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E Pur Si Muove

blog.samaltman.com

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Re: E Pur Si Muove

#271

Post by conanbatt »

xocyabencl wrote: post #106
conanbatt wrote: post #75

I remember being in argentina a couple of years back and seeing the "Political correctness" pro-trump slogan and thinking how dumb that sounded. Moved back to SF, and there is a HUGE difference of what it was for me 5 years ago. The people I know are way more cautious and the people I don't are even more afraid. The Damore essay is still one of the unspeakables. I know I fear getting fired if i publicly said i agreed…

Can you explain your last paragraph further? Obviously saying you agree with something you never read is a bad idea. Since you haven't read it, you don't know how bad it is, right? For all you know it could be Mein Kampf. Or it could just say your boss is an idiot, or that working at your company is a waste of time, etc. Especially as a knowledge worker, ideas you espouse at work could affect your employability, so y…

Godwin's law came fast on this one!

A part of me is uninterested in reading it because I find other topics way more interesting. But a part of me also feels I can't read it. Because if I read it and I agree with it, I will have to balance honesty and integrity with oppression.

All my life I held all my controversial opinions quite openly, but this was the first time I actually fear being controversial.

I'm with Voltaire on this one: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.". A coworker can say something I disagree terribly with, that even could impact my life personally, and would consider it just the way people relate to each other, sometimes its not nice and thats it.

"Moral outrage" on twitter is a ridiculous measure for progress or improvement over people's lifes. It does terrible damage in so many levels. And companies listening to that are just succumbing to their PR and legal department, not striving to an idealistic work environment. Google can be sued for not firing Damore!

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#272

Post by vidarh »

blfr wrote: post #103

We need to accept that some of these ideas ... are inherently dangerous. Maybe but somehow we don't focus on dangerous ideas. Communism is by far the most dangerous idea devised in the west. It infected dozens of societies and led them to a century of poverty, slavery, and hundred million deaths. Yet someone who's open about being a communist won't really be ostracised in SF. Communist flags are available on Amazon.…

That's because most people who take more than a cursory glance sees that there are multiple different ideologies lumped under the same name there, diverse enough that the supporters of some have historically been the most brutal persecutors of supporters of others - Among the millions dead you list are huge numbers of communists that fought against the regimes you complain about, in many cases in open armed conflicts.

Raise more specific ideologies, like Stalinism or Maoism or even Leninism and you will certainly meet a lot more opposition, and rightly so, because many on the left are closest ideologically to victims of the followers of those ideologies. E.g. one thing most people forget about the October "revolution" was that it wasn't a revolution at all, but a coup against the socialist provisional government - it was the Bolsheviks overthrowing the revolutionary socialist/communists and largely Marxist groups that had popular support after the elections to the constituent assembly went against them.

So painting them all with one brush is not just ignorant, but offensive to the many socialists and communists who took up arms, and fought and died to try to stop those regimes.

Your example is pretty much equivalent to complaining about capitalism because various governments allowing some variation of private ownership of capital have committed atrocities.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#273

Post by guelo »

creaghpatr wrote: post #197
guelo wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As if southerners aren't constantly cursing or making fun of "San Francisco values".

People in the south don't think about San Francisco at all. Only the Fox News anchors based in New York but charged with representing the politics of the south care about San Francisco.

People in SF don't think about the south either besides in political discussions.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#274

Post by dmode »

I have no idea what this article was about. As someone who grew up in India, lived extensively in Europe and Arizona before settling down in the Bay Area, and travel to China 2-3 times a year, I find Bay Area by far to be the most open, tolerant, accepting places I have ever lived. And it is not even comparable. And it is borne out by simple stats. People vote with their feet. Bay Area is almost a majority minority area, with equal representations of white folks, south asians, east asians, hispanics (although smaller African American population). This is not a coincidence. This is because people here are naturally accepting of other cultures, view points etc.

And comparing this to Beijing is laughable. When I travel to China, my life is put on hold as you cannot access Gmail, Facebook, Whatsapp and myriad of other mundane websites. I dare not write anything negative about the Chinese government when I am there.

India is also becoming intolerant by the day, where even the though of eating beef can lead of mob lynching or ending up in jail. Even benign things such as a Bollywood movie (Padmavati) is in trouble for imagined cultural threats.

I have lived extensively in Netherlands and Denmark. I love those countries as they are progressive in many ways. Except for the acceptance of a brown man. I don't hold any grudge, it is what it is and it is difficult for such a small country to be open about cultural integration.

I have found Bay Area to be an open community, where no matter you background you just seamlessly integrate. You go to work without thinking how you have to tweak your accent or deep dive in cultural norms to progress through corporate hierarchy (I have done that a lot as a consultant). All it matters is your work and output.

