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Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’

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Re: Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’

#831

Post by abusoufiyan »

Chris2048 wrote: post #707
spookthesunset wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> SJW Ah the SJW boogyman. A quick way to get anybody with a functioning brain to dismiss everything you say.

It's just the counterpart of the "racist" boogyman. Why is it terrible to dismiss people by calling them SJWs, but not calling them racist.

I guess for a few reasons:

1) SJW isn't a bad thing, like racism. social justice (the literal term) is what all people want in their society. It's preached by nearly every religion (the idea that the poor are equal to the rich, the black people equal to the white, etc).

2) Racist is an adjective but SJW is a group affiliation often attributed to people who don't wish to be affiliated that way. A person can say a racist thing, but no one can do an SJW thing. We can qualify certain things and statements as racist or not. We cannot do the same with SJW. SJW will always be used to denigrate someone. Racist, however, can be used analytically and without malice.

Re: Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’

#832

Post by abusoufiyan »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #429
titzer wrote: post #310

I'm 37 and, God, people treat me like I'm a dinosaur. I've been programming C for 25 years and it's hard to relate to young people who don't know what a machine register is. We can argue about it, I can get downvoted, whatever. I moved out of the Bay Area after 5 years, and to be honest, the divide between where I am and where the ideological center of Silicon Valley has drifted just continues to get wider. It has li…

>> Silicon Valley is overrun by techno-utopians. That's what it sounds like to me too. I find it particularly hard to reconcile claims of liberalism, or even libertarianism, with an industry led by Google, Amazon and Facebook, companies that basically make money by running roughshod over their users' privacy.

> libertarianism, with an industry led by Google, Amazon and Facebook, companies that basically make money by running roughshod over their users' privacy.

That is the libertarian utopia right? Ultimate privatization, very few regulations on what businesses can do.

Re: Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’

#833

Post by abusoufiyan »

sho wrote: post #46

What is crazy about the the situation in SF is that even 5 or so years ago if you asked me what the "echo chamber" there was echoing I would have said libertarianism and some kind of techno-utopianism. The takeover by the proscriptive far-left has been astonishingly rapid, and it is absolutely real. I also know people who have left, and many more who absolutely keep their political and even philosophical views to the…

Can you get the rest to leave too? Tons of engineers who are willing to not be lunatics and would love the cheaper housing if you could get all your conservative friends to leave.

Re: Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’

#834

Post by abusoufiyan »

sho wrote: post #91
gameswithgo wrote: post #55

Earlier 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.

You fear the far left (who couldn't even get their milktoast socialist candidate into the Presidential race) more than the far right (who are gaining actual political power in Europe with their openly neo-Nazi parties)?

What world do you live in, man?

Re: Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’

#835

Post by abusoufiyan »

RoyTyrell wrote: post #749
manofstick wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As non-american, living outside of america (but having lived there for a year and a half starting January 2000), I concur. I still follow american politics quite a bit (too much for me to remain healthy actually) and I'm constantly bamboozled trying to comprehend what people mean by the "far left". To me it seems like any one is considered "far left" if they believe in: - treating all people, regardless of race, gend…

> believing that guns are the main reason for mass murders Not to start a political flame war but that's the only thing I disagree with you on - mostly. I think guns allow for easy mass murder at a distance but you have to have a mental illness along with some other potential extreme views, to be able to jump the mental hurdles where mass murder is an acceptable option. The people committing these horrendous crimes a…

>you have to have a mental illness along with some other potential extreme views, to be able to jump the mental hurdles where mass murder is an acceptable option.

This is a hard truth for people to swallow, but no, you don't have to be mentally ill to think this. It's really easy to think murder is an acceptable option when you live in a country which is constantly murdering innocent civilians daily.

Look, I'm not a mass murderer sympathizer or anything like that. But the US army killed somewhere near 1 million civilians in Iraq alone (possibly more, this poll is from over a decade ago): https://www.commondreams.org/news/2007/09/14/poll-civilian-d...

When you live in a world which routinely brushes away and rationalizes that kind of mass murder because it promotes American interests and American values, it's not hard to see why some random dude might see killing people he disagrees with as a way to promote his values.

Re: Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’

#836

Post by makewavesnotwar »

tomcam wrote: post #31
makewavesnotwar wrote: post #9

Likening people to Thiel is ridiculous. He is personally facing the backlash from openly supporting Trump and being a speaker at his rallies. Nobody else in the valley did anything as absurd or unnecessary. And if he thinks he'll fair better in LA, I think he's sorely mistaken once people start recognizing him en masse. But to my point, this article seems to be generalizing an outlier to make its point. Everyone is b…

Why was supporting Trump absurd?

