4 ms·

"If Galileo had said that people in Padua were ten feet tall, he would have been regarded as a harmless eccentric. Saying the earth orbited the sun was another

by Meekro 9y ago

"If Galileo had said that people in Padua were ten feet tall, he would have been regarded as a harmless eccentric. Saying the earth orbited the sun was another matter. The church knew this would set people thinking." -- Paul Graham, What You Can't Say [1] "And worse than simply thinking these things or saying them in private, you’ve said them in a way that’s tried to legitimize this kind of thing across the company, causing other people to get up and say “wait, is that right?”" -- senior Google guy, in condemnation of the essay [2] [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html [2] https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/so-about-this-googlers-manifesto-1e3773ed1788 https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/so-about-this-googlers-man...

hncens0rship 9y ago
SV/YC culture is extremely toxic, and people hate having that pointed out to their faces. edit: sv/yc are toxic for how they actively shame outsider opinions, then headhunt the individuals who put said opinions forward. from sama's what i heard from trump supporters, "Almost everyone I asked was willing to talk to me, but almost none of them wanted me to use their names—even people from very red states were worried about getting “targeted by those people in Silicon Valley if they knew I voted for him”. One person in Silicon Valley even asked me to sign a confidentiality agreement before she would talk to me, as she worried she’d lose her job if people at her company knew she was a strong Trump supporter." like for instance on this website, where flagged & downvoted comments lead to rate limiting. sorry guy i can't respond to, it's the mods' fault. minority opinions get to say 1, maybe 2 things, before being silenced. controversial threads are flagged or removed by dang and co from the front page within an hour. ever have a convo with a conservative on here, where they just stopped responding to you? was probably silenced by the moderation team. this discussion is flagged to obscurity, while the stupid circle jerk post about "google engineer breaking his bubble through global travel!" is on the front still. http://blog.samaltman.com/what-i-heard-from-trump-supporters http://blog.samaltman.com/what-i-heard-from-trump-supporters
- johan_larson 9y ago
  Toxic how?
  - toxiccwm 9y ago
    The progressive definition of a toxic person is someone who doesn't profess progressive principles at every opportunity. It's sort of like how Muslims think Jews are toxic.
- sillysaurus3 9y ago
  I don't think it's fair to lump YC culture in with SV culture. YC is based in SV, but it seems to be an island of reasonableness.
  - hncens0rship 9y ago
    I do, and provided a direct example of their culture of censorship - how they limit the ability of minority opinions to speak on their own site, and manipulate the front page to control perception. YC leadership and rank and file effectively never express opinions that are significantly different from the rest of SF tech, because in many ways they define its culture. Why is it a "bastion of reasonableness?" The only reason I even talk at all here is because I think it's important to break up the ideological uniformity, because people who talk here have enormous amounts of control over how people are able to communicate with one another in the modern world. I don't want to be here, I fucking hate this community.
  - Bukhmanizer 9y ago
    While I think that YC tends to be a bit more reasonable on some topics, it can be pretty reactionary on others. For example, if anything to do with Facebook or Zuckerberg is posted, the level of discourse drops to the typical reddit outrage machine. Similarly, I think that when it comes to talking about sexism in tech, the community as a whole can be pretty toxic. As someone who was annoyed by both the original manifesto, and the response to the original manifesto, it's a bit frustrating to see the conversation here take shape the way it has.
  - stefantalpalaru 9y ago
    > I don't think it's fair to lump YC culture in with SV culture. YC is based in SV, but it seems to be an island of reasonableness. Wait until you get hellbanned.
- gjjrfcbugxbhf 9y ago
  It is interesting how the grandchild responses to the responses to this post have been flag killed...
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - hncens0rship2 9y ago
    Predictable is the word I'd use. Oh well, I just hope people don't assume that actual conversations on politics happen here. Right wing perspectives are silenced then ganged by strawmen when they can't reply, it's a fucking joke.
- CalChris 9y ago
  Neither YC (you probably meant HN) nor SV are toxic.
  - hncens0rship 9y ago
    Yes they are. Y Combinator and its employees, the Hacker News community at large, and the SV/SF tech companies them and their ilk occupy, are all toxic. Is that clear enough for you? Don't put words in people's mouths.
naiveattack 9y ago
I really like the "What You Can't Say" essay. Interestingly, what it says is not that speaking out is bad. It says that you must weight the benefit of speaking out to society, to the cost to yourself. It says you know what, sometimes it's ok to pick your fights, to be a coward, or to turn a blind eye to the destruction of the good in society. I agree that sometimes it's important to be selfish. This means that I can avoid the short term cost to me, but what about the long term cost? Every time you stay silent, you are complicit in the foolishness and irrationality in society. Every time a mob silences an individual and you ignore it, you lend power to the mob, and power to the idea of a mob in the mind of society. You lend power to the idea that the louder you shout, the more correct your idea is. And it's the ideas that make our society. Here's an example of where this is going: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-nvNAcvUPE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-nvNAcvUPE . The rabbit hole goes deep. I am worried that even HN, a crowd that prizes itself on being intellectual, is so easily swayed by virtue signalling and shouting loudly (see comments here and on other similar threads). If these rational minds are so easily swayed, what about the larger crowd that thinks even less for itself? These centres must be held to a higher standard or we risk corruption of everything. Your choices make a difference, choose wisely.

