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I also moved from the the Bay Area to Oviedo, FL not long ago (fun fact about our little town: Brian Acton, co-founder of WhatsApp, grew up here). I agree with

I also moved from the the Bay Area to Oviedo, FL not long ago (fun fact about our little town: Brian Acton, co-founder of WhatsApp, grew up here). I agree with everything on your list, and I'll add one more item: 9) Greater thought diversity and tolerance for opposing viewpoints. When I lived in the Bay Area it seemed that too many people I interacted with were of similar backgrounds: very educated, high income and similar political and social values. While I loved my years there, at times I felt like I was in a cultural bubble insulated from the real world. Worse, I saw people professionally shunned for expressing opinions that fell outside the mainstream. People here in the Orlando area are all types and they seem to love to discuss their differences and even try to learn from them. I can't begin to imagine someone suffering professionally only for their opinions here. It's very refreshing. I have not lived in enough places to guess if this is a Florida vs California thing, or an Orlando area vs Bay Area thing, or a Bay Area vs everywhere else thing, but I think it's certainly a positive difference.

froindt 9y ago
> When I lived in the Bay Area it seemed that too many people I interacted with were of similar backgrounds: very educated, high income and similar political and social values. I think this is one of the most important things as a whole. I am in Iowa (a red except for the counties holding the ~5 largest cities) and have a friend who is in DC. She said she mentioned having a couple friends from high school who were conservative and that made her weird in her friend group. The rest were in the DC bubble, effectively not knowing people from "the other side" on a personal level. The political polarization is really bad for the country. The concept that you can agree with the left on some issues and the right on others isn't popular. Personally I take the position that the "true, objective best" (if there was such a thing) solution is closer to the middle than the far right or far left.
- rm_-rf_slash 9y ago
  OT politics and viewpoints are deeply ingrained. Two people with different views could be given the exact same facts and come away with vastly different conclusions. That never changes. The way we with with people we disagree with does change, and it indeed changes us as well.
mklim 9y ago
Agree in a lot of ways, but there's darker sides to this pro depending on context and who you are. One of the things that makes the Bay Area priceless to me (visibile minority) is that I'm consistently treated like a regular person/with friendliness by strangers instead of with general hostility/coldness like I was back home in the Midwest.
stuffedBelly 9y ago
Totally agreed. Bay Area seems to be detached from the rest of the country sometimes and it's easy for people who live here to fall into echo chambers/cultural bubbles. I would not give out the company name, but I once visited this company and there is an "empathy corner" that displays low-end phones to remind employees that these still exist, probably because majority of the employees there are well-off and unlikely to own low-end devices. It struck me how detached from reality big tech companies could be and hence my decision to travel around other parts of the country/world to refresh my mind and get out of this bubble.
enraged_camel 9y ago
With all due respect, I don't really buy that narrative. People often mistake critical thinking skills with close-mindedness. Just because someone uses thought and reason to reject an idea doesn't mean they are close-minded. Not all ideas deserve acceptance. I'm as open-minded as it gets, but if you tell me that vaccines cause autism then you will go down several notches in my book. (Ironically, there are many anti-vax people in the Bay Area!) I don't know about Oviedo specifically (maybe it's a liberal haven in the middle of a conservative sea, like Austin TX), but I've known several Floridans from the more conservative parts of the state, and they were either naive and gullible as hell, or actually close-minded. I don't say that to stereotype the entire state, but it's worth remembering that conservatism is about the preservation of the status quo, and by definition it's not nearly as accepting of new (and valid) ideas and perspectives as liberalism is. That's not meant to be a value judgment, but rather a descriptive statement.
- muninn_ 9y ago
  Right, that's one of the things I have found my fellow liberals struggling with. They don't understand the state of mind of somebody who wants to maintain things how they are, "we like it here" and attribute that to being close-minded, racist, ignorant, whatever. Sometimes that's true, but often times it's not. For example, I'm quite bearish on immigration, for example (I won't get into it here unless asked), and among my fellow liberal friends it's something they don't understand and considered "close-minded" or "unaccepting" but what does being close-minded actually mean? In my case, for example, I've thought about an issue and have drawn a conclusion based on the facts at hand. I'm very open to new perspectives and new ideas and often challenge people on their own preconceptions because I think it's valuable that people are challenged. But again, I'm not "close-minded", I've just drawn a different conclusion. People need to understand the difference and they largely don't.
- stmfreak 9y ago
  That sort of "critical thinking" arrogance is what keeps people from sharing their different opinions and perspectives from your pompous ass.
  - 9y ago
BadassFractal 9y ago
Completely agreed here. My experience has been that people are very intolerant of thought diversity. They like all sorts of diversity, as long as you subscribe to the same politics and morality as they do.
IVDV 9y ago
Really surprised to hear my hometown mentioned on hackernews! Went to Carillon as a child, still around the area now working at UCF.

