At liberal tech companies, those who disagree on politics say they’re isolated • Hacker News Board

Re: At liberal tech companies, those who disagree on politics say they’re isolated

#381

Post by wasted_intel » Wed, Sep 06, 2017, 4:16 AM UTC

nxsynonym wrote: post #307

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of my saddest friends, at least when it comes to expressing themselves politically, are my liberal friends who have beliefs just a bit outside the left-norm. Things like owning firearms, or support for free speech even when it's ugly. These folks are shunned by both groups. One guy told me once he had friends of 20 years that wouldn't let him in the house when they found out he owned a gun. But the question one…

I identify with your left-of-norm liberal friends. Most of my views sit closer to the middle than either pole - but I can't actually discuss this with any of my "liberal" friends. If I say anything that isn't a complete regurgitation of a leftist facebook meme, I'm suddenly an "alt-right sympathizer" (real quote). It's made it so that whenever politics comes up at all I just check out of the conversation. It's hard b…

Those friends sound kind of terrible. Good friends can have rational, respectful discussions, even if they disagree.

Re: At liberal tech companies, those who disagree on politics say they’re isolated

#382

Post by lancewiggs » Wed, Sep 06, 2017, 4:36 AM UTC

sharemywin wrote: post #234

malmsteen wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

r u kidding ? bush was largely more evil than trump. trump is just randomly going from one to another mostly unconsequential decision. bush went to war, purposefully let torture be instigated (while trump say ok for torture motsly to look tough) and promoted hugh oil conglomerates.. he's also the governor who order the most inmates to be sent to death row Learn to see the difference between talk and action.

your comparing 8 years to 6 months and legislative agenda that's so right wing they can't even get anything passed by their own party.

It's not that it's right wing - it's the general incompetence that is slowing progresss. The scary thing, as an outside observer, would be a vaguely competent extreme right wing president, such as the current VP.

Re: At liberal tech companies, those who disagree on politics say they’re isolated

#383

Post by ikeyany » Wed, Sep 06, 2017, 4:49 AM UTC

justin66 wrote: post #360

koolba wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As someone who falls on the Liberal side of the spectrum, this bothers me more than almost anything else regarding modern day politics. If you fall in line with the "right" (left) side, you are allowed to say any number of disparaging, mean, hateful, or ignorant comments without fear of consequence - as long as it's aimed at the political right-wing. If you mention you are a conservative or hold conservative views,…

> I'd lean towards worse. I don't recall anyone attempting to publicly shame me for not being "conservative enough". I'd wager that most liberals have encountered some version of that. Odd. Just an observation: conservatives in the US have a commonly used name for that - RINO - Republican in Name Only - and there is no equivalent name among liberals.

They're called limousine liberals/champagne socialists.

Re: At liberal tech companies, those who disagree on politics say they’re isolated

#384

Post by flukus » Wed, Sep 06, 2017, 4:53 AM UTC

AndrewDucker wrote: post #25

staticelf wrote: post #3

Honestly, I am not the least surprised. I don't know if anyone is really. Because never before has there been so much hate towards simply holding different opinions. People actively share "if you like x you can remove me as your friend" shit on facebook, companies fire people for expressing their political views and media companies "choose a side" more then ever. And don't tell me Google isn't. Just look at Youtube w…

If someone is "simply holding different opinions" that people should have lesser rights, or be treated differently because of how they were born, then we shouldn't really be surprised that people are upset by that. I'm not seeing hatred towards people for arguing over correct levels of import taxes. I'm seeing it because they're backing politicians who are actively causing harm to real human beings.

> I'm not seeing hatred towards people for arguing over correct levels of import taxes.

I sure am. I think import taxes should be raised so that workers in the western world aren't competing in a race to the bottom with the third world. Somehow over the last few years this has come to mean that I'm a racist, uneducated redneck. The left have abandoned the working class.