by Meekro 9y ago

hncens0rship 9y ago

SV/YC culture is extremely toxic, and people hate having that pointed out to their faces. edit: sv/yc are toxic for how they actively shame outsider opinions, then headhunt the individuals who put said opinions forward. from sama's what i heard from trump supporters, "Almost everyone I asked was willing to talk to me, but almost none of them wanted me to use their names—even people from very red states were worried about getting “targeted by those people in Silicon Valley if they knew I voted for him”. One person in Silicon Valley even asked me to sign a confidentiality agreement before she would talk to me, as she worried she’d lose her job if people at her company knew she was a strong Trump supporter." like for instance on this website, where flagged & downvoted comments lead to rate limiting. sorry guy i can't respond to, it's the mods' fault. minority opinions get to say 1, maybe 2 things, before being silenced. controversial threads are flagged or removed by dang and co from the front page within an hour. ever have a convo with a conservative on here, where they just stopped responding to you? was probably silenced by the moderation team. this discussion is flagged to obscurity, while the stupid circle jerk post about "google engineer breaking his bubble through global travel!" is on the front still. http://blog.samaltman.com/what-i-heard-from-trump-supporters http://blog.samaltman.com/what-i-heard-from-trump-supporters

johan_larson 9y ago
Toxic how?
- toxiccwm 9y ago
  The progressive definition of a toxic person is someone who doesn't profess progressive principles at every opportunity. It's sort of like how Muslims think Jews are toxic.
sillysaurus3 9y ago
I don't think it's fair to lump YC culture in with SV culture. YC is based in SV, but it seems to be an island of reasonableness.
- hncens0rship 9y ago
  I do, and provided a direct example of their culture of censorship - how they limit the ability of minority opinions to speak on their own site, and manipulate the front page to control perception. YC leadership and rank and file effectively never express opinions that are significantly different from the rest of SF tech, because in many ways they define its culture. Why is it a "bastion of reasonableness?" The only reason I even talk at all here is because I think it's important to break up the ideological uniformity, because people who talk here have enormous amounts of control over how people are able to communicate with one another in the modern world. I don't want to be here, I fucking hate this community.
- Bukhmanizer 9y ago
  While I think that YC tends to be a bit more reasonable on some topics, it can be pretty reactionary on others. For example, if anything to do with Facebook or Zuckerberg is posted, the level of discourse drops to the typical reddit outrage machine. Similarly, I think that when it comes to talking about sexism in tech, the community as a whole can be pretty toxic. As someone who was annoyed by both the original manifesto, and the response to the original manifesto, it's a bit frustrating to see the conversation here take shape the way it has.
- stefantalpalaru 9y ago
  > I don't think it's fair to lump YC culture in with SV culture. YC is based in SV, but it seems to be an island of reasonableness. Wait until you get hellbanned.
gjjrfcbugxbhf 9y ago
It is interesting how the grandchild responses to the responses to this post have been flag killed...
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- hncens0rship2 9y ago
  Predictable is the word I'd use. Oh well, I just hope people don't assume that actual conversations on politics happen here. Right wing perspectives are silenced then ganged by strawmen when they can't reply, it's a fucking joke.
CalChris 9y ago
Neither YC (you probably meant HN) nor SV are toxic.
- hncens0rship 9y ago
  Yes they are. Y Combinator and its employees, the Hacker News community at large, and the SV/SF tech companies them and their ilk occupy, are all toxic. Is that clear enough for you? Don't put words in people's mouths.

naiveattack 9y ago

I really like the "What You Can't Say" essay. Interestingly, what it says is not that speaking out is bad. It says that you must weight the benefit of speaking out to society, to the cost to yourself. It says you know what, sometimes it's ok to pick your fights, to be a coward, or to turn a blind eye to the destruction of the good in society. I agree that sometimes it's important to be selfish. This means that I can avoid the short term cost to me, but what about the long term cost? Every time you stay silent, you are complicit in the foolishness and irrationality in society. Every time a mob silences an individual and you ignore it, you lend power to the mob, and power to the idea of a mob in the mind of society. You lend power to the idea that the louder you shout, the more correct your idea is. And it's the ideas that make our society. Here's an example of where this is going: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-nvNAcvUPE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-nvNAcvUPE . The rabbit hole goes deep. I am worried that even HN, a crowd that prizes itself on being intellectual, is so easily swayed by virtue signalling and shouting loudly (see comments here and on other similar threads). If these rational minds are so easily swayed, what about the larger crowd that thinks even less for itself? These centres must be held to a higher standard or we risk corruption of everything. Your choices make a difference, choose wisely.