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Stuff You Can't Say in Silicon Valley
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- jpeg_hero 9y ago47 upvotes, and zero comments ... that tells you something, doesn’t it
- ekianjo 9y agothats another stuff you cant comment about in SV.
- minimaxir 9y agoIt should be noted that this article was posted a few weeks ago, and is not directly related to Sam Altman's recent (controversial) essay: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15924093 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15924093
- pwaai 9y agough I stopped reading after the first sentence: "Earlier this year, I noticed something in China that really surprised me. I realized I felt more comfortable discussing controversial ideas in Beijing than in San Francisco." I also feel comfortable speaking about controversial things foreign cultures would not have the appropriate context to judge, out of concern for being rude, culture value differences etc. I'm losing a lot of respect lately as it turns out more and more people involved with YC seem somehow okay with Peter Thiel and Trump supporters. Even VICE for fucks sake (Gavin McInnes's all white trash fuck boys) etc. Have a little respect for your country fellow Trump supporters!!! You have a fucking KGB puppet in charge! Actively working against the long term interests of your country who also happens to assault women, writes asinine shit and gets in the bed with the enemy. that's enough anger seething...im just anxious that the US is veering off course and into a different beast that would allow more nastier beasts to come into power.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- yandrypozo 9y agohard to believe this's in the first page of HN
- mr_spothawk 9y agotiming is everything
- rdtsc 9y ago> hard to believe this's in the first page of HN Is it because you disagree with the statement or you agree but believe that it would have been flag killed quickly?
- jdlyga 9y agoMakes me glad I live in New York and not Silicon Valley.
- electrograv 9y agoHonest question: How does New York compare on this spectrum? I had the impression that the political atmosphere there is very similar to California. I loved New York City when I visited, so I’m very curious to learn more about it from this perspective. If you don’t feel safe talking about it publicly, feel free to email me (you can track it down via my account). I wish I didn’t have to say that last sentence, but this is the USA we live in right now.
- berbec 9y agoNot really. If you think that way, you just move to Staten Island [1] 1: http://www.silive.com/news/index.ssf/2016/11/election_day_2016_live_vote_re.html http://www.silive.com/news/index.ssf/2016/11/election_day_20...
- free652 9y agoNot sure about California as a whole state, but NYC is liberal aside from Staten Island. And the rest of the state is red, aside from few cities. https://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/new-york https://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/new-york
- insickness 9y agoIn NYC, coming out as a Trump supporter is a cardinal sin that will lose you friends.
- dionidium 9y agoIn my first month in NYC I was yelled at by someone I'd met in a bar because I didn't do enough to stop my mother from voting for Trump. [0] [0] My mother didn't actually vote for Trump, but this woman got the impression that she had and was appalled that I hadn't done more to stop her.
- scottmcdot 9y agoIsn't this stuff you can't say anywhere?
- colordrops 9y agoI don't agree with most if any of the list in the article, but you are in a filter bubble if you are unaware of the large swaths of the US and other parts of the world where these attitudes are tolerated if not prevalant.
- Helloworldboy 9y agoI'd say most liberal metro areas, with slightly more leniency in the midwest. I imagine it's worst in SF/SV, but that's just my subjective view based on a few visits.
- dionidium 9y agoNo. Most of these are pretty mainstream moderate to conservative positions. Depending on how you measure it, roughly half the country believes at least some of the stuff on that list. Perhaps yours is really more of a comment about the homogeneity of the company you keep than on the universality of their beliefs?
- ekianjo 9y agoYou wont be fired in most parts of the world for saying that kind of stuff.
- scottmcdot 9y agoI don't feel like I can say this around my office (big 4 bank, Melbourne).
- ekianjo 9y agoI said "most", so yes there are definitely cases like the one you mention. In general, the larger the corporation, the more likely your freedom to have "diverse" opinions is diminished.
- lotsofpulp 9y agoTrump is literally putting the health of my country's citizens at risk for political posturing, I think animosity towards him is easily warranted: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/cdc-gets-list-of-forbidden-words-fetus-transgender-diversity/2017/12/15/f503837a-e1cf-11e7-89e8-edec16379010_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/cdc-g... Apparently, there's nothing better our tax dollars can be doing than destroying some of the most important and successful organizations human civilization has managed to create.
- ihsw2 9y agoAnd knowingly exposing others to HIV is no longer a felony in California. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2017/10/09/knowingly-infecting-others-with-hiv-is-no-longer-a-felony-in-california-advocates-say-it-targeted-sex-workers/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2017/1... While virtue-signalling about nomenclature is fun, this actually has a measurably horrible impact on public health.
- Aaron1011 9y agoHow is this related to the parent or OP?
- mcguire 9y agoThere are some things you're not allowed to say.
- Aaron1011 9y agoYou and the lawmakers opposed to that bill certainly seem 'allowed to say' whatever you want on that subject. Let me be more clear: What does this have to do with 'What you can't say in Silicon Valley', or 'animosity towards Trump'?
- cycrutchfield 9y agoNice whataboutism.
- QML 9y agoWhat’s the worse that can happen?
