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Silicon Valley Has an Empathy Vacuum

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Re: Silicon Valley Has an Empathy Vacuum

#31

Post by thekemkid »

doubleunplussed wrote: post #3

It's not a private company's job to have empathy for the people affected by progress. Don't get me wrong, I have plenty of empathy. But petitioning private companies to change their ways will get you exactly nowhere unless it comes with a corresponding profit motive. It's the government's job to redistribute wealth and income to the needy, and provide safety nets and retraining opportunities for people whose industri…

This attitude is why silicon valley is well on its way to becoming the villain in the narrative of our progress. It is a place dedicated to redefining the world we live in. Valley companies can, and regularly do, redefine how companies work and make money. Sometimes they need to be the ones to bite the bullet and lose some of their yearly profits by spending it on making this transition buttery smooth.

Without them trying to make this effort, and the common man fearing the gaze of the innovation beast, governments will have to act - and not necessarily by transition those affected into positions where they can still be secure, but by stifiling the innovation by actively targeting the catalysts of these changes with laws and regulations and hoops upon hoops to jump through.

Re: Silicon Valley Has an Empathy Vacuum

#32

Post by talideon »

robbrown451 wrote: post #11

I don't see how the things he discusses have to do with empathy in Silicon Valley. Driverless trucks, for instance, have nothing to do with empathy and a lot to do with simple economics. Someone is going to build them if they can make a buck doing it, and empathy isn't going to somehow stop that. On the other hand, I do think companies like Facebook and Google and the news sites (or whoever makes their comment system…

> I don't see how the things he discusses have to do with empathy in Silicon Valley. Driverless trucks, for instance, have nothing to do with empathy and a lot to do with simple economics. Someone is going to build them if they can make a buck doing it, and empathy isn't going to somehow stop that.

But whether or not you consider what happens to the people who used to drive those trucks and what they, their families, and their communities are going to do when they no longer have work has everything to do with empathy.

Re: Silicon Valley Has an Empathy Vacuum

#33

Post by nkohari »

atemerev wrote: post #4

People had voted for Trump not because of lack of empathy, but because they were fed up with being patronized, negged, treated like children, observed, modeled and disempowered, belittled and generally discounted. And this article is not helping it.

The effects you list are a result of others not having empathy for people who would end up supporting Trump.

Re: Silicon Valley Has an Empathy Vacuum

#34

Post by rhodri »

adamnemecek wrote: post #13

This Neo-Luddism feels really misplaced. Do you know why some people are getting the short end of the stick? It's because the educational system has failed them by wasting their youth and giving nothing in return. But I can't blame a guy who founded a SV-centric blog to see all problems through a SV-centric lens.

one point is that most of SV's technology is in the hands of an elite of techno-libertarians and super-rich VCs with various chips on various shoulders.

they have no interest in spreading technology's monetary or possible systemic benefits to the entire population, and indeed a direct interest in accumulating and then exercising political power.

it's a real problem that cannot be explained away through a lack of education, as many over-educated, under-employed and disempowered young (and old!) people directly experience day to day. open-source software and education are steamrollered by the directed power of hierarchy.

Re: Silicon Valley Has an Empathy Vacuum

#35

Post by TulliusCicero »

rubidium wrote: post #15
doubleunplussed wrote: post #3

It's not a private company's job to have empathy for the people affected by progress. Don't get me wrong, I have plenty of empathy. But petitioning private companies to change their ways will get you exactly nowhere unless it comes with a corresponding profit motive. It's the government's job to redistribute wealth and income to the needy, and provide safety nets and retraining opportunities for people whose industri…

bull. You're a human being. A CEO is a human being. A software engineer is a human being. The type of thinking you just espoused leads to sweatshops, environmental destruction, and corporate fraud. We all have a responsibility to show empathy to others. Anyone who tries to hide behind the corporate shield of "it's just my job and fiduciary responsibility" should be shown the door.

We can expect a company to have respect for the rule of law even if we don't expect them to go beyond the call of duty in charitable acts.

Re: Silicon Valley Has an Empathy Vacuum

#36

Post by adamnemecek »

SomeStupidPoint wrote: post #29
adamnemecek wrote: post #13

This Neo-Luddism feels really misplaced. Do you know why some people are getting the short end of the stick? It's because the educational system has failed them by wasting their youth and giving nothing in return. But I can't blame a guy who founded a SV-centric blog to see all problems through a SV-centric lens.

