6 ms·

In effect, this is simply a group-think assay for those whom think in the "Silicon Valley VC mindset".

by kefka 11y ago

dang 11y ago
Almost certainly the vast majority of users on that list are well outside Silicon Valley, as well as its "mindset" (if there is such a thing).
- lvs 11y ago
  It very much has a "mindset" that is all the more obvious to those of us not sharing it.
  - dang 11y ago
    Obvious is a dangerous word. Some of this is imaginary. The kaleidoscopic filter of media drama affects these perceptions as well as reporting on them.
    - lvs 11y ago
      All I have to do is read the tablets of your financial gods, cited daily here, to understand how utterly lost you all really are. It's an honest shame that so many brilliant, educated people with bright and positive outlooks have been so thoughtlessly coopted, with their own consent, into routine and pointless profit-seeking under the guise of "changing the world." Let's be clear: SV "startups" are pointless capital ventures that reasonable conscientious people would never support or pursue except for the sole purpose of personal profit-seeking. As you get older, I think you'll see, as a smart person, the curtain will pull back and the difference between substantive pursuits and what you're all doing will be truly revealed. I don't say this to be mean or for any gain whatsoever. I am truly sad about the second internet boom, having seen a bit of the first one. I am just a lamenting academic with no horses in your race. I would only like to see the world truly changed, and I wish all our society's best education were put to use actually doing it.
      - dang 11y ago
        You obviously have some nuanced views on this, which I don't object to (and probably agree with more than you'd expect). The problem is that when you present them in a polarized and polarizing format, you move the discussion towards a clash of enemies instead of a conversation of colleagues. That's a big deal. It's hard to notice what a big deal it is because when we post such things it always feels like we're brave and tiny David against big ugly Goliath. But that's a cognitive bias. The solution is to remove or at least de-escalate the pejoratives, and roll back one's grand claims to partial ones. If you consciously leave room for other options, people will become curious to engage with your point of view. Then we get interesting discussion, which is really all we care about here. I spend countless hours reading these comments and have gradually gotten more inured to their sharpness than most readers can be expected to, yet when I read things like "your gods" and "how utterly lost you all are" my spine stiffens and my fur stands on end. Such comments only evoke tribal identification: for or against, depending on where one's pre-existing sympathy lies. Once tribal identification kicks in, we get reflexive responses rather than reflective ones, and that is the root of everything we're trying to avoid.
        kefka 11y ago
        lvs strikes a chord with me as well. I'm also an academic (well, staff in implementation of MS Cloud technologies at a 150k user university). Coming from a very liberal campus has exposed me to a great deal of people, from Anarcho-capitalists to Communists, and everything in between. I get the idea that simply "doing work to make money" doesn't change the world in meaningful ways. I think of it akin to the idea of "Rent" or lock-in. Both of those ways can be used, and quite effectively, to extract more money. Yet neither of those can be used to further science, arts, technology, engineering, philosophy, or other more academic pursuits directly. Making a new DRM technology to retard sharing of media isn't innovative: it's built on a broken premise that will turn into a time and money sink for all those whom are involved. Now, money can be used to fund those areas. YC is doing just that with the UBI research (linked elsewhere in this thread). But the money can also be stockpiled, sent in investments, or other non humanity-furthering ways. But, I think the crux of his argument is that this 'gravitational' force of money sucks innovative peoples, scientists, and similar into what amounts to a tar pit. There's only a limited amount of these types of people, and the claim is SV and similar cultures around the world is sucking the air out from more pressing pursuits. Now, the bad side: Academia is also just as poisonous... Just in not the ways SV is. Instead, at least in the US, I'm sure you know of the repercussions students have, are, and will go through for the loan crisis. My own job, as with most around me, are paid nearly all by exorbitant student loans. And it's a cyclical money-suck. Faculty also deal with nasty issues. Three of my friends are PhDs in various STEM areas. All 3 of them are adjunct faculty. In other words, cheaply paid contract labor. This is similar to the Uber-ification of teaching staff. I'm a relative outsider to that of business and that of academia (being IT staff). I see the value of both, and also its poisons. The more I think on it, it seems the underlying issue is money. Or better yet, it's the idea that one has to "grow or perish". The idea is the same in both spheres.
- kefka 11y ago
  But that's what I'm speaking of: an inherent bias. Silicon Valley has this notion that one can replace hundreds, thousands, or millions of people with "short shell scripts". The base idea is something I'm OK with. However, with no social support structure in place, the ideas/implementations of Silicon Valley (and VC culture) seek to destroy people and families. No jobs == no money. No money == homeless, foodless, resourceless. A great problem child is Uber. They destroy what little protections employees have, by refusing to have "employees". Powerless people either work for peanuts, or not work at all. They certainly won't sue. And Uber's end-game is "disenfranchise all workers by investing in automatic transportation via autonomous vehicles". That's the kind of endgames Silicon Valley thinks of. And that's frankly terrifying : "Be a serf until we no longer need you" And, one can have the understood mindset of Silicon Valley and the VCs, and yet not live there. I know of those whom live in Chicago, New York City, parts of the Eastern Seabed in decent proximity of DC, London, and others whom share these notions. The thing missing from the 'Valley speak is there is no discourse on how to handle everyone when nobody needs to work. That discussion is (not so) mysteriously left out.
  - dang 11y ago
    > The thing missing from the 'Valley speak is there is no discourse on how to handle everyone when nobody needs to work. That discussion is (not so) mysteriously left out. Here's an example of what I mean that some of these perceptions are imaginary. In fact what you describe is a hot topic of discussion in SV as in other places; YC Research is funding an experiment in Basic Income; and so on.
    - kefka 11y ago
      I held off responding because I wasn't aware of this. I needed to research after your mentioning involvement in UBI research. Yes, my views of SV are shaped by internet media, business acquisition coverage, comments here at YC news, and conventions I attend. So no, I don't live in the 'Valley per se, but have at least some understanding of it. If I cite correctly, I found these as the UBI discussions YC is funding? https://blog.ycombinator.com/basic-income https://blog.ycombinator.com/basic-income https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10982340 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10982340 http://www.fastcoexist.com/3056510/why-silicon-valleys-leading-startup-incubator-wants-to-research-basic-income http://www.fastcoexist.com/3056510/why-silicon-valleys-leadi... http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/27/technology/y-combinator-basic-income-research/ http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/27/technology/y-combinator-basi... So, yes, it does seem that YC is continuing the underlying research on what it would take to implement UBI. That's awesome! Unfortunately, the negative comments towards "Silicon Valley and the VCs" was that: a larger discussion. I'm not meaning this to be a "YC sux" kind of discussion. That goes nowhere. I'm sincerely glad you (and YC) are getting into this tough area. But you seem rather alone in that regard. The Guardian puts it well, with this article (Feb 2016): http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/28/silicon-valley-basic-income http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/28/silicon... So, to keep this constructive, what can the members of the (tech enlightened) public do to help? Have other organizations (for and non-profit) entered into talks to assist with your UBI research?

