Hm, I wonder how this evidence should cause us to shift our beliefs.
At first I was thinking that it shifts towards non-disparagement not being too bad. I don’t think it’s intuitively an obviously terrible thing. And thinking about YC, I get the sense that they actually do want to Be Good. And that, if true, they wouldn’t really stand for so many YC-backed companies having non-disparagement stuff.
But then I remembered to be a little cynical. Over the years, I feel like I’ve seen YC companies do a bunch of unethical things. In such a way that I just don’t think YC is policing its companies and pushing very hard against it. Although, I do think that people like Paul Graham do actually want the companies to Be Good. But anyway, I think that regardless of how YC feels about it, they wouldn’t really police it, and so the observation that tons of YC-backed companies have this clause doesn’t really shift my beliefs very much.
A very general point about how we are supposed to update in a complex system:
Evidence that a company you trust uses these should cause you to update BOTH slightly more towards “this isn’t too bad,” and slightly more towards “YC companies, and this company in particular, are unethical.”
(Though one of those updates might be a lot smaller than the other, if you’ve e.g. already thought about one of those topics a lot and reached a confident conclusion.)
Hm, I wonder how this evidence should cause us to shift our beliefs.
At first I was thinking that it shifts towards non-disparagement not being too bad. I don’t think it’s intuitively an obviously terrible thing. And thinking about YC, I get the sense that they actually do want to Be Good. And that, if true, they wouldn’t really stand for so many YC-backed companies having non-disparagement stuff.
But then I remembered to be a little cynical. Over the years, I feel like I’ve seen YC companies do a bunch of unethical things. In such a way that I just don’t think YC is policing its companies and pushing very hard against it. Although, I do think that people like Paul Graham do actually want the companies to Be Good. But anyway, I think that regardless of how YC feels about it, they wouldn’t really police it, and so the observation that tons of YC-backed companies have this clause doesn’t really shift my beliefs very much.
A very general point about how we are supposed to update in a complex system:
Evidence that a company you trust uses these should cause you to update BOTH slightly more towards “this isn’t too bad,” and slightly more towards “YC companies, and this company in particular, are unethical.”
This is formally correct.
(Though one of those updates might be a lot smaller than the other, if you’ve e.g. already thought about one of those topics a lot and reached a confident conclusion.)