Well, props for sticking with a truly unpopular opinion.
I’d like to change your mind one day though. My friendship with Scott was instructive here. He was a former HN mod. I looked to him as a mentor and a friend, though I’m not sure it went both ways. Regardless, we worked together on Lumen for years. When I was banned for a year from HN, he never once allowed our friendship (such as it was) to affect his duty to the site. The decision wasn’t his, and he wasn’t going to pull strings internally just because we occasionally wrote code together.
I get what you’re saying. And I agree that in the long term, it’s extremely important to set up incentive structures in the right way. But friendship — a word quite hard to define, if you think about it — is a part of the human experience.
The point here is that there are people with integrity. They do exist. And they can be friends regardless of other duties — sometimes unpleasant ones.
Now, my little story isn’t quite related. I wasn’t an adversarial peer, which is what you’re talking about. But your reasoning seems to be: if the incentive structure permits friendship, it compromises integrity. It’s a reasonable concern, especially over the course of decades. But the word “professional” reflects the fact that business comes before friendship.
It’s a fundamental truth that people will try to form friendships regardless of their occupation. Rather than change the incentive structure, as you propose, shouldn’t we recognize that truth?
The reason I related to your comment so much is, for a time, I felt exactly the same way: if business was any indication, it was a web of insider deals, “friendships”, and favors behind closed doors. I wanted nothing to do with that world. But two people with integrity can sidestep all of those concerns and simply... be friends. Even in the highest court of the land, which determines our fate.
(As a sidenote, you seem like an interesting person. If you happen to want a friend, or to debate hypothetical political structures, feel free to DM me on Twitter.)
>The point here is that there are people with integrity. They do exist. And they can be friends regardless of other duties — sometimes unpleasant ones.
Sure. There are fantastic individuals out there.
The key to fair systems is to structure the system in such a way that does not rely on the recruitment of extraordinary individuals who are filled to the brim with integrity.
The key is to create a system of checks and balances that disallows obvious unfairness by means of liability isolation and personal separation, etc.
I'm glad your friendship with whoever Scott is worked out despite whatever problems on HN, but all the example tells me is that Scott (and to a smaller degree, yourself) have some level of personal integrity; but facts and statistics generally say that systems that can be gamed, will be -- and that's without a motivating factor other than a personal win; include motivation like money and power and the scales tip much more radically against those with integrity.
For every 'Scott' there are 10 folks without any integrity that'd have gladly re-instantiated their friends' accounts that had been banned AS LONG AS it didn't mean hurting their own position.
That's exactly why 'fair' systems are generally built in such an isolated fashion so as to reduce inclusion of bias and personal feelings.
Exactly! Which is why this conversation is so interesting – and why it seemed they were unfairly downvoted. The question of "does friendship compromise integrity of systems over time?" is quite fascinating, and there are many examples across many countries that show "yes, yes it does." So it seemed entirely legitimate to say that perhaps a system should penalize friendships, somehow.
But, after watching Scalia, how can you not like him?
He was witty, charming, and a master orator. So when people hear "can't have a friendship with Scalia, even though you work with him," it's kind of like "can't breathe, even though you're human." It's a logical contradiction. And it's not even a well-defined problem: what is a "friendship," anyway?
> The question of "does friendship compromise integrity of systems over time?" is quite fascinating, and there are many examples across many countries that show "yes, yes it does."
I think this is probably true in legislative bodies and in government agencies - for the same reason: both promote deal making because there's something to be gained.
One of the reasons the SC Justices are seated for life is precisely to blunt that effect. They can be friends without needing to make deals because they really don't get anything out of a deal - and one hopes they fully appreciate the gravity of their position.
The Court is a sort of unique entity in that it doesn't need (I don't think) to be confrontational in order to be effective. It is the one place where one would think, true wisdom reigns. And by and large, that is what I see from SCOTUS' decisions.
