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’
#2I hate to have sympathy for the devil here, but I see their point.
Hackernews is living proof. Pre-election, you could voice a contrary opinion here and have a discussion. Post-election, even the faintest wrongthink shibboleth gets silently downvoted into oblivion.
Re: Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’
#3Rather worryingly this got flagged and killed. Hopefully we're still at the point where we can sensibly discuss a WSJ article.
Re: Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’
#4I hate to have sympathy for the devil here, but I see their point. Hackernews is living proof. Pre-election, you could voice a contrary opinion here and have a discussion. Post-election, even the faintest wrongthink shibboleth gets silently downvoted into oblivion.
I don't agree with your pre/post-election divide.
I've voiced my opposition to what I consider unrestrained capitalism and ideological free-marketerism and been downvoted many times over the years preceding the election.
I've had dang come down on me for expressing my views (it's his and the moderators' prerogative but I'm not stopping either). It doesn't bother me because that's who I am. I'd rather folks offer their disagreements than downvote my comments because that's what I'm here for: discussion and synthesis with the ideas and arguments put forth by folks who share some or none of my interests.
Even you mention "sympathy for the devil." I don't know if that's recognition that some viewpoints are truly toxic and unworthy of even basic respect and consideration or an merely an allusion to the down-voting of un-conventional views and thoughts.
For me, there is nothing interesting to discuss about ideas or views espousing racism or gender-bigotry, but those are different than discussing the factual situations of ethnicity and gender in our society as determined by historical legacies and cultural forces. I will respect the right of an individual to hold bigoted views but that doesn't mean I must respect the individual, either.
Re: Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’
#5Rather worryingly this got flagged and killed. Hopefully we're still at the point where we can sensibly discuss a WSJ article.
Agreed. This is so ridiculous. I saw the link on the front page. Now it's gone. At least it exists in search results.
Re: Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’
#6I hate to have sympathy for the devil here, but I see their point. Hackernews is living proof. Pre-election, you could voice a contrary opinion here and have a discussion. Post-election, even the faintest wrongthink shibboleth gets silently downvoted into oblivion.
I don't agree with your pre/post-election divide. I've voiced my opposition to what I consider unrestrained capitalism and ideological free-marketerism and been downvoted many times over the years preceding the election. I've had dang come down on me for expressing my views (it's his and the moderators' prerogative but I'm not stopping either). It doesn't bother me because that's who I am. I'd rather folks offer thei…
"sympathy for the devil" would be "poor little billionaire" in Peter Thiel's case. As though there aren't hundreds of media outlets that wouldn't jump at the chance to hand him the megaphone for whatever he felt like saying at the time.
Re: Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’
#7Most silicon valley employees don't really care about any of this. If anything most have extremely conservative opinions, they'll be all for Trump if they could vote on H1
Re: Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’
#8[deleted]
Re: Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’
#9Likening people to Thiel is ridiculous. He is personally facing the backlash from openly supporting Trump and being a speaker at his rallies. Nobody else in the valley did anything as absurd or unnecessary. And if he thinks he'll fair better in LA, I think he's sorely mistaken once people start recognizing him en masse. But to my point, this article seems to be generalizing an outlier to make its point. Everyone is being alienated everywhere because the country has a leader who is actively polarizing the populous by demonizing every side that he's not on as an enemy to his agenda, even going so far now as to suggest people who disagree should be labeled as traitors - which coming from the President, is technically a death threat as that is the punishment for treason. Peter Thiel seems to be actively trying to paint a more dystopian portrait of the situation to make himself out to be a victim when in reality people on both sides have been alienated by the dissolution of the "moderate" common ground where we all worked together in favor of a Monday Night Football-esque team based society (or crime drama - good v. bad). More generalizations like this that skew reality aren't going to help anything.
Re: Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’
#10What is it that Peter Thiel said previously about women voting? What did he do to Gawker?