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Things That Happen in Silicon Valley and Also the Soviet Union

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Re: Things That Happen in Silicon Valley and Also the Soviet Union

#41

Post by imbokodo »

toomanybeersies wrote: post #21
21 wrote: post #7

> the United States as a whole is depicted as evil by default So true. The USA is viewed worse than China, Russia or Saudi Arabia. I also see a lot of it on HN.

I think the argument is that the USA is a democracy (at least more so than the others), and therefore it's fair to criticise the USA as a whole (i.e. the citizens of the USA) for the failures of the US Government. A friend of mine made the same comment recently in regards to condemning human rights abuses in Israel. You can condemn until your face is blue the human rights violations in Iran, but there's not a lot the…

> Israel is a democracy, and therefore (at least in theory) the government represents the people.

Netanyahu says the West Bank is Israel, and within Israel de facto and de jure it is. Yet Palestinians in the West Bank can not vote, and there is talk in the Knesset of disenfranchising Palestinians outside of the West Bank. Yet a Jew from Brooklyn can move to the West Bank, seize a Palestinian's land, and vote in elections.

Yet this is termed a democracy in comparison to Iran.

Re: Things That Happen in Silicon Valley and Also the Soviet Union

#42

Post by petermcneeley »

HyperNormalization looms large.

"everyone knew the system was failing, but as no one could imagine any alternative to the status quo, politicians and citizens were resigned to maintaining a pretense of a functioning society... Over time, this delusion became a self-fulfilling prophecy and the "fakeness" was accepted by everyone as real"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperNormalisation

Re: Things That Happen in Silicon Valley and Also the Soviet Union

#43

Post by beaconstudios »

s3r3nity wrote: post #27

"[T]he economy is centrally planned, using opaque algorithms not fully understood by their users" Loved this thread, but I think this one lost me. Does anyone know to what this is referring and mind explaining? Is this a comment on news feeds in apps, or is it a comment on the odd housing supply / zoning decisions? Or neither?

perhaps the fads and trends that drive huge amounts of VC investment and disappear a year or two later? Currently it's blockchains and AI, but previous iterations have been IoT, social, local, chatbots, and so on. Often these technologies are hyped way beyond their actual practical applications.

Re: Things That Happen in Silicon Valley and Also the Soviet Union

#44

Post by mc32 »

zug_zug wrote: post #12

"- being told you are constructing utopia while the system crumbles around you" This is the one that resonated with me. Obviously "the system" as a whole isn't objectively crumbling by traditional measures like GDP, but there were things that could give that feeling: Homeless sleeping in the subway and on the main streets, the smells, crime so rampant it's basically ignored (my car was broken into > 5 times), working…

The one thing that you didn’t get in the Soviet Union was everyday crime, well, what we understand as crime. Sure they could and did send people off to the camps for weird [political and crimes against the state] offenses, but property crimes and such were close to non existent.

Re: Things That Happen in Silicon Valley and Also the Soviet Union

#45

Post by cjf4 »

coldtea wrote: post #28
jpzisme wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll go ahead and say the United States is the greatest country the world has ever seen. It's not perfect, but once you live in other countries for a bit, even if you enjoy the experience, you appreciate the U.S. a lot more.

> I'll go ahead and say the United States is the greatest country the world has ever seen. It's not perfect, but once you live in other countries for a bit, even if you enjoy the experience, you appreciate the U.S. a lot more. Depends on whether you have lived in an advanced Western European country. It also depends of your tolerance of rednecks, prudes, puritans, and ignorant people (which exist everywhere in the wo…

>Depends on whether you have lived in an advanced Western European country.

All of which enjoy the shadow of nuclear security provided by the United States.

Re: Things That Happen in Silicon Valley and Also the Soviet Union

#46

Post by imbokodo »

21 wrote: post #7

> the United States as a whole is depicted as evil by default So true. The USA is viewed worse than China, Russia or Saudi Arabia. I also see a lot of it on HN.

