Earnestness: http://paulgraham.com/earnest.html
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It’s worth pointing out the dark sides of earnestness: monomania, myopia, and willful ignorance. Progress at all costs, without factoring ethical or societal impact. We see this everywhere: Facebook’s refusal to censor misinformation, Uber’s lax approach to self driving safety.
In theory that could be a problem, but in practice people working on something out of genuine interest seem more ethical than those driven by other motives. Perhaps the reason is that earnestness tends to arise as part of a cluster of good motives.
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I agree this holds up at small scale, but a successful startup or new technology has such broad systemic impact that much of the ethical fallout happens outside of its laser-focused founders’ zone of awareness. IMO this is why diversity of perspectives is so important in hiring.
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And I’m sure that most successful founders probably want to make the world better. It’s just unbelievably difficult to define and measure “better”, especially if you personally only care about a single topic.
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