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What Silicon Valley Insiders Think of Peter Thiel’s Speech at RNC

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Re: What Silicon Valley Insiders Think of Peter Thiel’s Speech at RNC

#71

Post by pythia__ »

elgabogringo wrote: post #67
pythia__ wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conversely, if you recognize this, do not let "liberal(ism)" become a thought-terminating cliche for you.

I think I get what you are saying, but not sure. What is liberalism, BTW? Liberalism used to refer to philosophy of English enlightenment thinkers like John Locke and had natural rights as a large part of it's foundation. Today? well... hmmm... What is the intellectual foundation of today's "liberals"?

Not ceding classic liberalism with the word is the point. (Because ceding too much of it puts you at danger of a populist takeover, i.e., "literally Hitler".)

Land explains this better (mentioning Thiel, too) at http://www.xenosystems.net/nrx-and-liberalism/. His thinking there should apply broadly to all non-left (non-)politics.

Re: What Silicon Valley Insiders Think of Peter Thiel’s Speech at RNC

#72

Post by brighteyes »

DominikR wrote: post #60
brighteyes wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a reasonable argument, but some of the facts don't fit it. 7% of tech roles in Apple are black [1], while at Google that figure is just 1%. A 7 times difference is very large. But let's be generous and say that the 1% is 1.5% that was rounded down. The percentage of black tech workers is still almost 5 times higher at Apple than at Google. These are massive companies, not small startups where a single hire ske…

I don't buy it that Google is biased against black people, it's just that Google has more jobs that require a higher education in STEM fields whereas Apple has many people employed in stores and factories. I believe that there are just fewer black graduates in STEM fields from top universities and that's why Google can't hire more of them.

I agree most Google employees are probably not racist against black people.

But they do have a bias similar to the one you just mentioned - they tend to only hire from "top schools". It's true that the top schools tend to produce good people, but it's elitist to think that only they do. Perhaps Apple recruiters look at a broader range of universities, including historically black ones, for example.

Regarding what you said about stores and factories at Apple, those figures were for tech roles, not retail, so that isn't why Apple has 7x more. Although, what "tech" precisely is is not defined by either company, so it's possible there is a significant difference there that we can't see.

Re: What Silicon Valley Insiders Think of Peter Thiel’s Speech at RNC

#73

Post by B1FF_PSUVM »

_delirium wrote: post #61
elgabogringo wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Point awarded. Context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_will_bury_you "Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you!"

"History on our side" is a pretty common phrase, used by people of varying political stripes. A quick Google Books search turns up British MPs using it in the 1940s and George H.W. Bush using it in the 1990s, among others.

It's a bit of ideological poison, extracted from the root of the dialectical materialism tree (aka 'scientific socialism', as defined in the poems of Marx and Engels).

The allegedly scientific basis is that there is an unstoppable march of historical progress, and you should cheer it on and actively lay waste to the obstacles that are going to be swept aside anyway. (Yes, it's a strange creed.)

Re: What Silicon Valley Insiders Think of Peter Thiel’s Speech at RNC

#74

Post by dang »

elgabogringo wrote: post #46

Honestly, this type of thinking is part of the problem. Silicon Valley should be about ideas and innovation, not alignment with some PC racial quota dogma.

Personal attacks are not welcome on HN. Please (re)-read the site guidelines and edit such stuff out of your comments here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12149564 and marked it off-topic.

Re: What Silicon Valley Insiders Think of Peter Thiel’s Speech at RNC

#76

Post by Turing_Machine »

vpribish wrote: post #24
wavefunction wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course there are more than just the coasts.

please cite some examples

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Georgia Tech (okay, that's technically in the east, but it's not what's usually thought of as "East Coast"). UT Austin. University of Wisconsin—​Madison. University of Michigan—​Ann Arbor.

The list could go on. If you want to expand outward a bit, the University of Waterloo in Canada is also quite good.

Re: What Silicon Valley Insiders Think of Peter Thiel’s Speech at RNC

#77

Post by dang »

neom wrote: post #9

Yes, you are totally correct. I love my SF friends are starting to come over to NY, leave the old white men in the valley and burn it down, vive la revolution. ;)

This whole divisive rhetoric thing is exactly what we don't want on HN, so please don't post such stuff here, and especially not with bonus race trolling.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12149564 and marked it off-topic.

Re: What Silicon Valley Insiders Think of Peter Thiel’s Speech at RNC

#78

Post by elgabogringo »

pythia__ wrote: post #71
elgabogringo wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I get what you are saying, but not sure. What is liberalism, BTW? Liberalism used to refer to philosophy of English enlightenment thinkers like John Locke and had natural rights as a large part of it's foundation. Today? well... hmmm... What is the intellectual foundation of today's "liberals"?

Not ceding classic liberalism with the word is the point. (Because ceding too much of it puts you at danger of a populist takeover, i.e., "literally Hitler".) Land explains this better (mentioning Thiel, too) at http://www.xenosystems.net/nrx-and-liberalism/ . His thinking there should apply broadly to all non-left (non-)politics.

Skimmed the beginning, will read the rest later. Liberalism is definitely modern (it's from the enlightenment), it's definitely British (ie. has nothing to do with Rousseau)... I'll have to read more to see why the author thinks it's not political.

I personally like that they are embracing "progressive" more. I think it's more accurate than "liberal" and uniquely theirs.

Re: What Silicon Valley Insiders Think of Peter Thiel’s Speech at RNC

#79

Post by dang »

calibraxis wrote: post #45
yodsanklai wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> leave the old white men in the valley Should I apologize for being old and white?

Depends, have you spent some of that long life fighting for those who don't have your privileges? (Assuming you haven't been unable due to intersecting factors like mental illness or poverty?) Noam Chomsky's an old white man. Doesn't thrill him to spend half his time helping the human race end its wars and self-destruction, but he takes the responsibility. (Even if you did apologize, what difference would it make?)

For a long time, you've been using HN primarily for political purposes. That's not a legitimate use of this site, and we've already asked you to stop doing it.

In addition, many of your comments (like this one) straddle if not cross the line into personal disrespect. That's also an abuse of this site, so please stop doing that too.

Re: What Silicon Valley Insiders Think of Peter Thiel’s Speech at RNC

#80

Post by jackfoxy »

lisper wrote: post #42
elgabogringo wrote: post #41

Silicon valley is increasingly adopting way too much of the PC groupthink as of late. There's absolutely nothing and nobody that is truly disrupting anything. Even the word "disrupting" has become a cliche adlibs fill in the blank for pitching "new ideas". Gone are the middle-class rebels (jobs/clark) that don't care what anybody thinks, in are the ivy-league-ish conformers that want wall street funding and friendly…

> There's absolutely nothing and nobody that is truly disrupting anything It's not for want of trying. http://urbit.org And my own humble efforts in this regard: https://sc4.us

> SC4 is Strong Cryptography (or Secure Communications) for non-technical people.

Even technical people can't be technical about everything. We need useable and ubiquitous.

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