I'm not sure if you mean in general or with regard to my original comment, but in general I think supporting a guy who personally claimed to have molested women and who was in the middle of several fraud lawsuits to run the country is absurd in my book. Maybe you have a different definition of absurdity. Trump was also making absurd comments about our 2 biggest trade allies Mexico and China saying that he was going to build a wall and have Mexico pay for it (aside from being an idiotic idea for a number of reasons - there was no way he was/is ever going to get Mexico to pay for the wall) and stating as a matter of fact that China was manipulating our currency and created the "hoax" of global warming. All absurd and senseless in my book.

Secondly for Thiel, there's the whole question of why on earth he would go on national TV to support Trump when he is completely outside the general demographic that Trump caters to. Trump's biggest supporters were some combination of baby-boomers (and to some extent their children), gun owners and Christians. Some of the ultra-rich may have been his biggest financial supporters and the ones that stand to gain the most from his presidency - but they are only a sliver of his actual voter base and an even smaller percentage of the American populous. By speaking out the way he did - he essentially put a spotlight on himself as someone willing to sacrifice the welfare of the people if it helps his own bottom line. He could have supported Trump indirectly and it wouldn't have changed the outcome of the election. I would say the way Thiel supported Trump was especially absurd.

Re: Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’

#837

Post by makewavesnotwar »

unapprovedviews wrote: post #216
makewavesnotwar wrote: post #9

Likening people to Thiel is ridiculous. He is personally facing the backlash from openly supporting Trump and being a speaker at his rallies. Nobody else in the valley did anything as absurd or unnecessary. And if he thinks he'll fair better in LA, I think he's sorely mistaken once people start recognizing him en masse. But to my point, this article seems to be generalizing an outlier to make its point. Everyone is b…

> facing the backlash from openly supporting Trump thus further proving the headline

That's a stretch.

Re: Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’

#838

Post by namlem »

_skel wrote: post #169

I don't get it. I grew up in Silicon Valley and I work in tech, and so do many other people I know. They run the gamut from far-left socialists to libertarians to own a bunch of guns. They have all kinds of ethnic backgrounds and religious views. Some of my most libertarian/pro-gun friends have not been shy about their political views and it hasn't hurt their tech careers at all. They are far more welcome here than l…

Are they contrarians, or are they simply genuine racists or misogynists?

Re: Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’

#839

Post by ImSkeptical »

abusoufiyan wrote: post #825
ImSkeptical wrote: post #592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is probably something to this explanation. One reason I've seen for why women prefer not to go into start ups, for example, is that it's more of a high risk, high reward, gamble - which is typically more interesting to men. Likewise, ideologically conservative people are likely disposed not to make such risks. The question isn't, or shouldn't be, "Do we have representation of women/conservatives/whateve…

>For example, I'd feel quite comfortable wearing a Burnie Sanders shirt or hat to work. I'd expect that wearing a MAGA hat would cause problems. They aren't equal things though. The latter is basically you promoting the idea that people of different backgrounds aren't as welcome in the workplace. Especially if your workplace hires anyone on an H1-B or on any other kind of visa, or anyone from Iran, Sudan, Iraq, or th…

Where I work a lot of people are on H1-B type visas. At least I assume they are. Probably between one third and one half of employees are foreign born.

On the one hand, I get what you're saying. My MAGA hat might be objectionable to a lot of coworkers. On the other hand, I also think things like "I wonder if the large portion of foreign born workers are effectively suppressing my wages" because they increase supply of labor. I can't help but wonder if I'd be making more money, or higher up the chain, or just relatively better off without H1-B visas. And then, it's interesting to connect the dots - the candidates who want to keep importing labor, and therefore suppressing wages, those candidates are fine to support. But if you support a candidate who wants to import less labor, which might help current labor class members while hurting the big companies - well then you're a toxic, racist, jerk, etc. Weird that the big companies think that way - right?

I also understand that my reasoning is selfish. But, I pay taxes. My parents paid taxes. We support the organization that is the US government - shouldn't that organization be working for our benefit and not the benefit of foreign laborers and big companies?

I think if one political opinion is banned, then both should be.

Re: Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’

#840

Post by leereeves »

abusoufiyan wrote: post #823
leereeves wrote: post #722

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, it's worth reflecting on. I see Trump's rise as a response to people on the left who celebrate "the end of men", expel men without giving them an opportunity to defend themselves, unapologetically depict men and white people (and white men most of all) as evil, demand white people "absent themselves", and offer jobs for which white people need not apply. Not "far-left crazies", but major media outlets and un…

>When the media and academic culture is so toxic to any white men who speak up for their own interests, only someone who has no filter, like Trump, dares to speak at all. Do you live anywhere near a University? Get your butt there and count how many white men there are in Professor's chairs. Then count how many of the tenured Professors are white men. Then count how many of the head administrators are white men. Abso…

Now count how many are willing to speak up in favor of bringing manufacturing jobs back to the US or in favor of race-blind admissions. Count how many have done so and kept their jobs.

If all you care about is skin color you're missing my point.

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