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▲ ptero 10 hours ago

> “this other thing is also bad” is not an exoneration

No, but it puts some perspective on things. IMO Google, after abandoning its early "don't be evil" motto is directly responsible for a significant chunk of the current evil in the developed world, from screen addiction to kids' mental health and social polarization.

Working for Google and drawing an extravagant salary for many, many years was a choice that does affect the way we perceive other issues being discussed by the same source. To clarify: I am not claiming that Rob is evil; on the contrary. His books and open source work were an inspiration to many, myself included. But I am going to view his opinions on social good and evil through the prism of his personal employment choices. My 2c.

▲WD-42 10 hours ago | parent [-]

This is a purity test that cannot be passed. Give me your career history and I’ll tell you why you aren’t allowed to make any moral judgments on anything as well.

▲trinsic2 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

My take on the above, and I might be taking it out of context is that I think what is being said here is that the exploitation and grift needs to stop. And if you are working for a company that does this, you are part of the problem. I know that pretty much every modern company does this, but it has to stop somewhere.

We need to find a way to stop contributing to the destruction of the planet soon.

I don't work for any of these companies, but I do purchase things from Amazon and I have an apple phone. I think the best we can do is minimize our contribution to it. I try to limit what services I use from this companies, and I know it doesnt make much of a differnce, but I am doing what I can.

I'm hoping more people that need to be employed by tech companies can find a way to be more selective on who they employ with.

▲bossyTeacher 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Point is he is criticizing Google but still collecting checks from them. That's hypocritical. He would have a little sympathy if he never worked for them. He had decades to resign. He didn't. He stayed there until retirement. He's even using gmail in that post.

▲tczMUFlmoNk 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Rob Pike retired from Google in 2021.

▲ptero 10 hours ago | parent [-]

Yes, after working there for more than 17 years (IIRC he joined Google in 2004).

▲rdiddly 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I still don't see the problem. You can criticize things you're part of. Probably being part of something is what informs a person enough, and makes it matter enough to them, to criticize in the first place.

▲ptero 3 hours ago | parent [-]

> I still don't see the problem. You can criticize things you're part of.

Certainly. But this, IMO, is not the reason for the criticism in the comments. If Rob ranted about AI, about spam, slop, whatever, most of those criticizing his take would nod instead.

However, the one and only thing that Rob says in his post is "fuck you people who build datacenters, you rape the planet". And this coming from someone who worked at Google from 2004 to 2021 and instead could have picked any job anywhere. He knew full well what Google was doing; those youtube videos and ad machines were not hosted in a parallel universe.

I have no problem with someone working at Google on whatever with full knowledge that Google is pushing ads, hosting videos, working on next gen compute, LLM, AGI, whatever. I also have no problem with someone who rails against cloud compute, AI, etc. and fights it as a colossal waste or misallocation of resources or whatever. But not when one person does both. Just my 2c, not pushing my worldview on anyone else.

▲watwut 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It is OK to collect checks from organization you are criticising. Getting money from someome does not imply you must only praise them.

▲Imustaskforhelp 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I know right?

If rob pike was asked about these issues of systemic addiction and others where we can find things google was bad at. I am sure that he wouldn't defend google about these things.

Maybe someone can mail a real message asking Rob pike genuinely (without any snarkiness that I feel from some comments here) about some questionable google things and I am almost certain that if those questions are reasonable, rob pike will agree that some actions done by google were wrong.

I think its just that rob pike got pissed off because an AI messaged him so he got the opportunity to talk about these issues and I doubt that he got the opportunity to talk / someone asking him about some other flaws of google / systemic issues related to it.

Its like, Okay, I feel like there is an issue in the world so I talk about it. Now does that mean that I have to talk about every issue in the world, no not really. I can have priorities in what issues I wish to talk about.

But that being said, if someone then asks me respectfully about issues which are reasonable, Being moral, I can agree about that yes those are issues as well which needs work upon.

And some people like rob pike who left google because of (ideological reasons perhaps, not sure?) wouldn't really care about the fallback and like you say, its okay to collect checks from organization even if they critize

Honestly Google's lucky that they got rob pike instead of vice versa from my limited knowledge.

Golang is such a brilliant language and ken thompson and rob pike are consistently some of the best coders and their contributions to golang and so many other projects is unparalleled.

I don't know much about rob pike as compared to Ken thompson but I assume he is really great too! Mostly I am just a huge golang fan.