froindt 9y ago

> When I lived in the Bay Area it seemed that too many people I interacted with were of similar backgrounds: very educated, high income and similar political and social values. I think this is one of the most important things as a whole. I am in Iowa (a red except for the counties holding the ~5 largest cities) and have a friend who is in DC. She said she mentioned having a couple friends from high school who were conservative and that made her weird in her friend group. The rest were in the DC bubble, effectively not knowing people from "the other side" on a personal level. The political polarization is really bad for the country. The concept that you can agree with the left on some issues and the right on others isn't popular. Personally I take the position that the "true, objective best" (if there was such a thing) solution is closer to the middle than the far right or far left.

rm_-rf_slash 9y ago
OT politics and viewpoints are deeply ingrained. Two people with different views could be given the exact same facts and come away with vastly different conclusions. That never changes. The way we with with people we disagree with does change, and it indeed changes us as well.

mklim 9y ago

Agree in a lot of ways, but there's darker sides to this pro depending on context and who you are. One of the things that makes the Bay Area priceless to me (visibile minority) is that I'm consistently treated like a regular person/with friendliness by strangers instead of with general hostility/coldness like I was back home in the Midwest.

stuffedBelly 9y ago

Totally agreed. Bay Area seems to be detached from the rest of the country sometimes and it's easy for people who live here to fall into echo chambers/cultural bubbles. I would not give out the company name, but I once visited this company and there is an "empathy corner" that displays low-end phones to remind employees that these still exist, probably because majority of the employees there are well-off and unlikely to own low-end devices. It struck me how detached from reality big tech companies could be and hence my decision to travel around other parts of the country/world to refresh my mind and get out of this bubble.

enraged_camel 9y ago

With all due respect, I don't really buy that narrative. People often mistake critical thinking skills with close-mindedness. Just because someone uses thought and reason to reject an idea doesn't mean they are close-minded. Not all ideas deserve acceptance. I'm as open-minded as it gets, but if you tell me that vaccines cause autism then you will go down several notches in my book. (Ironically, there are many anti-vax people in the Bay Area!) I don't know about Oviedo specifically (maybe it's a liberal haven in the middle of a conservative sea, like Austin TX), but I've known several Floridans from the more conservative parts of the state, and they were either naive and gullible as hell, or actually close-minded. I don't say that to stereotype the entire state, but it's worth remembering that conservatism is about the preservation of the status quo, and by definition it's not nearly as accepting of new (and valid) ideas and perspectives as liberalism is. That's not meant to be a value judgment, but rather a descriptive statement.

muninn_ 9y ago
Right, that's one of the things I have found my fellow liberals struggling with. They don't understand the state of mind of somebody who wants to maintain things how they are, "we like it here" and attribute that to being close-minded, racist, ignorant, whatever. Sometimes that's true, but often times it's not. For example, I'm quite bearish on immigration, for example (I won't get into it here unless asked), and among my fellow liberal friends it's something they don't understand and considered "close-minded" or "unaccepting" but what does being close-minded actually mean? In my case, for example, I've thought about an issue and have drawn a conclusion based on the facts at hand. I'm very open to new perspectives and new ideas and often challenge people on their own preconceptions because I think it's valuable that people are challenged. But again, I'm not "close-minded", I've just drawn a different conclusion. People need to understand the difference and they largely don't.
stmfreak 9y ago
That sort of "critical thinking" arrogance is what keeps people from sharing their different opinions and perspectives from your pompous ass.
- 9y ago

BadassFractal 9y ago

Completely agreed here. My experience has been that people are very intolerant of thought diversity. They like all sorts of diversity, as long as you subscribe to the same politics and morality as they do.

IVDV 9y ago

Really surprised to hear my hometown mentioned on hackernews! Went to Carillon as a child, still around the area now working at UCF.