It's a sign of an intelligent, mature mind to be able to contain contradictory ideas without losing your identity. Being friends with someone on the other side of the political aisle, in a group as small as the supreme court, I would think has the effect of improving the quality of their deliberations and little else.
How can I not like him? Real easily, turns out! Scalia wanted to deny basic human dignities to people I care about. Scalia perpetuated a system that grinds your everyday citizen into the dirt because it made his moneyed interests a speck wealthier. To hell with that, and worse words besides.
A competent rhetorician is only "hard to hate" when you don't look at what they do. Keeping one's eye on the ball is not that difficult when you have a set of principles.
You should watch that second youtube link. His whole point was that judges shouldn't be in a position to deny anyone anything. It's a policy preference, and should not be left to seven unelected judges.
If you disagree with that, I suppose we'll have to agree to disagree. It was sort of incredible that Scalia basically straight-up says "You gave me the power to decide whether abortion is permitted nationwide? Really? Who thought this was a good idea?" (Not an actual quote; the talk is quite good.)
Apparently it wasn't always so, and Scalia explains the history too. The concept of the constitution as a "living document" was manufactured, along with the idea that morals mature over time. "Societies only mature, they never rot! /s"
What you're talking about is a matter of business. There are certainly some individuals that it would be quite difficult to be friends with in spite of what they've done. But if Scalia is one of them, well... Everyone has their preferences, I guess.
I am entirely already familiar with Scalia's approach to jurisprudence. I spent most of my youth thinking it was just such a great idea. I also grew up affluent, white, male, and cis; to no surprise, these are contributing factors. Having since grown up and built for myself some facility for basic human empathy I do disagree with that, because not everyone can pick up states and leave Alabama or whatever because their judiciary decides that they can stuff gay kids in conversion therapy or can relegate abortions to back alleys. It privileges me to have such a society because I can go wherever the hell I want because I have money.
Antonin Scalia's entire worldview was built because he knew he was a rear-guard for regressive thought and maybe, just maybe, a broken country with an impotent federal government could allow people like him to continue to kick the shit out of the weak a little longer. He was never going to get to punish women with an abortion ban (and today, would never get to fuck over trans people) nationally--so the natural outgrowth of this is to punish women and fuck of trans people where they can. All in the name of "letting people choose", so they can choose to vote on the basic humanity of others.
I reject the idea that one can "be friends" with the people who want to bring the long dark back. They will break civil society on the anvil of a supremacism that exists to benefit me, and I refuse it.
I’d like to change your mind one day though. My friendship with Scott was instructive here. He was a former HN mod. I looked to him as a mentor and a friend, though I’m not sure it went both ways. Regardless, we worked together on Lumen for years. When I was banned for a year from HN, he never once allowed our friendship (such as it was) to affect his duty to the site. The decision wasn’t his, and he wasn’t going to pull strings internally just because we occasionally wrote code together.
I get what you’re saying. And I agree that in the long term, it’s extremely important to set up incentive structures in the right way. But friendship — a word quite hard to define, if you think about it — is a part of the human experience.
The point here is that there are people with integrity. They do exist. And they can be friends regardless of other duties — sometimes unpleasant ones.
Now, my little story isn’t quite related. I wasn’t an adversarial peer, which is what you’re talking about. But your reasoning seems to be: if the incentive structure permits friendship, it compromises integrity. It’s a reasonable concern, especially over the course of decades. But the word “professional” reflects the fact that business comes before friendship.
It’s a fundamental truth that people will try to form friendships regardless of their occupation. Rather than change the incentive structure, as you propose, shouldn’t we recognize that truth?
The reason I related to your comment so much is, for a time, I felt exactly the same way: if business was any indication, it was a web of insider deals, “friendships”, and favors behind closed doors. I wanted nothing to do with that world. But two people with integrity can sidestep all of those concerns and simply... be friends. Even in the highest court of the land, which determines our fate.
(As a sidenote, you seem like an interesting person. If you happen to want a friend, or to debate hypothetical political structures, feel free to DM me on Twitter.)