A Soccer Con Man Who Couldn't Play the Game(atlasobscura.com)
atlasobscura.com
A Soccer Con Man Who Couldn't Play the Game
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/soccers-ultimate-con-man-was-a-superstar-who-couldnt-play-the-game
110 comments
Yap saw it. A large company someone new hired. Hung around for about a year, managed to write 100 lines of code. Only 10 were ever accepted after peer review.
However come meeting time, would be very vocal about random technologies -- we'd talk about spawning a process and he'd chime in how you can do this complicated kernel trick with signals, or shared memory and whatnot. At first everyone was impressed. Heck, I was.
After a while nobody saw any results from him though. When came time to show his results he started to claim to have health issues. So was gone for a while.
After a couple of months the manager caught on and kept assigning him different tasks hoping they'd finally find something he's good at. Would get as simple task, yet instead of just doing it, he would re-frame as some complicated theoretical problem, which needed research and the solution needed something like P vs NP solved in order to deliver it. Not sure if someone in the end explicitly told him that "Look Pete, it is a test function, just write the test function. You don't have to solve P vs NP to do it". (Pete is not his real name)
But yeah he was invited to depart, after collected a nice salary for about a year. He's probably at another company now doing the same thing.
However come meeting time, would be very vocal about random technologies -- we'd talk about spawning a process and he'd chime in how you can do this complicated kernel trick with signals, or shared memory and whatnot. At first everyone was impressed. Heck, I was.
After a while nobody saw any results from him though. When came time to show his results he started to claim to have health issues. So was gone for a while.
After a couple of months the manager caught on and kept assigning him different tasks hoping they'd finally find something he's good at. Would get as simple task, yet instead of just doing it, he would re-frame as some complicated theoretical problem, which needed research and the solution needed something like P vs NP solved in order to deliver it. Not sure if someone in the end explicitly told him that "Look Pete, it is a test function, just write the test function. You don't have to solve P vs NP to do it". (Pete is not his real name)
But yeah he was invited to depart, after collected a nice salary for about a year. He's probably at another company now doing the same thing.
Oh man, this brings back memories...
There was this company (shall remain nameless) where the product was always "around the corner". Just one more week or two! Yes it doesn't work right now, but these are minor things, let us iron out the final bugs!
This went on for almost two years.
Leadership being non-technical, they didn't know whether what the "technical team" was telling them is true or not. They couldn't check, but were not idiots, so eventually suspected bullshit. So they hired us as "crisis consultants", to do an audit and put things back on track.
Needless to say, we had to scrap everything. Which, it turns out, was about half a dozen unfinished PHP scripts and some apache configs... the result of ~4 man-years of work!
The main employee squirmed and lied and lashed back during meetings. Not a pleasant experience at all. For anyone involved. When the true horror of the situation became apparent, they had to be let go.
Of course, this "worked out" only because we had the leadership's full backing (they really felt more shameful than angry, on account of their mismanagement), and because we could stand our ground technically. Now what to do if you're a grunt employee, without good access to leadership, observing such bullshit unfold... difficult. Chances are, the bullshitters are better at politics & smooth talking than you are, so confrontations are risky.
There was this company (shall remain nameless) where the product was always "around the corner". Just one more week or two! Yes it doesn't work right now, but these are minor things, let us iron out the final bugs!
This went on for almost two years.
Leadership being non-technical, they didn't know whether what the "technical team" was telling them is true or not. They couldn't check, but were not idiots, so eventually suspected bullshit. So they hired us as "crisis consultants", to do an audit and put things back on track.
Needless to say, we had to scrap everything. Which, it turns out, was about half a dozen unfinished PHP scripts and some apache configs... the result of ~4 man-years of work!
The main employee squirmed and lied and lashed back during meetings. Not a pleasant experience at all. For anyone involved. When the true horror of the situation became apparent, they had to be let go.
Of course, this "worked out" only because we had the leadership's full backing (they really felt more shameful than angry, on account of their mismanagement), and because we could stand our ground technically. Now what to do if you're a grunt employee, without good access to leadership, observing such bullshit unfold... difficult. Chances are, the bullshitters are better at politics & smooth talking than you are, so confrontations are risky.
Similarly, impossibility results in distributed systems theory can act as a pretty good cover. Something along the lines of "You know, in a distributed setting you cannot distinguish node failure from delays in communication. So no, I won't be writing monitoring scripts for this service. They will be useless."
> After a couple of months the manager caught on and kept assigning him different tasks hoping they'd finally find something he's good at.
This is exactly the reaction I'd expect from a good manager. Work the problem and see if you can fix it instead of blaming people for things.
I suppose I'm always willing to give people the benefit of the doubt, but of course only to a point.
This is exactly the reaction I'd expect from a good manager. Work the problem and see if you can fix it instead of blaming people for things.
I suppose I'm always willing to give people the benefit of the doubt, but of course only to a point.
Yes, but not actually a programmer. The guy was hired to be a project manager.
After joining things were as expected but after a few weeks we noticed that he was rarely around after lunch and never around after lunch on a Friday.
We would email him at those times deliberately to catch him out and I recall starting to put sticky notes on his laptop "Came to see you a X time". He would come back and just dump all the notes in the rubbish and claim he never got them. He would often claim to be working from home, despite his laptop being on his desk and usually closed. He would also never responding during those times to email or IM.
A classic seagull manager he would appear when something went wrong, making a lot of noise, writing a lot of emails and then vanishing. He would also be sure to be seen when something was delivered often staying back late on those times.
It got so bad one friend of mine started tracking when he was around and then tracking when one of his relatives died. During his tenure the following incidents occurred,
- Hot water system blew up. 4 times. He had pictures which he would show all the time.
- Uncles, aunts, and various over family members died to the total of 20 individuals.
- Our time tracking him showed him to be in the office less than 15 hours a week on average.
We started to suspect he had a second job and was pulling the same con on them. This was never proved, but we did find someone who had worked with him previously and they reported the same behavior.
The worst thing was it was raised with management at least several dozen times and nothing ever happened. He managed to pull this scam off for 4 years. I could not believe the waste of money this guy was, literally $500,000 burnt on a useless individual.
After joining things were as expected but after a few weeks we noticed that he was rarely around after lunch and never around after lunch on a Friday.
We would email him at those times deliberately to catch him out and I recall starting to put sticky notes on his laptop "Came to see you a X time". He would come back and just dump all the notes in the rubbish and claim he never got them. He would often claim to be working from home, despite his laptop being on his desk and usually closed. He would also never responding during those times to email or IM.
A classic seagull manager he would appear when something went wrong, making a lot of noise, writing a lot of emails and then vanishing. He would also be sure to be seen when something was delivered often staying back late on those times.
It got so bad one friend of mine started tracking when he was around and then tracking when one of his relatives died. During his tenure the following incidents occurred,
- Hot water system blew up. 4 times. He had pictures which he would show all the time.
- Uncles, aunts, and various over family members died to the total of 20 individuals.
- Our time tracking him showed him to be in the office less than 15 hours a week on average.
We started to suspect he had a second job and was pulling the same con on them. This was never proved, but we did find someone who had worked with him previously and they reported the same behavior.
The worst thing was it was raised with management at least several dozen times and nothing ever happened. He managed to pull this scam off for 4 years. I could not believe the waste of money this guy was, literally $500,000 burnt on a useless individual.
Pretty much why FizzBuzz is a thing: https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/
Yep. At my last company we'd ask people to write an integer parser, and a task that required some very basic LINQ - a join, group by, and select.
We saw everything from completely non-functional code, to doesn't handle negatives or signal failures/triply nested for-loops respectively(partial credit OFC), to picture perfect code w/ multiple tests.
Obviously weighted very far to "completely non-functional code". It boggles my mind the amount of "programmers" who literally can't.
We saw everything from completely non-functional code, to doesn't handle negatives or signal failures/triply nested for-loops respectively(partial credit OFC), to picture perfect code w/ multiple tests.
Obviously weighted very far to "completely non-functional code". It boggles my mind the amount of "programmers" who literally can't.
I wish I could give tests like this to my potential co workers as well.
