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E Pur Si Muove

blog.samaltman.com

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Re: E Pur Si Muove

#481

Post by munin »

Cshelton wrote: post #245
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…

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 som…

> The thing I hear the most from people who have moved to Dallas recently or visiting is "Everyone here is so nice"

I lived in Dallas, it was the only place I've lived where people would yell "faggot" at me on the street. People there aren't that friendly if you look different.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#482

Post by rsp1984 »

It looks like there are very different opinions about whether Silicon Valley culture is more or less tolerant than other places.

However I think those differences can be resolved by viewing tolerance of background and tolerance of opinion on two different axes. In my mind SV scores very high on tolerance of background but low on tolerance of opinion (as in "we don't care how you look like, as long as you agree with our opinions"), whereas NY scores high on both, and places like Japan are the reverse (scoring low on tolerance of background but high on tolerance of opinion -- hope I haven't offended any Japanese readers but that was my impression when I lived there for a short while).

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#483

Post by [deleted] »

cortesoft wrote: post #333
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…

Well, another way of putting it is "Liberals are tolerant of anything except intolerance" If I want to be a tolerant and accepting person, do I have to accept someone who wants to deny a group of people to marry the person they love? Do I have to tolerate someone who wants to control a woman's body? This is similar to a love of freedom; I want everyone to have freedom, but that means having to restrict the freedom to…

[deleted]

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#484

Post by BadassFractal »

BadassFractal wrote: post #207
robinsloan wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't describe my experience of the Bay Area (2004-present) at all. Here's a sincere tip: start attending the Seminars About Long-term Thinking organized by the Long Now Foundation. Take a friend or two. Sitting in those (packed!) theaters, listening to big, bold, and really very challenging ideas -- not just presented and left at that, but also opened up and interrogated -- I really don't think you'll feel yo…

If you're going to that sort of event, you're intentionally going out of your way to be around people who are interested in, as you said, big, bold, and challenging ideas. The issue is that the next day, when you're back to your 9to5 at BigCo (or even a random startup in the area), you are not back among people who support authoritarianism and will shoot you down (possibly getting you fired) for not having the same v…

*now

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#485

Post by Houshalter »

cortesoft wrote: post #475
Houshalter wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how they justify it, but empirically it doesn't seem to be the case. E.g. liberals are pretty tolerant of minority groups with more extreme opinions than average conservatives. E.g. muslims are pretty strongly against homosexuals among other things. But they don't receive anywhere near the same level of hate and vitriol even moderate conservatives will get. I think it's just based on how much of a threat a gro…

> E.g. liberals are pretty tolerant of minority groups with more extreme opinions than average conservatives. E.g. muslims are pretty strongly against homosexuals among other things. But they don't receive anywhere near the same level of hate and vitriol even moderate conservatives will get. I think this is a common misunderstanding among conservatives of a certain type. The pattern seems to be: A right-wing person m…

>The problem is that liberals AREN'T tolerant of Muslims who have anti-gay beliefs; we are as against them as we are against Christian's who are anti-gay.

In principle, yes. In practice they definitely are not. Liberals are not going on mass firing and blacklist campaigns of conservative Muslims. They aren't getting filtered and censored on social medial platforms. There is nowhere near the same level of emotional hatred and vitriol towards them. And anyone that has such hatred is seen as a bigot. But the same level of hate towards Christians is perfectly accepted.

This was a big issue in the atheist community. A lot of atheist thinkers became massively successful for mocking and criticizing christians. But there was huge controversy when they started doing the same for Muslims.

What happened? Well Muslims might have the same wrong beliefs. But they aren't The Hated Outgroup like the Christians were.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#486

Post by dominotw »

geofft wrote: post #470
dominotw wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't say it was the "truth" or anything like that. What are you even saying?

I claimed a thing was true. You said that the results of a debate disagree with me. Either you meant that my position was likely to be untrue as a result, and in turn the position advocated by the "winner" of the debate was likely true, or you didn't mean anything relevant at all. Which is it?

It merely meant lots of people were convinced that its true based on the arguments provided by side arguing for the motion.

"Undecided" went from 8% to 24% for the motion.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#487

Post by edmccard »

Houshalter wrote: post #400

Most of the comments here are about culture war and missing the more interesting point of the essay. We knew political tribalism was getting bad in SF. But isn't insane that things like life extension and genetic engineering are becoming a victim to this? I wouldn't have even thought these issues were controversial or political. These are by far the most important technologies of our time. The consequences of them be…

>But isn't insane that things like life extension and genetic engineering are becoming a victim to this? I wouldn't have even thought these issues were controversial or political.

You don't think there are any political ramifications to the possibility of dividing the world into new categories of "haves" (life-extended and genetically-modified) and "have nots"?

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#488

Post by dguaraglia »

Houshalter wrote: post #363
dguaraglia wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

Damore did make a scientific case for his claims and referenced a bunch of studies. That's probably why it got so much attention. The original had a bunch of links and graphs and plots. But the version most people read was published by some newspaper that stripped all that stuff out (and titled it an "anti-diversity screed" just to show how unbiased they were.) >they should "respect all points of view" (no matter how…

> Damore did make a scientific case for his claims and referenced a bunch of studies.

Most of those studies were debunked as using very shaky methodologies. Just because you can quote a paper it doesn't mean the paper is right.

> Everyone believes their opponents beliefs are flawed and ignorant.

Probably, but objective observable truth should prevail. The problem is lately a lot of people make claims based on nothing else than their "intuition" and they expect people to accept it as a "valid opinion".

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#489

Post by dguaraglia »

conanbatt wrote: post #454
tomtheelder wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Damore did make a scientific case for his claims and referenced a bunch of studies. Ehhh. Among my friends/coworkers one of the biggest objections was how dicey a lot of the referenced research was, and how much he was bending or extending conclusions to fit his narrative. At the very best his essay was awful science, but to me it felt more like a half-hearted attempt to cherrypick studies that sort of reinforced h…

The Damore case has nothing to do with the validity of the science. If the scientific interpretation had been perfectly reasonable there would still be a flip-out and would have also been fired. Thats what's scary.

Damore was fired not because his science was flawed, but because he made himself essentially impossible to work with. Would you be "scared" if someone refuses to take a shower for months on end and a company decides to fire them?

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#490

Post by dguaraglia »

conanbatt wrote: post #410
dguaraglia wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me introduce you to 2001, the year we had five presidents in the span of a couple months: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_2001_riots_in_Argenti... The perceived notion that people have to resign for "what they say or think" in the US is overblown.

I'm Argentinian.

Yo también.
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