> Two years ago, they were on top of the world, having just introduced ChatGPT, and struck a big deal with Microsoft. Nobody else had a model close to GPT-4 level; media coverage of OpenAI was endless; customer adoption was swift. They could charge more or less what they wanted, with the whole world curious and no other provider. Sam Altman was almost universally adored. People imagined nearly infinite revenue and enormous profits.
Part of me likes to think of this as cosmic karma. I know it's been hounded on a lot lately, but the irony is too rich, especially with how hostile they've been to "Open AI."
This goes way past teams bud. If you don't realize the kind of existential threat trump is posing to millions of people, you haven't paid attention to a single thing he's done since taking office.
Maybe the political climate is impacting a higher number of topical points that are being discussed on HN. When governments are changing, interfering, and impacting technology you're going to see it crop up more.
It's not a "rough start for HN", it's the current climate of the world through the lens of the US.
> The political commentary is infecting every thread.
Unfortunately politics has infected areas of our lives we took for granted. The stopping of reporting coming out of the CDC/NIH/HHS makes discussing health science articles more challenging. And this is a direct result of the new administration. While this article may not be vaccine related, the new administration wants a known anti-vaxxer to lead the HHS.
I would argue that being rabidly apolitical while a dangerous threat to western democracy has been growing in America for years is the rough part.
I'm an old person. I have a leftist bent. I used to get along with many conservatives, I just had different policy viewpoints than they did. What we are seeing now is a completely different political landscape where one of the parties is actively setting up a dynastic plutocracy in the open.
FWIW I have a ton of criticism for the "other" party too as an ineffective mess sucking the corporate teet almost as hard, just without the actual proto fascism.
Some yes, but maybe not you? Because you used the following language yesterday:
"Only a few short months ago, I was under constant attack from various public members of the Democratic party for being a white male with center-right views. The vitriol was quite unhinged, really." when asked for specifics you went to '...on CNN for example'.
* edit: I mean for use as ammunition in an argument. It's not that you're wrong—it's just that the cost (to the intended spirit of the site) outweighs the benefit (being right in an argument).
TBH this idea that each comment should stand individually on its (including HN's downplaying of the usernym with grey) seems like it contributes to some of the problems with modern discourse. When someone I know says something challenging, I know the context they're coming from, what I do agree with them on, what skills of theirs I respect, etc. Whereas message board comments are just tiny slivers of information with which you can agree or disagree.
Oh for sure. There's nothing wrong with people getting to know each other, and their views, by reading through past comments.
It's just not in the intended spirit of HN to track down contradictions and use them as gotchas in arguments. That's a narrower point. I've added an edit to the GP comment to clarify that.
Do I engage in politics on HN occasionally? Yes. Is it my primary motivation? No. I don't open up HN with the intention of having rigorous political discussions, even though I sometimes fall into them.
My comment history, which it seems you only partially perused, demonstrates this to be true. Especially if you go back a year ago before things became politically charged around here.
I also don't see what relevance my example has to this conversation. It sounds like you're trying to corner me into a specific label (Republican, maybe?). I guess thanks for proving my point about discussions around here?
I haven't used party labels on HN. You seem to be the one forcing an identity on me? I would respond but my post was out of bounds so I shouldn't elaborate/reference further.
FYI if you read my post history you will see I am a libertarian leaning (Santa Cruz hippie libertarian not Rand Paul 'my dad got me the job but I believe in everyone earning their way' libertarian) refugee from the Bay Area to a small town in a very red state. I don't have the agenda you think other than calling out hypocrisy and a desire for a functioning health system.
> I think part of the challenge is that, when we talk about crime, what do you mean by crime?
As I was processing the article, I was subconsciously asking this in my head. My first thought on whether I believe crime was going up was yes, but for me, it related more to the increase in public overdoses in my town. Naturally, I would assume if I see more overdoses, then more illicit drugs must be getting sold, and therefore crime must be going up. But this raises a lot of questions:
Are the same overdoses increasingly spilling out into the public?
Are the illicit drugs getting stronger and thus causing more overdoses?
Answering yes to either of these may mean the actual crime rate hasn't changed. Anyway, it was just a rabbit hole I went down in my head that I think speaks to what is being said here.
More and more it’s hard to find people on HN that don’t tightly cling to party lines.
The numbers I’ve seen some of these departments get paid is mind boggling. It’s possible to both value these principles and yet be in disgust at what a grift so much of it has become.
I was raised Republican in a very conservative area. I attended church and went to a christian school from K-12. There's a lot of traditional conservative values that I agree with. The Republican Party currently embodies none of those principals. Frankly, I'd be voting D just out of the lesser of two evils, and it's not even a long shot.
I yearn for a proper Conservative Party to bring some sanity back to the world. I wish that the Christian right would actually follow the teaching of Jesus that they claim.
I don't agree with a lot of what the Democrats do, but they generally do what they do out of a place of good and Republicans are working out of a place of hate. And that matters. Tearing it all down and hurting people just isn't something I feel that I can support, no matter what other things they do that I might agree with or might help me.
Thanks for sharing your experience. It's quite a bit different from my own experience, though. Only a few short months ago, I was under constant attack from various public members of the Democratic party for being a white male with center-right views. The vitriol was quite unhinged, really.
From my perspective, both sides engage in it just as much as the other, and it's getting worse because people are choosing to respond in kind rather than take the higher ground. I voted for neither party in the last cycle, and it's likely to stay that way for me unless things dramatically change.
