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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’

#631

Post by otterley »

drovo9 wrote: post #611
wpietri wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, intolerance is a specific term of art here, not just anything lefties don't like. For example, look at the US right's decades-long pursuit of anti-GLBTQ policies. Gay people mostly just want to be left alone to live their lives. the US right wants to use the power of the state to discriminate against them. It went so far in California that Prop 8 specifically rewrote the constitution to strip the right of equal p…

For example, look at the US right's decades-long pursuit of anti-GLBTQ policies. Gay people mostly just want to be left alone to live their lives. Being left alone is all I ever wanted as a gay man. But the gay rights activists are demanding all sorts of positive rights and privileges from the government, and worse yet, they are trying to do it in my name.

As far as I know, they’re just asking for the same rights as privileges that heterosexuals and heterosexual couples are entitled to.

What, exactly, are the “all sorts...of rights and privileges” that are unique to homosexuals that you are referring to?

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

#632

Post by throwaway1748 »

mrep wrote: post #619
cgag wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people I'm honest with about my politics are people I've sort of slowly sussed out as cool, we're all pretty afraid to state many of our actual opinions because we're not rich. I don't care very much but there are a ton of people out there afraid of being damore'd.

> I don't care very much but there are a ton of people out there afraid of being damore'd. Seriously, here is how it went down from what I remember: Damore writes controversial internal only paper -> another googler takes the document meant for internal only viewing and shares it with the media -> someone removes most/all graphs and citations to make it look more like an opinion piece (most likely to flame up more me…

The real problem is how much of a win that tactic was for Gizmodo and others who published the incomplete document in bad faith. Clickbait sensationalism in media, particularly around race and gender issues, created this environment.

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

#633

Post by bendbro »

drovo9 wrote: post #615
wpietri wrote: post #78

> they feel people there are resistant to different social values and political ideologies This is just bizarre to to me. I moved here from the Midwest, which I found stifling. There's a far greater variety of social values and political ideologies (not to mention backgrounds and interests) here than pretty much any place I've lived. The main hostility I see is to intolerance, but that's hardly surprising given SF's…

welcoming history and the paradox of tolerance The "paradox of tolerance" is only a paradox if you assume that society can determine objectively for its citizens what constitutes "tolerant" and "intolerant" behavior; such societies are by necessity totalitarian. In a free society, there is no paradox of tolerance; in free societies, individuals make their own choices and judgments about each other, and there are many…

And if (everyone minus you) freely chooses to not sell you food, water, shelter or services for $random_reason, does that still count as a free society?

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

#634

Post by otterley »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #332
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.

Years ago, I had a class on Homelessness and Public Policy through SFSU. At the time, SF had about as many homeless as NY in a city with about one tenth the population, IIRC. I spent 6 years on the street. I blog about homelessness and have done at least a little paid writing on the subject. My blog and other online activities keep me in touch with homeless people. I have also been interviewed by reporters because of…

It’s very easy to contemplate how to solve this problem: make it easy to build extremely dense housing in SF. The problem is that the powers that be don’t want to make it easier, and they all have ultimately self serving excuses as to why.

Every time a politician tells me more housing won’t make it cheaper, I posit the hypothetical “what if we built 100,000 more units? No? How about 1 million more? 5 million more?”

The answer I get is the same: “well, we don’t want to change the character of the city. Do we really want to be like New York?”

Press the question enough and the subject will eventually confess.

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

#635

Post by tortasaur »

manfredo wrote: post #529
tessierashpool wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is an obviously disingenuous argument. bigot refers to prejudice. a person can be a pro-choice extremist, but not a pro-choice bigot. the phrase simply has no meaning.

Or how about a pro affirmative-action person in deeply conservative areas? Plenty of people would say that it's a bigoted view. Not to mention, affirmative action is explicitly treating people better or worse based on their race, sex, or other aspect of their identity which is the literal definition of prejudice. [1] Some may say that careful application of prejudice is acceptable to account for past injustices (and…

I believe it's the definition of discrimination, not prejudice, that you're looking for.

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

#637

Post by projectileboy »

sseveran wrote: post #426
strangeloops85 wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I don't get it either, especially the "feeling alienated" part. Does that include being feted and having a respectful discussion with your liberal friend and old colleague, Reid Hoffman, on the Stanford campus on Jan. 31 of this year, moderated by a very sympathetic Niall Ferguson? With laudatory words and praise from the President and Provost? https://news.stanford.edu/2018/02/01/cardinal-conversation-r... Look…

Mrs. Clinton won college educated voters by 9 percentage points which is not exactly a super majority. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/09/behind-trump...

You're not wrong, but in an election at the national level, 9 points is normally considered a pretty big spread (for example, Obama's victory over McCain in 2008 was pretty solid, and that was by a 7 point margin).

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

#638

Post by friedman23 »

manfredo wrote: post #247
friedman23 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> conservative housing policies Rent control is conservative now? All of SF policy is leftist and pro government intervention. I wonder why it fails...

In many ways rent control is a conservative policy. It's a nativist policy that decreases social mobility into the cities that enforce rent control. It doesn't jive with the traditional view of conservatism as advocating lesser government control over the economy. But does fall in line with conservative thinking in the more recent view of conservatism as advocating a more closed society (which arguably became mainstr…

So rentcontrol can be considered conservative if you define conservatism as everything that causes failed government policy. Got it.

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

#639

Post by dnr »

sturgill wrote: post #273
idlewords wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thiel spoke on national television at the National Republican Convention. He made the choice to bring his private political beliefs into the public sphere, and has no grounds to complain for catching heat for them.

And when did Brendan Eich make public comments? When he privately donated to a cause? You can be dismissed from leading a company today by privately supporting conservative causes. And there’s very little threat of a liberal CEO being dismissed independent of his private/public statements. I have no desire to speak to any particular political subject in this forum; but it’s incredibly disingenuous to pretend this onl…

On this one point, without taking a position on the rest of your comment: everyone making political donations in CA knows (or should know) that donations over $200 go in the public record. If you want it to be private, keep it under $200. Eich's donation was much larger and he knew that it would be in the public record. It cannot be fairly characterized as a "private donation".

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

#640

Post by lkerrekfjk »

wz1000 wrote: post #99
sho wrote: post #46

What is crazy about the the situation in SF is that even 5 or so years ago if you asked me what the "echo chamber" there was echoing I would have said libertarianism and some kind of techno-utopianism. The takeover by the proscriptive far-left has been astonishingly rapid, and it is absolutely real. I also know people who have left, and many more who absolutely keep their political and even philosophical views to the…

> 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.

> 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.

You're not paying attention that's all. All American politics revolves first and foremost around identity politics. Do you support illegals or not? Are you in favour of transgender kids using this or that bathroom or not? now go educate yourself about the "wonders" of "diversity", "inclusiveness", "white fragility", "toxic masculinity" and all that intersectional bullshit.

Intersectionalists have infected every level of management in corporations such as Google,Twitter or Github. So much that these people will actively try to fire you if you don't agree with their extremist ideology. The power grab is real and they are using the companies they work in to further their political agenda and giving bullshit jobs to their friends from social studies.

These people are putting their ideology before anything else. The wealth of the silicon valley is just a mean to spread their influence and their doctrine. Their first victim was the open source community, conferences, where they established tribunals under guise of fairness through codes of conducts. These venues are now politically charged environments where using the "wrong pronoun" will get you kicked out of a project.

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