4 ms·

That struck me as ridiculous. If you piss off the mayor of SF you don't get disappeared, but that very much does happen in China.

by ch4s3 9y ago

pavlov 9y ago
In China, you can even get disappeared in your own home. It’s called “residential surveillance at a designated location” — indefinite house arrest under police watch. It’s used routinely against both irrelevant dissidents and high-profile targets like artist Ai Weiwei and Nobel prize winner Liu Xiaobo. Maybe, in Altman’s Panglossian view, house arrest is just an opportunity to think deeply about inconvenient truths.
- creaghpatr 9y ago
  I'm giving Sam the benefit of the doubt that he's just trying to make a point and didn't think that line through.
  - ch4s3 9y ago
    I'd refer you to my response below. If he didn't think it through, then it points to how thin his argument is and how weak his thinking is on this issue.
colordrops 9y ago
That's not what is being talked about here. The topic is about social ostracization based on opinions you hold, rather than the ability to challenge authority over public broadcast mediums.
- ch4s3 9y ago
  Then he's wrong about that too. There are plenty of heterodox ideas that would get you ostracized socially as well as imprisoned in Beijing, they just aren't the ideas that are heterodox in SF and vica versa, so he's ignoring them. Also, the blurry line between state and society in China means that social heterodoxy is a challenge to authority. He's missing the point. Furthermore, what is he really ostracized from? He never makes that clear. His anecdote about " radical life extension" relies on literally the worst version of criticism of life extension, the kind you would get from the angriest and least informed type of person. It's a bad argument. Furthermore his argument about Newton undermines itself. Newton hid his work on alchemy and it was uncovered after his death, because he'd have literally been imprisoned for it. That wouldn't happen if Musk tried to turn lead into gold today. Again, the mention if Elon Musk is ridiculous, because plenty of people ridiculed SpaceX when he started it, but he push on anyway. Sure, occasionally good ideas get shouted down throughout history by small minded reactionaries, especially slightly transgressive ones, but that's just the hurdle you have to cross to execute on brilliant ideas sometimes. This whole thing seemed extremely thin skinned and petulant to me, and I definitely have diminished respect for Sam after reading it. And, if indeed he is correct and SF has entered a phase of reactionary response to new ideas, then that change hasn't happened in a vacuum.
  - colordrops 9y ago
    I lived in Beijing for 9 years and I never once felt threat for my ideas, those of which I spoke to pretty much anyone. And I'm definitely anti-authoritarian. You really are only gonna get busted if you hold up signs or organize protests. The topic of this post is not about public protests. Don't get me wrong. I don't agree with China's treatment of public protests, and think it's despicable. And I find that free speech in the US is one of the only things that we are right about when it comes to exceptionalism. It's maybe the last thing that is special about the US, and that's why I don't like attacks against it. Only a few weeks ago during "free speech week" at Berkeley and the South Carolina protests I had leftist friends and acquaintances advocate for limitations on speech, and violence towards those who use hate speech, despite the fact that the first amendment protects hate speech. It's ass backwards, and exactly what China's faux-leftist policies advocate. In any case, that is not the topic of this post, which is topics of daily conversation.
    - ch4s3 9y ago
      Yeah, I also know a number of extremely left leaning folks who advocate some authoritarian nonsense, and I agree that they're wrong. I don't care to address the free speech week which was clearly set up to provoke the response they got. However, none of that changes the fact that Sam Altman is playing loose with some sloppy analogy. No one is stifling his speech.
      - colordrops 9y ago
        No one is stifling his speech because he is richer than god. But a plebian such as myself won't bring up current affairs with most friends and coworkers anymore though. It's not really a topic of conversation anymore. And I'm pretty confident that tolerance of differing views is a casualty of the last election. Propaganda campaigns on social networks mobilized the easily swayed on both sides and drew a hard line down the middle that no one is allowed to cross anymore.

