Why do the hackers support Sam? He's the least hacker-y of the major players at OpenAI. Seems like more of a fundraiser, marketing type with little technical skills. Hackers traditionally support technically competent people.
Reading through comments I felt that at least superficially many in HN thought this was a fight between "business exec(s) and technical/qualified scientists" as if any organization can exist based purely on technical (as in technological or academic) expertise.
If anything, this novela should tech the importance of politics in any human organization.
That demand on HN was an unfounded gut based reaction that you typically expect from a mob. People were saying stuff like the board was mentally deficient for doing what they did. How likely is it for the board to be actually dumb to the point of actual stupidity?
If you think about it, the board being actually mentally challenged is an extremely low probability but that was the mob reaction. When given so little information they just go with the flow even if the flow is unlikely.
Now with more articles, the mentality has shifted. Most people don't even remember their initial reaction. Yeah It looks like everybody on this thread has flipped, but who admits to flipping? Ask anyone and they'll claim they were skeptical all along.
People say The hacker news crowd is different, better... I'd say the hacker news crowd is the same as any other group. The difference is they think they're better. That includes me... as I'm part of HN so don't get all offended.
As bad as the mob mentality is on HN, I think it is much worse on Twitter. I got a bunch of upvotes here on HN for linking the charter and pointing out that terminating OpenAI as an organization would be quite consistent with the charter. I didn't see the same point getting much play on Twitter at all.
I think the fact that upvotes are hidden on HN actually helps reduce the mob mentality a significant amount. Humans have a strong instinct to join whichever coalition appears to be most powerful. Hiding vote counts makes it harder to identify the currently-popular coalition, which nudges people towards actually thinking for themselves.