I hear you. The extremes on both sides are awful. I try to ignore them when I make a decision on who to vote for. I try to look at the actual impact the policies and agendas have.
That said, ignoring the loudest voices in the room, especially when they're pointed at you is very hard to do.
> I was under constant attack from various public members of the Democratic party for being a white male with center-right views.
Could you give an actual example? This isn't some kind of gotcha, I'm genuinely curious. As a non-American the Democratic Party seem pathologically obsessed with reaching across the aisle to the moderate right winger.
Well, I suppose we can start with the fact that anyone voting on the opposite ticket was routinely accused of ending democracy. Just look up various reactions to Scott Jennings on CNN for an example.
Honestly, though, I'm more curious about the examples that led you to believe they reach across the aisle. Neither party does, both are firmly encamped, and both routinely resort to verbal attacks based on party affiliation.
It's probably hard to reach a consensus when every workplace is different. However, sexually explicit text would be inappropriate at most places I've worked.
Doesn’t looking at porn cause a biochemical reaction in the brain? Just seems like the inputs are a lot more complex than you’re making them out to be.
I don't think there's much of anything you can look at, or do, or think about, without brain activity being somehow involved. What with the brain being where thoughts live.
I mean there is the introduction of a chemical into the blood stream that acts on neurons. This does not happen with screens and speakers. It is not meaningless. In fact it's a super important distinction.
By pretending that multimedia can directly alter someone's behavior you throw out the entire idea of human volition. Even if it were true on some level our entire legal code and indeed western society is based on the idea of humans making choices and being responsible for them. Unless they're directly altered like with psychocative chemicals (and sometimes even then). The stimuli you see and hear are not drugs and regulating them as drugs will do more harm and cause more use of force then it prevents.
> I mean there is the introduction of a chemical into the blood stream that acts on neurons. This does not happen with screens and speakers.
What are the actual mechanics behind how scary movies make people jumpy? Or behind news articles pushing people to "I'm literally shaking" levels of anger? Or to stick with the theme from ancestor comments, behind the thing I've heard called "post-nut clarity" (whatever it's actual proper name is)?
I’m going to try with a counter argument here that might seem trivial at first but encourage you to think a bit more deeply on it.
Multimedia consumption does directly alter your behavior.
You see an add for fries and you want fries and you go out and buy and eat them. If you hadn’t watched that video you wouldn’t have done that. Yes, it was still your choice to do so (avoiding the question of free will), but it was also the choice of the addict to shoot up one more time. Seeing the burger introduced psychoactive chemicals (endogenous ones): dopamine is one of the most relevant and well understood.
And to be clear - it’s not unique because it’s related to food and therefor a substance you put into your body like a drug. As others have pointed out gambling and porn addictions rely on similar mechanisms, and doom scrolling/compulsive news checking are tied to the same chemical mechanisms in the body.
From a medical perspective this is pretty well understood. Social expectations and norms that feed into regulations and laws are wildly subjective, so it’s not surprising that there is a lot of inconsistency in how and what is regulated and illegal when looked at from the perspective of biological mechanisms.
Why do most people in this thread assume this move intends to politicalize the NIH? I don't think the administration thoroughly thought out the consequences of this decision, but that's a typical government move. Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
Hard to attribute it to stupidity and lack of planning when almost every executive order signed by Trump during his first days back in office are straight out of Project 2025.
As others have said, his actions are all straight from the project 2025 playbook. Go read page 284, it's very explicit about them viewing it as politicized and wanting to fix that (read actually politicize it):
"The incestuous relationship between the NIH, CDC, and vaccine makers—with all of the conflict of interest it entails—cannot be allowed to continue, and the revolving door between them must be locked. As Severino writes, “Funding for scientific research should not be controlled by a small group of highly paid andunaccountable insiders at the NIH, many of whom stay in power for decades. The NIH monopoly on directing research should be broken.” What’s more, NIH has long “been at the forefront in pushing junk gender science.” The next HHS secretary should immediately put an end to the department’s foray into woke transgender activism."
I agree with you about this. I think it's worth calling out where the shoulder of the highway ends and the cliff begins, now that the guardrails have been (if temporarily) removed, but I'm optimistic that nobody is crazy enough to totally jam up the NIH given its importance to our economy and national security.
> Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
This quote does not apply in a place where the actor has specifically promised to be malicious.
Now, you may not see their promises as malicious and that is your prerogative. But that quote isn’t applicable for a ton of people when it comes to Trump.
I would have to disagree with the criteria. More times than not, I've seen people who have promised maliciousness (AKA bullies) make really stupid decisions. It seems to go hand-in-hand in a lot of cases.
Either way, this seems like a political flip-flop, with the opposing party now putting on the tin hats. That's just the way it looks to me as an independent.
My original comment was regarding the claim that this is being done to politicize the NIH. To me, it requires the same tin hat that conservatives put on when they were making all sorts of crazy assumptions about the government's moves during Covid.
I never said you had to put on a tin foil hat to call someone malicious. I'm just saying that malicious people tend to do stupid things which have unintended consequences they didn't fully realize.
I am also an independent. I did not vote for Biden, Kamala, nor did I vote for Trump.
However, I am still able to put 2 and 2 together to see his behavior during COVID, his statements before this current elections, and the current decisions (especially regarding gender definitions) and understand what the goal of silencing the NIH (even temporarily) is.
Part of me likes to think of this as cosmic karma. I know it's been hounded on a lot lately, but the irony is too rich, especially with how hostile they've been to "Open AI."