Stuff You Can't Say in Silicon Valley

You think this is a dog whistle?

> “There can be 12 white, blue-eyed, blond men in a room and they’re going to be diverse too because they’re going to bring a different life experience and life perspective to the conversation,” the inaugural diversity chief said.

> ”Diversity is the human experience,” she said, according to Quartz. “I get a little bit frustrated when diversity or the term diversity is tagged to the people of color, or the women, or the LGBT.”

This is what Denise Young Smith, 20 year HR veteran at Apple said. She 'resigned' and was replaced after the ensuing outrage.

"If San Francisco residents really believed that sea levels were rising, they’d have all sold their homes by now."

To be fair, that probably hits too close to home.

> I think a lot of people are used to saying what's on their mind without consequence.

No, it's simpler still. What is happening is that conservatives feel awkward and nervous being a minority (irony much?), so they look to strawman arguments to make themselves feel better.

Obviously you can have those fights if you want. You just can't find many people to agree with you. This is like walking into a megachurch in Mississippi and complaining that no one wants to listen to your opinions on reproductive health care.

You can say all of these things anywhere with minimal actual consequences other than social consequences. You have to be so deep into first world problems that you can't see that social consequences are not the biggest problem for most Americans right now.

* You can support Trump, it doesn't mean other people don't have the right to think you're a moron, bigot, or supporter of fascism for doing so. You go right ahead and think the same thing about them. NO ONE ACTUALLY CARES. Most people are too busy working to get caught up in politics.

* Diversity of thought often comes with diversity of skin color because people with different skin color have a hell of a different experience than white people. They even have different experiences among their different ethnicities. Does it mean white people can't have different thoughts? No, but when you're in a bubble how would you even know?

* The way the H1-B is written now is terrible both to the H1-B holder and American workers. It forces workers to get paid below what they should get paid both as an H1-B worker and as the American worker. H1-B holders should not require sponsoring by a company. If their skills are in such high demand they should have no problem getting a job.

* If they could afford to sell. If they were stupid. Maybe they are optimists? Seems like San Fran has a ton of optimists. Maybe they plan on selling before sea levels rise or trust their government to bail them out.

* If this was all he said, sure, there's room for conversation about how and why we got into this situation, but it was a stupid screed against diversity. This guy is no champion of discourse. I doubt you could do what he did anywhere and have it go over well. You keep your politics out of your work whenever possible and speak your mind at home. A company is not a free speech zone.

* Equality of treatment doesn't mean equality of outcomes. That's a strawman argument.

I 100% agree with your premise that “the more voices the better” (i.e. the fewer voices that are silenced, the better). What you describe certainly covers much of what’s happening, but something else is happening too: Voices are being silenced.

And to respond to your opening sentence, I don’t mean anyone is silenced physically (who does that?), but rather psychologically, culturally, and socially. That’s not a good thing.

Giving everyone a voice is good precisely because it facilitates debate, such that good ideas rise to the surface and bad ideas sink. Silencing voices opposed to your own views may serve you in the short term, but as a principle it’s incredibly dangerous and almost certainly harmful in the long run.

Edit: P.S. This doesn’t mean that bad ideas shouldn’t float down to a point where their advocation questions ones’ rational credibility, nor does it mean we should be entitled to say anything we want (no matter how extreme) without consequence.

For example, if you blurted out “The earth is flat - it’s all a conspiracy!”, most people would shake their heads in pity and keep walking away. But if someone presents evidence or ideas to a claim so extreme, the degree of our interest must be proportionate to the credibility of the evidence and the logical consistency of the argument — not the social stigma attached to the topic. This is a subtle distinction, but so important.

Social stigma can serve perhaps as a caching mechanism of consensus, but it is a tool we must wield with extreme caution.