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E Pur Si Muove

blog.samaltman.com

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Re: E Pur Si Muove

#801

Post by brendanw »

hsod wrote: post #314
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…

Have you heard this? I have not. I have heard people make the case that there are very minor biological differences between men and women, and seen them get tainted with the brush of holding a far different view.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#802

Post by vidarh »

gdudeman wrote: post #541
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.…

I'd like to challenge this. If you go into a startup and say "I'm a communist," many of them are going to be pretty skeptical of your ideas. You will find yourself in a lot of awkward conversations if you make this a thing you want to talk about. If you pitch a VC and throw in "btw, I'm a communist," or they find your online writings about being a communist, you aren't getting a check. If you apply for upper manageme…

> If you pitch a VC and throw in "btw, I'm a communist," or they find your online writings about being a communist, you aren't getting a check.

A friend of mine has had half a dozen startups funded in the Bay Area, and most of the books on show in his living room is Marx, Engels and Trotsky. He now runs a VC fund. One of the first things he told me when I met him was that he used to be a member of a communist party.

If you make a big deal of it in contexts where it would seem weird, like as part of a pitch, then yeah, because it'll make them question why. But the Bay Area is quite more tolerant of left wing views than the rest of the US.

That's not to say it will not affect you - said VC above did tell me he once lost a job over it, but the one time he knows of it was an "outsider" not someone from the Bay Area that prevented him from getting hired.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#803

Post by grandalf »

It's great to see Sam calling attention to this problem.

I'd argue that it's not really about ideas as much as it is about the public being much more accepting of authoritarianism.

The broader values of free speech and free expression come not from an aesthetic judgment of particular acts of speech, but from a desire to limit the power of authoritarian governments to suppress speech/expression.

We're seeing in both parties an amnesia about the downside of authoritarianism, and this filters down to things like office culture, university culture, and the perception of the trade-offs associated with various freedoms.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#804

Post by Houshalter »

dguaraglia wrote: post #776
Houshalter wrote: post #763

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've done a bait and switch on me. I'm talking about personality types. Maybe you can argue that women are less likely to be e.g. introverts, because of culture. But that has nothing to do with the tech industry and they can't change that. And that was basically Damore's argument. You have personality types like INTP being vastly overrepresented among programmers, yet 4 times less common among women. You have the s…

> You've done a bait and switch on me. No I haven't. > ... that has nothing to do with the tech industry and they can't change that... So what you are saying is that: a) We don't know if this is a cultural issue or not b) So the tech industry shouldn't do anything about it Huh? > You have studies trying to raise kids as neutrally as possible and still finding boys prefer trucks and girls prefer dolls. It's definitely…

I'm saying the disparity is due to personality difference. Which, even if cultural, can't be changed by the tech industry. I find it very implausible that the differences are cultural at any level. And many possible cultural explanations have been ruled out.

Poor and communist countries have less gender disparities because people have less choice over their careers. E.g. poor parents shove their kids into STEM because it's see it as a way out of poverty. In rich countries people have the freedom to pursue their actual interests. And so statistical differences in interests start to matter.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#805

Post by Houshalter »

dguaraglia wrote: post #777
Houshalter wrote: post #764

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a double standard. Feminists with far more extreme beliefs can talk about their opinions at work. Not only that, but actually have them become official policy. Even policies that intentionally discriminate against men, which is insane. But if you dare to object to it... Against policies that are actually sexist and actually relevant to your work. Make an actual scientific case for your side. Then somehow you are…

> Feminists with far more extreme beliefs can talk about their opinions at work. Please give examples. > Even policies that intentionally discriminate against men, which is insane. Again, provide examples. I hear this argument a lot "poor men are being discriminated by women!!!" and yet I have to see a single shred of evidence of this. Again, for context, I'm a male working in the tech field and I have worked at Goog…

>Give examples.

Read page 6 of Damore's memo. He gives a number of very serious examples.

>Do you personally feel that a field where 80% of the workforce is male (vs a 50/50 split in overall demographics) is "actively discriminating against hiring males? I find that argument very, very, VERY difficult to defend.

What are you not understanding here? If 20% of qualified applicants are female, but 30% of new hires are female, you must be discriminating against men. A 50/50 split would require severe discrimination. Damore suggested they were lowering hiring standards and setting arbitrary quotas. I find this very, very, VERY difficult to defend.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#806

Post by smsm42 »

Diederich wrote: post #339

Shortly prior to the recent US presidential election, I worked next to a nice, smart young man from California who went to a well-known progressive university in the bay area. Politics was very rarely discussed at work, but in the weeks before the election, there was some cross talk in the isles. He trusted me enough to message me privately that he was planning to vote for Trump. At that time, I was quite anxious abo…

> because he feared that his 'out of place' political views would, in his words, 'indirectly limit his career options.' Why he supported Trump is pretty irrelevant, but I found his opinion reasonable, though I disagreed with his overall choice.

