Does this article mention Adam Becker at all ?
Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy
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Re: Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy
#22I think it’s true that when Musk or Altman is just unambiguously being like, “Yes, this story is a template for what I should do with my company,” that’s bonkers. But there is [also] this technocratic libertarian thread in science fiction that they are picking up on.
Is there some evidence for this claim? Lepore in her reply says "I guess Bezos is a big Robert Heinlein fan" and then there is a lot of talk about Asimov. I also read a very old article about Amazon, and the journalist noted that a book by David Niven was the only one on Bezos' office bookshelf.
But, so what? I read Heinlein and Niven and Asimov when I was young, too, along with a bunch of much pulpier stuff (James P. Hogan, anyone?). Does that make me and millions of other science fiction fans technocratic libertarians? If not, why do people regularly point to science fiction as the source of these three men's libertarian leanings?
Re: Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy
#23I don't think there's anything deep here. Good fiction is entertainment. The author may or may not also intend to send a message or teach a lesson, but above all fiction has to be entertaining, or it won't get read. A sense of morality is obviously not required to be entertained. People like Musk are science fiction fans who also happen to be morally bankrupt. I believe those two factors are mostly unrelated. Space, rockets, aliens, lasers, pew pew pew, end of story.
Re: Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy
#24They know exactly what they are doing. Elon Musk talks a lot about freedom but he has never practiced it with regards to others, only himself. He has always considered the technologically well educated to be superior. He is also an egotistical narcissist. You can't believe anything he says he believes because he projects what he wants others to believe of him, not what he truly believes. The same is true of many of t…
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Re: Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy
#25In the US at least, we've been brainwashed to think that government, by definition, must be bloated, corrupt and inefficient. Believing this axiom, people vote to hand over every possible service to private enterprise.
Now we are in a situation where a handful of unelected business men have more power over our lives than the elected government.
Re: Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy
#26Re: Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy
#27Being and especially growing up rich tends to shield you from seeing the consequences of bad decisions, and I think that results in a lot of these rich tech bros being unable to properly analyze not just risk, but any negative externalities. Every child starts out thinking, "if I was in charge, I could fix this. It's so simple!" Then you actually see that when you make bad choices, you or others get hurt, and you rea…
I think you're talking about a specific form of the larger problem. The very wealthy only know the world of the very wealthy. They know nothing, let alone care, about people who aren't "in the club".
Every worse, they -- like pretty much all of us -- tend to think that most people are just like them, so they think not only that they understand normal people, but that they are normal people. And the ones that don't either tend to think that their will should be imposed on the rest of us because we're too stupid to understand what's good for us and/or just view us as resources to be mined.
Re: Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy
#28They know exactly what they are doing. Elon Musk talks a lot about freedom but he has never practiced it with regards to others, only himself. He has always considered the technologically well educated to be superior. He is also an egotistical narcissist. You can't believe anything he says he believes because he projects what he wants others to believe of him, not what he truly believes. The same is true of many of t…
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??? Elonjet????
Re: Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy
#29I don’t even think most of it is deeply philosophical. They just got uberrich and now worry more about the concerns of the uberrich than the concerns they had when they were normies. Rule of law, functioning government providing services, functioning public commons, free press, freedom of speech for all, any social safety net, etc don’t matter when they are so far removed from the public they can just go buy yourself…
This is what happens when you have VCs putting on hackathons at NorCal universities and scooping people off the campuses before they ever get their degrees.
If you take a guy under the age of 25, give him millions of dollars, and tell him he's a genius, he's going to develop a personality disorder.
Re: Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy
#30They know exactly what they are doing. Elon Musk talks a lot about freedom but he has never practiced it with regards to others, only himself. He has always considered the technologically well educated to be superior. He is also an egotistical narcissist. You can't believe anything he says he believes because he projects what he wants others to believe of him, not what he truly believes. The same is true of many of t…
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