That struck me as ridiculous. If you piss off the mayor of SF you don't get disappeared, but that very much does happen in China.

by ch4s3 9y ago

That struck me as ridiculous. If you piss off the mayor of SF you don't get disappeared, but that very much does happen in China.

pavlov 9y ago

In China, you can even get disappeared in your own home. It’s called “residential surveillance at a designated location” — indefinite house arrest under police watch. It’s used routinely against both irrelevant dissidents and high-profile targets like artist Ai Weiwei and Nobel prize winner Liu Xiaobo. Maybe, in Altman’s Panglossian view, house arrest is just an opportunity to think deeply about inconvenient truths.

creaghpatr 9y ago
I'm giving Sam the benefit of the doubt that he's just trying to make a point and didn't think that line through.
- ch4s3 9y ago
  I'd refer you to my response below. If he didn't think it through, then it points to how thin his argument is and how weak his thinking is on this issue.

colordrops 9y ago

That's not what is being talked about here. The topic is about social ostracization based on opinions you hold, rather than the ability to challenge authority over public broadcast mediums.

ch4s3 9y ago
Then he's wrong about that too. There are plenty of heterodox ideas that would get you ostracized socially as well as imprisoned in Beijing, they just aren't the ideas that are heterodox in SF and vica versa, so he's ignoring them. Also, the blurry line between state and society in China means that social heterodoxy is a challenge to authority. He's missing the point. Furthermore, what is he really ostracized from? He never makes that clear. His anecdote about " radical life extension" relies on literally the worst version of criticism of life extension, the kind you would get from the angriest and least informed type of person. It's a bad argument. Furthermore his argument about Newton undermines itself. Newton hid his work on alchemy and it was uncovered after his death, because he'd have literally been imprisoned for it. That wouldn't happen if Musk tried to turn lead into gold today. Again, the mention if Elon Musk is ridiculous, because plenty of people ridiculed SpaceX when he started it, but he push on anyway. Sure, occasionally good ideas get shouted down throughout history by small minded reactionaries, especially slightly transgressive ones, but that's just the hurdle you have to cross to execute on brilliant ideas sometimes. This whole thing seemed extremely thin skinned and petulant to me, and I definitely have diminished respect for Sam after reading it. And, if indeed he is correct and SF has entered a phase of reactionary response to new ideas, then that change hasn't happened in a vacuum.
- colordrops 9y ago
  I lived in Beijing for 9 years and I never once felt threat for my ideas, those of which I spoke to pretty much anyone. And I'm definitely anti-authoritarian. You really are only gonna get busted if you hold up signs or organize protests. The topic of this post is not about public protests. Don't get me wrong. I don't agree with China's treatment of public protests, and think it's despicable. And I find that free speech in the US is one of the only things that we are right about when it comes to exceptionalism. It's maybe the last thing that is special about the US, and that's why I don't like attacks against it. Only a few weeks ago during "free speech week" at Berkeley and the South Carolina protests I had leftist friends and acquaintances advocate for limitations on speech, and violence towards those who use hate speech, despite the fact that the first amendment protects hate speech. It's ass backwards, and exactly what China's faux-leftist policies advocate. In any case, that is not the topic of this post, which is topics of daily conversation.
  - ch4s3 9y ago
    Yeah, I also know a number of extremely left leaning folks who advocate some authoritarian nonsense, and I agree that they're wrong. I don't care to address the free speech week which was clearly set up to provoke the response they got. However, none of that changes the fact that Sam Altman is playing loose with some sloppy analogy. No one is stifling his speech.
    - colordrops 9y ago
      No one is stifling his speech because he is richer than god. But a plebian such as myself won't bring up current affairs with most friends and coworkers anymore though. It's not really a topic of conversation anymore. And I'm pretty confident that tolerance of differing views is a casualty of the last election. Propaganda campaigns on social networks mobilized the easily swayed on both sides and drew a hard line down the middle that no one is allowed to cross anymore.