One of the best buys in personal conduct these days is front-loading just a little bit of courage — to say what you mean, to withhold judgment, to be unfairly pegged an asshole or a bigot or whatever else if it protects you from social kidnap.
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Cowardice is like blackmail: whatever benefits you accrue crumble the moment you grow a spine; you don't have to be owned for long before you're owned forever.
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Mason 🏃♂️ ✂️ Retweeted Paul Graham
The minimum buy-in for being a decent person and anything better than a worse-than-useless friend is the capacity to say "I'm waiting to see if this can be substantiated."https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1121340611477557248?s=12 …
Mason 🏃♂️ ✂️ added,
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Replying to @webdevMason
One lesson I've learned from Twitter: I never believe anything bad about anyone famous until the evidence is overwhelming. The attention (= money for reporters) you can get by telling lies about someone famous is just too tempting.
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Replying to @paulg @webdevMason
Related: I no longer believe that where there's smoke, there's fire. The fact that people consistently say x about some famous person means no more than that there are a lot of people who want to hear it.
1 reply 5 retweets 51 likes -
Replying to @paulg @webdevMason
Reputational destruction in the age of analytics. Lines of attack are A/B tested until something gets traction. Destructive potency is easier to measure than truth. We'll have to evolve new norms around this. "Everyone must disown the targeted in 24 hours" is not acceptable.
1 reply 3 retweets 39 likes -
Replying to @TheStoicEmperor @webdevMason
It may be that more evolves than just norms. Companies and institutions may evolve, in the literal sense of new ones rising and bad ones dying, as a result of this threat.
1 reply 1 retweet 15 likes
Companies with a culture that doesn't strictly reject this can't possibly survive it in the long run, no? This is like an organizational time-bomb gene. "Assume no sociopaths, ever" is a great way to be overrun by sociopaths
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