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

Perhaps you posted elsewhere in the thread, but do you have any substantial criticism? I mean, beyond "that's a cartoonish view", which isn't really helpful to informed debate?

Everyone here knows SV company environments are hostile working environments for conservatives. Even multi-billion dollar companies espouse far left populous views. You learn to keep your opinions to yourself especially when the office discussion reaches ridiculous levels. Since my views are conservative/libertarian, I won't bother replying to LinkedIn invites from Google/Levi's/The Gap/Facebook or other far left companies. Particularly companies whos' marketing departments are extensions of San Francisco/Oakland/Berkeley extremists.

And we could find anecdotes of just as many conservative colleges. Instead of finding anecdotes can you find a survey across college campuses?

I could just as easily say that colleges don't support interracial marriage based on Bob Jones University but that would be intellectually dishonest.

All of that is true. Nonetheless, I don't respect the methodology of many of the people who hold #3 in that it does not seem to me like they're fighting #2 in ways that are sensitive to truth.

Just because somebody's opponents are biased doesn't mean they aren't.

Note that I am not saying that #3 is not the case! I'm saying that I personally have not been given reliable reason to believe #3 over #2, or reason to believe that the people who have tried to get me to believe #3 are competent and respect their own fallibility to the point where I could tentatively trust them.

Ironically, the more aggressively people try to get me to agree with #3, the more skeptical I tend to become of it. To me this is analogous to the AI risk debate, where I at least partially worry about it because the arguments against from otherwise intelligent people have been so consistently lackluster.

edit: To iterate on that earlier "which side disgusts you less" comment:

As with the Trump election, people on either side tend to assume that people on the other side agree with their candidate.

This is not necessarily the case. Often when forced to choose between two alternatives, the question is down to which outcome seems to you more desperate. People who vote Trump consider immigration a desperate struggle. People who vote $not_trump probably consider sexism/racism a desperate struggle. Both sides are willing to sacrifice some values so that they can try and preserve others.

I believe the debate between #2 and #3 is mainly down to whether you consider sexism or knowledge the more desperate struggle. Personally I tend to come down on the knowledge side, possibly because I am not personally affected by sexism. This does not mean I will condone sexism, it means that I will trade it off, if I am utterly forced to, against a value that I consider more vital. That does not mean I wouldn't like to reduce sexism if I could; it does mean that when people are censured due to citing scientific studies, I feel that something I consider more urgent than gender equality is at stake.

In any forced tradeoff, there is only one value that can win. I think sexism and racism are serious issues, but I don't think they are the most serious issues. If that makes me a misogynist in people's eyes, then so be it.

Of course, in any remotely sane civil society we would try to negotiate solutions that satisfy the values of everybody involved. This is a large part of why the aggressive, condescending rhetoric of certain parts of #3 is so frightening to me. I see no reason why the fight against sexism and racism has to be at odds with truth; it's an unforced overaggression that's alienating people like me for no reason.

In summary: my issues are with the #3 methodology, not the #3 position.

> believing that guns are the main reason for mass murders

Not to start a political flame war but that's the only thing I disagree with you on - mostly. I think guns allow for easy mass murder at a distance but you have to have a mental illness along with some other potential extreme views, to be able to jump the mental hurdles where mass murder is an acceptable option.

The people committing these horrendous crimes are not the same people as most gun owners. That being said I think some federally mandated gun control laws are needed - leaving it totally up to the states allows things like what happened in Florida to occur.

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

If you can frame those issues outside of politics, I think they are in the US too. Once people think their political affiliations come into play it becomes personal like the scum that use Emacs.