▲trinsic2 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I know this will probably not come off very well in this community. But there is something to be said about criticizing the very thing you are supporting. I know in this day and age, its not easy to survive without contributing to the problem in some degree.

Im not saying nobody has the right to criticize something they are supporting, but it does say something about our choices and how far we let this problem go before it became too much to solve. And not saying the problem isn't solvable. Just saying its become astronomically more difficult now then ever before.

I think at the very least, there is a little bit of cringe in me every time I criticize the very thing I support in some way.

▲mrguyorama 5 hours ago | parent [-]

The problem is that everyone on HN treats "You are criticizing something you benefit from" as somehow invalidating the arguments themselves rather than impeaching the person making the arguments.

Being a hypocrite makes you a bad person sometimes. It doesn't actually change anything factual or logical about your arguments. Hypocrisy affects the pathos of your argument, but not the logos or ethos! A person who built every single datacenter would still be well qualified to speak about how bad datacenters are for the environment. Maybe their argument is less convincing because you question their motives, but that doesn't make it wrong or invalid.

Unless HNers believe he is making this argument to help Google in some way, it doesn't fucking matter that google was also bad and he worked for them. Yes he worked for google while they built out datacenters and now he says AI datacenters are eating up resources, but is he wrong?. If he's not wrong, then talk about hypocrisy is a distraction.

HNers love arguing to distract.

"Don't hate the player, hate the game" is also wrong. You hate both.

▲trinsic2 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Well said. Thank you. I just wanted to point out that there is some truth behind the negative effects of criticizing what you helped create. IMHO not everything is about facts and logic, but also about the spirit that's behind our choices. I know that kind of perspective is not very welcome here, but wanted to say it anyway.

Sometimes facts and logic can only get you so far.

▲bossyTeacher 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

>But that being said, if someone then asks me respectfully about issues which are reasonable, Being moral, I can agree about that yes those are issues as well which needs work upon.

With all due respect, being moral isn't an opinion or agreement about an opinion, it's the logic that directs your actions. Being moral isn't saying "I believe eating meat is bad for the planet", it's the behaviour that abstains from eating meat. Your moral is the set of statements that explains your behaviour. That is why you cannot say "I agree that domestic violence is bad" while at the same time you are beating up your spouse.

If your actions contradict your stated views, you are being a hypocrite. This is the point that people in here are making. Rob Pike was happy working at Google while Google was environmentally wasteful (e-waste, carbon footprint and data center related nastiness) to track users and mine their personal and private data for profit. He didn't resign then nor did he seem to have caused a fuss about it. He likely wasn't interested in "pointless politics" and just wanted to "do some engineering" (just a reference to techies dismissing or critising folks discussing social justices issues in relation to big tech). I am shocked I am having to explain this in here. I understand this guy is an idol of many here but I would expect people to be more rational on this website.

▲michaelt 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

When I take a job, I agree to dedicate my waking hours to advancing the agenda of my employer, in exchange for cash.

▲SpicyLemonZest 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I think everyone, including myself, should be extremely hesitant to respond to marketing emails with profanity-laden moralism. It’s not about purity testing, it’s about having the level of introspection to understand that people do lots of things for lots of reasons. “Just fuck you. Fuck you all.” is not an appropriate response to presumptively good people trying to do cool things, even if the cool things are harmful and you desperately want to stop them.

▲trinsic2 7 hours ago | parent [-]

It sounds like you are trying to label this issue in such a way as to marginalize someones view.

We got to this point by not looking at these problems for what they are. Its not wrong to say something is wrong and it needs to be addressed.

Doing cool things, without looking at whether or not we should doesn't feel very responsible too me esp. if it impacts society in a negative way.

▲SpicyLemonZest 7 hours ago | parent [-]

Yes, I'm trying to marginalize the author's view. I think that “Just fuck you. Fuck you all.” is a bad view which does not help us see problems for what they are nor analyze negative impacts on society.

For example, Rob seems not to realize that the people who instructed an AI agent to send this email are a handful of random folks (https://theaidigest.org/about) not affiliated with any AI lab. They aren't themselves "spending trillions" nor "training your monster". And I suspect the AI labs would agree with both Rob and me that this was a bad email they should not have sent.

▲discreteevent 6 hours ago | parent [-]

It's a smarmy sycophantic email addressing him personally and co-opting his personal achievements written by something he dislikes. This would feel really fucked up. It's true that anger is not always a great response but this is one of those occasions where it fits exactly.