When I was a recent graduate, I was thrown into becoming the lead developer for a product at a startup after my boss left to become a Java dev.
The workload was enough that we needed to hire another developer, so we lined up a couple of people for interviews. As the most senior technical person on the team (with two whole years experience) it fell to me to try and hire someone. I had barely had any technical interviews, let alone interviewed someone, so I did what anyone who read Jeff Atwood's blog would do. I used FizzBuzz.
Then and now, I still feel it's a poor way to judge someone's programming ability. It judges your ability to know the modulus operator above anything else. However, it did seem to weed out most of the people who came for the job. We had people with eight years experience and significant experience in what we did that couldn't get as far as the for-loop. I asked a couple of super basic questions to judge their knowledge (how do you guys deploy code at your current job? difference between a class and an object? etc), and nearly everyone answered these, but FizzBuzz was solved by only one person, even when they were allowed to use any language they want. We ended up hiring this guy, and he's still there (well, at the company they acquired them shortly after I left). We're still friends, and I consider him to be a rock solid developer whom I would hire again.
I've not used it since, but I've worked with a number of developers in the past few years that have walked into a job with nothing more than a CV of impressive words and a memorised list of answers to the kind of questions you see on the first page of a "developer interview questions" Google search. My favoured approach has been a relaxed conversation in a cafe and a task to build something, done either at home or in the office, but I often wonder whether I'd be better off just going back to FizzBuzz.
The workload was enough that we needed to hire another developer, so we lined up a couple of people for interviews. As the most senior technical person on the team (with two whole years experience) it fell to me to try and hire someone. I had barely had any technical interviews, let alone interviewed someone, so I did what anyone who read Jeff Atwood's blog would do. I used FizzBuzz.
Then and now, I still feel it's a poor way to judge someone's programming ability. It judges your ability to know the modulus operator above anything else. However, it did seem to weed out most of the people who came for the job. We had people with eight years experience and significant experience in what we did that couldn't get as far as the for-loop. I asked a couple of super basic questions to judge their knowledge (how do you guys deploy code at your current job? difference between a class and an object? etc), and nearly everyone answered these, but FizzBuzz was solved by only one person, even when they were allowed to use any language they want. We ended up hiring this guy, and he's still there (well, at the company they acquired them shortly after I left). We're still friends, and I consider him to be a rock solid developer whom I would hire again.
I've not used it since, but I've worked with a number of developers in the past few years that have walked into a job with nothing more than a CV of impressive words and a memorised list of answers to the kind of questions you see on the first page of a "developer interview questions" Google search. My favoured approach has been a relaxed conversation in a cafe and a task to build something, done either at home or in the office, but I often wonder whether I'd be better off just going back to FizzBuzz.
I have a "simple" problem where a piece of code somebody "wrote this morning" doesn't work. Its about thirty lines, has a pretty print harness and well defined inputs and outputs - it normally takes a competent programmer about 15 minutes to solve in an interview setting (less than five outside).
What absolutely shocked me when I first started using it is that it normally takes them 10 minutes for them to decide to insert any form of debugging code, and many try and not talk to me - despite introducing the problem as "a quick debugging task which we hope will show your willingness to talk problems over".
Of course the man that took the biscuit was the one who, after I introduced the problem boldly stated "This is obviously a complex problem. If I had more time I would be able to solve it for you". No.
What absolutely shocked me when I first started using it is that it normally takes them 10 minutes for them to decide to insert any form of debugging code, and many try and not talk to me - despite introducing the problem as "a quick debugging task which we hope will show your willingness to talk problems over".
Of course the man that took the biscuit was the one who, after I introduced the problem boldly stated "This is obviously a complex problem. If I had more time I would be able to solve it for you". No.
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Just at the last job, I was hired at the same time as another 'senior' guy. It took me all of 2 hours in the job to realize he was completely incompetent.
I requested a meeting with the director, and explained to him that despite being very new in the job, I suspected the guy was indeed completely incompetent, didn't have any experience of what we were working on and that me being an expert, it was pretty easy for me to realize he didn't know anything about what he was talking about. I emailed him proof that he had at least lied about the work he had done on a task... But the guy still managed to survive the first 3 months, so was 'hired'...
I told the director that I couldn't work with him at all, as I thought he was just a hindrance -- I emailed several times detailed reports to show he was completely incompetent at programming, and was just lying about stuff he did do....
The guy still stayed 18 months in the company, and he eventually left by himself.
After he left, I inherited his 'work' and proved in about 20 minutes that he had completely faked a demo he had done of a feature he was supposed to work on... The code wasn't there at all, they had been conned.
Thing is, said guy probably picked up some extra lingua to put into his CV for the next 'job' he'll go into...
I requested a meeting with the director, and explained to him that despite being very new in the job, I suspected the guy was indeed completely incompetent, didn't have any experience of what we were working on and that me being an expert, it was pretty easy for me to realize he didn't know anything about what he was talking about. I emailed him proof that he had at least lied about the work he had done on a task... But the guy still managed to survive the first 3 months, so was 'hired'...
I told the director that I couldn't work with him at all, as I thought he was just a hindrance -- I emailed several times detailed reports to show he was completely incompetent at programming, and was just lying about stuff he did do....
The guy still stayed 18 months in the company, and he eventually left by himself.
After he left, I inherited his 'work' and proved in about 20 minutes that he had completely faked a demo he had done of a feature he was supposed to work on... The code wasn't there at all, they had been conned.
Thing is, said guy probably picked up some extra lingua to put into his CV for the next 'job' he'll go into...
> How many of you have not worked with someone whom you suspected of not being able to program, despite being paid to do so?
I haven't, and I don't understand how people like that get and retain jobs without having some other "in" to exploit the system.
I haven't, and I don't understand how people like that get and retain jobs without having some other "in" to exploit the system.
It's especially common when they used to work at a "famous" company.
Some real world examples: in the mid-2000s being a "Googler" was a straight pass by some to thinking you were some wizz-bang amazing programmer. Because Google only hired the best and brightest, right?
Then you work with some of them and realize they they were nothing more than a smart college kid who got lucky with who hired them and were terrible programmers. They were juniors at best, but now with the ego of RMS.
The same happened for a while with "Game Producers" from Zynga, when they were riding high and had a better reputation. The trouble was that Zynga had a policy of rapid promotion so you got "Producers" and "Studio Leads" who couldn't last 5 minutes outside of Zynga. That wasn't always the case, but it happened enough that it actually became something of a black mark in the industry.
Some real world examples: in the mid-2000s being a "Googler" was a straight pass by some to thinking you were some wizz-bang amazing programmer. Because Google only hired the best and brightest, right?
Then you work with some of them and realize they they were nothing more than a smart college kid who got lucky with who hired them and were terrible programmers. They were juniors at best, but now with the ego of RMS.
The same happened for a while with "Game Producers" from Zynga, when they were riding high and had a better reputation. The trouble was that Zynga had a policy of rapid promotion so you got "Producers" and "Studio Leads" who couldn't last 5 minutes outside of Zynga. That wasn't always the case, but it happened enough that it actually became something of a black mark in the industry.
So basically you just hire people with stellar-looking resumes. When has that ever been a good idea?
Never said it was a good idea but it's shockingly common. Also passing an interview isn't hard. Especially if you know the right terminology and are personable.
It's the day to day on the job tasks where the lack of skill becomes really apparent.
It's the day to day on the job tasks where the lack of skill becomes really apparent.
> I don't understand how people like that get...
Their resume is so good. They worked at top companies. Nobody wants to insult them with some simple test of programming basics during interview, so they rather ask them what was it like working in the Big Companies. After some chit-chat, they get the job. The company thinks they're lucky to have hired someone that smart.
> ...and retain jobs
Inertia, lack of communication inside the company, etc. Those people are usually also very friendly and soon learn who reports to whom and how to hide the fact that they aren't contributing anything useful.
Their resume is so good. They worked at top companies. Nobody wants to insult them with some simple test of programming basics during interview, so they rather ask them what was it like working in the Big Companies. After some chit-chat, they get the job. The company thinks they're lucky to have hired someone that smart.