- asveikau 9y ago> If San Francisco residents really believed that sea levels were rising, they’d have all sold their homes by now. I wonder what effect the hills have on that. I googled "sea level rise san francisco" and found this: http://geology.com/sea-level-rise/san-francisco.shtml http://geology.com/sea-level-rise/san-francisco.shtml At the default view of +7m, it seems like the parts of the city that used to be water (Marina, Mission Bay, parts of the Mission, east part along the bay) are most vulnerable. The interior looks like less of a problem.
- tytytytytytytyt 9y agoWhat's so bad about saying that one?
- asveikau 9y agoMaybe because it's not true outside of certain high-risk neighborhoods? (And those are also higher risk for earthquake damage for the same underlying reason.) People who are buying property in SF can and do look up these risks.
- tytytytytytytyt 9y agoSure, but that doesn't seem like it'd make it such a horrible thing to say.
- michaelhoffman 9y agoIt's not a horrible thing to say. It's an ignorant thing to say. If you say it, people will think you are dumb.
- michaelhoffman 9y agoThe IPCC predicts that, in 2100, sea level at San Francisco will increase between 0.2 m and 1.0 m. It is possible to think that the best models of climate change are correct and that (a) the sea level is rising, and (b) most of San Francisco won't be submerged anyway. I wouldn't buy property in Mission Bay, though.
- mr_spothawk 9y agoI mentioned it in the @sama thread earlier... but we're also missing Brendan Eich being canned for his views on gay marriage
- tachyonbeam 9y agoTo be fair, he's also responsible for JavaScript.
- goatlover 9y agoTrue, but I listened to his podcast on the history of JS, and he was hired to put Scheme in the browser, but then management decided it needed to be something else, which turned into a compromise with Sun because they were wanting Java. And then there was a limited time to make it happen before Netscape shipped. After that time, whenever Brendan wanted to fix things in the language, he couldn't, because you can't break the web for people already using things as they are. This happened several times.
- ihsw2 9y agoI'm on the fence about this, especially given that it's my livelihood. Sure, I worked through the bad old days of writing `document.getElementById()` by hand, Scriptaculous vs MooTools, mountainous files of jQuery, Backbone vs Angular, and CoffeeScript when it was cool, but I can't deny that things aren't so bad nowadays. Maybe I'm just naive.
- yawn3000 9y agoHaving a homophobic CEO didn't really jive with the Mozilla ethos. He had to go.
- wavefunction 9y agoNot his views, his financial support of legislative efforts to prohibit the same civil rights enjoyed by some in this country for other fellow Americans depending on their sexual preference. He lost the confidence of the internationally focused diverse organization he was charged with leading due to that financial support.
- yawn3000 9y agoClearly you can say this stuff. It's just that the speakers seek to demand no consequences from their speech. Also, is HN really the right place to be discussing petty disagreements within the SV bubble? This article doesn't seem worthy.
- ej_campbell 9y agoThe cherry picking of this article is extreme. A company chooses to not employ someone based on a multiple page essay and this article takes a sentence and tries to make it look ridiculous.
- Helloworldboy 9y agoYou should actually read the multi-page article. And not the version hacked apart by tech "journalists" to remove the citations.
- Niksko 9y agoCitations are worthless when the reasoning that is citing them is shoddy. If you cite things, it makes the facts that you're referencing true. It doesn't make the logic of your argument true.
- Helloworldboy 9y agoObviously it's appropriate to remove the citations from someone's work then, right? No bias there :^)
- insickness 9y agoWhat else from that essay was grevious enough to fire him?
- jonathankoren 9y agoThe whole thing made a textbook hostile workplace. He said the people around him only got their jobs because of their race or gender and were therefore incompetent.
- freedomben 9y agoIt's pretty clear you didn't actually read it. I didn't at first either because I trusted the sources I was reading to give me a fair summary. That was a mistake. I didn't necessarily agree with what he said, but it was nowhere near as bad as what 90% of sources were reporting.
- afpx 9y agoIf I had a nickel for every time someone told me that they were not allowed to say these things shortly after saying one or more of them ...
- toomuchtodo 9y agoI think the greater concern are weaponized codes of conduct in an at-will employment environment. If you can’t say something without losing your job, you’re not free to say something. You can take every effort to respect someone else, not allow any of your behavior to be construed as harassment, and still be out the door because someone objects to or is offended by what you’ve said.
- jonathankoren 9y agoYou’re always free to say it. What you’re talking about is being free of other people exercising their speech to denounce it. Let’s be honest here. What these folks want is the ability to insult and attack people with impunity. That’s not what free speech is. It never was.
- toomuchtodo 9y agoI’m talking from an employment perspective where your wage is on the line. The Supreme Court has ruled in the US that there is no exception to free speech for hate speech. If this is not preferred, your argument is with the judicial branch or Congress and a constitutional amendment, not me.
