Silicon Valley Has an Empathy Vacuum • Hacker News Board

Re: Silicon Valley Has an Empathy Vacuum

#101

Post by eva1984 » Mon, Nov 28, 2016, 5:05 PM UTC

jmkni wrote: post #26

doubleunplussed wrote: post #3

It's not a private company's job to have empathy for the people affected by progress. Don't get me wrong, I have plenty of empathy. But petitioning private companies to change their ways will get you exactly nowhere unless it comes with a corresponding profit motive. It's the government's job to redistribute wealth and income to the needy, and provide safety nets and retraining opportunities for people whose industri…

That lack of empathy might come back to bite those companies in the ass later on though when the people affected start to vote for politicians who promise to protect their jobs by heavily taxing companies who use/focus on automation.

This might be the best way...to be honest.

Re: Silicon Valley Has an Empathy Vacuum

#102

Post by TulliusCicero » Mon, Nov 28, 2016, 5:08 PM UTC

talmand wrote: post #65

throwaway729 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. These are the same truck drivers who have overwhelmingly conservative political views. If they don't want to help themselves then I'll take the tax breaks and avoid being affected by their self inflicted pain.

Maybe they view that "helping themselves" is stealing from their children's future with unsustainable debt and taxes?

Helping people back on their feet, if anything, should result in a stronger fiscal future, not a weaker one. Just letting people languish in unemployment tends to result in people acquiring physical health problems, mental health problems, even drug dependency. And then those people get stuck on the disability rolls, draining taxes rather than contributing them.

Just look at all the stories around opioid abuse throughout rural white areas/the rust belt; you think those places are setting us up for a stronger fiscal situation in the future?

Re: Silicon Valley Has an Empathy Vacuum

#103

Post by ambivalence » Mon, Nov 28, 2016, 5:15 PM UTC

> The streets of San Francisco—spiritually part of the Valley—feel less crowded. Coffee-shop conversations are hushed. Everything feels a little muted, an eerie quiet broken by chants of protesters. It even seems as if there are more parking spots.

Or maybe it was just Thanksgiving week?

Re: Silicon Valley Has an Empathy Vacuum

#104

Post by dragonwriter » Mon, Nov 28, 2016, 5:18 PM UTC

atemerev wrote: post #4

People had voted for Trump not because of lack of empathy, but because they were fed up with being patronized, negged, treated like children, observed, modeled and disempowered, belittled and generally discounted. And this article is not helping it.

People voted for Trump because he was the Republican nominee, and a smaller share of the electorate did so than voted for the last Republican nominee.

Re: Silicon Valley Has an Empathy Vacuum

#105

Post by internaut » Mon, Nov 28, 2016, 5:22 PM UTC

adamnemecek wrote: post #97

internaut wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really really disagree with this. I think the evidence is against you. The economics research shows that the 'best returns' come from early education, with diminishing returns the further progress is made. It is counter intuitive I know, but mass education is similar to macro economics. Helping everybody can help nobody. South Korea and Japan put a lot of focus on education, work insane hours for comparatively low…

> I think the evidence is against you. The economics research shows that the 'best returns' come from early education, with diminishing returns the further progress is made. There isn't a single country where majority of the population does some sort of research. And guess what, that's what people in the future will have to be doing for their jobs. > It is counter intuitive I know, but mass education is similar to ma…

> that's what people in the future will have to be doing for their jobs.

We'll have to agree to disagree.

Most post-2008 grads today are living hand to mouth in the cities. They are the new working poor. This isn't going to change. The market is saturated.

It is just that nobody wants to believe this. Not the teachers, not the parents, not the students.

> Fundamentally I think that one of the issues of the system is a lack of exploration. Like there are so many areas where you can go to extreme detail but people don't explore them because the educational system limits your worldview by limiting your choices.

We certainly agree on that.

Interdisciplinary pollination is all but forgotten. There's a cheap source of growth right there and few are picking up those dollar bills on the street.

If we lived in a world of economic growth (I'm convinced we're not, you see. I think ex-computation there is no real growth in the developed world for a long time) then we should see a flowering of new fields, new explorations, new businesses. What the GDP statistics say is only tangentially connected to reality.

The solution I would throw out is the use of AI, particularly agent based AI capable of nudging researchers and regular people along interesting lines of inquiry. I know that sounds vague but unless you think radical government reform is possible (you know: the other half of the workforce that has never seen genuine automation)... Almost any reform would probably spark a civil war.

What solution would you put forward?

> I think that some of these issues are somewhat cultural though. To me it feels like both SK and Japan still cling to old social structures to a detriment of the society.

Maybe. Maybe they're caught in the same trap we are.