> ...and retain jobs
Inertia, lack of communication inside the company, etc. Those people are usually also very friendly and soon learn who reports to whom and how to hide the fact that they aren't contributing anything useful.
> Their resume is so good. They worked at top companies. Nobody wants to insult them with some simple test of programming basics during interview, so they rather ask them what was it like working in the Big Companies. After some chit-chat, they get the job. The company thinks they're lucky to have hired someone that smart.
So, bad processes and cultish worship of certain companies.
> Inertia, lack of communication inside the company, etc. Those people are usually also very friendly and soon learn who reports to whom and how to hide the fact that they aren't contributing anything useful.
So, more bad processes.
I know my responses are bordering on flippant, but having come up from the real engineering world I don't see how these things happen for any reason other than companies in this industry are not run nearly as well as their management thinks.
So, bad processes and cultish worship of certain companies.
> Inertia, lack of communication inside the company, etc. Those people are usually also very friendly and soon learn who reports to whom and how to hide the fact that they aren't contributing anything useful.
So, more bad processes.
I know my responses are bordering on flippant, but having come up from the real engineering world I don't see how these things happen for any reason other than companies in this industry are not run nearly as well as their management thinks.
Maybe they hired some managers who can't manage, but interview well and have a lot of experience managing at top companies?
Dual response to you and raverbashing, since you both express the same concept:
Having non-technical management interview and assess technical hires is a serious process error. If you are hiring someone, regardless of what it is for, and you task someone with evaluating that candidate in an area the interviewer knows little to nothing about you have screwed up royally and need to fix your process. I haven't seen that happen in a real engineering company, at least not for technical roles.
Having non-technical management interview and assess technical hires is a serious process error. If you are hiring someone, regardless of what it is for, and you task someone with evaluating that candidate in an area the interviewer knows little to nothing about you have screwed up royally and need to fix your process. I haven't seen that happen in a real engineering company, at least not for technical roles.
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I don't get this. Even when I interview people I am going to report to, I grill them on technical questions.
Managers are usually the less technically inclined at certain companies. They don't know what to ask and they don't care
former js coworker: "i cant populate that dropdown with the results of an ajax request because everything is 'async' in javascript"
Current co-worker, a contractor, on a remote project wrote 1000+ lines of JS to load a JSON file in Node (he didn't realize he could just require it).
On the other hand, if it worked, he could write a JSON parser, which most programmers cannot do.
I could forgive anyone for not knowing about requiring json files in node. It is kind of arcane.
But 1000 lines?
But 1000 lines?
var x = JSON.parse(fs.readFileSync('filename.json'));Huh neat I actually didn't know that.
There must be something missing to that story. Even the most asinine way I can imagine doing that would be 50 lines max.
Did he try to write a complete JSON parser from scratch?
Did he try to write a complete JSON parser from scratch?
While playing with Node as someone new to JS at the time, I wrote some code to load a JSON file due to not knowing I could require it... and it was vastly less than 1000+ lines.
On a similar basis, I once worked on a codebase where someone had implemented strftime, poorly, a few different ways, and also come up with several replacements for strptime, all of which had subtle bugs and none of which worked the same.
On a similar basis, I once worked on a codebase where someone had implemented strftime, poorly, a few different ways, and also come up with several replacements for strptime, all of which had subtle bugs and none of which worked the same.
Both of your examples describe people who can code.
Given only the information you provided, I would hesitate to mock them, for fear they might make something really cool.
Given only the information you provided, I would hesitate to mock them, for fear they might make something really cool.
Though strftime is in ISO C, so there is little excuse, strptime is a POSIX function, so there is at least the possibility of a credible portability argument there. (Though this probably doesn't stretch far enough to justify the lack of an #ifdef to select the system's strptime if it is provided.)
In this particular case the application was already quite POSIX-dependent in other ways, but it's a good point to make -- I did hesitate before deciding on it for that reason, now that you remind me.
To add additional details, for those who might draw amusement and/or wisdom: In all cases the input/output date/time strings had the same format. Further, a number of the bugs were due to half-implemented reinventions of atoi being involved -- and atoi was definitely available, as one of the reinventions used it! Finally, in at least one case there was a Y2100 problem.
To add additional details, for those who might draw amusement and/or wisdom: In all cases the input/output date/time strings had the same format. Further, a number of the bugs were due to half-implemented reinventions of atoi being involved -- and atoi was definitely available, as one of the reinventions used it! Finally, in at least one case there was a Y2100 problem.
To be fair, I'd reroll atoi too - but only once, with "sufficient" unit tests (e.g. round trip unit tests for INT_MIN..INT_MAX), and only because atoi has no proper error checking nor wchar_t* variants.
Indeed; atoi in fact invokes undefined behavior in out of range situations; you can only safely use it when the input has been lexically analyzed to be a valid integer of only so many digits as not to overflow.
I'd tend to make this re-rolled atoi a wrapper around strtol/wcstol.
I'd tend to make this re-rolled atoi a wrapper around strtol/wcstol.
> atoi in fact invokes undefined behavior in out of range situations
Ouch! TIL. You'd think by now I wouldn't be surprised by such things, and yet, somehow I was...
Ouch! TIL. You'd think by now I wouldn't be surprised by such things, and yet, somehow I was...
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I was such a guy for a while.
I actually can program, and implemented some stuff in that company (moving the whole codebase from svn to git and educating everyone, for example). But then I got into depression because of family issues, and just couldn't write a single line of code for an entire month. I kept giving excuses, inventing all kind of bullshit to cover it, and felt even more depressed because of it — so when they finally fired me, I was relieved.
Now when I see guys who're doing this all the time, I can't help but imagine what's going through their head all the time and in what an awful state they must be in.
I actually can program, and implemented some stuff in that company (moving the whole codebase from svn to git and educating everyone, for example). But then I got into depression because of family issues, and just couldn't write a single line of code for an entire month. I kept giving excuses, inventing all kind of bullshit to cover it, and felt even more depressed because of it — so when they finally fired me, I was relieved.
Now when I see guys who're doing this all the time, I can't help but imagine what's going through their head all the time and in what an awful state they must be in.
> And gets credit for it.
You let him get credit for 7 years?
You let him get credit for 7 years?
When you're in the trenches, it's often hard to know what's being presented externally.
This applies to the startup scene.
I have seen it first hand, someone managed to convince a few investors who were old and not very quick thinking that they should invest in his company.
The product idea was just awkward and made up. It was as if someone is given a 5 minute task to quickly think of a startup idea.
But he was a good smooth talker, so millions of dollars later down the drain, with a private office in the Valley, he can now claim he was a serial entrepreneur, CEO, mentor. He'd go to all meetups and give talks. Would publish a blog post here and there so he was also an "author".
Every time he was asked to present his product or asked when it was going to be shipped, he'd claim he saw this trendy technology at a meetup (last was some container thing) and claimed he needed to rewrite his stack using that to go "faster". That lasted for close to 5 years.
People claim it was a failure. I claim it was a major success for him. He's probably off to the next adventure. Not bad overall. Ride the hype and you'll make it!
I have seen it first hand, someone managed to convince a few investors who were old and not very quick thinking that they should invest in his company.
The product idea was just awkward and made up. It was as if someone is given a 5 minute task to quickly think of a startup idea.
But he was a good smooth talker, so millions of dollars later down the drain, with a private office in the Valley, he can now claim he was a serial entrepreneur, CEO, mentor. He'd go to all meetups and give talks. Would publish a blog post here and there so he was also an "author".
Every time he was asked to present his product or asked when it was going to be shipped, he'd claim he saw this trendy technology at a meetup (last was some container thing) and claimed he needed to rewrite his stack using that to go "faster". That lasted for close to 5 years.
People claim it was a failure. I claim it was a major success for him. He's probably off to the next adventure. Not bad overall. Ride the hype and you'll make it!
I totally see this not only in the startup scene but life in general! in every trade there is a charlatan that will fake mastery of the skills needed to succeed.
I have definitely seen this happening as well. Being the hype and cool factor of startups, wantrepreneurs are sprouting everywhere. It is usually easy to spot them, all talk and nothing to show.
