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Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’

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Re: Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’

#231

Post by adventured »

refurb wrote: post #177
wz1000 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The takeover by the proscriptive far-left Americans have a very weird conception of what "far-left" means. Liberal feel good minority appeasement by billion dollar multinational corporations is as far from "far-left" as you can get.

Political views are relative. I could say that there are no hard-right parties in Europe (with mainstream ideals - I'm ignoring the fascist parties).

You can't correctly say there are no hard-right parties in Europe. They're in nearly every European nation and often have large political positions. Ignoring that is like pretending the alt-right Breitbart crowd doesn't exist in the US. Much of Eastern Europe in particular is overflowing with a hard-right quasi-fascist ideology currently.

Re: Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’

#232

Post by ebbv »

I'm supposed to feel bad for Peter Thiel? The guy is a billionaire. He can go wherever he wants and do whatever he wants.

He thinks it's hard to be a conservative in California? Try being a liberal in most of the red state parts of the country who actually has to work for a living.

Give me a break.

Re: Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’

#233

Post by manfredo »

_skel wrote: post #169

I don't get it. I grew up in Silicon Valley and I work in tech, and so do many other people I know. They run the gamut from far-left socialists to libertarians to own a bunch of guns. They have all kinds of ethnic backgrounds and religious views. Some of my most libertarian/pro-gun friends have not been shy about their political views and it hasn't hurt their tech careers at all. They are far more welcome here than l…

I work in the Bay Area and I have personally worked with (as in, on the same team with and working directly in cooperation. CEOs, founders, etc. are not included in this count), exactly one person who discussed their conservative views. This is in comparison to hundreds of liberals. Sure, you may be able to identify at least one person on variety of ends of the political spectrum, but I don't think anyone can sanely deny a vast under representation of conservatives in Silicon Valley. Granted, Silicon Valley itself is politically imbalanced. But even in San Francisco 9% [1] of voters voted Republican in 2016.Despite that, I haven't witnessed anything close to that share of conservatives in my tech jobs - even in my jobs lower in the Peninsula and in South Bay.

Adding this as an edit: Also, do you work in the Bay Area currently (you mentioned you grew up there)? There is a pretty substantial discrepancy between voicing political views in high school and college vs. when people actually start working. I have met more than an order of magnitude more conservatives and non-liberals in 4 years of university in the Bay Area as compared working in tech there - 25 to 30 in unviersity vs. exactly 1 in industry. Also edited in the fact that I work in the Bay Area in the first sentence, so I realized I didn't mention it until the last.

Re: Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’

#234

Post by mrep »

eadmund wrote: post #213
jstewartmobile wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what the averages are, but reviewing my comment history, seems to be more upvotes than downvotes. I don't post comments on HN to stir the pot. I post comments on HN in the hope of getting other perspectives. A comment with a downvote and a reply is more valuable than a comment with upvotes and no replies. It's not like I can redeem HN points for cash and prizes. I think I can do an OK job of not being an…

> I think I can do an OK job of not being an asshole, but I honestly have no idea what is or isn't going to piss people off or classify as flamebait here. I wish that there were some sort of metamoderation system. I downvote the mods whenever they post about abusing their power, but I don't know if that even has an effect, or if moderators' posts are immune from downvotes.

Wasn't this the point of flagging/vouching for comments?

Re: Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’

#235

Post by manofstick »

walshemj wrote: post #138
sho wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> insane, insufferable far left crazies Definitely this option. And by the way, I've been increasingly wondering lately whether our blind insistence on labelling absolutely everything "left/right" or "red/blue" isn't doing our society real damage. I've never voted conservative my entire life but I have nothing in common with the far left and indeed fear them a lot more than the far right. We need a new vocabulary.

Yes but there are no far left parties in the USA to vote for.

As non-american, living outside of america (but having lived there for a year and a half starting January 2000), I concur. I still follow american politics quite a bit (too much for me to remain healthy actually) and I'm constantly bamboozled trying to comprehend what people mean by the "far left".

To me it seems like any one is considered "far left" if they believe in:

- treating all people, regardless of race, gender, gender-identity or age equally (*) - believing in the science of climate change - believing that guns are the main reason for mass murders - believing that the more you earn, the more tax you should pay

Which, for the rest of the world, are pretty centralist positions...