It still remains to be seen if the Luddites were wrong or merely early -- that's the very thing under discussion! Great PR to use their name as an insult before resolving whether they're right or not.

I didn't know this was still debated.

Re: Silicon Valley Has an Empathy Vacuum

#37

Post by brenschluss »

doubleunplussed wrote: post #3

It's not a private company's job to have empathy for the people affected by progress. Don't get me wrong, I have plenty of empathy. But petitioning private companies to change their ways will get you exactly nowhere unless it comes with a corresponding profit motive. It's the government's job to redistribute wealth and income to the needy, and provide safety nets and retraining opportunities for people whose industri…

Profit motives are short-term optimization behavior (or game-theory maneuvering), pure and simple.

I don't believe in companies because they think in the short-term. The average life-expectancy for companies in the S&P is 18 years.[1] Over our lifetimes, we will see endless companies live and die, each only seeking profit for the next quarter, year, or decade.

Believing that the role of companies (and especially Silicon Valley businesses) should be profit-seeking without any thought to empathy is like shooting ourselves in the temporal foot. What should our long-term strategies be? What company is going to care about you when you retire, or be thoughtful about the next generation's well-being?

It's the most idiotic of strategies that would invest in a few long-term strategies (governments, cooperatives, (a few) non-profits) and almost all short-term strategies without thinking about how they balance.

[1] https://www.innosight.com/insight/creative-destruction-whips...

Re: Silicon Valley Has an Empathy Vacuum

#38

Post by talideon »

illumin8 wrote: post #12
doubleunplussed wrote: post #3

It's not a private company's job to have empathy for the people affected by progress. Don't get me wrong, I have plenty of empathy. But petitioning private companies to change their ways will get you exactly nowhere unless it comes with a corresponding profit motive. It's the government's job to redistribute wealth and income to the needy, and provide safety nets and retraining opportunities for people whose industri…

Right on. Silicon Valley may have an empathy vacuum/problem, but let's place the blame for this problem where it really lies: government policy makers. They are the ones that have watched globalization gut the middle class, while sitting back and collecting their fat stock grants and salaries for sitting on the board of the companies that are the beneficiaries of these policies. We need universal basic income to soft…

> We need universal basic income to soften the impact of the rise of automation in the workforce.

People need to feel useful. Universal basic income doesn't give that to people by itself.

Re: Silicon Valley Has an Empathy Vacuum

#39

Post by misiti3780 »

“Productivity is at record levels, innovation has never been faster, and yet at the same time, we have a falling median income and we have fewer jobs. People are falling behind because technology is advancing so fast and our skills and organizations aren’t keeping up.” It is, he said, “the great paradox of our era.”

While I believe this is true, and understand why it is a problem, I do not think there is anything that can be done about it. Now that billions of people are online, Moore's law has made hardware cheap and fast, and anyone can build a piece of software with a chance of viral growth (if lucky), we have to establish that we are in a winner-take-all environment. This is simply the power law at work.

I would also say that we are without a doubt, in the early phases of this period - going forward, any job that can be automated will be, eventually. If my company can front the capital expenditures to build/buy a robot that can do my job for $4/hour (with out lunch and coffee breaks) instead of $35/hour w/ benefits, my new salary should be $4/hour per basic economics of supply and demand.

Is this a huge problem, absolutely. Is it going away - not a chance. The writing is on the wall for a lot of repetitive tasks - the best thing everyone can do is vote for people who want to improve education, starting and elementary level in the US and push more kids in the STEM careers. If you want to contribute on an individual level, consider tutoring / mentoring younger kids in your free time. Show them that instead of pissing their entire youthful lives away scrolling through the useless feeds that are facebook, instagram and/or snapchat, they could actually build their own facebook/snapchat.

Re: Silicon Valley Has an Empathy Vacuum

#40

Post by pmoriarty »

atemerev wrote: post #4

People had voted for Trump not because of lack of empathy, but because they were fed up with being patronized, negged, treated like children, observed, modeled and disempowered, belittled and generally discounted. And this article is not helping it.

And why were they patronized and treated like children again?

Oh, perhaps it was because they claimed Obama wasn't born in the US. Or because they denied global warming. Or because they hate Mexicans and Muslims.

In short, because they bought in to the steaming pile of bullshit that is the right wing media echo chamber.

When they think like children, talk like children, and act like children, they shouldn't be surprised that they're treated like children.

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