[antris]

Jobs didn't believe in cancer treatment https://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2011/10/24/steve-j...

I'm pretty sure he'd have fell in line to the fascist insanity just like all other billionaires. He lived at the time of the height of neoliberal ideology, when most people believed in the conjured public images that the tech bro CEOs gave out in PR. Behind the scenes, things were quite different. Jobs has been reported to be petty, insulting and belittling of his employees

[ConradKilroy]

Thank you for referencing his idiot behavior leading to his own demise, I hope that will be on his coin.

[khazhoux]

Why do you say that?

Was his refusal of cancer treatment more impactful on the world than his creation of Apple Computers?

[nobankai]

Probably. Given the known history of Apple it's just as likely that they'd have been successful if Jobs got hit by a bus after the Apple II shipped. His legacy of irrational and unexplained digression is pretty suitably punctuated by his own unwillingness to part with his pancreas.

A timeline where Woz led product design at Apple under a less recalcitrant leader might be one where Apple Computers is still relevant for making computers. The pivot to a lifestyle brand hasn't proven to be the strongest option, in the long term.

[khazhoux]

He didn't get hit by a bus, though. He led the company for decades.

Surely you've heard how opinionated and domineering Jobs was? Every strategic decision and major product decision was either from him or went through him.

[lacy_tinpot]

To imagine being anti-pharma, and big corporations used to be a Leftists/Hippy talking point.

[lotsofpulp]

Still is. Portland, OR shoots down fluoridated water every time.

[tredre3]

Most of the world doesn't put fluoride in tap water. I appreciate that you've been raised to believe it's a "no-brainer and only idiots would oppose it", but there are actual tangible downsides to doing it and now that fluoride toothpaste is widespread there might not even be any upside to fluoride in water anymore.

[blackeyeblitzar]

You don’t need it in the water when you can get it from many other sources. I find it strange that there would be additives to something basic like water. And as I recall there are studies that show too much can be bad too. It’s hard to know your dosage if random things incorporate it as an additive unexpectedly.

[antris]

Hippies were never leftists, they were liberals. And when fascists come knocking, liberals flock to fascism.

Also, being anti big pharma isn't the same as believing in conspiracy theories. You can't resist if you don't live in reality.

[thomassmith65]

Left-leaning people famously tend to disagree with each other (eg: as lampooned in https://youtube.com/watch?v=WboggjN_G-4).

If 'hippies' here refers to the original hippies back in the 1960s, they ran the whole range from far pipebombs-in-the-name-of-communism left, to centrist.

[efnx]

> Hippies were never leftists, they were liberals. And when fascists come knocking, liberals flock to fascism.

I don’t understand this, can you explain what you meant? Maybe with examples?

[antris]

Democratic party and Biden (liberals) when running against republicans (fascists): "Democracy is at stake" https://www.cbsnews.com/news/president-biden-speaks-on-stake...

Biden, when Trump arrives at White House: "Welcome home" https://www.yahoo.com/news/welcome-home-joe-biden-greets-160...

Also, in Germany the Nazi Party never got more than 43,91% of the votes in free elections. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_Party_election_results Hitler rose to power through the support of the "moderate" or "liberal" right wing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler%27s_rise_to_power

[wqaatwt]

Papen wasn’t even remotely left wing or even “moderate”. Hindenburg also hated democracy and wanted to destroy it.

There were barely any liberals left in the Reichstag when it voted for the enabling act (progressive liberalism as we’d understand it hardly existed in Germany back then anyway). Closest would be the moderate-conservative Catholic “Center” party who usually were historically part of the Socialist-Liberal coalition.

Anyway you cut it far-right parties had the majority of seats in 1933. Of course everyone else could have actually tried doing something instead fighting with each other or just tagging along with the nazis “since it can’t be that bad”.

[thomassmith65]

  I'm pretty sure he'd have fell in line to the fascist insanity just like all other billionaires.

That's a take that seems based on some kind of ideology more than thinking about the actual person. The actual person was a man with a massive ego, and pretensions of being an artist and intellectual. It's a real stretch to envision Jobs being deferential to Musk or Trump, both of whom, without a doubt, still fantasize about being Steve Jobs.

[cbozeman]

Musk is easily on the level of Jobs and arguably beyond him, not just financially, but on the scale of what they've done for Humanity as a whole.

SpaceX and Starlink just by themselves are enough to catapult him beyond Jobs, but you add on Tesla, which pretty much single-handedly pushed electric cars into mainstream culture, and he's easily there.

This isn't even really a subjective perspective, you could objectively argue it.

[thomassmith65]

The personal computer revolution (kicked off in 1977 by the Apple II), and the smart phone era (kicked off in 2007 by iPhone), have done at least as much for humanity.

[cbozeman]

> The personal computer revolution (kicked off in 1977 by the Apple II),

This is an oversimplification. Apple II was a huge part of it, but didn't kick it off. The real revolution was the IBM PC in 1981. It definitely did not kick it off single-handedly though, since you had the TRS-80, Commodore PET, and Altair 8800 before, or alongside the Apple II. You could argue the IBM 5100 I guess, but it was too expensive for most people.

And like I said above, the iPhone did not "kick off" the smartphone era. It was transformative, sure, but didn't kick it off.

IBM Simon, BlackBerry, Palm Treo, Symbian Phones, Windows Mobile, all came before it, and everyone could clearly see where the entire market was headed even in the early 2000s.

[thomassmith65]

Most of the prevailing narratives about pivotal moments in technology leave out nuance. Still, to say the Apple II and iPhone kicked off new eras is closer to the truth than to credit those eras to the Altair and BlackBerry.

If a person is nitpicky, they could use the same kind of objections to minimize Musk's accomplishments - and the accomplishments of many, many others (Edison, Marconi, Watson & Crick, etc)

[antris]

Musk has massive ego too, and he's drinking the fascist kool aid, perhaps even more than Trump himself. Massive ego is more susceptible to fascist thinking, not less.

[thomassmith65]

https://youtu.be/E8oEWdYfO4U [content-warning: Elon Musk]

[Mistletoe]

I'm not even a Jobs fanboy but let's give him the benefit of the doubt. He at least believed in things, which is more than I can say for the tech giants that are bending the knee right now.

[goosejuice]

Oh they believe in things... https://a16z.com/the-techno-optimist-manifesto/

[antris]

Well I'm just going by what's been reported in the media. It gives no indication that Jobs was an anti-fascist ready to resist.

[caycep]

at least judging from his products sense, what he believed in was more grounded in the real world

[jsphweid]

> Jobs didn't believe in cancer treatment

His own health choices are a private matter as far as I'm concerned. He held off too long on modern medicine and paid the price for it. Bringing it up here is irrelevant and distracting.

[bertylicious]

It's not distracting, it's an important detail underlining the ridiculousness of this decision.

Maybe it's just me, but I think innovation awards are for people with scientific mindsets. Jobs obviously didn't have one.

[khazhoux]

Are you suggesting Apple was not innovative, or that he did not have a role in Apple's innovation?

We can pretend all day that the Apple II, the Mac, iMac, macbook, iPod, iPhone, and iPad would have been exactly the same without Jobs. But in the reality we currently inhabit, he was the person overseeing them all.

[antris]

RFK Jr. is the Secretary of Health and Human Services.