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Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy

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Re: Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy

#131

Post by newspaper1 »

WalterBright wrote: post #109
newspaper1 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not doxxing, it's posting public information and it's 100% free speech.

It certainly is doxxing (although there is no legal definition of it that I'm aware of). I also wrote that X has the least censorship of any social media platform. If you have to dig down to elonjet, it just affirms my statement. Elon also has legitimate concerns for his safety.

It's public information, it's not doxxing.

> Elon also has legitimate concerns for his safety.

Musk constantly posts racist and violent provocations. Free speech for him, brutal censorship for everyone he disagrees with.

Re: Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy

#132

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

quantified wrote: post #120
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t really understand this perspective? I’m not a small government guy, I think the government ought to play an important role in providing a good regulatory framework and a strong social net. But if someone’s going to have direct power over my life, I’d much prefer a business owner or boss I can freely choose in principle rather than a government official who may not view me as part of their winning coalition.

How do you ever choose your boss at work? Never. Oh, by quitting that job and getting another? That's called "moving" when applied to politics. Which is super unattractive in much of regular life, unless you don't need people.

Most people change jobs much, much more frequently than they move between even states, much less countries. The latest cohorts for which we have full-career data held about 12 jobs over their lifetimes, and job hopping is much more normalized now than it used to be. Obviously it's hard enough that we all have to put up with some frustrations and inconveniences in our career, but it seems like it mostly works out.

For example, I find it very annoying to have to fill out time cards or such, and other people find it very annoying to have any demands whatsoever on their time outside of core working hours. If we had to have a political debate about which is the one true working model, we'd get pretty worked up about it, and if I lost I'd go away bearing a pretty strong grudge about the daily annoyance that was inflicted on me against my will. Instead, there's some companies that do it one way and some that do it the other, and we self-sort between them according to our preferences.

Re: Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy

#133

Post by sjsdaiuasgdia »

WalterBright wrote: post #78
newspaper1 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's one example: https://x.com/PushDemsLeft/status/2085803160342241367

And there it is, posted on X. BTW, if I owned X, I would also not allow pictures of mutilated people or sexual content. The previous incarnation of Twitter did not allow that either, but did censor right wing content and anything that disagreed with Fauci covid policy.

[flagged]

Re: Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy

#134

Post by lelanthran »

bonsai_bar wrote: post #90
hunterpayne wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's true for one specific kind of wealthy person. Specifically those born into it. Its absolutely not true for the self-made. I do have a solution to this. If you haven't paid your own bills with money you earned (no jobs from family) for the last 10 years, you can't run for office. Literally the mayor of Seattle has never paid her own bills and her husband has never worked either. There is no universe whe…

You're making it seem like the mayor is an out of touch nepo baby when she's living a regular life dedicated towards helping others. You may want to get your info from more places than Fox News.

> You're making it seem like the mayor is an out of touch nepo baby when she's living a regular life dedicated towards helping others.

If it's true she has never paid her own bills and her husband has never had a job, then I'd like that sort of regular life.

If she has been paying her own bills or her husband has had a job in his life, then say so.

Re: Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy

#136

Post by epgui »

lisper wrote: post #110
jfengel wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People really don't get how poorly freshman philosophy presents the field. It's not even a survey of an introduction to a prologue. So every passing thought feels like "philosophy".

It doesn’t help that a lot of philosophy is actually bullshit.

Well “a lot” in volume sure, but that feels unnecessarily (maybe ignorantly) dismissive of the core corpus of the field.

Find me any field in which there isn’t “a lot” of BS.

Re: Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy

#137

Post by keeda »

WalterBright wrote: post #45
watwut wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> It has pro-far-right censorship which is something different. Just what is he censoring? I've seen plenty of far-out posts from both the left and right on X.

In this algorithmically recommended world it would be naive enough to think that censorship is as binary as “you can’t say that!” or “now you see it / now you don’t (because we took it down!)” It’s all about the reach these days, i.e. “you can say whatever you want but we control how many people actually see it”:

https://theconversation.com/a-few-weeks-of-xs-algorithm-can-...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/10/29/elon-mu...

Re: Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy

#139

Post by wdr1 »

yoyohello13 wrote: post #25

In the US at least, we've been brainwashed to think that government, by definition, must be bloated, corrupt and inefficient. Believing this axiom, people vote to hand over every possible service to private enterprise. Now we are in a situation where a handful of unelected business men have more power over our lives than the elected government.

> In the US at least, we've been brainwashed to think that government, by definition, must be bloated, corrupt and inefficient.

I don't know that I've been brainwashed, but living most of my life in Chicago & Los Angeles, I've seen a lot of bloat, corruption, & massive inefficiency.

Many of friends lost their homes in the Palisades & Altadena fires. If it weren't tragic, it would be laughable the challenges they've faced in rebuilding. Several have kids about to enter high school. A dilemma they face is should they both building a house for their teenage children or assume they'll be off to college -- knowing it could be 3+ years until they're have a permanent home again.

In Chicago, I watched the mayor sell of all the parking meters for a fraction of their value. In Los Angeles, I'm watching them struggle to complete the people mover at LAX, a project years later & billions over budget.

This doesn't make me anti-government.

I see the need for it & I want it work well.

But comments like this make me frustrated that people would rather close their eyes & try to gaslight people, rather than acknowledge the problems & talk about how we fix them.

I feel our country is split between one side that doesn't want the government to do anything, even when it works, and another side that wants the government to do everything, even when it fails.

It's not clear to me where someone in the middle goes.

Re: Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy

#140

Post by preg_match »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #60
yoyohello13 wrote: post #25

In the US at least, we've been brainwashed to think that government, by definition, must be bloated, corrupt and inefficient. Believing this axiom, people vote to hand over every possible service to private enterprise. Now we are in a situation where a handful of unelected business men have more power over our lives than the elected government.

I don’t really understand this perspective? I’m not a small government guy, I think the government ought to play an important role in providing a good regulatory framework and a strong social net. But if someone’s going to have direct power over my life, I’d much prefer a business owner or boss I can freely choose in principle rather than a government official who may not view me as part of their winning coalition.

The flip of this is that businesses aren't elected, and you have no control over them. If they have a monopoly, then you're 100% fucked, you have no choice.

And realistically, they don't require a monopoly. If there are 1000 competitors but they all have the same evil ideology at the helm, the result is identical. Your choice is now "flee the country".

Except, wait no. Those companies have the entire western world by the balls. Want to avoid extreme surveillance from Google? Maybe there's a forest somewhere you can forage in.

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