In effect, this is simply a group-think assay for those whom think in the "Silicon Valley VC mindset".

by kefka 11y ago

In effect, this is simply a group-think assay for those whom think in the "Silicon Valley VC mindset".

dang 11y ago

Almost certainly the vast majority of users on that list are well outside Silicon Valley, as well as its "mindset" (if there is such a thing).

lvs 11y ago
It very much has a "mindset" that is all the more obvious to those of us not sharing it.
- dang 11y ago
  Obvious is a dangerous word. Some of this is imaginary. The kaleidoscopic filter of media drama affects these perceptions as well as reporting on them.
  - lvs 11y ago
    All I have to do is read the tablets of your financial gods, cited daily here, to understand how utterly lost you all really are. It's an honest shame that so many brilliant, educated people with bright and positive outlooks have been so thoughtlessly coopted, with their own consent, into routine and pointless profit-seeking under the guise of "changing the world." Let's be clear: SV "startups" are pointless capital ventures that reasonable conscientious people would never support or pursue except for the sole purpose of personal profit-seeking. As you get older, I think you'll see, as a smart person, the curtain will pull back and the difference between substantive pursuits and what you're all doing will be truly revealed. I don't say this to be mean or for any gain whatsoever. I am truly sad about the second internet boom, having seen a bit of the first one. I am just a lamenting academic with no horses in your race. I would only like to see the world truly changed, and I wish all our society's best education were put to use actually doing it.
    - dang 11y ago
      You obviously have some nuanced views on this, which I don't object to (and probably agree with more than you'd expect). The problem is that when you present them in a polarized and polarizing format, you move the discussion towards a clash of enemies instead of a conversation of colleagues. That's a big deal. It's hard to notice what a big deal it is because when we post such things it always feels like we're brave and tiny David against big ugly Goliath. But that's a cognitive bias. The solution is to remove or at least de-escalate the pejoratives, and roll back one's grand claims to partial ones. If you consciously leave room for other options, people will become curious to engage with your point of view. Then we get interesting discussion, which is really all we care about here. I spend countless hours reading these comments and have gradually gotten more inured to their sharpness than most readers can be expected to, yet when I read things like "your gods" and "how utterly lost you all are" my spine stiffens and my fur stands on end. Such comments only evoke tribal identification: for or against, depending on where one's pre-existing sympathy lies. Once tribal identification kicks in, we get reflexive responses rather than reflective ones, and that is the root of everything we're trying to avoid.
      - kefka 11y ago
        lvs strikes a chord with me as well. I'm also an academic (well, staff in implementation of MS Cloud technologies at a 150k user university). Coming from a very liberal campus has exposed me to a great deal of people, from Anarcho-capitalists to Communists, and everything in between. I get the idea that simply "doing work to make money" doesn't change the world in meaningful ways. I think of it akin to the idea of "Rent" or lock-in. Both of those ways can be used, and quite effectively, to extract more money. Yet neither of those can be used to further science, arts, technology, engineering, philosophy, or other more academic pursuits directly. Making a new DRM technology to retard sharing of media isn't innovative: it's built on a broken premise that will turn into a time and money sink for all those whom are involved. Now, money can be used to fund those areas. YC is doing just that with the UBI research (linked elsewhere in this thread). But the money can also be stockpiled, sent in investments, or other non humanity-furthering ways. But, I think the crux of his argument is that this 'gravitational' force of money sucks innovative peoples, scientists, and similar into what amounts to a tar pit. There's only a limited amount of these types of people, and the claim is SV and similar cultures around the world is sucking the air out