If I had more time, I might elaborate on the fact that both the author and those he criticizes are children of the Enlightenment. I mention this, because it has a great deal of relevance. Neither Promethean Techno-Pelagianism on the one hand nor Socio-Voluntaristic Manichaeism on the other present a great vision of the good, whatever validity we can find in their criticisms.
I Don't Think I Can Stay in Tech
41–50 of 93 posts
Re: I Don't Think I Can Stay in Tech
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
A little bit sorta. Conservatives will come out to say that you can't force JK Rowling to be pro (or even neutral) on the trans issue. Now, they'll also say that certain people shouldn't be allowed to create. Or at the very least create based on certain properties. Which is admittedly almost a "same result, different mechanism" issue. But they will claim to allow the market decide (aka "go woke, go broke").
Conservatives have many forms of "cancel culture". They want to deport people from places they don't like (or from a race they don't like), they want to enforce Christianity in public places, they want to make being "antifa" illegal... And the ultimate form of cancel culture, conservatives (including the neo-liberal variety) will straight up murder you if you're Muslim and live in the Middle East. None of that is fre…
I don't necessarily disagree.
But this is getting rather forest for the trees.
End point is: If you don't like who is making your software, make your own. Giving up is just letting them win.
Re: I Don't Think I Can Stay in Tech
#43> But my personal lines definitely extend to don’t give money to people who enable fascism and don’t create value for them, either.
You simply cannot use any technology at all in general while abiding by this ideology though. Just the keystrokes you used to write this already were paid for by, and continue to be used to enable, countless people to do their "fascism" as you call it.
Re: I Don't Think I Can Stay in Tech
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hyperbole is as useless to productive conversation as strawmen and one is usually just an excuse to prop up the other. Maybe you could tell us what, specifically, the author refers to as fascist that you don't consider to be fascist?
My understanding is that they are referring to DHH lamenting that his race is becoming a minority in his home country due to mass immigration. Is it fascist to not want to become a minority based on how we see them often treated badly? I think it's normal to fear that.
Yes, it is.
Racial essentialism, xenophobia and white supremacy are all fascist. Praising and supporting right-wing extremists is fascist. Believing in ethnic cleansing and that non-whites need to be forcibly removed is fascist. Believing all non-Christian religion needs to be banned is fascist. Equating "gypsies" to dogs is fascist.
When you believe the things that fascists believe, it is accurate to call you a fascist.
Obviously, you will disagree with my interpretation and the interpretation of many others, and I'm not interested in having that argument, because I know it will be futile. The point is that your original hyperbolic assertion that the author had no rationale for considering DHH to be fascist other than pure arbitrary spite is incorrect. They have a rationale, you just disagree with it.
Re: I Don't Think I Can Stay in Tech
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Conservatives have many forms of "cancel culture". They want to deport people from places they don't like (or from a race they don't like), they want to enforce Christianity in public places, they want to make being "antifa" illegal... And the ultimate form of cancel culture, conservatives (including the neo-liberal variety) will straight up murder you if you're Muslim and live in the Middle East. None of that is fre…
I don't necessarily disagree. But this is getting rather forest for the trees. End point is: If you don't like who is making your software, make your own. Giving up is just letting them win.
That costs money though (or takes time, which is money). When you need to eat and put a roof over your head, you realize our system is not setup to allow you to do this.
Re: I Don't Think I Can Stay in Tech
#46Seems like an unnecessarily broad brush to paint with, as if "tech" were a monolith. Just don't work for the companies that cross your self-stated lines in the sand: > But my personal lines definitely extend to don’t give money to people who enable fascism and don’t create value for them, either.
I think there's a systemic problem with the investors though. It's a smallish pool of very much monocultured venture capitalists that's very easy to get blacklisted from if you don't adhere to their ideology. It's not as simple as just finding a job somewhere else, when the financing is controlled by a small group of people who are extremely vindictive.
Founders swim in the incentive pool of VCs, who swim in the incentive pool of LPs, who swim in the incentive pool of capital-c Capital.
