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E Pur Si Muove

blog.samaltman.com

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Re: E Pur Si Muove

#181

Post by SnacksOnAPlane »

guelo wrote: post #155
throwaway34689 wrote: post #148

Of the places I've lived (not necessarily in order): - Deep South (18 years - born + raised) - Boston MA (5 years @ college then job) - NYC (6+ years) - Los Angeles (1yr @ startup) - San Diego (1yr @ startup) - Bay Area (6 years, including 4+ at household name tech company) I found the Bay Area (and SF in particular) to be the most intolerant, rigid and inflexible culture I've ever lived and worked in. I've never enc…

As if southerners aren't constantly cursing or making fun of "San Francisco values".

We're really not.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#182

Post by gadders »

Analemma_ wrote: post #41

I might have more sympathy for this post if I only knew about it in the abstract and wasn't familiar with specific cases. For example, lately among Bay Area types, and especially the Rationalist community, there's been a surge of interest in eugenics and scientific racism, now euphemistically rebranded as "human biodiversity". It tends to take the form of hand-wringing about how "people from certain regions" have low…

I don't think people from different regions or types have different IQs, but as a thought experiment, suppose it was proven that (to pick a random example) all Capricorns born on a Tuesday were below average intelligence. Should discussion of that fact be suppressed?

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#183

Post by andrestan »

guelo wrote: post #155
throwaway34689 wrote: post #148

Of the places I've lived (not necessarily in order): - Deep South (18 years - born + raised) - Boston MA (5 years @ college then job) - NYC (6+ years) - Los Angeles (1yr @ startup) - San Diego (1yr @ startup) - Bay Area (6 years, including 4+ at household name tech company) I found the Bay Area (and SF in particular) to be the most intolerant, rigid and inflexible culture I've ever lived and worked in. I've never enc…

As if southerners aren't constantly cursing or making fun of "San Francisco values".

Irrelevant to his original point. That Southerners do the same does not justify San Franciscans doing it as well.

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

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#184

Post by pmyteh »

dominotw wrote: post #139
pmyteh wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The results of a straw poll after a debate are not evidence for anything beyond what the people who saw the debate thought of the debaters. People vote for all kinds of reasons - the underlying merits of the case, the impressiveness of the speakers that they've found to present it, even sympathy for someone who got obviously crushed by their opponent. When I was a debater I've seen some truly outrageous motions get p…

I understand. I was responding to comment that said its totally baseless caricature. I think debaters did a good job of presenting evidence for their case. Why not give it a chance instead of saying its "staw poll", isn't any poll "straw poll" by that account? Also I never said it evidence of anything. What is an example of "evidence" in this particular case for you?

Ah, sorry. You said "results of this debate disagree with you", so I took that to be the debate's results (the vote), not the debate itself.

(And as a side point, no to the straw poll question - there are certain statistical guarantees on the representativeness of polls as long as they're drawn from a random sample of the public, with debates about how far you can deviate from a random sample and still have results that are useful. Self-selected polls, on the other hand, pretty much mean nothing.)

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#185

Post by jedharris »

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #7

Isn't this just asking for your ideas to not be criticized? Me: let's extend life Someone else: If people live a lot longer it will be disastrous for the environment, so people working on this must be really unethical Isn't this exactly how it's supposed to work? Why would Sam complain about an encounter like this?

Criticism: Helps to create a healthy society.

Toxic environment motivating you to move to another town: Tends to create an unhealthy society.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#186

Post by olympus »

ak_yo wrote: post #57
youdontknowtho wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep hearing that from people saying things like... "I think black people are genetically inferior." ...followed by... "Why can't we have a free exchange of ideas?" What if the ideas are unethical? There is a lot of that going around these days. Life extension is one that comes up quite a bit, because the question doesn't seem to involve life extension for all, but life extension for a few who can afford it. Or, if…

I completely agree. The exchange seems to go like this: A: "I think black people are genetically inferior." B: "I think that's a bigoted thing to say that has historically caused a lot of harm to a lot of people." A: "Why can't we have a free exchange of ideas?" Person B is engaging with that idea, it's just that they think it's completely indefensible. I have a hard time understanding how Person A thinks this conver…

But what if A said this:

There are obviously genetic differences between races. That's how AncestryDNA can tell where you came from. So if there are obviously genetic differences, why can't I talk about the pros/cons of being black without being hateful? Some differences are going to be objectively better or worse, why I can't we talk about them without going into full blown racism? If we acknowledge the fact that there are physical differences due to genetics, maybe there are mental differences too (that's a real touchy one)?

Pro: some localized African phenotypes make for world-class athletes in certain sports- a single tribe in Kenya is vastly over-represented in marathon running.

Con: Africans are worse at living in the Arctic Circle compared to Nordic people. Their dark skin isn't suited to producing enough vitamin D with limited skin exposure.

Con: Black people with high blood pressure don't respond well to beta blockers and ACE inhibitors. Instead they need to be prescribed diuretics and calcium blockers, but these have worse side effects.

It seems like today if we mention that there are actually genetic differences between races it automatically gets shut down because they assume we're going to start making the conversation about hate instead of what we can do to fix some of the cons.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#187

Post by [deleted] »

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #7

Isn't this just asking for your ideas to not be criticized? Me: let's extend life Someone else: If people live a lot longer it will be disastrous for the environment, so people working on this must be really unethical Isn't this exactly how it's supposed to work? Why would Sam complain about an encounter like this?

[deleted]

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#188

Post by robinsloan »

BadassFractal wrote: post #10

Thank you Sam for speaking out about this. Every few months living in the Bay reminds me of the importance of Paul Graham's http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html . The constant pursuit of ideological purity in the Bay, the desire for diversity of skin tones and orientations, but not of ideas, taking offense as a viable way of establishing social hierarchies. It's all very tiring.

This doesn't describe my experience of the Bay Area (2004-present) at all. Here's a sincere tip: start attending the Seminars About Long-term Thinking organized by the Long Now Foundation. Take a friend or two. Sitting in those (packed!) theaters, listening to big, bold, and really very challenging ideas -- not just presented and left at that, but also opened up and interrogated -- I really don't think you'll feel you're surrounded by people in "pursuit of ideological purity" who don't value interesting new ideas.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#189

Post by angersock »

guelo wrote: post #155
throwaway34689 wrote: post #148

Of the places I've lived (not necessarily in order): - Deep South (18 years - born + raised) - Boston MA (5 years @ college then job) - NYC (6+ years) - Los Angeles (1yr @ startup) - San Diego (1yr @ startup) - Bay Area (6 years, including 4+ at household name tech company) I found the Bay Area (and SF in particular) to be the most intolerant, rigid and inflexible culture I've ever lived and worked in. I've never enc…

As if southerners aren't constantly cursing or making fun of "San Francisco values".

What do you consider southerners?

As recently as two nights ago I helped entertain some startup founders from SF who were genuinely suprised that Houston (the 4th largest, soon 3rd largest city in the US) wasn't just a few strip malls.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#190

Post by kevlar1818 »

addicted wrote: post #127

---It is bad for all of us when people can’t say that the world is a sphere, that evolution is real, or that the sun is at the center of the solar system. Wait can people not say these things in SF? If not then what's the point of this post. If so, then wow SF, Thats messed up.

It's an analogy to "heretical" ideas from history.
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