and ended up with nothing.
"Good enough" has been a highly rewarding concept for me.
It's a lack of exchange caused by lack of specificity of requests and a lack of discernment on the part of the hubs.
I get what you mean by "bug", but I think it's less of a bug, and more of just how things work, and if we could have perfect information, it'd most likely all make sense.
At the end of the day, all of us are gonna have to choose our poison, because none of us are getting out of here alive. I think most people make the very reasonable choice to not end up in a situation where the past will come back to haunt them, since when it does come back it will be very difficult to control the how/when/where of it all.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_%26_Melinda_Gates_Foundat... ... And that's just barely scratching the surface. Honest curiosity will lead you to understanding how the megalomaniac in Bill is still alive and well.
> Honest curiosity will lead you to understanding how the megalomaniac in Bill is still alive and well.
I'll bite. Where is your evidence of Bill Gates being an egomaniac in recent history? The 3 points made in your link are underwhelming.
Gates on Climate change:
Reality: Gates on medical assistance: Reality: ...and this is just with simple random google searches like 'gates foundation criticism' . There is a rabbit hole you can fall through if you're so inclined but the core idea of a megalomaniac comes through fairly quickly.This is true only insofar as the vocational marketplace promotes skillsets that are highly valuable in-context, but over-all contribute to some very negative externalities.
According to the calculations I've done, my collusion in an environment-destroying military-industrial complex is far from well-enough-compensated to, well, compensate for the damage we've wrought.
Even in a simple dollar-scale, if I earn 1/10th what produce for the company, there's an outsized swath of profit spent against my philanthropic endeavors
We, as individuals, cannot outspend the corporations from whose pockets we're fed. Working for a corp it's two steps back for every one step of charitable spending.
It's the old saying: "give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day, teach him to fish..."
Philanthropy will never solve the fundamental problems with our economy.
Coercive economic dependence drives exploitation and disparities.
My wife went back to college in her early thirties. During one class, the grad student was trying to get the class to really question their moral certitude. "Would your loved one cheat on you a million dollars?"
My wife, however, was positive. When pressed, she said "Oh, he's done the math. I have nothing to worry about for less than 5 million. After that, sure, who knows, but until then...".
This was not the answer they expected. The students were horrified and the instructor was confused.
To rephrase your point (and the problem): Money can't buy happiness, but it can provide a lot of security against UNHAPPINESS. Depending on where I'm at, security-wise, different money amounts mean different things. Even if I'm very secure in all my personal needs, offer me a billion dollars and there's a lot of options at the top of Maslov's hierarchy. If I recall the math right, I could give a family $10,000/day, every day, for 216 years. Add in the effects of interest (and offset for inflation), and it's probably an infinite ability.
That's a lot of soul-soothing.
I too have made choices, at far less than the $1billion (or 1 million) level. And....
I'm still torn. I'm glad my current job isn't one I'm ashamed of, but those past jobs provided a lot of security for my wife and I. We have physical and mental health specialists able to attend to our needs.
I will disagree with anyone that says money/security is all that matters, but I can't say the choice is easy or clear.
How high of a road do you think you've really taken? This whole industry is super-connected to some unacceptable atrocities, from plastic pollution to the torture-at-scale perpetrated by the military industrial complex.
You may feel as though your hands are clean, but what about your customers and suppliers? How far down/up the dependency chain are you from materially supporting real suffering?
There are a lot of folks on high horses in this industry, but unless you're dead set against the bulk of it, you're colluding in some really, really nasty–not to mention undignified–exploitation, violence, and depravity.
https://www.slashfilm.com/why-silicon-valley-is-ending/
TJ Miller leaving was another huge setback for them, he really was the perfect foil for all of the characters around him.
And then he has some movie ideas: https://www.indiewire.com/2019/03/silicon-valley-ending-mike...
Most* European shows follow an arc and then stop. It helps that there isn't really an overwhelming obsession with reaching for syndication(~100 shows). Not much point either as rewards for non US syndication are tiny fractions of US.
Last season already felt like it had a lot of recycled ideas and Erlich Bachman was notably missing.
Although the character that I didn't expect to have much of an arc, is having a great one. I'm of course talking about Jian Yang! Now I wish he would have his own show. That guy is not only hilarious, but a kind of evil mastermind in the classic SV way, where you wonder how someone so seemingly incompetent could do such things.
The plot I feel is still pretty good, and mostly just a normal parody of what is going on in SV, which makes it hilarious, but I don't know if other people would really get it as much as tech insiders would.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reel_Bad_Arabs
That said, this show once again unintentionally predicted current event relevance with its creative choices:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/03/world/americas/chile-prot...
Using Saudis would have been very much part of their style.
Actually, Shadowrun is an RPG set in a cyberpunk world completely unrelated to D&D and Magic is a card game set in a fantasy universe also completely unrelated to D&D (though Magic and D&D have the same publisher).
Sorry, I just had to say that.
He had a "warehouse of Chinese developers" and would simply throw 10 developers at it working on the exact same thing, and use the best code of the 10. That was his pitch.
Needless to say, I said no.