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Stuff You Can't Say in Silicon Valley

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Re: Stuff You Can't Say in Silicon Valley

#271

Post by cannonedhamster »

pretendscholar wrote: post #170
cannonedhamster wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Political views only matter when your company markets itself on values. Oracle and Google aren't about freedom, Mozilla is, GNU/linux is. When you want to be the rudder for a company based on values your background needs to be unassailable, in other words, boring. You can't be boring when you take an active role in a cause that is directly against your employees.

Which is fine but the parent comment was trying to say he wasn't fired for his views. He was clearly fired for his political views.

Yes I must not have made my point. His political views matter only because the company is based upon values such as openness and inclusiveness. As the one running the ship his political views would have been antithetical to the company mission based on his current actions, which is why the employees revolted.

Re: Stuff You Can't Say in Silicon Valley

#272

Post by ajross »

T2_t2 wrote: post #118
ajross wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 Mis…

I couldn't agree more. In a town like SV where almost everyone is liberal, the problem is conservatives. Oh, do I need to state that was sarcasm? > This is like walking into a megachurch in Mississippi and complaining that no one wants to listen to your opinions on reproductive health care. How can you not see the irony in this? Your example is a bad outcome. SV doing the reverse is bad. Not there are ideas that are…

Argument isn't the same as "alienation" though. The post is a bunch of whining about how you "can't say" stuff because people won't like you if you do. Well, duh.

What you and the poster say you want is Free Speech in some kind of abstract principled sense. What you actually want is a safe space where people won't argue with you for believing different things.

Thus, strawman.

Re: Stuff You Can't Say in Silicon Valley

#273

Post by angry_octet »

ghostcluster wrote: post #258
angry_octet wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just hoping that amateurs with agendas, trying to cherry pick studies with outcomes they like, is not seen as science. Because they are ones that seem like anti-vaxxers to me.

You're calling this Stanford piece 'amateurs with agendas'? > There was too much data pointing to the biological basis of sex-based cognitive differences to ignore, Halpern says. For one thing, the animal-research findings resonated with sex-based differences ascribed to people. These findings continue to accrue. In a study of 34 rhesus monkeys, for example, males strongly preferred toys with wheels over plush toys,…

No, I'm talking about Damore and his ilk.

And you still seem to be implying that, because there are biological differences in preferences or some task skill at a statistical population level, any one individual can be categorised, based on their gender alone, as having different ability at a different technical and education dependent task.

If that is the case, a cite from a Cochrane study that linked specific brain characteristics to intellectual task performance would have some weight. A pop sci piece does not.

Re: Stuff You Can't Say in Silicon Valley

#274

Post by koverstreet »

rectang wrote: post #221
Veelox wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Relentless oppression must be broken. I am going to quote the man who has arguably done the most to end oppression in the USA. "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that." - MLKJ

Defend the unjust status quo, squealing at the most minor affronts and drawing false equivalencies. It will last as long as you live, and you'll never give up. Society will just have to leave you behind.

Holy crap, talk about false equivalencies. The parent was disagreeing with your tactics, and you equate that with defending the status quo.

You crusaders and your "You're either with us or against us" mentality are the worst.

Re: Stuff You Can't Say in Silicon Valley

#275

Post by RickJWag »

It's true. PC culture is so strong it's dangerous to have an opinion outside of what popular culture pushes on us.

It's not a good situation. There's blatant hypocrisy in the air as well. (Many of the same voices calling out politicians for past sexual misdeeds have yet to sever ties with the Clintons, for example.)

It's to our collective detriment. I can't wait for the pendulum to swing back the other way so we can all speak what we think without fear of falling on the wrong side of the PC police.

