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E Pur Si Muove

blog.samaltman.com

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Re: E Pur Si Muove

#311

Post by creaghpatr »

Diederich wrote: post #280
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…

>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.

Probably because Columbus GA is 45% black and San Francisco is only 6.4% black. Hard to have black/white tension when one of those groups comprises such a small percent of total population.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#312

Post by Aron »

> "If people live a lot longer it will be disastrous for the environment"

This one has been around FOREVER but he was surprised to hear it this year? doubtful. I think Sam actually picked safe examples for his contrarian essay. e.g Notably absent Damore.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#313

Post by UncleEntity »

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.…

> Yet someone who's open about being a communist won't really be ostracised in SF. Communist flags are available on Amazon. Communist subreddits are not banned. So no, I don't buy this new wave of censorship as a defence against dangerous ideas.

Try flying a rebel flag off your SF apartment balcony. Or even something not as inciteful like saying you support the current sitting president.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#314

Post by hsod »

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…

I think the use of the word "tolerance" here muddies things.

To the extent that tolerance is a virtue, it refers to tolerating other people for what they are, not what they do. There are gray areas here of course, but there are plenty of places where that distinction is clear.

I don't think political tolerance is inherently virtuous. If a coworker tells me they don't think women are suited for technical work then I don't feel any moral obligation to be "tolerant" of that viewpoint.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#315

Post by Cshelton »

maxerickson wrote: post #298
Cshelton wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I'm saying there is a difference between Dallas, Austin, Houston, San Antonio and the rest of Texas, like rural east and west Texas. I think you have to compare apples to apples here. San Fran to Dallas/Houston/etc. You can't compare rural west Texas to San Fran or the rural wine country around SF to Dallas.

I understood what you meant, I was wondering if you noticed that you, as a self-proclaimed open-minded Houstonite, made a broad brush stereotype about "Rural people".

Well, I didn't say it definitively. But I suppose you can say that. But this whole thread is one giant stereotype to begin with, so yeah. From my observation is what I should have said.

And I'm in Dallas, way better than Houston ;)

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#316

Post by CalChris »

SnacksOnAPlane wrote: post #302
CalChris wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you are all very, very different. So are we. But it remains that really starting with Gingrich that conservatives have mounted a long media campaign against liberals which has been personified as Pelosi and codewritten as San Francisco values. The reverse is not the case. This was one sided but it was also Gingrich and Republicans only path to power. It worked as an election strategy but not as a governing philo…

But I feel like you're blaming the victims. It was actually people like Rupert Murdoch who set up the whole "our culture is being destroyed by PC run amok" thing, and they did it to gin up ratings for Fox News and to gain power. We're all vulnerable to cultural brainwashing. I think that's part of what the article is complaining about. It's hard to be an iconoclast, especially when you're treated as an immoral person…

Fox News dates to 1996. Newt Gingrich (Atlanta suburbs) was already Speaker by then and had been recruiting and training candidates on his methods for close to a decade. He started as a pro-environment wonk Republican back bencher but saw this perfection of Nixon's Southern Strategy as his only path to power.

It worked.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Fox_News

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy

To be a real iconoclast, and I don't see Altman as any sort of iconoclast, you have to take your lumps. You have to be indifferent to your lumps.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#317

Post by UncleEntity »

papaf wrote: post #175
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.…

century of poverty, slavery, and hundred million deaths I am genuinely curious about where you get the figure of 100 million deaths from. I also believe that all the societes that had slaves were capitalist ones. But we can both agree that communism leads to poverty although the poorest countries in the world are failed states rather than communist: https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-poorest-countries-in...

> I also believe that all the societes that had slaves were capitalist ones.

German POWs were kept as slaves until, IDK, the 80's?

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#318

Post by dguaraglia »

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…

The difference with Argentina is that Damore would have been told to make a constructive argument backed by actual science, rather than be hailed or STFU. Instead, in the US people were hailing him as a martyr of PC culture and telling everyone that they should "respect all points of view" (no matter how flawed or ignorant they are.)

Argentine culture has it's advantages, but "tolerance to new ideas" is not one of them. I should know, I grew up there.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#319

Post by btilly »

CPLX wrote: post #290
btilly wrote: post #147

http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html is very relevant about how we got here. As Paul Graham said then, the biggest threats to free thought and speech come from people who have just enough power to enforce taboos, and not enough to be confident in their power. In this case the political ideology that is stifling thought is one that has nationwide lost Congress, the Senate and the Presidency. Which naturally results in a…

> The result is, as I've heard it put, Liberals are tolerant of anything except being conservative. That's a clever slogan. But the logical response to that would be to say that liberals are tolerant of everything except intolerance. Which as a factual statement is of course arguable, but as a premise is certainly internally consistent.

The problem with that "logical response" is that it is wrong.

Here is a simple demonstration. Consider the conservative argument that when you raise the minimum wage, elementary economics of supply and demand results in fewer jobs for poor people. I guarantee you that if you present this argument to 10 liberal friends, more than half will have a strong emotional response against it. While responding, some are likely to turn an interesting shade of red. Yet there is no intolerance in that argument.

Furthermore the argument is fairly well grounded in reality. Supply-demand curves are well-established basic microeconomics. And furthermore if you play around with https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/science-isnt-broken/#pa... you will find that Republican policies (which include low minimum wages) are consistently better for creating jobs. Just as Democratic ones are better for increasing GDP.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#320

Post by [deleted] »

CalChris wrote: post #283
SnacksOnAPlane wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, Roy Moore lost. It wasn't a resounding loss, but he did lose. Second, acting like an entire region as a monoculture is stupid and unproductive. We're all very, very different, and while there are some trends that are more prevalent in a region, that doesn't mean that the people who believe those things are backwards. Perhaps it means that you just haven't tried to see things from their perspective. The lack of…

Yes, you are all very, very different. So are we. But it remains that really starting with Gingrich that conservatives have mounted a long media campaign against liberals which has been personified as Pelosi and codewritten as San Francisco values. The reverse is not the case. This was one sided but it was also Gingrich and Republicans only path to power. It worked as an election strategy but not as a governing philo…

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