Comment by eru 8 months ago
> In order to get into Zuckerberg’s position in the first place, you need to have a highly competitive personality type. And competitive people want to win at EVERYTHING, all the time.
Many competitive people want to win, but they want to win the real game, not a rigged version.
The thing Tom Brady is accused of (deflating footballs) is scientifically proven to be a result of the ideal gas law. The NFL admitted they had no idea that was a thing when they levied the accusations at him.
Even if you believe the NFL and it was "more probable than not" that he was "generally aware" of a scheme to deflate the balls, let's not pretend that accusation is even in the same universe as what Bonds and Armstrong did
Perhaps he failed to cheat, but the text messages that came out make it very clear that he attempted to.
Though a far cry from steroids & doping, DeflateGate was found NOT to be explainable by the ideal gas law.
https://web.archive.org/web/20191107043435/https://static.nf...
"we have concluded that it is more probable than not that Jim McNally (the Officials Locker Room attendant for the Patriots) and John Jastremski (an equipment assistant for the Patriots) participated in a deliberate effort to release air from Patriots game balls after the balls were examined by the referee
...
Our consultants confirmed that a reduction in air pressure is a natural result of footballs moving from a relatively warm environment such as a locker room to a colder environment such as a playing field. According to our scientific consultants, however, the reduction in pressure of the Patriots game balls cannot be explained completely by basic scientific principles, such as the Ideal Gas Law, based on the circumstances and conditions likely to have been present on the day of the AFC Championship Game. In addition, the average pressure drop of the Patriots game balls exceeded the average pressure drop of the Colts balls ...
...
Based on the testing and analysis, however, Exponent concluded that, within the range of likely game conditions and circumstances studied, they could identify no set of credible environmental or physical factors that completely accounts for the Patriots halftime measurements or for the additional loss in air pressure exhibited by the Patriots game balls, as compared to the loss in air pressure exhibited by the Colts game balls. Dr. Marlow agreed with this conclusion. This absence of a credible scientific explanation for the Patriots halftime measurements tends to support a finding that human intervention may account for the additional loss of pressure exhibited by the Patriots balls."
>Many competitive people want to win, but they want to win the real game, not a rigged version.
Apply the phrase to the staff member he lost to, and the situation makes sense. The staff member wants to win the real game (of remaining a high-salary Facebook employee), and will throw an otherwise inconsequential game of Catan to maintain that position's security.
The do anything to win mentality often includes bending the rules where they can. Someone listed some top people in their various sports below but I'd include Lebron too. Dude is the best basketball player the world has ever seen at least when considering longevity but he still flops often to get what he wants even though he doesn't need to to win. He's just going to get every edge.
Yes, that is a convenient escape hatch for justifying amoral behavior.
In my personal experience the will to win and the willingness to cheat in general correlates.
There is no real game in the fog of business development. You invent your own and see if it works.
The game of capitalism is to win by any means necessary. Rigging the game and evading the law is part of game itself. All winners play the game this way.
Capitalism is a system that allows people to make wealth based on trade. The winners in this game are the people at the top of the hierarchy. All these type A billionaires are the ultimate winners of the game. Zuck is a winner.
In communism the system says there are no winners. Everything needs to be fair.
There's plenty of exceptions. PR China just after Deng was a good exception, and so was the Soviet Union after Stalin.
But they were only exception in the lame technical sense that you didn't have a single 'guy at the top' in charge, but a sharing of power by eg something like the Politburo.
To be fair, some games effectively to force you to move outside normal set of rules eventually ( ie. Monopoly, when bank money supply dries out ).
> Many competitive people want to win, but they want to win the real game, not a rigged version.
There are far, far fewer of these people than you think. Lance Armstrong was the best, and he cheated to win anyway. Barry Bonds was the best, and he cheated to win anyway. Tom Brady was the best, and he cheated to win anyway.