Re: Stuff You Can't Say in Silicon Valley

#276

Post by angry_octet »

electrograv wrote: post #231
angry_octet wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rational argument doesn't scale, bots and memes scale. Blocklists do scale, and it's only because identity platforms (fb, twitter) are also locked down content control platforms that we haven't seen more global blocklists. I fully expect decentralised social behaviour blocklists to emerge in the near future. Who would want to (employ/socialise with/do business with) a (trumptard/libtard)? Why take the risk of employi…

Rational argument is difficult to scale (certainly more so than memes and propaganda bots), but not impossible. Real social progress takes real work, but it’s worth it. Your last two paragraphs sound an awful lot like the book 1984. If you haven’t read it, I recommend you check it out.

I think Trumpism and climate denial are good counter-arguments to that. I think we (humans, not any one society) are fundamentally vulnerable to propaganda, and we've opened a Pandora's Box of next level propaganda tools (micro targeting, social distribution, anonymous participants) but have not evolved educational defences yet.

"You can fool some of the people all the time," as said by Unknown -- probably not Lincoln, but one of the things continually misattributed to him, in an earlier style of meme misinformation. It is ironic that people thought that the internet would purge misinformation (by making sources easier to check) but instead it has made it worse, by bypassing expertise, analysis and references altogether.

1984 isn't really about tribal groupings using computerised social credit systems, but I take your point. From the authoritarian POV, China already has nascent systems to score each citizen's thought correctness factor.

Re: Stuff You Can't Say in Silicon Valley

#277

Post by angry_octet »

spdionis wrote: post #259
angry_octet wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rational argument doesn't scale, bots and memes scale. Blocklists do scale, and it's only because identity platforms (fb, twitter) are also locked down content control platforms that we haven't seen more global blocklists. I fully expect decentralised social behaviour blocklists to emerge in the near future. Who would want to (employ/socialise with/do business with) a (trumptard/libtard)? Why take the risk of employi…

Reminds me of that Black Mirror episode where you could block people. Sounds horrible.

Excellent series, though I'd not seen that one. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Christmas_(Black_Mirro...

Re: Stuff You Can't Say in Silicon Valley

#278

Post by angry_octet »

angry_octet wrote: post #238
cpitman wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not just those people being silenced though. It is people who stayed home, maybe their views are not quite as radical as someone who would protest, or maybe they tend to be more politically apathetic (ie most people). When those people watch Fox News ( http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2017/08/14/twitter-users-identif... ) and see what is happening to those people for their speech and actions, they are being silenced…

When they are watching Fox they are not being silenced, they are being programmed. They start to believe they are being silenced, but their views are just being opposed and offended and that they are (at long last) being told that other people think their positions are discriminatory. And without the visible and palpable sense that their views are not mainstream any longer, what is their incentive to change?

Predictably, I've offended you and you've downvoted. I win.

Re: Stuff You Can't Say in Silicon Valley

#279

Post by deyan »

dang wrote: post #248
deyan wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for replying, I appreciate it. The way I read the response is the following: the tug of war between users who want to see / comment on this and those who are flagging the article is being won by those flagging it - and thus the article has fallen below the front page. The irony is strong here. An article talking about what you can't say, being flagged to oblivion, further confirming that, indeed, some thing…

You're still looking at this only from the point of view of one thread you happen to care about. I understand that! But HN has hosted truckloads of extremely active threads about all of this. Many have spent loads of time on the front page. In fact this topic set is one of the most highly represented on HN. So the situation is the opposite of how it seems to you and not ironic at all; the irony is that it seems that…

Fair enough, fair enough

Re: Stuff You Can't Say in Silicon Valley

#280

Post by [deleted] »

pwaai wrote: post #236
minimaxir wrote: post #6

It should be noted that this article was posted a few weeks ago, and is not directly related to Sam Altman's recent (controversial) essay: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15924093

ugh I stopped reading after the first sentence: "Earlier this year, I noticed something in China that really surprised me. I realized I felt more comfortable discussing controversial ideas in Beijing than in San Francisco." I also feel comfortable speaking about controversial things foreign cultures would not have the appropriate context to judge, out of concern for being rude, culture value differences etc. I'm losi…

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