When you architect your industry around "number goes up" as the number one priority that everybody agrees on, and then add multiple layers of abstraction separating capital from labor, you end up with the Ouroboros-style arrangement we have today. The head forgets that it is the tail, and vice-versa.
I think we used to (in, idk, the era of the Roosevelts) have a very different leadership class, with competing interests that were more complicated than "number go up", even in the corporate class.
Since the Kennedy assassination(s!) in the US, I don't think we've had a single leader (corporate or political) who has publicly and sincerely questioned that narrative. At this point we struggle to imagine a civilization with alternative priorities, but history is littered with examples.
Re: I Don't Think I Can Stay in Tech
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
For the record I am with you and OP in the sense that I personally would struggle with such proximity. But the reality is that even if you do what I did and give up quite a bit of salary in exchange for something so mundane as the same work in a public university-run health system, you can still often follow the money to some ugly places that are not as far away as you'd like. Regarding startups, the ones like yours…
I totally agree with you. The problem is bigger than tech. Is it capitalism? I was historically not anti-capitalist but it's hard not to lean in that direction now. I feel like the issue is somehow bigger than even that though. If we were living under communism, the same people would probably be in charge. There's something about consolidation and centralization of power and access to resources being fungible through…
> The problem is bigger than tech. Is it capitalism?
The underlying problem is that power and wealth causes people to believe themselves above others to a degree proportional to how much more power and wealth they have relative to those considered below them.
Unfortunately, we've seen unprecedented concentration of wealth occur, so it should come as no surprise that those who are running things exhibit very little humanity towards others.
Re: I Don't Think I Can Stay in Tech
#48If he feels that way, he feels that way. However, if you don't like the creator of Brave or Ladybird, and you don't believe Google or Mozilla can be trusted to make a browser that respects privacy, giving up is just ceding to those forces. Like, make a browser. Make it with people who do share your values. That's exactly what Andreas King and the Brave people did. That's what DHH is doing. If they're right about anyt…
"giving up" in this case would be to stay the course, to ignore one's own considered ethical obligations.
Re: I Don't Think I Can Stay in Tech
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
My understanding is that they are referring to DHH lamenting that his race is becoming a minority in his home country due to mass immigration. Is it fascist to not want to become a minority based on how we see them often treated badly? I think it's normal to fear that.
Yes, it is. Racial essentialism, xenophobia and white supremacy are all fascist. Praising and supporting right-wing extremists is fascist. Believing in ethnic cleansing and that non-whites need to be forcibly removed is fascist. Believing all non-Christian religion needs to be banned is fascist. Equating "gypsies" to dogs is fascist. When you believe the things that fascists believe, it is accurate to call you a fasc…
> your original hyperbolic assertion that the author had no rationale for considering DHH to be fascist
I did not assert there was no rationale, and that was never my intent.
> When you believe the things that fascists believe, it is accurate to call you a fascist.
I never claimed to believe any of the things that "fascists believe".
Re: I Don't Think I Can Stay in Tech
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
For the record I am with you and OP in the sense that I personally would struggle with such proximity. But the reality is that even if you do what I did and give up quite a bit of salary in exchange for something so mundane as the same work in a public university-run health system, you can still often follow the money to some ugly places that are not as far away as you'd like. Regarding startups, the ones like yours…
I totally agree with you. The problem is bigger than tech. Is it capitalism? I was historically not anti-capitalist but it's hard not to lean in that direction now. I feel like the issue is somehow bigger than even that though. If we were living under communism, the same people would probably be in charge. There's something about consolidation and centralization of power and access to resources being fungible through…
Congrats on rediscovering Anarchism from first principles. Hierarchy begets hierarchy. As long you have a society where some people can coerce others into acting for the master's benefit and against their own, you end up on a ratchet. Power accumulates, leading to more coercion, leading to more power. Such systems select for individuals who are the most feverishly driven to amass power at any cost and put them in the position to seize more.