What a choice of words. Being old should is not the cause of being swindled. Maybe inexperienced which is aggravated by being old as you should have more experience.
Bit the same for quick thinking. Learned quick thinking many times result in sloppy thinking.
So maybe the investors were just not fit to be investors at what ever age?
Bit the same for quick thinking. Learned quick thinking many times result in sloppy thinking.
So maybe the investors were just not fit to be investors at what ever age?
> What a choice of words. Being old should is not the cause of being swindled. Maybe inexperienced which is aggravated by being old as you should have more experience.
Sorry it did sound bad the way I put it. But I've know the group of people for 10 years or so and have seen decline in their decision making in that time. It might not be true in general but it seemed like it was true there.
At some point they stopped following technology. So someone friendly and smooth talking who knows how to throw some technical / startup terms came and took their money. They also thought of thesmelves as little Mark Cubans or Marc Andreessens. Someone knowing how to play to that image was well positioned to trick them.
Sorry it did sound bad the way I put it. But I've know the group of people for 10 years or so and have seen decline in their decision making in that time. It might not be true in general but it seemed like it was true there.
At some point they stopped following technology. So someone friendly and smooth talking who knows how to throw some technical / startup terms came and took their money. They also thought of thesmelves as little Mark Cubans or Marc Andreessens. Someone knowing how to play to that image was well positioned to trick them.
...yeah, lets pretende Alzheimer and every other brain disease directly related to age doesn't exist.
Just quit a job working for a guy exactly like that. He worked it for three years, and he damn well might make it last longer. In my case we had a fully working product. You could have sold the fuck out of it but instead we always needed a different UI. Instead he spends his time playing on the company card at the bar or spending his time on every local interest group board. All while "payroll glitches" left the only people working unpaid. It's sick.
It's hard to believe that no rumors were circulated among the players or coaches of different teams, or at least, they were never strong enough for a single person to investigate seriously. Especially with the amount of money they must have been paying for nothing.
Although I guess if the fans are happy, the money is well spent...?
Although I guess if the fans are happy, the money is well spent...?
I wouldn't be surprised to learn that he earned little or no money from most of his clubs, posing as an injured player desperately hoping to resurrect his career who was willing to train with them on a contract structured mostly on a pay-as-you-play basis. I suspect his limitations as a footballer were slightly exaggerated too: Brazilian Wikipedia records him as having made 15 appearances for Fluminense, one of Brazil's bigger clubs, at one stage of his career. As for the fans, I doubt many of them cared about or even knew the name of a free transfer signing in the reserve squad.
That theory doesn't fit with the narrative that well, but if there's one thing we know for sure about him it's that he knows how to spin a good story to the media.
That theory doesn't fit with the narrative that well, but if there's one thing we know for sure about him it's that he knows how to spin a good story to the media.
Perhaps Carlos's greatest con was persuading the world he was a great conman.
Not sure if the Wikipedia page is true; it has no reference for the 15 appearances, as far as I can tell. Globo[1] says he only lasted a week in Fluminense.
[1] http://globoesporte.globo.com/futebol/noticia/2011/05/briga-...
[1] http://globoesporte.globo.com/futebol/noticia/2011/05/briga-...
Globo seems to credit Ronaldo Torres with unmasking him as a fraud at both Botafogo and Fluminense...
Separating the reality from the fantasy is difficult when the sources from the period can't be relied upon: the Globo article also includes an clipping from a Brazilian newspaper - presumably written by one of his journalist friends - discussing him being the top scorer in the French third tier in 86/7! Which I'm pretty sure he wasn't. Various accounts of him as a footballing charlatan have this stint in France as a brief year in the middle of his career or an extended stint in its twilight; have his career begin as a promising teenager or as a 23 year old socialite. Attempts to total up his career appearances seem to agree he played in around 30 first team matches for professional clubs but disagree about whether these were only overseas or mostly in Brazil
Above all, even in the internet age you can see why some of his taller stories might have been believed...
Separating the reality from the fantasy is difficult when the sources from the period can't be relied upon: the Globo article also includes an clipping from a Brazilian newspaper - presumably written by one of his journalist friends - discussing him being the top scorer in the French third tier in 86/7! Which I'm pretty sure he wasn't. Various accounts of him as a footballing charlatan have this stint in France as a brief year in the middle of his career or an extended stint in its twilight; have his career begin as a promising teenager or as a 23 year old socialite. Attempts to total up his career appearances seem to agree he played in around 30 first team matches for professional clubs but disagree about whether these were only overseas or mostly in Brazil
Above all, even in the internet age you can see why some of his taller stories might have been believed...
Agreed. Playing on a 2nd division French team is not indicative of a brilliant con.
Also, some of the information in the article strains credulity: Without balls to practice with, the team was restricted to doing a physical training session. They had no balls to train with?? I've seen some down-and-out footballers, and somebody always had an extra ball or two in the car.
Also, some of the information in the article strains credulity: Without balls to practice with, the team was restricted to doing a physical training session. They had no balls to train with?? I've seen some down-and-out footballers, and somebody always had an extra ball or two in the car.
"Without balls to practice with..."
...because he had just kicked them all into the stands. I think the point was, he kicked the balls away so he wouldn't be embarrassed in front of his new fans.
...because he had just kicked them all into the stands. I think the point was, he kicked the balls away so he wouldn't be embarrassed in front of his new fans.
The players that are mentioned at the beginning of the article were very big shots, incredibly good and powerful players. They would basically run their teams. Romario, one of the greatest forwards of all time was known for "owning" the team. He, not the coach, would say who would play and who would be on the bench. Any antagonist would soon be fired or negotiated to other team.
And these guys most certainly knew he was a fraud. If i recall correctly, they outright admitted so in the brazilian articles I read about his guy. They just didn't care because he was part of the gang.
And these guys most certainly knew he was a fraud. If i recall correctly, they outright admitted so in the brazilian articles I read about his guy. They just didn't care because he was part of the gang.
Reminds me the story of the con man who tried to buy the Islanders. People were told he was rich and just believed whatever terrible excuse he came up with about why he didn't have the money. "If he wasn't rich how'd he make it this far? Surely someone must've checked"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Spano
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Spano
It might of been like, when he was starting out, no one really cared to look, after he was famous, anyone who noticed anything would of just assumed it was a stint of bad luck, otherwise he wouldn't be famous!
Repeat con men thrive on their victims being too embarrassed to publicly call them out.
I'm not talking about publicly calling anyone out. I'm surprised the coaches and players on teams taking him in didn't hear enough rumors from the coaches and players on the teams he was leaving to make them suspicious enough to investigate his ability themselves (or even watch him work the ball for more than a few seconds).
Even then, coaches wouldn't want to fess up being hoodwinked. Looks bad!
[deleted]
There's an emperor looking for his new clothes too..
Reminds me a little of Ali Dia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Dia
Might not have been a con as such, but amusing none the less.
Might not have been a con as such, but amusing none the less.
Reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Keane
Wow - in reading about Walter Keane, I came across this old Life magazine article about his wife... but then I noticed all the OTHER articles in this magazine and I can't believe all the amazing stuff being written about here: a new AI bot from MIT and Stanford, the World Trade Center being built in NYC, computerization of India, Korea starting to manufacture semiconductors, and more... WOW: https://books.google.com/books?id=2FMEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA56-IA1#v...
At the lower tiers of the professional game, Brazilian footballers have an advantage in foreign markets because their nationality has a kind of soccer mystique. I can't find the exact quote, it was from an agent, saying it was easier to place a mediocre Brazilian than a brilliant Mexican (Somewhere in the book "Futebol: The Brazilian Way of Life" by Alex Bellos). I know my local (second, third, maybe nth) tier professional team were very proud of three Brazilians, apparently obtained as a job lot. They came complete with single word names etc. After watching them play I was pretty sure the aquisition strategy was to pick three random twenty something dudes off the street of Sao Paulo or similar! These guys are sure to be good enough to play professionally in New Zealand right! To be fair one of the three could play and he made a decent career in Wellington. Daniel was his name if I remember correctly.