Re: At liberal tech companies, those who disagree on politics say they’re isolated

#385

Post by TeMPOraL » Wed, Sep 06, 2017, 7:27 AM UTC

CalChris wrote: post #290

TeMPOraL wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is that judging a person - a sophisticated individual with complex life history and embedded in equally complex environment - by just few bits of information, is a very stupid thing to do in general. There are situations in which you have no other choice, when few bits is all you have to go on and you need to make some decision. But those situations are very rare. In a typical case, such evaluation is just i…

At what point do you judge a person because your litany of examples isn't making any sense. All I'm seeing here is an attempt at equivocation.

I don't?

I judge actions, in context, but I avoid doing even that if I don't know a lot about the actions and the context.

Re: At liberal tech companies, those who disagree on politics say they’re isolated

#386

Post by timthelion » Wed, Sep 06, 2017, 7:57 AM UTC

austenallred wrote: post #108

chrisabrams wrote: post #2

I grew up in Texas but worked in Silicon Valley for a few years. One of the toughest adjustments was going from a small conservative town to a major liberal populace. It was astonishing the number of people who got angry _at me_ for having a different opinion then they did. At one workplace I saw two coworkers get into a fist fight because the liberal was "offended" that the conservative differed on a viewpoint. Go t…

I moved to San Francisco from a small, deeply red town. I'll just say this - I think even that small town would be more tolerant of liberals than I felt when I worked in San Francisco, and I'm not even really that conservative (just economically). The leadership at the company was very reasonable, but the politically active folks terrified me, and didn't just think that those that held conservative viewpoints were mi…

I agree that the west coast left is getting too jumpy with regards to Trump. I'm far left and certainly not a supporter of Trump ( I voted Stein because I felt Hillary to be too wealthy ). Once I mentioned to a family member on the west coast that I thought it was interesting that so many of the smart and kind people in the woodworking community come directly from Trump-land and that it was a paradox that such hateful rhetoric comes from a place that I associate with such intelligence and sharing. And my family member got very angry at me and was unable to continue the conversation.

I find it terrible that when you're only given two options, and both of them suck, choosing one over the other can be seen as such a treason. To me these conversations sound like "You prefer diarrhea to vomiting! I'm never going to sit on your couch again!"

Re: At liberal tech companies, those who disagree on politics say they’re isolated

#387

Post by peoplewindow » Wed, Sep 06, 2017, 8:04 AM UTC

te_chris wrote: post #239

peoplewindow wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're changing the subject. My original assertion was that there's nothing magic about taxes that makes them unusually civil, it's simply that austerity is not an issue in US politics because the government has never tried to balance its budget. I cited the UK as a counter example. You suggested I had never engaged with their arguments because I described them as based in hatred. I proved that my description of thes…

More like: you presented a framing of the argument against austerity as purely being about tax levels, I gently mocked this. You then cited some guardian articles and reasoned that "Politicians that aim for a balanced budget without raising taxes = murderers" was a message. I replied questioning what you thought about what I took as the main message from those arguments: that govt. negligence can occur as a result of…

You conclusively proved that the mere existence of these arguments is offensive to you

No. I realise it may seem this way to someone in the part of the political spectrum you inhabit, where offence is so central to so much, but I never argued or even implied that these views are offensive to me. I do say they're extreme, but extreme views are not inherently offensive. You've picked a fight with a straw man there.

And I'm afraid arguments about austerity are about tax levels. The alternative is tax is borrowing, which is no alternative at all, as eventually that money must be paid back via even higher taxes (to pay the borrowed amount + the interest). You can also do money printing, but that's simply a tax on cash savings by another name.

All arguments about austerity are ultimately arguments about tax incidence.

You also consistently proved that you see yourself as eminently rational

I didn't discuss my own rationality either. Again, you're setting up a straw man and then attacking it. I said I don't share the same axioms as these people without commenting on the rationality of that position (it's possible for two people to disagree on basic axioms without either being irrational).