Sure, we have yet to figure out how to approach "tolerance of intolerance", but it will evolve over time and we will arrive at a sweet spot. Many countries have taken a extreme free speech stance on "tolerance of intolerance" - for example, UK allowed one Egyptian preacher to openly preach hatred and violence from the streets of London. Is that a good thing for society ? I am not so convinced.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#275

Post by elsif1 »

amsheehan wrote: post #115
throwaway8766 wrote: post #64

I'm extremely aware of this as someone who is socially conservative in terms of abortion, gay marriage, trans issues, etc (seriously not trying to start a flame war). It's weird knowing that a large portion of the country has similar values to me, but in a major city I can never mention these things or I'll immediately become unemployable. It doesn't matter that these things have zero impact on my behavior at work; y…

What I would take away from that notion is that large is relative. A large portion of the country still has fewer people than New York City. I am of course, not trying to start a flame war either, but my take on it is that those sorts of issues would be inappropriate to bring up at work or in a job interview in the first place, regardless of your position. Based on your description, I believe I probably espouse the o…

If they don't want intolerant people in their ranks though, then what would that make them?

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#276

Post by eduren »

kfcm wrote: post #67

This isn't happening in only SF, or only in tech. It's happening all over, and across the spectrum of ideas. Is the argument that social media is tearing apart our society correct? I think it goes deeper than that, and that it's tech in general. We've grown impatient with right-swipe, immediate communication (whether through texting or calling on a cell phone; remember when you had to find a phone, or wait until you…

The happiest you've been is taking a 7 month road trip vacation? That's not really surprising or novel. Most people feel relaxed, happy and free when they have nothing tying them down (whether or not technology is in the picture).

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#277

Post by xocyabencl »

conanbatt wrote: post #271
xocyabencl wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain your last paragraph further? Obviously saying you agree with something you never read is a bad idea. Since you haven't read it, you don't know how bad it is, right? For all you know it could be Mein Kampf. Or it could just say your boss is an idiot, or that working at your company is a waste of time, etc. Especially as a knowledge worker, ideas you espouse at work could affect your employability, so y…

Godwin's law came fast on this one! A part of me is uninterested in reading it because I find other topics way more interesting. But a part of me also feels I can't read it. Because if I read it and I agree with it, I will have to balance honesty and integrity with oppression. All my life I held all my controversial opinions quite openly, but this was the first time I actually fear being controversial. I'm with Volta…

Godwin's law exists because "something we both agree is wrong" is a useful north star in an argument.

Edit: If someone makes a general claim like "nobody should be fired for agreeing with any text x", it makes sense to test that claim by putting an extreme value in for x.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#278

Post by pmyteh »

dominotw wrote: post #213
pmyteh wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, sorry. You said "results of this debate disagree with you", so I took that to be the debate's results (the vote), not the debate itself. (And as a side point, no to the straw poll question - there are certain statistical guarantees on the representativeness of polls as long as they're drawn from a random sample of the public, with debates about how far you can deviate from a random sample and still have results t…

> Self-selected polls, on the other hand, pretty much mean nothing. Isn't our democracy built upon "self selected polling" , people who chose to go excesrice their right to vote. Its all meaningless?

If few enough people vote, arguably yes (though that's a fairly complex question and depends a lot on what your conception of democracy is). But in essence, an election is a full-population poll: like a random sample with probability 1 of being chosen. So it's statistically maximally valid. We (political scientists) tend to squint a bit and say the opportunity to vote is equivalent to actually voting, so non-voting doesn't harm the legitimacy of elections. I don't personally buy that, but it's a tricky problem to fix.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#279

Post by mintplant »

throwaway34689 wrote: post #148

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…

Okay. I grew up in small town Louisiana, across the street from a swamp, where a baby alligator once crawled up into our ditch. Coming to California, and then to San Francisco, felt like shrugging off a weight I'd never realized I'd been carrying. I think what you're experiencing is value mismatch. When the culture won't bend the way you're used to, it can seem as though it's resistant to bending at all. But you yourself admit that the Bay Area accommodates "people different viewpoints than mine that really expanded my horizons along a lot of different axes". Not that I wouldn't say the same about my birthplace: it's just biased at a different point in the multidimensional space of personality.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#280

Post by Diederich »

throwaway34689 wrote: post #148

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…

> Deep South (18 years - born + raised)

If I may ask, where, more specifically?

I grew up in southern California, and my wife grew up in Columbus, Georgia. We met in the midwest and lived there 15 or so years, and so visited Columbus frequently. For the last 4 months of her dad's life, we lived in Columbus.

We've lived in the SF Bay Area for the past 8 years.

> [SF Bay Area ...] most intolerant, rigid and inflexible culture

I think I know what you're getting at, and I don't necessarily disagree out of hand.

I will say that there is an enormous difference in day to day racial tension in west Georgia compared to the SF Bay Area. In Columbus, from McDonalds to hospitals, there was barely submerged but obvious tension between blacks and whites.

I don't mean this to be a counter to what you're saying, I think it's a different thing.

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