It looks like this guy took some advantage of this "Brazilian factor", although it hardly explains his stints at huge clubs like Botafogo etc. in Brazil itself!
It looks like this guy took some advantage of this "Brazilian factor", although it hardly explains his stints at huge clubs like Botafogo etc. in Brazil itself!
Interesting that the article is almost a section by section copy of his Wikipedia page.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Kaiser_(footballer)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Kaiser_(footballer)
Somehow fitting...
You see this everywhere. I saw this in school. Some kids got good grades but really knew jack shit. The grades were a result of memorizing, cheating, plagiarizing assignments, great rapport with professor and TA, great recommendations.
All this and now, working at top tech company.
All this and now, working at top tech company.
Wow that's wild.
I guess it's nice to learn that despite technology opening up the doors to so many other cons, it also closes the doors to some older avenues. I'd venture a guess that the former significantly outweighs the latter, which is too bad, but oh well.
I guess it's nice to learn that despite technology opening up the doors to so many other cons, it also closes the doors to some older avenues. I'd venture a guess that the former significantly outweighs the latter, which is too bad, but oh well.
It's surprising that he wasn't uncovered through player stats. If a newspaper headline hints about someone's scoring ability, wouldn't a few people get curious and look up the actual stats in some soccer almanac to see how good it is. Maybe that data wasn't easy to come by. In any sport that supports a national stats-gathering bureaucracy, that would be hard to get away with. E.g. baseball in the USA: you know everyone's "batting average" and so on. (Not to mention that when players are traded, the teams or clubs have access to this info!)
Replace Soccer with pretty much anything and you can find similar examples. Yes, even in the IT field
My favorite of all is the story of Elmyr de Hory who was the greatest art forger of all time. Something like $60million or more worth of fake art sold in his lifetime? Some of his Picasso's and others they say still hang in museums too afriad to admit they are fakes.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elmyr_de_Hory
Orsen Welles did a great movie on him and fakery in general - http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gIVgUjj6RxU
The question of who are the real fakers in the art world, the forger or the critics who are duped and swear that a painting is authentic.
The tragedy of Elymr was that he was a great painter but no one cared for his original works and he was much more successful as a forger. The same for Clifford Irving, ironically, who wrote Elymr's biography.
Irving wrote a fake biography of Howard Hues or something along those lines.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elmyr_de_Hory
Orsen Welles did a great movie on him and fakery in general - http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gIVgUjj6RxU
The question of who are the real fakers in the art world, the forger or the critics who are duped and swear that a painting is authentic.
The tragedy of Elymr was that he was a great painter but no one cared for his original works and he was much more successful as a forger. The same for Clifford Irving, ironically, who wrote Elymr's biography.
Irving wrote a fake biography of Howard Hues or something along those lines.
There are some stories where reality surpass fiction. In addition to this, I found the story of Frédéric Bourdin to be hard to beleive yet real. The 2012 documentary The Imposter tells the story in an astounding way: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1966604/
This reminds me of Elmyr de Hory. I watched him one of Orson Wells last movies "F for Fake" and I have no idea what to make of it.
Any chance this piece itself is a fake?
(Asking for a friend, as they say.)
(Asking for a friend, as they say.)
At risk of being called overly-PC, I must point out that the opening sentence is could be seen as objectifying women:
>Brazilian soccer star Carlos Kaiser had it all: exclusive contracts with popular teams, money, fame, and women.
I normally don't point out things like this, because hyper-sensitivity to things that are often considered "offensive" when they really aren't can be annoying. But I can't see how to interpret this other than "women" being a possession.
To be fair, the author isn't likely being malicious, and I think he just means that he's receiving the attention of lots of women. Such attention is, arguably, an "object" in the sense of a commodity in the social marketplace ("that guy has a lot of women" is often seen as a compliment whether you like it or not). But still, I'm surprised at how much the author's choice of words bothered me. I don't even identify as a feminist in the traditional sense....shrug.
>Brazilian soccer star Carlos Kaiser had it all: exclusive contracts with popular teams, money, fame, and women.
I normally don't point out things like this, because hyper-sensitivity to things that are often considered "offensive" when they really aren't can be annoying. But I can't see how to interpret this other than "women" being a possession.
To be fair, the author isn't likely being malicious, and I think he just means that he's receiving the attention of lots of women. Such attention is, arguably, an "object" in the sense of a commodity in the social marketplace ("that guy has a lot of women" is often seen as a compliment whether you like it or not). But still, I'm surprised at how much the author's choice of words bothered me. I don't even identify as a feminist in the traditional sense....shrug.
Whilst I have friends I don't own them. I endeavour to obtain more friends, and I judge people as to whether they would be the kind of friend that I want - short or long term.
To describe somebody as 'having' women is often accurate and useful - I do not see why this should be penalised.
Now what does confuse and upset me is the way in which we rarely describe women as being able to have lots of men - the slut problem.
Enjoying regular sex and really exploring it, like any other hobby, seems incredibly reasonable. Hoping to enjoy lots of sex sounds like something anybody should want, and I don't see why this is limited as a descriptor for men only.
In short, pretty much everybody likes a good fucking - why are we afraid to say it?
To describe somebody as 'having' women is often accurate and useful - I do not see why this should be penalised.
Now what does confuse and upset me is the way in which we rarely describe women as being able to have lots of men - the slut problem.
Enjoying regular sex and really exploring it, like any other hobby, seems incredibly reasonable. Hoping to enjoy lots of sex sounds like something anybody should want, and I don't see why this is limited as a descriptor for men only.
In short, pretty much everybody likes a good fucking - why are we afraid to say it?
>Now what does confuse and upset me is the way in which we rarely describe women as being able to have lots of men - the slut problem.
We do describe women, in a positive way, as being able to have lots of men -- we just call them suitors. We correctly identify that having lots of men that want to marry you is a rare gift, and that having lots of women that want to have sex with you is a rare gift. Having casual sex with a lot of men is not a difficult feat to achieve, so why would you expect anyone to glorify anyone for being able to do it?
We do describe women, in a positive way, as being able to have lots of men -- we just call them suitors. We correctly identify that having lots of men that want to marry you is a rare gift, and that having lots of women that want to have sex with you is a rare gift. Having casual sex with a lot of men is not a difficult feat to achieve, so why would you expect anyone to glorify anyone for being able to do it?
So you recognize the inequality inherent in the situation. This is exactly why being sensitive to objectification of women is important for fighting gender inequality! The reason society praises men getting sex is because women are / have been historically treated in part as objects of pleasure / things to be won / conquests. Brides are literally given away at weddings. Women's suffrage in the US came after slaves.
Once the "object" is "defiled" it is shamed, but the men are not defilable because they're not objects! They can't be defiled because it's not their job to be objects for others. Like, if I sleep in a set of sheets, and then you go to sleep in the sheets, you might say the sheets are defiled. But in no world do you say either of us are defiled. Society currently treats women like bedsheets, to put it lightly.
Women are only praised for getting "suitors," so people who ask them to be their girlfriends, and people who ask them to marry them. But if you follow that model, women have no agency. There's no agency in waiting for men to ask. Again, they're just objects.
And people take this all as normal?! That a man having sex never treats the man as an object of pleasure, but as a taker of pleasure? And women are just pleasure-giving commodities? That's exactly the problem.
I don't think people care that much about what they're praised for, but more that they are seen as whole people instead of objects without agency.
Once the "object" is "defiled" it is shamed, but the men are not defilable because they're not objects! They can't be defiled because it's not their job to be objects for others. Like, if I sleep in a set of sheets, and then you go to sleep in the sheets, you might say the sheets are defiled. But in no world do you say either of us are defiled. Society currently treats women like bedsheets, to put it lightly.
Women are only praised for getting "suitors," so people who ask them to be their girlfriends, and people who ask them to marry them. But if you follow that model, women have no agency. There's no agency in waiting for men to ask. Again, they're just objects.
And people take this all as normal?! That a man having sex never treats the man as an object of pleasure, but as a taker of pleasure? And women are just pleasure-giving commodities? That's exactly the problem.
