[jancsika]

Digression-- this is a good example where the mumbo jumbo that anarchists buzz on about applies in a very obvious way.

You were literate in that domain. The interviewer wasn't. In a conversation among equals you'd just continue talking until the interviewer yielded (or revealed their narcissism). The other interviewers would then stand educated. You see this process happen all the time on (healthy) FOSS mailing lists.

Instead, you had to weigh the benefit of sharing your knowledge against the risk of getting in a pissing contest with someone who had some unspecified (but real!) amount of power over your hiring.

That's the problem with a power imbalance, and it generally makes humans feel shitty. It's also insidious-- in this case you still don't know if the interviewer said "no" because they misunderstood homomorphic encryption.

Plus it's a BigTechCo, so we know they understand why freely sharing knowledge is important-- hell, if we didn't do it, nearly none of them would have a business model!

[ChadNauseam]

In my experience this comes up a lot less often when people are paid to be empirically right, and the most annoying arguments occur when no one has an interest in being right and instead wants to defend their status. e.g. try telling a guy with his date nearby that he's wrong about something irrelevant like how state alcohol minimum markups work. An even more common scenario is when someone is passionate about a political topic and they publicly say something incorrect, and now would look like a fool if they admitted they were wrong. Sometimes I worry that a post-money future would become entirely dominated by status considerations and there would be no domain where people are actually incentivized to be right. Do you know if there's any anarchist thought related to this topic?

[bawolff]

That does kind of make sense though - if you are paid to be right but someone doesn't believe you, you are still getting paid, so what does it matter?

[ChadNauseam]

I was referring to the situations where being right directly means you make money - right about price movements, right about what users want, right about whether oil is present in a particular digging location, etc. In those cases you only get paid if you actually are right.

[lcnPylGDnU4H9OF]

> the mumbo jumbo that anarchists buzz on about

I enjoy exposing myself to new-to-me opinions. Do you know a decent anarchist blog/vlog to dip my toes into this area?

[mhitza]

Not OP, nor do I understand what he's referring to, but https://theanarchistlibrary.org/special/index is a good starting point.

[317070]

"The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy", by David Graeber might be good for this one, though some of Graeber's other books also apply.

[saagarjha]

> In a conversation among equals you'd just continue talking until the interviewer yielded (or revealed their narcissism). The other interviewers would then stand educated. You see this process happen all the time on (healthy) FOSS mailing lists.

Yeah, what actually happens is that both parties think they are right and keep yapping until someone "yields" by being so fed up that they don't want to argue anymore. Everyone else watching learns nothing.

[bawolff]

> You see this process happen all the time on (healthy) FOSS mailing lists.

In a FOSS mailing list, someone would hopefully just link to wikipedia.

No amount of arguing is going to resolve a duspute about definitions of terms.