I think in SV, it is a completely reasonable precaution. If you openly declare you are, say, a communist (I don't mean "support Obamacare", I mean real communist, as in nationalize everything, ban private property, etc.), chances that people would shun you and that hurts you carrier are pretty small. If you say you voted for Trump, chances are higher, and I've heard people say as much pretty much open text.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#807

Post by smsm42 »

danso wrote: post #693
ironjunkie wrote: post #607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an outsider to American politics. This is 100% my vision also. I know a lot of people that have moderate views that are simply shut down by liberals. As a response, they hide and vote for Trump. I see it as their way to elect someone that is not afraid to go against the accepted view of the elites and therefore going against all that political correctness nonsense.

What "political correctness nonsense"?

One of the examples is trying to find offense in anything - literally from milk and pumpkin spice lattes to national anthem and math and logic as a basis of science. It's ok to think whether our actions could hurt anybody and adjust accordingly, but when it turns into obsessive offense mining and paranoid banning of anything that could that could be construed as offensive to anybody (usually only by the same people who do the banning, not even by the people that they purport to protect) - for some people it is just too much. It's a difference between reasonable hygiene and OCD when a person washes the hands for 4 hours. The first is great, the second is a debilitating disease. Many people feel the American culture has crossed the boundary into the disease and keeps marching on.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#808

Post by observation »

amsheehan wrote: post #128
CharlesMerriam2 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of things no one talks about: correlations. I have seen several of people lose their careers after become right wing spokespeople. These people work in difficult, ambiguous fields including patent prosecution (IP Law) and network security analysis. The fields are all about considering probable outcomes from ambiguous or untrustworthy data. They weren't pushed from their jobs; they stopped being able to juggle the…

Can you elaborate? I don't think I understand what you mean.

He is claiming becoming more right wing makes somebody less likely to understand statistics.

Personally I think leftists, rightists and centrists are terrible at grokking stats because the human brain can't handle multifaceted realities very well.

It is possible for instance that all political positions are correct, even the apparently contradictory ones because they are part of the Elephant (the one with the blind men).

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#809

Post by smsm42 »

te_chris wrote: post #720
jochung wrote: post #696

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firing people for providing criticism of a company's diversity police, while citing science, and letting your friends in media drag the plaintiff through the mud. Cancelling events and boycotting sponsors because their speaker line up isn't sufficiently in line with imaginary industry demographics. Or even because a blind selection process, the thing people say they want, ends up selecting a wrongthinker. Bullying co…

'Citing science'. I can think of a few other groups throughout history who have said awful things and backed it up with 'science'.

Sure, you can use science for evil things, like you could use a hammer to hit somebody on the head and a car to run somebody over. The problem here is not hammers and cars. If Damore were challenged on scientific grounds and refuted as such, it'd be fine (tbh, many people did exactly that and stopped there, and they were doing it right). But he was chased out as a heretic, not as someone who wrote scientific paper that was less than solid. He was chased out because him questioning this particular dogma is incompatible with being employed at this place, and because the culture we have now does not allow Google to be perceived as tolerating heretics.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#810

Post by observation »

mikeash wrote: post #621
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…

Are life extension and genetic engineering really becoming a victim of this? Or is this just a mostly inconsequential reaction by people who have noticed that wealthy Silicon Valley technologists love to talk about improving humanity but mostly end up producing products which make life easier for wealthy Silicon Valley technologists?

I believe that it is a reality that people die through the side affects of political hegemony.

I used to be a Jehovah's Witness and am familiar with those outside the religion criticizing it because it frequently occurs that their children die due to the refusal of blood transfusions.

However I now think there is a similar type of ignorance which has stemmed out of politically correct thought.

I believe biracial children are more likely to die due to the side affects of ignoring racial topics in our society. Here is how: biracial children have a lower probability of organ donation matches, and a drastically lower probability of bone marrow matches.

I have never seen this discussed before but it seems self evident to me. In order for a Congolese-Belorussian (a real family I know) child to obtain a bone marrow match it must be sought out way in advance of the illness, if a match can be found at all that is.

Since few if any people are aware of the rarity of matches for biracial people it must mean a lot of them die, there just isn't enough time to source the match in time.

Of course there are failure modes for rightist thought also. Were biracial couples illegal I don't think that would be a step forward. Still the failures of our current order linger in my mind and I believe that a slightly more right wing policy with respect to biracial couples (activating searches for organ/marrow matches in advance) would save lives.

Some people here may suggest that this isn't right wing, it is merely common sense or logical. Sure, but as Sam Altman's blog post suggests, sometimes good ideas are quelled if they could potentially interfere with political heuristics.

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