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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

#221

Post by anthem2025 »

petra wrote: post #151
Treegarden wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t see how “tech” is limited to software. While your case might be made for software, according to many accounts Musk is a strong driver on the hardware side. For instance, I’ve read the Tesla and SpaceX books by Eric Berger, which are much more focused on technical things compared to the more mainstream books. And while Musk is not in the trenches with a screwdriver, he’s not faking it either. To be honest, I’m…

There was a podcast with Mark Andreesen, the VC, and he said that Elon has deep understanding and involvement in the technical side in his companies.

Wow if Marc Andreesen said then it must be true.

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

#222

Post by nkmnz »

tim333 wrote: post #186
rolandog wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps the nuance is in the eye of the beholder? I don't think it's sustainable to go about our lives wearing blinders and averting our gaze from the misuse of technology because one might be afraid of unhappy feelings creeping in. One must not be so cowardly as to deny that materials and technology can be misused or deny that their purpose is of oppression for fear of being attacked by group-thinkers. "The unexamin…

>deny that their purpose is of oppression... A lot of the uber-nerds are just regular nerds who got lucky, not part of some evil genius cabal. By all means keep an eye on them but I think for the most part they are regular people.

Look at Germany 1933++ and Eastern Germany 1945++ to see how regular people act when they get power over their neighbours. I don’t have a position on the book, but your argument isn’t supporting what you think your position is - quite the contrary.

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

#223

Post by cadamsdotcom »

Unfettered capitalism is great under certain conditions. Amazing things get invented & rolled out to the world.

When conditions change, cracks appear..

For many reasons we appear to be in an era of slower growth, but shareholders used to growth are still demanding it. That’s sticking business leaders in a really tough place.

The incentives need to change - whether through legislation, or market demands. Until then it’ll be less leg room on flights, more “offers” when you just opened your banking app to pay a bill, and more sanctioned spam in your inbox.

I truly believe plenty of folks are fed up and a backlash is coming that’ll be a mix of legislation and companies emerging that cater to informed customers. I’m optimistic!

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

#224

Post by robocat »

jve wrote: post #49
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.

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…

The list is missing my #1 quote from Jim Keller (an epic engineer type) although unfortunately quote is in middle of a long YouTube vid. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33662764

Aside: I don't understand why they even mention what journalists think - only engineers opinions matter when judging engineering ability.

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

#225

Post by lo_zamoyski »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #194
tim333 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>deny that their purpose is of oppression... A lot of the uber-nerds are just regular nerds who got lucky, not part of some evil genius cabal. By all means keep an eye on them but I think for the most part they are regular people.

People don't stay 'regular' for long after gaining immense power or money. I imagine it's quite difficult to stay grounded and humble in such situations, especially with legions of sycophants and yes-people hyping them up.

People live mostly by convention, not reason (including those who think they don’t). When social sensibilities change, people move with them regardless of whether they are good or bad, because people in general are cowards. They fear life outside the crowd. For most, majority opinion - whether manufactured or not - is God. Most float downstream (including those who think they don’t); few swim upstream.

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

#226

Post by lo_zamoyski »

pigpop wrote: post #218
sgnelson wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See: banality of evil

it's almost like the people you call evil are just regular people anyone can be evil, anyone can be good, anyone can be both even on the same day or be seen as one contemporarily and the other historically so perhaps painting specific groups of people as the incarnation of pure evil is not a good idea unless you're trying to sell a book or get ad revenue

The line between good and evil runs through every human heart.

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

#227

Post by delichon »

ben_w wrote: post #178
delichon wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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) un…

It's safer than human drivers now. That's good enough. It will take more than that to convince world, and it should. I applaud the well earned skepticism. But I'm an old guy who has no problem qualifying for a driver's license, and if you replaced me with FSD 14.2, especially under not ideal conditions like at night or in a storm, everyone would be safer.

I predict a cusp to be reached in the next few years when safety advocates flip from trying to slow down self driving to trying to mandate it.

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

#228

Post by lo_zamoyski »

JuniperMesos wrote: post #196
disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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).

The nerd/jock dichotomy is at best loosely pointing at some genuine clusters of interests and predilections that exist among people in the world, and is more often taking a set of tropes from 80s Hollywood movies about high school and using them to try to explain how real people in the world are today, which is stupid. (Who wrote all those 80s movies? Bookworms ! Who acted in them? Theater kids !)

Indeed. People who use this terminology in earnest have a maturity problem. It’s a juvenile way of classifying the world that silly people like to use to channel their petty resentments and envies. Time to grow up.

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

#229

Post by dialup_sounds »

zrn900 wrote: post #212
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.

The uncomfortable reality is that there does exist an 'us vs them' situation in every other aspect of society today, and those who ignore it end up on the losing side.

A statement so vague and ominous it could have been uttered at any point in human history by persons of any ideology without loss of meaning.
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