4 ms·

Come on... Hotz doesn't really represent anyone but George Hotz. He is a very unique individual that was blessed with a very mathematical mind but very little s

• gaze 10y ago
  He's a good hacker but he's not particularly mathematical...
• Analemma_ 10y ago
  Sure, but every individual is part of a pattern, and our outgroup is becoming more convinced that there's one pattern in particular at play here. Take a look at the front page of Hacker News right now: in addition to this story, there's "Soylent halts sales of its powder as customers keep getting sick" and "Uber drivers win employee rights case" (presumably over Uber's fierce opposition). With 30 items on the front page, that means we've got 10% of the news in our field which could plausibly be parsed by outsiders as "technolibertarian assholes". I've been watching public opinion of the Bay Area startup scene gradually eroding in the last half-decade or so, and this is a big part of the reason; it's a real problem that we need to start thinking about.
  • toomuchtodo 10y ago
    I don't think this can be fixed. Silicon Valley thinks its the solution, when its more the problem. You can't drastically disrupt major pieces of the economy, expect to keep large swaths of the pie for yourself, and having no safety net, those who used to have jobs end up disenfranchised and permanently economically disadvantaged.
    • jacquesm 10y ago
      It's the exact same thing as the banking crisis, only with a bit of a techno sauce. See, if it works then they'll make bank, if it doesn't society will pick up the cost. It's a bet without much of a downside.
      • toomuchtodo 10y ago
        Privatize the profits, socialize the failures.
  • idlewords 10y ago
    It's not just outsiders who take this view.
    • Analemma_ 10y ago
      I was hoping you'd show up in this thread ;) It's definitely not just outsiders as you (and I) can attest; I went with that line of argument to try and convey some sense of urgency about the problem. It's easy to dismiss internal dissent about SV libertarian groupthink as not important, but "outsiders" have the potential to bring the party to an end if they collectively get really grumpy about what we're doing. I thought that might be more motivation.
      • jacquesm 10y ago
        Unfortunately for all of us, this will likely continue until people get killed in large enough numbers for some common sense to prevail.
      • oldmanjay 10y ago
        Here's something I always wonder about humans; Why is it only groupthink when you disagree with it?
    • x0x0 10y ago
      And we've now, at the behest of these companies, redefined statists down to: - thinks it's OK for neighbors and local government to have a say in whether people run a hotel next door, possibly sharing a roof or even a wall - thinks it's OK to require pretty reasonable background checks ala Austin for taxi drivers - thinks it's OK to have some safety regulations around self driving cars sharing our roads beyond hey, it worked in my car on this specific stretch of road so, you know, yolo
      • stale2002 10y ago
        Congratulations, by waiting a year to implement self driving cars, through overly burdening government regulations, you just killed ten thousand people. What about those people? The people who WILL die in car accidents next year unless we do something about it. Screw them, right?
  • asimpletune 10y ago
    How about just not caring on "correcting" people's impressions of our culture? It seems like it's a challenge any way, probably because it's a fool's errand. Yeah a lot of people who are brilliant don't give af, why get suckered into believing this is a bad thing? In fact, you don't have to have an opinion about it.
  • webkike 10y ago
    It has definitely been a noticeable problem much earlier than that, my guess probably a half-decade after the dot com bubble burst. I was in school at Palo Alto Senior High School and I gradually began to notice really offensive trends in the way "silicon valley people" acted. When I left school the damage was already done. I remember one of the last examples I saw before college was in a Facebook group called "humans of Palo Alto" (which I objected to from the start), there was a picture of two men in nice clothing holding cardboard signs that said "need venture capital money". Their quote was "you know the Drake song 'started from the bottom now we're here'? Well, that's about us"
  • icebraining 10y ago
    The Uber lawsuit doesn't fit in that pattern. Cab companies are also being used over the same issue[1], since drivers were always considered contractors. Uber followed the established model there, it's not an example of SV arrogance. [1] http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2014-03-26/news/chi-suit-taxi-drivers-should-be-considered-employees-20140326_1_taxi-drivers-yellow-cab-taxi-industry http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2014-03-26/news/chi-suit-...
• golergka 10y ago
  But when startup and engineer community praises him and puts him on a pedestal, doesn't it say something about them (us) as well?
• hartator 10y ago
  I don't think we should be proud of a country that scares genius away.