I don't think people care that much about what they're praised for, but more that they are seen as whole people instead of objects without agency.
>So you recognize the inequality inherent in the situation.
Yes, I think the inequality inherent to the relationship between men and women will inevitably result in people being impressed by certain accomplishments when done by men and other accomplishments when done by women.
>The reason society praises men getting sex is because women are / have been historically treated in part as objects of pleasure / things to be won / conquests.
Don't you think it has more to do with the fact that it's difficult to convince a lot of women to have sex with you?
>Once the "object" is "defiled" it is shamed, but the men are not defilable because they're not objects!
If it turns out that either A) women having casual sex is bad for society or B) women having the sorts of personality traits that lead them to have lots of casual sex is bad for society, is shaming not an appropriate tool to improve society? As far as defiling goes, do you believe that sex has the same effect on women that it has on men and that the sort of personality traits that cause a woman to seek out sex with men other than a life partner are the sort of personality traits that men find desirable in life partners?
Yes, I think the inequality inherent to the relationship between men and women will inevitably result in people being impressed by certain accomplishments when done by men and other accomplishments when done by women.
>The reason society praises men getting sex is because women are / have been historically treated in part as objects of pleasure / things to be won / conquests.
Don't you think it has more to do with the fact that it's difficult to convince a lot of women to have sex with you?
>Once the "object" is "defiled" it is shamed, but the men are not defilable because they're not objects!
If it turns out that either A) women having casual sex is bad for society or B) women having the sorts of personality traits that lead them to have lots of casual sex is bad for society, is shaming not an appropriate tool to improve society? As far as defiling goes, do you believe that sex has the same effect on women that it has on men and that the sort of personality traits that cause a woman to seek out sex with men other than a life partner are the sort of personality traits that men find desirable in life partners?
Don't you think it has more to do with the fact that it's
difficult to convince a lot of women to have sex with you?
is shaming not an appropriate tool to improve society
do you believe that sex has the same effect on women that
it has on men and that the sort of personality traits that
cause a woman to seek out sex with men other than a life
partner are the sort of personality traits that men find
desirable in life partners?
Generalizing about the effects of sex on men vs women is pointless; sex means something different to every person and affects every person differently.
>This statement depends on who you are. Attractive males and females both get more sex than unattractive ones.
It's difficult in the sense that not a lot of people can do it.
>It's bad for society to oppress classes of people based on their gender (discrimination). Shaming people for their gender in the name of "improving society" is pretty ludicrous.
Why is it "ludicrous" for society to discourage women from engaging in certain behaviors, if it turns out that it's bad for society if women engage in those behaviors? That sounds eminently reasonable to me.
>What I believe is that people (but mainly men) should not look for sex toys as life partners.
Should they not look for chaste women as life partners, if it turns out that marriages to chaste women end up being the most successful? Should society not then encourage women to be chaste, if society cares about how many marriages end up being successful?
>Generalizing about the effects of sex on men vs women is pointless; sex means something different to every person and affects every person differently.
Why is it pointless? If casual sex tends to have some particular effect on men and some other effect on women, or if it turns out that the sort of personality traits that lead a woman to engage in casual sex tend to be different from the sort of personality traits that lead a man to engage in casual sex, why is it not reasonable for men to treat women who have casual sex differently from how women treat men that have casual sex? If the effect of casual sex on women tends to make them less desirable life partners in the opinion of men, why is it not reasonable for men to discourage women from engaging in casual sex if those men are primarily interested in long term relationships?
It's difficult in the sense that not a lot of people can do it.
>It's bad for society to oppress classes of people based on their gender (discrimination). Shaming people for their gender in the name of "improving society" is pretty ludicrous.
Why is it "ludicrous" for society to discourage women from engaging in certain behaviors, if it turns out that it's bad for society if women engage in those behaviors? That sounds eminently reasonable to me.
>What I believe is that people (but mainly men) should not look for sex toys as life partners.
Should they not look for chaste women as life partners, if it turns out that marriages to chaste women end up being the most successful? Should society not then encourage women to be chaste, if society cares about how many marriages end up being successful?
>Generalizing about the effects of sex on men vs women is pointless; sex means something different to every person and affects every person differently.
Why is it pointless? If casual sex tends to have some particular effect on men and some other effect on women, or if it turns out that the sort of personality traits that lead a woman to engage in casual sex tend to be different from the sort of personality traits that lead a man to engage in casual sex, why is it not reasonable for men to treat women who have casual sex differently from how women treat men that have casual sex? If the effect of casual sex on women tends to make them less desirable life partners in the opinion of men, why is it not reasonable for men to discourage women from engaging in casual sex if those men are primarily interested in long term relationships?
Why is it "ludicrous" for society to discourage women from
engaging in certain behaviors, if it turns out that it's bad
for society if women engage in those behaviors? That sounds
eminently reasonable to me.
Should they not look for chaste women as life partners, if
it turns out that marriages to chaste women end up being
the most successful? Should society not then encourage
women to be chaste, if society cares about how many
marriages end up being successful?
You also fail to define successful marriage: you could mean if they successfully rear children, or you could mean they are happy long term, or you can mean any other number of things. To encourage systemic behavior on poorly defined things like this leads to people getting hurt. In this case, it means women not having the same rights as men. And not only that: men with what are considered more feminine characteristics sometimes suffer similar consequences. Feminism is a misnomer; gender equality benefits both men and women because gender is not a binary and all men are not the same and all women are not the same.
You keep saying "if x turns out to y" but we don't have such data. Either say something or don't, that's why it's pointless. I think you'll find that there are actually no hard and fast rules like the ones you say we should consider may be the case, and that people actually occupy a very diverse spectrum. As such social policy should be as permissive as possible to avoid hurting classes of people not considered the "majority."
>It's ludicrous because saying we should decide social policies based on generalizations of groups of people is a bad idea. Replace women with any group: LGBT, people of color, poor people, foreigners, etc.
We don't let foreigners vote because, generally speaking, their interests are less closely aligned with the best interests of the country compared with citizens. Should we let foreigners vote now?
Certain racial minorities tend to come from poorer backgrounds, so we mandate that they receive certain advantages in hiring and college admissions and so on. Should affirmative action be ended?
Why is it necessarily a bad idea to base social policies on generalizations of groups of people? If the generalizations are correct, why is it automatically bad to take them into account when deciding policy? In what other circumstance is it a good idea to discard correct information when making decisions?
>Society should care about the rights of the individual to freedom and happiness to live their lives: equally, without regard to gender.
We all sacrifice some of our freedoms to make society a better place. Why should society not be allowed to take gender into account when making policies, if gender is actually relevant to the policy?
>You also fail to define successful marriage:
Generally speaking I mean they produce children that become productive members of society.
>To encourage systemic behavior on poorly defined things like this leads to people getting hurt.
Ignoring facts also leads to people getting hurt.
>You keep saying "if x turns out to y" but we don't have such data.
I'm not going to bother getting into specifics because it sounds to me like you wouldn't change your mind even if I provided such data. It sounds to me like you believe it's morally wrong in and of itself to hold men and women to different standards, even if there is good reason to do so.
>I think you'll find that there are actually no hard and fast rules like the ones you say we should consider
You're saying there is no statistical relationship between, say, the amount of casual sex people have and any other statistic that society has an interest in increasing or decreasing?
We don't let foreigners vote because, generally speaking, their interests are less closely aligned with the best interests of the country compared with citizens. Should we let foreigners vote now?
Certain racial minorities tend to come from poorer backgrounds, so we mandate that they receive certain advantages in hiring and college admissions and so on. Should affirmative action be ended?
Why is it necessarily a bad idea to base social policies on generalizations of groups of people? If the generalizations are correct, why is it automatically bad to take them into account when deciding policy? In what other circumstance is it a good idea to discard correct information when making decisions?
>Society should care about the rights of the individual to freedom and happiness to live their lives: equally, without regard to gender.
We all sacrifice some of our freedoms to make society a better place. Why should society not be allowed to take gender into account when making policies, if gender is actually relevant to the policy?
