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The Nerd Reich – Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy

simonandschuster.com

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Re: The Nerd Reich – Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy

#171

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

lagniappe wrote: post #87
disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> maybe you can count Zuckerberg I think that you definitely need to count him. He's always been a massive nerd, his attempts to bulk up and become a MMA competitor notwithstanding.

>his attempts to bulk up and become a MMA competitor notwithstanding a lot of us nerds value physical strength, it's 2025, we're not mouthbreathers anymore.

> a lot of us nerds value physical strength, it's 2025, we're not mouthbreathers anymore.

Sure, I don't disagree. I just put that in to prevent people from claiming he was a jock now because of that (which would clearly be absurd).

Re: The Nerd Reich – Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy

#172

Post by [deleted] »

pjc50 wrote: post #92
xg15 wrote: post #69

> "The Sovereign Individual" by James Dale Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg. Lord William Rees-Mogg being the father of Jacob Rees-Mogg, of Brexit fame. Interesting how often you meet the same people if you just start digging a little.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sovereign_Individual : 1997, since I had to check. > Interesting how often you meet the same people if you just start digging a little. Endemic problem in UK politics, and a lot of other countries.

[deleted]

Re: The Nerd Reich – Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy

#173

Post by sillyfluke »

pjc50 wrote: post #99
jamil7 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's cute but are there any actual nerds left in big tech leadership? Of the magnificent seven we basically only have Jensen Huang left as a technical leader and maybe you can count Zuckerberg.

Carmack? Also ended up drifting right, but you can't fault his technical credentials. Wozniak is still alive and seemingly not in the rightwing set, although also too retired to count as "leadership".

Yeah, as I recall Carmack came out against some of the anti-trust actions of Lina Kahn, soecifically blocking certain type of acquisitions and mergers by big tech companies.

Though I'm curious what the take of "founders first" type of VCs like YC on the Figma IPO is, after the acquisition by Adobe was blocked. Whatever the stock price of Figma is now, would they specifically argue that of the two outcomes the Figma IPO was worse for the founders? To be clear, if that acquisition wasn't blocked the IPO wouldn't have happened.

Re: The Nerd Reich – Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy

#174

Post by sillyfluke »

skrebbel wrote: post #2

I'm not a big sucker for this kind of un-nuanced "us vs them" rhetoric, but I gotta admit, the title is a stroke of genius.

>I'm not a big sucker for this kind of un-nuanced "us vs them" rhetoric

Everyone usually has this stance by default until they think some batshit crazy redlines have been crossed regardless of what end of the political spectrum they reside in and decide to adopt an "us vs them, hope for peace, prepare for war" approach.

I'm sure you have some "if they actually do then I'll adopt a more alarmed stance" line in the sand, it's just drawn at a different point probably. That's why it's best to talk specifics of the case instead of declaring an abstract high-road stance.

Re: The Nerd Reich – Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy

#175

Post by TeMPOraL »

wolvesechoes wrote: post #111
noduerme wrote: post #20

I know it's fashionable to say that democracy itself leads to these outcomes that destroy democracy. I think Arendt was right about self-colonization and overproduction of elites being the main thing that leads to totalitarianism. There wouldn't even be such a thing as a silicon valley billionaire if the United States wasn't the most wildly successful political entity for the past 2000 years. Power corrupts, but that…

> Power corrupts It doesn't, although they would like you to believe so, so you avoid obtaining it. But it definitely attracts those corrupted.

It does, by its very nature. Power is not magic, nor is it the Force. It's not a quantity you can stockpile and own - power is leased, it's granted to you by other people. It comes with expectations on how you will wield that power, and usually can be taken away just as quickly as it was granted, if you exercise it in ways they don't approve[0].

Power is obtained through meeting people, gaining their favor, entering deals, providing them services, eventually joining their ranks and advancing to the next level on the ordinal scale. Especially in politics, "power corrupts" by definition; by the time you gain any, you're so thoroughly entangled in mutual deals and friendships with other players you're no longer an autonomous entity - and if you're not willing to do that, you will never be given the opportunity to advance.

--

[0] - Yes, there are caveats and strategems one can use to hold on to power - usually by playing people against each other to coerce ongoing support; every history period and every movie with a villain has plenty of examples. It's another discussion; my focus here is on what power is, and where it comes from.

Re: The Nerd Reich – Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy

#176

Post by ben_w »

xg15 wrote: post #65
jve wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elon Musk must be one. Seems enough techy to me: Tesla, SpaceX, Starlink - software being used for the hardware in innovative ways. Edit: Oh, wow, mentioning this guy is surely controversial, sorry. However discussing whether he is a nerd, understands engineering on very deep level/gets his hands dirty OR he only manages people - there must be some psychological aspect related, a form of disagreement to discredit or…

I think Elon Musk just wants to be Tony Stark and cultivates the appropriate image for that. And possibly a genuine obsession with (rightwing-ish) meme/youth culture, which I think got him a lot of his initial followers on twitter/reddit/4chan/etc.

A lot of people miss how much of a tit Tony Stark (at least the Robert Downey Jr. version) was.

Smart, but not as smart as he thinks he is. Not good with anything interpersonal. Flair for the dramatic (and dad jokes) at the expense of those working with him.

Re: The Nerd Reich – Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy

#177

Post by TeMPOraL »

delichon wrote: post #162
wolvesechoes wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Power corrupts It doesn't, although they would like you to believe so, so you avoid obtaining it. But it definitely attracts those corrupted.

You don't believe that there are people who honored a principle until temptation became to strong? Only people who pursued the temptation?

False dichotomy; power is not a stockpilable quantity, it comes from other people and their willingness to defer to you or entertain you. Compromising is not a temptation to get power quicker - compromise is power, it's how you acquire it. The more you want to lean on the system to help you, the more aligned you need to be with it, eventually becoming one with it; you sacrifice autonomy at every step of the way.

Re: The Nerd Reich – Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy

#178

Post by ben_w »

delichon wrote: post #118
mikkupikku wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self-driving cars without LIDAR was a pure cynical business decision and hasn't worked well technically.

Disagree. The current limitations of Tesla self driving are not around difficulties in judging distances that lidar solves. They're around inference deficiencies with accurate geometry.

If the AI was good enough, vision-only self-driving would be at least as good as the best human.

The AI isn't good enough. I'm starting to suspect that current ML learning rates can't be good enough in reasonable wall-clock timeframes due to how long it takes between relevant examples for them to learn from.

It's fine to lean on other sensory modalities (including LIDAR, radar, ultrasound, whatever else you fancy) until the AI gets good enough.

Re: The Nerd Reich – Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy

#179

Post by PNewling »

lagniappe wrote: post #150
RealityVoid wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My body is just the vehicle that carries my brain around - and my brain deserves a smooth, luxurious ride.

Your brain doesn't live in isolation, your body and the fitness of it are crucial to fueling that brain.

> Your brain doesn't live in isolation

Well, we can't completely prove that...[0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_in_a_vat

Re: The Nerd Reich – Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy

#180

Post by bigyabai »

drcongo wrote: post #143
nephihaha wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how and why they get published. Little names don't get in there. I haven't read the book so can't judge the content.

This is the book that introduced the idea of disaster capitalism - how to profit from other people's misery.

Formerly known as opportunism.
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