
Mark Zuckerberg Talks With Atlantic Editor James Bennet - pg
http://www.theatlantic.com/events/archive/2013/09/watch-mark-zuckerberg-talk-with-i-atlantic-i-editor-in-chief-james-bennet/279787/
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clicks
I suppose he's gotten slightly better at talking. He seems nervous, but isn't
a complete wreck (see interviews from 2 years ago, he has improved a lot since
then). As I understand it the markets responded well to Zuck's talk with
Arrington and now with Bennet -- fb stock shot up after each of the
interviews. But that doesn't excuse the fact he is a cartoonishly twisted guy
and entrepreneurs and consumers alike should be leery of his every move. Does
he seriously expect people to buy his latest spiel about immigration? This is
the guy who created a political movement that went so far as to fund ads for
oil drilling in arctic national wildlife refuge and putting down Keystone XL
pipelines, so, sorry, I'm not buying that he's in this cause because he met
someone who couldn't attend college because they were illegal immigrants.
Having talked at length with people who knew him in his Harvard days, he's
ruthless, relentless, and rapacious -- he has determined he's going to
approach the immigration issue in the public arena with stories about illegal
immigrants not getting accepted into colleges, and this seems to be the way
he's going at it. Pity. He's the face of a serious issue that warrants genuine
people looking at it with sincerity and good faith, instead we're stuck with
Zuck.

This is the guy who _literally_ called the users of his site "dumb fucks", and
was _literally_ willing -- no, _eager_ to hand over private details of his
site's users to his friends. I ran forums that garnered about 12k users per
month when I was 16, I took the responsibility of safeguarding my users'
private information _very_ seriously.

The only thing that's changed about Zuck is he's learned to not say these
things out loud, play a nice PR game, and meet people and convince them that
he's a nice fella who wants best for everybody and "connect the world!"
through Facebook (no matter if you want to be connected to it or not).

~~~
pg
This comment seemed to me a perfect specimen of the type that drags down
forums: vitriolic and ill-informed. I've hypothesized before that the problem
is not that people make such comments (which seems inevitable if you have
open, anonymous signups) but that others upvote them. So I analyzed the votes
to see if there was a pattern, and indeed there is. The median karma of
upvoters was 644, and the median karma of downvoters was 1814, almost 3x as
high. If this pattern holds up it could be very useful.

~~~
dylangs1030
Correct me if I'm wrong, but if that pattern is sustainably observed, then it
almost certainly means the upvote/downvote privileges should be changed,
correct?

Elsewise, the pattern will continue like entropy, until the majority of
comments are like that.

~~~
nostrademons
There already are certain privileges to karma: you need a certain threshold to
downvote comments at all, and I suspect that thresholds to get onto the front
page are based on the karma of who upvotes your story. (There've been times
where my upvote alone, going from 2 to 3 votes, is enough to get something on
the front page, while many times I've seen new stories with 4-5 points that
don't make it.) I suspect PG is thinking of tweaking the weights,
automatically, until there's enough of a weight to high-karma downvotes to
kill bad comments. You could easily train an SVM or other classifier on some
set good/bad comments and then pull out the coefficients to figure out what
signals should go into weighting point totals.

------
akamaka
pg, I'd love to hear what you found interesting about this interview, because
I never seem to gain much insight by listening to Mark Zuckerberg. He's kind
of like Bill Gates, that way. They're both brilliant guys, but they don't ever
seem to publicly say anything that leaves me with any new knowledge, any spark
of inspiration, or a new perspective on the world.

I have a lot of respect for both of them, and I'm usually very dismissive of
the idea that they don't deserve their success, but this interview really
gives me the impression of a man who got lucky to be where he is, and doesn't
care for much beyond being keeping Facebook secure in its position (and
dipping his toe into humanitarian issues).

Good counterexamples are Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Steve Jobs, or yourself, who
have often surprised and delighted me with whole new ways of looking at
things, and who frequently leave me excited and motivated to go out and strive
to make my work count for more.

Did I miss something important in this video?

