Earlier quoted context omitted.
I keep seeing this argument, and wonder if we read the same memo. And to mirror your view, I'm getting pretty tired of people just brushing off criticism of the memo as "Strawman! Fake news!" when it's anything but. I guess it's a successful tactic though.
Perhaps you posted elsewhere in the thread, but do you have any substantial criticism? I mean, beyond "that's a cartoonish view", which isn't really helpful to informed debate?
Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’
751–760 of 901 posts
Re: Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’
#752Re: Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’
#753Earlier quoted context omitted.
These terms are ambiguous and have fluid meaning. But in general, anything on the Republican party platform, or supported by a substantial portion of Republicans or self-identified conservatives, is something I would consider part of mainstream conservatism. Quick examples include: * That affirmative action should be illegal or more heavily restricted. * That unlawful residents should be removed from the country, eve…
Voicing such statements creates a hostile work environment for 1. your immigrant coworkers who entered the country on H1B or other visas; 2. coworkers who benefited from affirmative action to get into university; 3. friends/relatives of law-abiding-but-undocumented aliens. You might think you are just making abstract policy statements. But to your listeners, you are making threats to destroy their livelihood and thei…
Re: Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’
#754I'm supposed to feel bad for Peter Thiel? The guy is a billionaire. He can go wherever he wants and do whatever he wants. He thinks it's hard to be a conservative in California? Try being a liberal in most of the red state parts of the country who actually has to work for a living. Give me a break.
Re: Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’
#755Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have no idea what SF is like, so in these discussions I never can tell if there really is an influx of insane, insufferable far left crazies, or if people who insist on remaining racist and keeping gays in the closet are mad that nobody is having that anymore. The latter is what I see in my own circle of humans but I live in Texas. I can say though that I've moved further to the left as I've gotten older, from a li…
> insane, insufferable far left crazies Definitely this option. And by the way, I've been increasingly wondering lately whether our blind insistence on labelling absolutely everything "left/right" or "red/blue" isn't doing our society real damage. I've never voted conservative my entire life but I have nothing in common with the far left and indeed fear them a lot more than the far right. We need a new vocabulary.
For instance, despite the similarities, I don't think that the prevailing progressivism in SV can be equated with classical Marxism, which is far-left in the original sense, since they disagree fundamentally on the most central questions to the Marxists, which are the centrality of economic class, and private property. I find the links between Fascism and far-right (again, in the original sense) Conservatism to be equally tenuous, given that they radically differ on the attitudes towards tradition and progress. Even the Republicans and Democrats don't really fit the mols. Think about it: what grounds do opposition to abortion and market liberalism have in common, really?
Trump doesn't fall neatly onto the line either, and I suspect that the tendency to place him somewhere on the old line has contributed to the rather confused, and reflexively negative reaction that many in the political class have had to his emergence and presidency.
It's best to think of political outlooks as clusters of positions in a high-dimensional space. The left-right model is like a poorly-executed PCA -- a reduction that confuses as much as it clarifies.
Re: Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’
#756Earlier quoted context omitted.
Brendan Eich lost his job because he supported a campaign whose sole purpose was that of bigotry and hate. After doing so, he could not be seen as an effective leader, because many other companies did not want to work with Mozilla.
I guess I'm too young to see how gay marriage is even controversial, but where's the frontier between bigotry and discrepant values? Is being anti-abortion bigotry & hate?
Re: Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’
#757Earlier quoted context omitted.
Citation needed. Also, you are being downvoted because you are making baseless claims and accusations; you are not being "silenced" or "censored".
> The End of Men ... What if modern, postindustrial society is simply better suited to women? https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-end... > the rules intended to protect victims of sexual assault mean students have lost their right to due process https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/09/the-un... > professor Bret Weinstein refused to comply with students interested in 'social justice'…
> https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-end....
It's a complete mischaracterization to call that celebrating the end of men. If anything it is worrying about it.
Re: Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’
#758Earlier quoted context omitted.
I used to believe #2 but experience brought me to #3. People are really irrational. Racism, sexism, and ageism are really just a few of the many dumb conditioned biases that guide decision making. A random example: taller people and people with broader shoulders make more sales. We are intelligent minds grafted clumsily onto apes.
All of that is true. Nonetheless, I don't respect the methodology of many of the people who hold #3 in that it does not seem to me like they're fighting #2 in ways that are sensitive to truth. Just because somebody's opponents are biased doesn't mean they aren't. Note that I am not saying that #3 is not the case! I'm saying that I personally have not been given reliable reason to believe #3 over #2, or reason to beli…
I also don't totally reject the notion that biology can explain differences in outcome. I just think that explanation should be a last resort after the far more likely causes of bias, random path dependency, and perverse incentives and feedback loops are ruled out. Blaming biology first is like immediately jumping to "compiler bug" when your program crashes. People who jump first to biology are probably racist or sexist.
As for immigration vs social justice: neither are IMHO existential struggles. Existial struggles are things like sustaining a modern economy post population growth and transitioning beyond fossil fuels before we either crash and burn in a Malthusian catastrophe or destroy our atmosphere and oceans. If we don't fix those things social justice and immigration issues won't matter much to the survivors of the nuclear war that ensues as global civilization collapses.
As for Trump: he is categorically unfit to be president, but Clinton was also an awful choice. That election was terrible and the lineup as a whole symptomatic of the decline of our political class.
Re: Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’
#759Earlier quoted context omitted.
Damore wasn't fired because he is a conservative. He was fired because he thinks women are inferior wrt tech and was very vocal about it.
You are spreading blatant lies and propaganda. Anyone who actually reads his memo knows he never said this, or anything close to it! He was trying to promote the use of scientific consensus on male-female personality differences to more effectively be inclusive of females in the tech world. Does that sound unfamiliar? If so, it’s probably because you never read what he actually wrote, and instead just accepted unques…
Re: Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’
#760Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The End of Men ... What if modern, postindustrial society is simply better suited to women? https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-end... > the rules intended to protect victims of sexual assault mean students have lost their right to due process https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/09/the-un... > professor Bret Weinstein refused to comply with students interested in 'social justice'…
> > The End of Men ... What if modern, postindustrial society is simply better suited to women? > https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-end... . It's a complete mischaracterization to call that celebrating the end of men. If anything it is worrying about it.