[dang]

Trash talking at that age is an embarrassingly normal thing to do. Accusing people of sociopathy without evidence is worse.

It's also hugely diluting of signal/noise ratio in threads. Grandiose accusations are noise, and no evidence means no signal. Please don't post such things to HN.

[bch]

Re: accusatory tone - I adjusted my comment to reflect more clearly this is only my take away. But I think his words and actions are the evidence. I understand trash talk, but calling your users (behind their back) "dumb fucks" sounds like nothing but contempt.

[dang]

Thanks for adjusting your comment. I want to expand on the point a bit further because I think it's important for Hacker News. But I don't mean to pick on you personally, so I hope you don't feel that way.

How many people have any real basis for knowing what Zuckerberg meant by those words? A line like that could mean almost anything. You'd have to have known him at the time. Also, how many people can truly claim never to have said anything just as bad or foolish? Those two groups must be minuscule, yet to be justified in making such an accusation, you'd have to belong to both of them.

Far more likely, what's going on here is wishful thinking, where the wish is e.g. to see someone else as a monster. The quote is just a convenient prop.

People bring it out at the slightest provocation. It has become an internet reflex, so it no longer adds any information. More importantly, it's the opposite of the principle of charity—i.e. giving the other person the benefit of the doubt—which we try to practice here.

[eggie]

> How many people have any real basis for knowing what Zuckerberg meant by those words? A line like that could mean almost anything. You'd have to have known him at the time. Also, how many people can truly claim never to have said anything just as bad or foolish? Those two groups must be minuscule, yet to be justified in making such an accusation, you'd have to belong to both of them.

I did know him at the time. He was not a friend, but I saw him every day. My friends were his roommates and in the same circles as some of the early fb people, so I saw and heard a lot to explain the guy and his motivations.

It is not an exaggeration to say he has done sociopathic things. He didn't hurt people physically (obviously), but he exploited them to the maximum extent that he has been allowed. Harvard attracts people like this guy, but honestly he was a bit extreme, maybe even out of our league. If you don't care about what people feel or think beyond what they can do to you, you can make the most optimum decisions for yourself.

He demonstrated this capacity in impressive form on several occasions which are now public so don't need to be described here. My initial reaction, before the media had taken up and transmitted its own interpretation of these stories, was exactly what many here are saying. So you don't need to moderate the discussion by noting that no one involved knew the guy at the time--- what people are saying is on point. His character is evident in his life's work.

Life requires compromise, so it's unlikely that he can do anything really bad now, due to the size of the operation and how many people are working together toward the greater goal of making "the" communication platform. That said, the idea that people need facebook to communicate on the internet is a conceit. The goal of this company is to centralize your communication and social life so it can be analyzed, exploited, and manipulated. That structure has grown from the motivations of this 19 year-old, aloof, and rather arrogant kid. The world has accepted it. Fair enough.

[dang]

Assuming the details are true, your comment does count as substantive: it describes concrete personal experiences. It also seems to have an agenda, but readers can evaluate that for themselves.

The moderation point is off, though. An unsubstantive smear doesn't suddenly become a good comment just because someone else shows up and posts a better one.

[marcos123]

> A line like that could mean almost anything.

Actually no, you are incorrect. Calling people "dumb fucks" for trusting you and/or your site is a statement with a pretty specific meaning behind it.

For a fun exercise, how about you explain the multitude of meanings you were able to derive from it?

[dang]

Your comment feels like cross-examination—not my idea of a "fun exercise"! Conversation is ok though.

Calling people dumb fucks for trusting you could easily have been for comic effect. The combination of bravado and self-deprecation is something comedians use for shock value and laughs. Adolescent boys (and not so adolescent boys) ham up outrageous stuff up around their friends all the time. Those things aren't sociopathic.

I have zero idea what he meant, and so does everybody else who has only those words to go on. People are just projecting onto a blank screen a few convenient details to create the image that they want to see, a monster and a sociopath—in other words a cartoon villain. You don't have anything close to the information you would need to draw that conclusion if you were inquiring seriously. What really gives the phenomenon away, though, is the cartoonishness of the picture.

The interesting question is why people do this kind of projection. I think it's that the brain works with contrasts, and creating a bad picture of someone else is a cheap way to create a good picture of oneself. But who knows. What's for sure is that this phenomenon is (a) not intellectually serious, and (b) ubiquitous. Even the comment in this thread that was apparently based on personal experience showed signs of it.

[marcos123]

> I have zero idea what he meant, and so does everybody else who has only those words to go on.

Again, incorrect. You know what we all have to go on? The meaning of those words, and their collective meaning when put together in a sentence. We all have a very good idea what he meant. Well, except for you obviously because willful ignorance seems to be your strong suit in this discussion.

What I think is the real interesting question is why are you taking up the position of Zuckerberg public relations evangelist on HN?