>You also fail to define successful marriage:
Generally speaking I mean they produce children that become productive members of society.
>To encourage systemic behavior on poorly defined things like this leads to people getting hurt.
Ignoring facts also leads to people getting hurt.
>You keep saying "if x turns out to y" but we don't have such data.
I'm not going to bother getting into specifics because it sounds to me like you wouldn't change your mind even if I provided such data. It sounds to me like you believe it's morally wrong in and of itself to hold men and women to different standards, even if there is good reason to do so.
>I think you'll find that there are actually no hard and fast rules like the ones you say we should consider
You're saying there is no statistical relationship between, say, the amount of casual sex people have and any other statistic that society has an interest in increasing or decreasing?
We don't let foreigners vote because, generally speaking,
their interests are less closely aligned with the best
interests of the country compared with citizens. Should we
let foreigners vote now?
Now, treating foreigners poorly because you think they're poorer or stupider than you or that their culture is inferior is why we have a lot of hate in the world -- that's an example of society choosing behavior / shaming based on generalization. And clearly that's not a good thing.
Certain racial minorities tend to come from poorer
backgrounds, so we mandate that they receive certain
advantages in hiring and college admissions and so on.
Should affirmative action be ended?
And so the same is with society: we should err on the side of respect and open-mindedness rather than trying to shoehorn everyone into boxes / classifications of our own imagination.
We all sacrifice some of our freedoms to make society a
better place. Why should society not be allowed to take
gender into account when making policies, if gender is
actually relevant to the policy?
Generally speaking I mean they produce children that become
productive members of society.
Ignoring facts also leads to people getting hurt.
In the world you propose, people can say "well statistics show they have higher divorce rates or children make less when they grow up" and use that as a reason to shame gay marriage. And in that world you'll fail to account for the myriad of reasons why that's a flawed notion.
Even if statistics show something, it doesn't mean we should act on it. We don't always know why things are and the various causes, so as soon as you try to blame it on poorly-defined blurry groups such as race and gender, you begin to encroach upon irrational territory. Basing decisions off intractable data is terrible.
I'm not going to bother getting into specifics because it
sounds to me like you wouldn't change your mind even if I
provided such data. It sounds to me like you believe it's
morally wrong in and of itself to hold men and women to
different standards, even if there is good reason to do so.
I think of law and society norms as being a shitty x-dimensional linear classifier, and people y-dimensional points, where y >>> x. This is where my disdain for your "data" arises: where you assert you can say some facts for "all women vs all men" and I'm saying you just can't. As far as reason goes, burden of proof is on the hypothesis.
Statistics also can be interpreted with a high degree of variability. So even if my premise was incorrect, and you did "have the data," we'd have to have a conversation about how you're interpreting it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operationalization
^ Turns out with most things regarding people we cannot directly measure / find metrics. Instead we have to satisfy ourselves with operationalizations. So yeah, forgive my skepticism when you claim to have enough data to know the effects of gender norms on societal health when you haven't even done step 1, defining how these things are measured and accounting for confounders.
You know what you can measure? Suffering. You can talk to women and people of color and realize that there are systemic flaws that really hurt people. And you can act on that data, because it's not abstract. You can be kinder.
You're saying there is no statistical relationship between,
say, the amount of casual sex people have and any other
statistic that society has an interest in increasing or
decreasing?
Equality for all people regardless of gender, ethnicity, or sexual orientation, is an ideal. If you don't believe in it, we're going to disagree, because it speaks to the core of what we feel is "good for society" or a "good society." If you think of life as an optimization problem, you can think of sum(ideals) as the objective function.
A good society to me is one in which everyone has the same civil liberties to life and happiness. Physical life is not fair (you may be born with a disease and I may not, born rich vs born poor, etc) but that doesn't stop us from saying that fairness is a virtue worth pursuing where we can. Do we at least agree on that?
>s/generally speaking/very specifically speaking/r. Foreigners don't live here and don't pay taxes. That is clear-cut, unlike gender. This is not an accurate analogy.
In the US, there are millions of permanent residents who live here and pay taxes but can't vote. Should they be allowed to?
>Clearly we should seek the most accurate classification and base policy on that.
The accuracy of the classification system is not the only concern. At the very least, the cost of classifying individuals will always be a factor.
>Are you saying women should sacrifice being treated as people with agency to make the world a "better place" ?
Do we not all sacrifice some of our freedoms to make the world a better place?
>Better for who?
Future generations.
>I won't agree with that and you wouldn't have data to support it.
It doesn't matter if the data exists or not; your ideology has told you a priori that it can't exist.
>Furthermore, assuming that you can know all the facts leads to people getting hurt.
In what other cases are we held to this high standard, that we must know all of the facts before we can take action? All we can ever do is use the facts we have to make reasonable guesses about what policies we should have. You seem to have made up your mind that it's fundamentally impossible to gather enough facts for us to know that not holding different genders to different standards will hurt people more than holding different genders to different standards.
>For example, many in society used to say homosexuals can't raise children as well as straight couples
What is the point in this anecdote, other than to suggest that because people who disagreed with you once used statistics wrong, other people who disagree with you cannot use statistics correctly?
>Even if statistics show something, it doesn't mean we should act on it.
Then what should we act on? What your feelings tell us?
>poorly-defined blurry groups such as race and gender
Gender is not blurry for the vast majority of people.
>where you assert you can say some facts for "all women vs all men" and I'm saying you just can't.
I've asserted no such thing, nor do I think any such thing. If you believe I have said such things, then you haven't been paying attention, and this discussion cannot possibly be useful to anyone. I have always spoken about women in general and men in general, understanding fully that what I'm saying does not apply to every single woman or every single man.
>Equality for all people regardless of gender, ethnicity, or sexual orientation, is an ideal.
It's not the only ideal, by any means, and the relative importance of that ideal is a matter of personal opinion.
>worth pursuing where we can. Do we at least agree on that?
It sounds to me like, for you, "where we can" means "irrespective of any other concern". I can't agree with that.
In the US, there are millions of permanent residents who live here and pay taxes but can't vote. Should they be allowed to?
>Clearly we should seek the most accurate classification and base policy on that.
The accuracy of the classification system is not the only concern. At the very least, the cost of classifying individuals will always be a factor.
>Are you saying women should sacrifice being treated as people with agency to make the world a "better place" ?
Do we not all sacrifice some of our freedoms to make the world a better place?
>Better for who?
Future generations.
>I won't agree with that and you wouldn't have data to support it.
It doesn't matter if the data exists or not; your ideology has told you a priori that it can't exist.
>Furthermore, assuming that you can know all the facts leads to people getting hurt.
In what other cases are we held to this high standard, that we must know all of the facts before we can take action? All we can ever do is use the facts we have to make reasonable guesses about what policies we should have. You seem to have made up your mind that it's fundamentally impossible to gather enough facts for us to know that not holding different genders to different standards will hurt people more than holding different genders to different standards.
>For example, many in society used to say homosexuals can't raise children as well as straight couples
What is the point in this anecdote, other than to suggest that because people who disagreed with you once used statistics wrong, other people who disagree with you cannot use statistics correctly?
>Even if statistics show something, it doesn't mean we should act on it.
Then what should we act on? What your feelings tell us?
>poorly-defined blurry groups such as race and gender
Gender is not blurry for the vast majority of people.
>where you assert you can say some facts for "all women vs all men" and I'm saying you just can't.
I've asserted no such thing, nor do I think any such thing. If you believe I have said such things, then you haven't been paying attention, and this discussion cannot possibly be useful to anyone. I have always spoken about women in general and men in general, understanding fully that what I'm saying does not apply to every single woman or every single man.
>Equality for all people regardless of gender, ethnicity, or sexual orientation, is an ideal.
It's not the only ideal, by any means, and the relative importance of that ideal is a matter of personal opinion.
>worth pursuing where we can. Do we at least agree on that?
It sounds to me like, for you, "where we can" means "irrespective of any other concern". I can't agree with that.
In the US, there are millions of permanent residents who
live here and pay taxes but can't vote. Should they be
allowed to?
