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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

#251

Post by ycombigrator »

tim333 wrote: post #165
ycombigrator wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hassabis is absolutely a nerd. Joint honours physics and maths from Oxbridge and a PhD in neuroscience (and a Nobel prize in none of these fields). His driving interest was always games (master standard in chess at 13, five-time winner of the all-round world board games championship, video game programmer in his teens then his own studio in his 20s). He's the end game boss of nerdland.

Yeah but the dictionary has "intellectually passionate but socially awkward, or someone considered unstylish and lacking social skills". I think he might be a bit social.

[dead]

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

#252

Post by sillyfluke »

skrebbel wrote: post #183
sillyfluke wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 san…

You misunderstand my point. I made no remark about whether big tech bosses behave harmfully or not (and in fact I believe that many do). My point is about blaming “nerds” or “Silicon Valley” for power grabs by a few asshole billionaires. As a nerd running a startup, I dislike the tendency of many journalists to blanket blame “nerds” for the behavior of nutjobs like Musk. It’s pure “us vs them” thinking, blaming the g…

Fair enough, but you have to admit it's virtually impossible to infer your two paragraphs here from that one sentence above. The calling out of "us vs them" rhetoric is what's stated clearly (as well as the fondness for the title).

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

#253

Post by brettermeier »

nephihaha wrote: post #90

This is far more similar to Communism than Fascism. Their mentality is that they are a scientific vanguard (like Marxism) and that the ends justify the means. They also share the binary thinking of Marxists. They part company with Fascism because most of them are internationalist.

MAGA spam bot?

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

#254

Post by sillyfluke »

nephihaha wrote: post #97
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.

There is a better one. It was about how the far right was trying to take over Furry Fandom... The title was "the Furred Reich".

hah, had to look this up to make sure this was a real thing. But disagree on which is better, the Nerd Reich has a better ring to it. When you say the other one out loud it sounds like "deferred Reich".

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

#255

Post by amiga386 »

nkmnz wrote: post #236
amiga386 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. You are literally likely to be in a better social class today if your ancestors were Normans conquerors rather than the Anglo-Saxon conquered. https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/60593/1/__lse.ac.uk_storage_LIBRAR...

Actually, that 0.7 intergenerational correlation only tracks surnames—i.e., the male line. It completely ignores the fact that ~50% of the population changes status by marriage, which is invisible in surname analysis. Think about it: when a blacksmith’s daughter marries a baron, her social mobility doesn’t show up anywhere in the data. She just becomes part of the baron’s lineage going forward. So Clark has discovere…

I think you're overestimating how far families married outwith their class. Given the scandal of Mrs Simpson or Ms Markle, how often do you think Barons married commoners? It's the stuff of fairy-tales.

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

#256

Post by major505 »

n4r9 wrote: post #75
major505 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Are you talking about this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot It looks like nothing actually happened...

Thats what they want people to believe. In the same time industry titans in the US like Ford where funding the ascencion of the nazi regime because they feared what happeing in Russian, without properly understanding the context that make possible the revolution to occour in there.

NOw they pack the "revolution" in a neat way to sell people the impression they are revolting against a system at the same time they sell fear for them to give up righs in the name of safety.

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

#257

Post by angelfangs »

What's the actual factual accusation here? That monied interests converge on the ruling power? How is this different when the 'opposition' is in control? As conditions for the middle class continue to deteriorate, isn't it normal that companies that depend on middle class purchasing power try to adjust government buttons and levers to assure their continuation and position in the market? The 'holier than thou' is showing.

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

#258

Post by happymellon »

tim333 wrote: post #138
happymellon wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that he didn't invent any of it. Just a savvy investor, and as far as I understand, hasn't really worked on any of it. His contributions were rants until he just took ketamine. His work was making a yelp clone.

He invented the very successful hyperloop.

He also successfully managed to invent a company that takes government contracts and fails to deliver to block momentum for public facilities.

(Boring company...)

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

#259

Post by rolandog »

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

> anyone can be evil, anyone can be good,

Not to be dismissive of your point, but this may be a thought-terminating cliché. That's not an argument that would hold up in court against pedophiles and murderers; I would argue that it shouldn't also hold for fascists.

The last one... well, we thought that decent people were the norm and that people would understand the nuance and spirit of laws; however, that hasn't been the case, so you see evil fascists skirting by because they're convinced that "the letter" of the law didn't specifically ban something, so it must be permissible.

> so perhaps painting specific groups of people as the incarnation of pure evil is not a good idea

Sorry to burst your bubble, but people consistently doing evil things that don't course-correct once exposed to new information are evil; those are the people we're referring to... (i.e. "a turd by any other name would smell as shit").

"We live in a society", we have a sort of social contract with each other (meaning, it's in our best interest to be nice to one another) and laws that we follow (in case someone isn't following the former).

I think most people would agree that 10 or 20 years ago, we'd be (mostly) lineally progressing towards peace and unity (glossing over some wars, as most people wanted to believe that "once that is over, we can proceed with 'progress'")...

Most people believed it so, that we didn't really give any attention to people that asked "what do we do if the fascists rise to power?"... Many laughed it off! "Fascists!? That's SO 1930's Europe! Besides, everyone knows that fascists are evil, and no one wants to be evil, right?".

So, you can imagine that almost nobody had "coordinated fascist international takeover" nor "brainwashed pedophile-apologist fascist takeover of the US" on their bingo cards. Interesting times...

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

#260

Post by brazukadev »

ManlyBread wrote: post #247
lapcat wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html The person who submitted the link already explained the submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46068363

Except there's nothing to discuss because the book is not released. Is HN about "awareness" now? Why not come back in 2026 when the book is actually released and people can actually talk about the contents of the book?

This is not a Show HN, just a link. Users engage if they want, and a lot of them wanted.
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