China, Russia and Saudi Arabia are three countries that have never invaded the United States, all of which were invaded by the United States.

Re: Things That Happen in Silicon Valley and Also the Soviet Union

#47

Post by baybal2 »

mc32 wrote: post #44
zug_zug wrote: post #12

"- being told you are constructing utopia while the system crumbles around you" This is the one that resonated with me. Obviously "the system" as a whole isn't objectively crumbling by traditional measures like GDP, but there were things that could give that feeling: Homeless sleeping in the subway and on the main streets, the smells, crime so rampant it's basically ignored (my car was broken into > 5 times), working…

The one thing that you didn’t get in the Soviet Union was everyday crime, well, what we understand as crime. Sure they could and did send people off to the camps for weird [political and crimes against the state] offenses, but property crimes and such were close to non existent.

>property crimes and such were close to non existent.

Whaaaaaaaat? Well, according to official statistics.

From my father's side, we had relatives living in a closed down military city, but they were totally paranoid about break-ins during "Peak Brezhnev." Break ins were 50/50 annual events.

Street poverty existed as well, just not in big cities, where classless were either branded as substance abusers and locked away in jail, or being labeled as mentally ill and locked away in jail.

The regime tried really, really hard to make it appear that there were something wrong with the classless people, and "you keep your head low and everything be alright"

Re: Things That Happen in Silicon Valley and Also the Soviet Union

#48

Post by shadowtree »

21 wrote: post #7

> the United States as a whole is depicted as evil by default So true. The USA is viewed worse than China, Russia or Saudi Arabia. I also see a lot of it on HN.

A good test is your view on the 2nd Iraq War.

For background, as facts matter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War

"After 9/11, the Bush Administration national security team actively debated an invasion of Iraq. On the day of the attacks, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld asked his aides for: "best info fast. Judge whether good enough hit Saddam Hussein at same time. Not only Osama bin Laden."[72] President Bush spoke with Rumsfeld on 21 November and instructed him to conduct a confidential review of OPLAN 1003, the war plan for invading Iraq.[73] Rumsfeld met with General Tommy Franks, the commander of U.S. Central Command, on 27 November to go over the plans. A record of the meeting includes the question "How start?", listing multiple possible justifications for a U.S.–Iraq War.[71][74] The rationale for invading Iraq as a response to 9/11 has been widely questioned, as there was no cooperation between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.[75]"

Is this good, neutral, evil?

Re: Things That Happen in Silicon Valley and Also the Soviet Union

#49

Post by Semirhage »

cjf4 wrote: post #45
coldtea wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'll go ahead and say the United States is the greatest country the world has ever seen. It's not perfect, but once you live in other countries for a bit, even if you enjoy the experience, you appreciate the U.S. a lot more. Depends on whether you have lived in an advanced Western European country. It also depends of your tolerance of rednecks, prudes, puritans, and ignorant people (which exist everywhere in the wo…

>Depends on whether you have lived in an advanced Western European country. All of which enjoy the shadow of nuclear security provided by the United States.

You do know that France is a nuclear power, right?

Re: Things That Happen in Silicon Valley and Also the Soviet Union

#50

Post by mc32 »

baybal2 wrote: post #47
mc32 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The one thing that you didn’t get in the Soviet Union was everyday crime, well, what we understand as crime. Sure they could and did send people off to the camps for weird [political and crimes against the state] offenses, but property crimes and such were close to non existent.

>property crimes and such were close to non existent. Whaaaaaaaat? Well, according to official statistics. From my father's side, we had relatives living in a closed down military city, but they were totally paranoid about break-ins during "Peak Brezhnev." Break ins were 50/50 annual events. Street poverty existed as well, just not in big cities, where classless were either branded as substance abusers and locked awa…

Huh. Interesting. Maybe it depended on where you lived. The people I’ve talked to from the former USSR were all city folk, West of the Urals
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