~~~
runawaybottle
Mark is younger than everyone on that list, so I'll suggest that it has more
to do with age. Everyone has insight in their respective fields, but I think a
certain level of adversity and time is necessary for one to turn a lot of that
insight into wisdom. Tesla and Spacex almost didn't make it out alive during
the 2008 financial crisis, and I recall Musk mentioning that when it looked
like his two companies would be a failure, he'd wake up with tears on his
pillow.

I think at the moment, Mark is definitely trying to not upset his share price
by saying something that doesn't need to be said. We don't know how he is
internalizing things right now. Hopefully we will get more wisdom from him in
the future, that stuff doesn't just grow on trees.

Gates is pretty interesting from whatever talks/interviews I can remember.

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psbp
I think it's unfortunate that this guy has so much power over technology and,
maybe to a greater extent, society as a whole. I don't know his true
intentions and ethics, but he just seems so disingenuous.

~~~
skrebbel
That's a pretty hard judgment based on, well, nothing.

~~~
sashagim
It's based on how many years the person heard or read about zuckerberg, and
how many years he's spent on earth learning about life. The statement is an
opinion (and is phrased accordingly), and it's based on his or hers unique
perspective of life, in other words - the personality. Don't dismiss that,
it's your biggest asset.

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rattray
I always find it oddly comforting to see how nervous, and frankly awkward,
Mark Zuckerberg can be on stage. I have a fine stage presence but it's somehow
very encouraging that someone so successful can still sport such discomfort
with important skills like public speaking.

~~~
larrys
Being able to be comfortable in front of people is a completely different
skill set. There are 8 year olds that can be comfortable in front of crowds.
There are people that are surgeons that can't get up the nerve to ask for an
upgrade to first class at the airline counter. Or who wouldn't be able to
negotiate down the price of a car. Has nothing to do with their ability to use
a scalpel though.

~~~
rattray
Right, I've just always found it hard to believe the same of an executive. But
your point -- and mine, really -- still stands. Not everything needs to be
perfect. Just the important stuff.

------
msoad
"There are a lot of problems to debug"

Is that normal English or just programmer English?

I am not native speaker so I really don't know. Is "debug" a known word for
public?

~~~
staunch
No, it's not commonly used by non-hackers. I'd guess most people can figure
out what it means given the context, but it's probably not entirely clear.

------
zeckalpha
I was pleasantly surprised by this, with the exception of the question about
the Social Mobile Cloud's ability to Disrupt. Blech.

------
goggles99
_" 11 million people are a lot of people who are being treated unfairly"_
(Speaking of illegal aliens)

Unfairly? Most of these people or their parents snuck into this country,
breaking the law. They knew full well the down side. How is this unfair? Isn't
it more unfair that taxpayers have to pay their medical and education bills?
and no they don't save the average person enough money on produce and services
to make up the difference - this is a lie propagated by the handful of wealthy
persons who actually benefit from their presence.

How can people be so blind?

 _" If you poll the majority of Americans, they want to get something done"_
(speaking on the illegal immigration situation)

Yeah Mark, you know darn well that most Americans want the borders secure,
illegals deported. In other words - The public largely wants the laws of the
country actually enforced (wow what a notion).

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Helianthus
Easy karma, pg.

I mean, you've posted a topic that is guaranteed to provoke the kind of
flamewar you seem to think is counterproductive.

~~~
enko
> Easy karma, pg.

Considering pg can likely award himself arbitrary karma points with a single
SQL statement, I think your assumption of his motives is probably mistaken.

~~~
Helianthus
You mistake my attack. pg is hiding from the fact that the people that made
him rich hate him.

~~~
westicle
I'm all for contrarian viewpoints, but what are you actually adding to this
discussion?

If you want to discuss your fascinating ideas about pg and his motives, why
not start your own discussion thread and see how popular it is, rather than
trying to hijack this one?

~~~
Helianthus
Because I'm taking pot shots, not engaging in full discourse.