I think 'Japan' is our future unless we solve for X here. They've been caught in a stagnation for decades. They don't have much social unrest, I doubt the United States would be so lucky.

Re: Silicon Valley Has an Empathy Vacuum

#106

Post by phreeza » Mon, Nov 28, 2016, 5:36 PM UTC

robbrown451 wrote: post #11

I don't see how the things he discusses have to do with empathy in Silicon Valley. Driverless trucks, for instance, have nothing to do with empathy and a lot to do with simple economics. Someone is going to build them if they can make a buck doing it, and empathy isn't going to somehow stop that. On the other hand, I do think companies like Facebook and Google and the news sites (or whoever makes their comment system…

I think Slashdot has something like this. Not sure how well it works.

Re: Silicon Valley Has an Empathy Vacuum

#107

Post by torkable » Mon, Nov 28, 2016, 5:44 PM UTC

noir-york wrote: post #53

adamnemecek wrote: post #13

This Neo-Luddism feels really misplaced. Do you know why some people are getting the short end of the stick? It's because the educational system has failed them by wasting their youth and giving nothing in return. But I can't blame a guy who founded a SV-centric blog to see all problems through a SV-centric lens.

> It's because the educational system has failed them by wasting their youth and giving nothing in return Ah, the deserving poor! Some never consider getting an education because it was not something to aspire to, let alone spending enough time in the system to fail them. Maybe these people are getting the short end of the stick not because they were idle, but because their family were too busy working three jobs try…

Is public education not worth anything?

Re: Silicon Valley Has an Empathy Vacuum

#108

Post by talmand » Mon, Nov 28, 2016, 5:49 PM UTC

TulliusCicero wrote: post #102

talmand wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they view that "helping themselves" is stealing from their children's future with unsustainable debt and taxes?

Helping people back on their feet, if anything, should result in a stronger fiscal future, not a weaker one. Just letting people languish in unemployment tends to result in people acquiring physical health problems, mental health problems, even drug dependency. And then those people get stuck on the disability rolls, draining taxes rather than contributing them. Just look at all the stories around opioid abuse throug…

I would have to say I haven't seen anything from either party that would address any of that, directly or indirectly. The problems you describe have been ignored for years.

Re: Silicon Valley Has an Empathy Vacuum

#109

Post by teilo » Mon, Nov 28, 2016, 5:52 PM UTC

pmoriarty wrote: post #40

atemerev wrote: post #4

People had voted for Trump not because of lack of empathy, but because they were fed up with being patronized, negged, treated like children, observed, modeled and disempowered, belittled and generally discounted. And this article is not helping it.

And why were they patronized and treated like children again? Oh, perhaps it was because they claimed Obama wasn't born in the US. Or because they denied global warming. Or because they hate Mexicans and Muslims. In short, because they bought in to the steaming pile of bullshit that is the right wing media echo chamber. When they think like children, talk like children, and act like children, they shouldn't be surpri…

What you fail to comprehend is that your contemptuous attitude is the very thing that isn't working anymore. In fact, the more you crank up the rhetoric, the more you will be ignored.

If this election has taught us anything, it is that if we continually scream at and belittle adults, they will eventually ignore us. Every epithet, every word of shame-speak will then fall on deaf ears. We will find ourselves in the very position we placed them in: powerless and irrelevant.

You should be asking yourself: Why was the birther and the racial element so prominent during the Obama years? These things do not happen in a vacuum. They have a root cause, and it is not, as you might conclude, because every Trump voter is a racist, a bigot, or stupid. Think more deeply.

I might also add that by pigeon-holing the entire body who elected Trump into the category of ignorant racist bigots, you are committing the very act of stereo-typing you are decrying. You are discrediting yourself by accusing people of things they know they are not guilty of, and reinforcing your own irrelevance. If empathy is your concern, perhaps you should start with your own.

Re: Silicon Valley Has an Empathy Vacuum

#110

Post by talmand » Mon, Nov 28, 2016, 5:54 PM UTC

throwaway729 wrote: post #88

talmand wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they view that "helping themselves" is stealing from their children's future with unsustainable debt and taxes?

Except they didn't vote for a fiscal conservative, they voted for a guy whose primary policy proposals are tax cuts and public works programs. So they're stealing from the future either way. If Cruz or Rubio or Ryan had been the GOP nominee, I would take your comment more seriously.

From my point of view, no candidate running for President had any fiscal conservative views. Some of the them could talk-the-talk and spit out a few keywords to the media, but none of them really had it if one would look at them hard enough. The Republican party hasn't supported the notion of a fiscal conservative in decades. So the voters went with the candidate that spoke out against the establishment.

Also, there are types of Presidents that can work on a decent future without being a fiscal conservative, it's not a requirement. We'll have to see how it plays out with Trump.