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E Pur Si Muove

blog.samaltman.com

241–250 of 853 posts

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#241
post #212
post #29

California has been ridiculous for as long as I can remember. Come to New York, we have 20 million or so people who don't give a fuck about you and what you do all day as long as you don't clog up the subway stairs. It's quite lovely.

But your work for hire laws suck. Do something on the side while you have a main job, and guess what. By default your current employer owns the code that you wrote! Been there, done that. Never again.

A competent lawyer can fix this if your NY-based employer attempts to put such language in your employment agreement. Speaking from experience several times over.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#242

Of the places I've lived (not necessarily in order): - Deep South (18 years - born + raised) - Boston MA (5 years @ college then job) - NYC (6+ years) - Los Angeles (1yr @ startup) - San Diego (1yr @ startup) - Bay Area (6 years, including 4+ at household name tech company) I found the Bay Area (and SF in particular) to be the most intolerant, rigid and inflexible culture I've ever lived and worked in. I've never enc…

> self-righteous, smug and viscerally hostile attitude to other parts of the country

I'm not sure what this has to do with "political correctness." People being jerks isn't the same as demarcating hate speech and saying that it has no place in public discourse.

I think what happens is that someone will propose something that another constituency worries will have violent outcomes for them, and they push back saying "that's unacceptable." Then the first party gets defensive and says that they're being tone policed instead of engaging with the substance of the complaint. For people like me (white men) this can sometimes be the first time when our presuppositions are challenged, or that we're told that we might not be totally objective, rational observers in a chaotic universe and its very very easy to get defensive.

Further, it's important to understand that people who worry about "PC" as a threat to the free exchange of ideas are actively having their rhetoric coopted by others on the far right who are actively trying to move the overton window into a place where they are able to espouse things like racism in public without backlash.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#243
post #29

California has been ridiculous for as long as I can remember. Come to New York, we have 20 million or so people who don't give a fuck about you and what you do all day as long as you don't clog up the subway stairs. It's quite lovely.

I completely agree, but when I was walking to the train station this morning with a 25F blast of wind going straight through my coat I was actually thinking how great CA would be. :)

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh please. Y'all campaign against San Francisco values. Pelosi is basically a code word for it even though she's from a Baltimore political dynasty. https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=644311... San Francisco values gets repeated by Newt Gingrich, Bill O'Reilly, Hannity, Rush, ... at every opportunity. Sorry to link to Breitbart, but here's Roy Moore ranting on about San Francisco. http://www.breitb…

Why are you associating those douchebags with the south? Newt I get, but aren't the rest of them in NYC? The real divide in this country is rural vs. urban. Cities in the south are plenty progressive, and rural areas in the rest of the country are plenty conservative. I've lived in Boston and Atlanta, and Atlanta is a much more tolerant, friendly place.

Even Newt’s been in the DC machine for decades, he probably doesn’t even watch college football.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#245

Of the places I've lived (not necessarily in order): - Deep South (18 years - born + raised) - Boston MA (5 years @ college then job) - NYC (6+ years) - Los Angeles (1yr @ startup) - San Diego (1yr @ startup) - Bay Area (6 years, including 4+ at household name tech company) I found the Bay Area (and SF in particular) to be the most intolerant, rigid and inflexible culture I've ever lived and worked in. I've never enc…

To add to that as someone who grew up in Dallas, Texas, has lived in what many consider the most "liberal" parts of the U.S., and now back in Dallas (Texas forever); The thing I hear the most from people who have moved to Dallas recently or visiting is "Everyone here is so nice". I hear it all the time. Even work colleges who are in town for business. I heard one say a few weeks ago how nice people are here after somebody waited a little longer holding a door open than what is considered normal.

I guess I've lived here most of my life and it's normal to me. You can literally strike up a conversation without almost anyone random and you won't get a disdained look back.

I think, in Texas at least, don't know about other areas of the south, many people will be surprised from how open people are in the cities. Now, in rural areas... yeah, no promise there. Rural people will love you at first site, but if you mention anything anything that contradicts their bible or the right to have a gun, most likely not. The cities surprise people who visit here though. They were not expecting the acceptance of things they thought everyone in the south was against.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#247
post #192

The most powerful man on earth, Pope Paul V demanded Galileo silence his thoughts on heliocentrism. He was then submitted to the Roman Inquisition, found guilty, and imprisoned for the rest of his life. Somehow this is seen as comparable in Sam's mind to a reasonable debate about ethics (“If people live a lot longer it will be disastrous for the environment, so people working on this must be really unethical”). Quite…

>if you can't find the courage to have a reasonable debate about your ideas..

The problem is that because of growing social polarization reasonable debates are becoming increasingly rare. Hoping to have a reasonable debate with people who are not looking to have a reasonable debate is silly and has nothing to do with courage.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#248

I'm naturally sympathetic to the sentiment, but this post fails to acknowledge, much less address, the major societal changes that have precipitated our current situation. Censorship is a reaction to our society's increasing inability to combat misinformation. Over the last 20 years, a huge, extremely influential right wing media establishment has sprung up. It has clearly demonstrated its ability to convince million…

You're not refuting his point... you're demonstrating it.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#249
post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But your work for hire laws suck. Do something on the side while you have a main job, and guess what. By default your current employer owns the code that you wrote! Been there, done that. Never again.

A competent lawyer can fix this if your NY-based employer attempts to put such language in your employment agreement. Speaking from experience several times over.

If there is no such language in your employment agreement, that is the default arrangement.

I'm not going to bother having to get a lawyer to fix something that shouldn't be a problem in the first place. In California it isn't a problem. I'm firmly convinced that this fact is one of the reasons why Silicon Valley is in California and not New York.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#250
For those not in the know: "E pur si muove" means "And yet it moves", a phrase supposedly uttered under his breath by Galileo after he was coerced into admitting that the Earth does not move around the Sun.
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