Your comment is one of those which I so very much hate about HN, because you already know it's wrong, you're just writing it because you like to argue and insult others.
By this stupid logic, you can never be happy, because there's always someone with more reasons to be happy, while the victims of a serial killer probably had it better off than a child who dies of starvation in Africa.
(Of course, you're a smart person, so I'm sure you're aware of how stupid this line of arguing is.)
You seem to be pretty strongly in support of someone who by all means cheated his employees. If that's the case, I certainly hope future employees have the foresight to do some research on who you are before agreeing to work for you.
You're misrepresenting reitzensteinm's position, which he put clearly: "I don't disagree with the direction of your sentiment, just the magnitude of the word you are using." His comment certainly seems to have been made in good faith even if you disagree with it.
Your tone on other hand is combative and patronizing. The HN guidelines say "When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names," and "Be civil."
I tend to agree with reitzensteinm that we in Silicon Valley should remember how good we have it compared to the rest of the world. Our fortune comes not only from hard work and talent, but from being born in the right decade in a prosperous country.
I was going to comment on reitz' original statement because something was off in the way it was put.
I didn't because every time I went over it and sliced it, there was too much scope to misunderstand what was said.
But there were 2 aspects that I knew were triggers -
1) His underlying assumption that the employees were there for playing the "startup lottery". Firstly this ascribes knowledge of the mind set of the emps. Secondly this ignores the fact that Zynga also was a "safer" firm given its history and at the time, certain prospects.
The employees for that firm which are hurting today aren't necessarily the same as your first batch or second batch hires in an untested startup.
(this is why I didn't comment - there are many ways to slice and dice this further, and suffer from badly drawn edges and subsets)
2) His description of it as startup lottery. The underlying philosophy here on HN, and in most places which discuss startups is strongly merit oriented.
His statement carried the implication that all the discussions so far were eye wash - it was a lottery and people lost, bad luck.
His later clarifications were pretty crucial to explain his context, but I can completely see where he ticked people off.
That's reductio ad absurdum. Yes, taken to an extreme, it stops making sense, but all I'm arguing for is a little perspective on how lucky we are as gifted developers. I might be wrong, but I'm certainly not arguing just for the sake of it.
Your assertion that I support cheating employees just because I didn't explicitly say otherwise is quite insulting, and it's what makes me feel the need to reply to you. I think the deal they got it shitty, and I certainly wouldn't start taking money off the table before my employees could.
I think you're reading an attitude into my comments that just isn't there. I suggest we continue this conversation by email, to avoid polluting HN with what will no doubt be a long thread - mine is in my profile if you'd like to.
I think you're ignoring the role of psychology. I think you do this very explicitly in your first comment:
>some Silicon Valley developers, one of the highest paid professions in one of the highest paid areas of the world, only made a decent salary instead of a fantastic total compensation package?
The relevance of the integrity of the managers to the ways people make decisions that determine the course of their lives is not something to be taken lightly. This applies even if the consequences themselves do not appear to be so dire. There is a distinctly painful feeling that comes along with devoting your life to someone who abuses that. For those familiar with this perception, the idea that you could ignore it is preposterous. From your perspective, whatever it may be, it could beyond your imagination and experience.
You might say this:
>Is it really 'heartbreaking' when someone's 17-year-old cat dies? It's a normal and expected outcome; plus, not only were they lucky enough to afford a pet and keep it in good health, the animal itself hasn't lost much, considering it's limited cognitive capacity.
And yet anyone who has been through or even near this situation would find the argument to be incredibly callous, because the formation of human emotion has so much more to it than simply evaluating one's present situation.
I understand the sentiment that perhaps nobody is entitled to a fantastically large amount of money and that people living what we call the good life are a small minority in the world. However, that just isn't the story here.
Connections between humans are what make society possible. It's reasonable to care when they are abused.
The comment you quote was trying to point out that they will recover from this, and have a fantastic career ahead of them.
It was not meant to be a comment on how it feels today, or to suggest that we shouldn't feel empathy for them because of their future position.
I just meant that in a few years they'll look back on this and laugh, which makes it story much less sad. Do you disagree with that?
Look, I'm coming from the perspective of an outsider. OP seemed to suggest it is heartbreaking to read about Zynga, which is what I was responding to. If one of my close friends was working there, I would absolutely feel a different way.
Similarly, if I read about a kid's cat dying on the internet, it might just make me feel a bit down. When my dog died, heartbroken was exactly how I felt.
I don't know, I kind of read your comment to say that unless you're dying some horrible death you shouldn't be using the word "heartbreaking" to describe the plight of someone. I think it would be heartbreaking for someone to toil away their time with family and friends in the hopes of a payout only to have it blow up in their face. Relationships do die and health does suffer from the strain of some peoples endeavors. While you can say that these programmers and artists brought it upon themselves and took on that challenge, at the same time there is enormous pressure by employers and the culture itself which reinforces the notion of grinding away and sometimes poor work/life balances.
I think it's very hard to define exactly where your slippery slope of perspective begins and ends. Bottom line is that greater injustice is never an excuse for injustice. Neither are acceptable.
Reductio ad absurdum is a valid form of argument and not a logical fallacy. While the argument doesn't prove or disprove anything, it can show inconsistency. For example one person might say "I think taking the middle ground is always a good thing" and one might reply "So the middle ground between Hitler and Stalin is good then?", if the first person were to say "no" he would have exposed an inconsistency in his logic, rendering his first statement all but useless.
While there was a "reductio ad absurdam" in there, it appears that term was used in error. From the rest of the post, the complaint appears to have been about an alleged "straw man argument".
I have no comment on the issue, I just wanted to point out a terminology confusion.
You are both right. My use of the term was in error. I meant to say it was reduced to absurdity while being presented as an inevitable logical conclusion, which is a straw man argument.
Without the straw man, reductio ad absurdum alone is just a tool, not a fallacy, as you say.
By way of being pedantic -- reductio ad absurdum is not a fallacy. Showing extreme consequences by taking assumptions to their conclusions is perfectly valid. That's the whole point of reductio.
I think his point was about the wording, the vocabulary used in the previous comment. I see a lot of hyperbole in HN, and I find the abuse of inappropriate wording revolting (haha, just kidding here). This is probably HN is populated by a lot of very young people whose toughest thing that happened to them so far is to get a bad grade in school or worse to quit college, and who therefore consider that losing a lot of money over something that is nothing but a bet can be heartbreaking.
Using overly emphatic words for not so cruel-bad situations is a bad thing, since you will be at loss for words when something worse happen. That's just a sign of lack of culture. I am not talking about the person who said "heartbreaking" in the first place, just a general observation as to what language is changing into these days.
Commenter is right. It's almost foolish to find this heartbreaking. It could be anger, disgust (though it's not necessary they are always mutually exclusive) but it can certainly not be heartbreaking. Not in this case.
It wasn't like Zyanga kept them working while they were starving and kept them lured all along that they will be fed once Zynga stock booms up.
They always had the chance to jump ship. Esp. with many small/big ships steadily floating around ready to lift them aboard. It was a gamble for the extra cash (read bonanza) and they lost (just the bonanza).
By this stupid logic, you can never be happy, because there's always someone with more reasons to be happy, while the victims of a serial killer probably had it better off than a child who dies of starvation in Africa.
(Of course, you're a smart person, so I'm sure you're aware of how stupid this line of arguing is.)
You seem to be pretty strongly in support of someone who by all means cheated his employees. If that's the case, I certainly hope future employees have the foresight to do some research on who you are before agreeing to work for you.