You keep trying to drag me into an argument about austerity. I have no interest in such an argument. It's much more relevant that Americans realise that the list of 'dangerous topics' that can get people branded evil/kiddie killer/etc is not restricted to race, sex or religion. Tax policy can certainly be included if the Republicans ever actually reach the point of trying to cut government spending.

Re: At liberal tech companies, those who disagree on politics say they’re isolated

#388

Post by mike_hearn » Wed, Sep 06, 2017, 8:18 AM UTC

tristor wrote: post #292

threatofrain wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does conservative mean? Some people say that conservatism includes things like gun rights, support for anti-immigration and lower taxes. As well as Christian values, which for a decade or two, has meant something around abortion, homosexuals, and recently transgenders. What are these viewpoints that are claimed to be conservative in nature? I have read the Texas GOP platform. Is that representative of conservati…

> What does conservative mean? This is a fair question at this point. I would posit answering this and also answering "What does liberal mean?" would be great things to address in high school political science classrooms, however it doesn't seem to be in the curriculum. We've had the better part of 30 years where media pundits have been doing their best to conflate these terms with concepts which are tangential at be…

The book "A Conflict of Visions" is by far the best treatment of this topic I have ever read. It was recommended to me some years ago by an anonymous poster on an internet forum and I am glad he/she did.

It's essentially a generalised theory that explains left/right (liberal/conservative) differences in terms of a single underlying intuition about human nature. Because it's an intuition, you can't alter people's point on the political spectrum through an interesting fact or argument, it's only experience that can change people. And yet he shows how starting from this one basic assumption you can logically extrapolate all conservative and liberal political positions from it, in an entirely rational way.

Re: At liberal tech companies, those who disagree on politics say they’re isolated

#389

Post by peoplewindow » Wed, Sep 06, 2017, 8:20 AM UTC

lern_too_spel wrote: post #340

ubertaco wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See also: Brendan Eich, who was booted from his job at Mozilla because someone went digging to find his personal voting record and found something they didn't like.

Nobody looked into Eich's voting record. Eich donated to a campaign against gay marriage, and donations above a certain threshold are public record. Gay people and people who support civil rights who are strong enough coders to work for Mozilla will easily find employment at any of a number of other Bay Area employers run by people who support them. Mozilla was losing developers[1], and Eich took the reasonable actio…

So someone went looking into the public voting record, presumably to find things they could exploit to get rid of him.

How is this different to what the OP said?

Re: At liberal tech companies, those who disagree on politics say they’re isolated

#390

Post by peoplewindow » Wed, Sep 06, 2017, 8:23 AM UTC

twoquestions wrote: post #334

chrisabrams wrote: post #2

I grew up in Texas but worked in Silicon Valley for a few years. One of the toughest adjustments was going from a small conservative town to a major liberal populace. It was astonishing the number of people who got angry _at me_ for having a different opinion then they did. At one workplace I saw two coworkers get into a fist fight because the liberal was "offended" that the conservative differed on a viewpoint. Go t…

In these instances, context matters a lot. Coworker: "My younger brother was killed in Iraq in 2007." You: "I voted for Bush." I'm sure you can see why Coworker wouldn't be pleased by your statement in this instance. I'm on the Left working at an oil company, so I feel your pain. It helps if you want to talk about these things to shift their Overton window slowly, not to expect tolerance for unthinkable actions right…

I agree with what you say, but your example of context seems to (unconsciously?) reflect your own politics. What if the coworker's brother signed up specifically to go to Iraq because he truly believed in the mission? What if the coworker's family viewed him as an all American hero? In that case, why would the coworker be upset?

Your conversation leading to upset is based in the assumption that the coworker already shares your worldview in regard to the Iraq war. It's one I share too, so I can see why that'd be automatic, but I've met and known people who fought in Iraq. They didn't exactly seem ashamed!