Re: Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’

#236

Post by jnbiche »

saget wrote: post #62
Barrin92 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>but the ideology of the south is just as homogeneous as SF this is an interesting asymmetry I've noticed too. There are countless of places where salt of the earth Americana is the de facto monoculture. If I'd go there and try to create a liberal-hippie space for myself they'd probably flip me the finger and tell me that's not the local way of life, and somehow everybody seems to agree that this is perfectly fine. Y…

They key difference between Nashville and SV is Nashville doesn't claim to be anything but what's it is. SV culture claims to be inclusive and value diversity of thought. However, plenty of people experience exactly the opposite of this and that makes people feel lied to. Eventually the true SV culture will become more understood but until then I can understand people's frustrations

> SV culture claims to be inclusive and value diversity of thought

I don't see many people in SV culture claiming to value "diversity of thought". They value diversity of culture, races, sexual identities, etc. But not thought (unfortunately).

That said, other posters are 100% correct when they write that rural America is just as intolerant, only in the other direction. And you don't see many people moving to those areas and attacking their lack of thought diversity (probably because they'd get shunned, at best, or shot, at worst).

Re: Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’

#237

Post by anigbrowl »

dang wrote: post #86
door3 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but really the point isn't about me. The point is the dominant opinion on Hackernews is "James Damore was right!" or at least "James Damore made some good points", which, whether you believe it or not, is absolutely a right-wing, conservative opinion, not the kind of "liberal SV PC culture" that is supposedly dominant and oppressive.

Every side thinks HN is dominated by the opposite side. This is as reliable as clockwork. But the truth is boringly tautological: on divisive issues, the community is divided, like any sufficient sample of society at large would be. People with strong views simply notice the comments they dislike much more strongly. And sometimes they pass around links to their friends to 'prove' it—which proves nothing, of course, b…

It would be quite interesting to see some anonymized SNA on the HN corpus to compare the volume and consistency of the various voting blocs in a quantitative fashion.

Re: Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’

#238

Post by anxman »

webkike wrote: post #221
downandout wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that among this crowd, simply saying "I voted for Trump" or "I hated Hillary so I just didn't vote" is considered "controversial" and worthy of personal and professional backlash.

Voting for an openly sexist person is extremely controversial. I don't find "I hated Hillary so I just didn't vote" controversial at all.

This is sexist talk in Silicon Valley. Be careful.

Re: Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’

#239

Post by adventured »

heurist wrote: post #180
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> SF just happens to be a highly visible example with some unique problems Coming in from New York, San Francisco’s lack of attention to its homeless population is self inflicted. It’s also a problem that nobody in the city seems very much to care about.

I haven't been to San Francisco in 10ish years or NYC in 5 so I can't compare directly, but Austin, Dallas, San Antonio and Houston all have tons of homeless people as well and they seem to get very little attention.

The point is that supposedly San Francisco's ideology would be extremely favorable to taking superior care of the homeless vs more conservative cities. The actual results, are that SF does an extraordinarily mediocre job at it.

SF is an affluent city, with a homeless problem consisting of 5,000 people, and they're unwilling to fix it financially. They can afford to, and they refuse to. It's disgusting.

Re: Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’

#240

Post by 6487698hhhh »

sho wrote: post #117
scarmig wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember always getting annoyed at colleagues and Hacker News generally for being technolibertarian fanboys. And now I'm constantly annoyed at the sanctimony and self-indulgence of the "Left," even though I hate granting them that label. Maybe I'm just getting old.

> Maybe I'm just getting old. Well unfortunately nothing can stop that, but things have definitely changed. I remember thinking that too.

From my own highly biased perspective the right has remained more or less in the same place politically over time, whereas the left has lurched violently towards the extreme on some topics, also tending towards the extreme in its tactics. We are not at war; we are not generally living in autocratic regimes; people generally have freedom to conduct their lives in the way they would prefer; so why is the left acting like we are living in a fascist state? Above all we need honest dialog. If anyone saw Cathy Newman's interview of Jordan Peterson, for example, I cannot see how it helps feminism at all to merely shout down those you disagree with rather than having an honest exchange of ideas.
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