from more pressing pursuits. Now, the bad side: Academia is also just as poisonous... Just in not the ways SV is. Instead, at least in the US, I'm sure you know of the repercussions students have, are, and will go through for the loan crisis. My own job, as with most around me, are paid nearly all by exorbitant student loans. And it's a cyclical money-suck. Faculty also deal with nasty issues. Three of my friends are PhDs in various STEM areas. All 3 of them are adjunct faculty. In other words, cheaply paid contract labor. This is similar to the Uber-ification of teaching staff. I'm a relative outsider to that of business and that of academia (being IT staff). I see the value of both, and also its poisons. The more I think on it, it seems the underlying issue is money. Or better yet, it's the idea that one has to "grow or perish". The idea is the same in both spheres.
kefka 11y ago
But that's what I'm speaking of: an inherent bias. Silicon Valley has this notion that one can replace hundreds, thousands, or millions of people with "short shell scripts". The base idea is something I'm OK with. However, with no social support structure in place, the ideas/implementations of Silicon Valley (and VC culture) seek to destroy people and families. No jobs == no money. No money == homeless, foodless, resourceless. A great problem child is Uber. They destroy what little protections employees have, by refusing to have "employees". Powerless people either work for peanuts, or not work at all. They certainly won't sue. And Uber's end-game is "disenfranchise all workers by investing in automatic transportation via autonomous vehicles". That's the kind of endgames Silicon Valley thinks of. And that's frankly terrifying : "Be a serf until we no longer need you" And, one can have the understood mindset of Silicon Valley and the VCs, and yet not live there. I know of those whom live in Chicago, New York City, parts of the Eastern Seabed in decent proximity of DC, London, and others whom share these notions. The thing missing from the 'Valley speak is there is no discourse on how to handle everyone when nobody needs to work. That discussion is (not so) mysteriously left out.
- dang 11y ago
  > The thing missing from the 'Valley speak is there is no discourse on how to handle everyone when nobody needs to work. That discussion is (not so) mysteriously left out. Here's an example of what I mean that some of these perceptions are imaginary. In fact what you describe is a hot topic of discussion in SV as in other places; YC Research is funding an experiment in Basic Income; and so on.
  - kefka 11y ago
    I held off responding because I wasn't aware of this. I needed to research after your mentioning involvement in UBI research. Yes, my views of SV are shaped by internet media, business acquisition coverage, comments here at YC news, and conventions I attend. So no, I don't live in the 'Valley per se, but have at least some understanding of it. If I cite correctly, I found these as the UBI discussions YC is funding? https://blog.ycombinator.com/basic-income https://blog.ycombinator.com/basic-income https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10982340 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10982340 http://www.fastcoexist.com/3056510/why-silicon-valleys-leading-startup-incubator-wants-to-research-basic-income http://www.fastcoexist.com/3056510/why-silicon-valleys-leadi... http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/27/technology/y-combinator-basic-income-research/ http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/27/technology/y-combinator-basi... So, yes, it does seem that YC is continuing the underlying research on what it would take to implement UBI. That's awesome! Unfortunately, the negative comments towards "Silicon Valley and the VCs" was that: a larger discussion. I'm not meaning this to be a "YC sux" kind of discussion. That goes nowhere. I'm sincerely glad you (and YC) are getting into this tough area. But you seem rather alone in that regard. The Guardian puts it well, with this article (Feb 2016): http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/28/silicon-valley-basic-income http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/28/silicon... So, to keep this constructive, what can the members of the (tech enlightened) public do to help? Have other organizations (for and non-profit) entered into talks to assist with your UBI research?