The accuracy of the classification system is not the
only concern. At the very least, the cost of
classifying individuals will always be a factor.
Do we not all sacrifice some of our freedoms to make
the world a better place?
Future generations.
The status quo for women blows.
In what other cases are we held to this high standard,
that we must know all of the facts before we can take
action?
What is the point in this anecdote, other than to
suggest that because people who disagreed with you once
used statistics wrong, other people who disagree with
you cannot use statistics correctly?
Then what should we act on? What your feelings tell us?
Gender is not blurry for the vast majority of people.
>where you assert you can say some facts for "all women vs all men" and I'm saying you just
can't.
I've asserted no such thing, nor do I think any such thing.
Should they not look for chaste women as life partners,
if it turns out that marriages to chaste women end up
being the most successful?
Why is it "ludicrous" for society to discourage women
from engaging in certain behaviors, if it turns out
that it's bad for society if women engage in those
behaviors?
if it turns out that the sort of personality traits
that lead a woman to engage in casual sex tend to be
different from the sort of personality traits that lead
a man to engage in casual sex, why is it not reasonable
for men to treat women who have casual sex differently
from how women treat men that have casual sex?
I have always spoken about women in general and men in
general, understanding fully that what I'm saying does
not apply to every single woman or every single man.
It's not the only ideal, by any means, and the relative importance of that
ideal is a matter of personal opinion.
It sounds to me like, for you, "where we can" means "irrespective of any other concern". I can't
agree with that.
And it's OK to say a theoretical is unlikely. You can theorize that aliens are watching our every move, or that god exists, and I can't refute that, but it doesn't make me irrational to be skeptical. You make it sound like there's possibly a point where subjugating women might be good for the human race as a whole...but good luck finding well-scoped proof of that, that's just crazy.
I haven't proposed anything impractical now, have I? If everyone were more respectful of one another the world would be a better place, can we agree on that? In lieu of data that would say it's good for society for some people to be deprived of their rights, is it not OK to choose a sane default action (ideal, if you will)?
> Women had fewer votes than slaves.
Incorrect. When slavery was legal, women had zero votes in and slaves had zero votes.
Presumably, you are confusing the 3/5 compromise -- by which slaves contributed to the representation of the states in which they were held -- with giving "votes" to slaves, but that's not correct (it just gave more power in federal government to the states in which they were held.) But, not only is that not correct, but since women were constitutionally "free persons" despite not being granted voting rights, they were counted as full -- not 3/5 -- people for representation. So if you are counting their contribution to their states representation as "votes" (which is, again, wrong) they would have more than slaves, not less.
Incorrect. When slavery was legal, women had zero votes in and slaves had zero votes.
Presumably, you are confusing the 3/5 compromise -- by which slaves contributed to the representation of the states in which they were held -- with giving "votes" to slaves, but that's not correct (it just gave more power in federal government to the states in which they were held.) But, not only is that not correct, but since women were constitutionally "free persons" despite not being granted voting rights, they were counted as full -- not 3/5 -- people for representation. So if you are counting their contribution to their states representation as "votes" (which is, again, wrong) they would have more than slaves, not less.
Cool. Thanks for correcting me on this, TIL.
That said, this does not invalidate and I still stand by my point.
That said, this does not invalidate and I still stand by my point.
To describe somebody as 'having' women is often accurate
and useful - I do not see why this should be penalised.
The language makes women sound like they are possessions.
I argue that it is correct to do so.
Firstly I show how being grammatically in possession of something is not derogatory:
> I have friends
I then argue that this usage is in fact desirable
> To describe somebody as 'having' women is often accurate and useful
Which is followed by stating that I also consider the language to be one sided
> Now what does confuse and upset me is the way in which we rarely describe women as being able to have lots of men
So when you ask whether I can see that someone might find this language offensive I can only say "evidently". And when you state that we don't see women being described as having men I refer you to my earlier dismay. And when you state that the syntax of the language makes it look like women are possessions I wholeheartedly agree.
Can you see that removing reference to "a persons ability to access sexual gratification" is detrimental to the expressiveness of the language?
Firstly I show how being grammatically in possession of something is not derogatory:
> I have friends
I then argue that this usage is in fact desirable
> To describe somebody as 'having' women is often accurate and useful
Which is followed by stating that I also consider the language to be one sided
> Now what does confuse and upset me is the way in which we rarely describe women as being able to have lots of men
So when you ask whether I can see that someone might find this language offensive I can only say "evidently". And when you state that we don't see women being described as having men I refer you to my earlier dismay. And when you state that the syntax of the language makes it look like women are possessions I wholeheartedly agree.
Can you see that removing reference to "a persons ability to access sexual gratification" is detrimental to the expressiveness of the language?
Firstly I show how being grammatically in possession of
something is not derogatory:
That is just what I meant. Justifying the usage as accurate and useful and grammatically correct doesn't take away from the point that someone can conceivably, justly, take offense to the language. It's valid for someone to feel the one-sidedness and inequality inherent to the statement.
Can you see that removing reference to "a persons ability
to access sexual gratification" is detrimental to the
expressiveness of the language?
I understand how people take offense at this. However I am saying that their offense is misplaced and the call for action validates the censorship of womens sexual desires.
I think you understand this, we just sit wanting different things. To my mind you are calling for the censorship of mens sexual desires to match.
In regards to finding a better way for the author to have said it, I imagine simply replacing 'women' with sex would be both more explicit and absent of trigger words.
I think you understand this, we just sit wanting different things. To my mind you are calling for the censorship of mens sexual desires to match.
In regards to finding a better way for the author to have said it, I imagine simply replacing 'women' with sex would be both more explicit and absent of trigger words.
the call for action validates the censorship of womens
sexual desires
Women are an underprivileged group right now, and nobody's "calling for censorship." I'm just asking for kindness. Is there anything wrong in hoping that people can be more kind?
There are many offensive things we avoid saying in general. It's not new, and it's not different to ask that people respect one another.
Do you consider fame be a possession, even though it exists entirely in the mind of others?
Are you saying the author is being unfair on the average footballer by implying that they objectify women? :)
In the context, I would take "[he had] women" to be shorthand for "[he had] sexual access to women he thought desirable". Maybe that commodifies them, but this probably reflects the attitude of a young Brazilian footballer more than it reflects the attitude of the author.
Why is this downvoted? Can someone explain? If you disagree with this assessment maybe respond with rationale rather than disagreeing by downvote.
If you object to the relevance of this, you may be wise to consider there are female readers on HN and be gently reminded that the software community has a diversity & inclusiveness problem.
I must point out that the opening sentence is could be
seen as objectifying women
If you object to the relevance of this, you may be wise to consider there are female readers on HN and be gently reminded that the software community has a diversity & inclusiveness problem.
Probably because this thread has a very good chance of becoming an off-topic flamewar.
(I didn't downvote, by the way.)
(I didn't downvote, by the way.)
Good point. I agree that it'd probably have become a flamewar and sucked. But also I wish it stayed at a low positive vote count, instead of being grayed out like it was an invalid opinion.
I find this story very hard to believe or grossly exaggerated. I mean this is soccer we're talking about, not brain surgery. If you plucked a random reasonably healthy person who had never seen a soccer ball in his/her life off any street in America say, and put them in a pro club with a contract and daily training with other pros, that person would probably become a reasonably good soccer player. Was it really harder for him to just, well you know, play than to fake it for 20 something odd years?
Apparently you are completely unaware of just how highly skilled they players are at this level. If anyone could do it they would, it's a highly desirable career.
This is correct. Football is "our thing" in the UK. Even in high school, some kids just had a knack for it and could run rings around everyone. There was no amount of training you could do to catch up to them. None of these kids went on to play professional football - they weren't good enough.
Here's a description of an ex colleague of mine:
- Asked me after 7 years about whether a system existed that could tell you the state of the code at a given time. You know, because it's inconvenient saving different versions in separate files.
- Can't do anything other than changing literals without breaking it.
- Can't tell you what the difference between an object and a class is.
- Pretends his job is higher level than coding.
- Since he can't do anything, goes to meetings explaining how he's the architect behind it all. And gets credit for it.