- jonathankoren 9y agoYou’re confusing the state with a private actor. Yes, private actors have a lot of power in this world, but that’s not what the law is about. The law is about the government, not private actors. If you don’t allow businesses to fire people, then you’re compelling speech. Think about it. Say you’re a restaurant and you have a waiter that habitually refers to guests with a constant stream of expitives that would make a sailor blush. It gets to the point that it hurts your business. Patrons stop coming in. You can’t recruit. Do you fire him? Of course not! You’d be impugning his free speech and that’s horrible. So the restaurant closes, and you start another. And guess who shows up for a job? Sailor Blusher. Do you hire him? Of course! You have to because if you didn’t, you’d be infringing in his right to get paid to berate strangers! This story isn’t an exaggeration. This is the logical outcome.
- tzs 9y ago> If San Francisco residents really believed that sea levels were rising, they’d have all sold their homes by now Anyone who says that is, frankly, unobservant. We have government bail outs for people who live in areas that frequently flood due to things that have nothing to do with climate change, such as normal rain and hurricanes. Many of these areas flood almost predictably, yet we keep providing government support to keep people living there, or to help them move to someplace that floods less. There is no way that something similar won't happen to people when climate change induced sea level rises starts making some coastal property unlivable. Also, a good fraction of the population live in areas where there is a good chance that something will destroy their house over the next 30 or 40 years. Besides the aforementioned floods, there are earthquakes, wild fires, and tornadoes. The only real difference between those and gradual sea level rise destroying your home is that with sea level rise afterwards you have to go live somewhere else instead of rebuilding where the old house was. No one claims that people who live in states that can have earthquakes or tornadoes do not really believe that earthquakes or tornadoes happen.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- sliverstorm 9y agoAnd/or people are just banking on getting theirs & getting out before it gets bad.
- goatsi 9y agoThe scale of the impact from rising sea levels will be much different than a single flood or hurricane. Government resources will be very thinly stretched and the bailouts will likely be much less than what people have invested in their property.
- jfoutz 9y agoI really like the idea of park insurance. We will completely reimburse the full value of the destroyed property. But it’s a national park now.
- aresant 9y agoYou want to know what I think is way, way scarier than self-censoring in SV? Is that as a CULTURE we are self-censoring due to the Chilling Effect from learning that the NSA collects unfathomable dossiers on every citizens private browsing behavior.(1) It is sad and hilarious that SV leaders - who have spawned & continue to lobby for anti-privacy technology in the name of data collection and personal information dealing to sell advertising are crying that they can't be honest with their peers. If we want people to be more open and honest, to be open to broader views than their own how about start by fixing the fucking group-think algorithms that FB / Twitter / Goog are so fond of? (1) https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/apr/27/nsa-surveillance-has-had-chilling-effect-internet-/ https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/apr/27/nsa-surveil...
- woodruffw 9y agoFor better or worse, popular society has become a lot better at detecting dog whistles. "Diversity of thought is more important than diversity of skin color" is one of those dog whistles. I don't find the discussion itself objectionable, but I also don't want to grant intellectual capital to anybody who is going to use a controversial topic in bad faith to control the discussion. I don't want to be used to legitimize more extreme views. Sometimes people don't bring these topics up in bad faith, but it's been my experience that they're the minority. FWIW, I don't live in Silicon Valley or in CA.
- Helloworldboy 9y agoI'd argue that popular society has an increasing false positive rate when detecting dogwhistles, and that the problem is exacerbated by increasingly partisan politics.
- dionidium 9y agoIn my experience, most accusations of dog whistling on the internet range from misguided to incoherent. It's worth remembering what a dog whistle is, in the first place. It's a tactic used by politicians to assure a certain set of voters that you're on their side while maintaining public deniability of unpopular beliefs. It's a way of talking to the public that guarantees that each constituency hears what they want to hear. How does any of that apply to what some dude says on the internet? It doesn't. Who would they even be dog whistling for or to? Nobody. It's nonsensical. It's really just a way to say, "I think you believe something other than what you're actually saying." In other words, it's a polite way to call somebody a liar. Which is fine, I guess, but if you want to call somebody a liar, just call them a liar. We don't need a new term for that, especially one that already has a perfectly good meaning in another context.
- cbhl 9y agoNit-picking about the definition of words is another form of "dog whistling" that popular society has learned to detect.
- 9y ago
- jaimex2 9y agoIs this something that applies to large corporate Silicon Valley companies only? I've only worked in small startups.
- karpodiem 9y agoI voted for Trump and I'll vote for him again. Hi HN!
- yawn3000 9y agoI doubt you'll get a second opportunity. He probably won't survive his full term.
- the_cat_kittles 9y agowhy?
- pg_bot 9y agoI can probably add a few more to this list: "Income inequality is not an actual problem" "The affordable care act was bad for America" "It would be beneficial if we got rid of all government guaranteed loans for university tuition" "People should be allowed to own automatic weapons"
- junkscience2017 9y agoand more: "wikimedia has plenty of money" "Mozilla is institutionally focused on supporting left wing views exclusively" "all of the rich people who speak out against guns have bodyguards who carry guns. they basically don't want poor people owning guns" "fwd.us is against Trump's wall but Mark Zuckerberg wanted to buy a city block in Palo Alto to keep the masses out"
- dulse 9y agoOn your last one, there is also a funny story about his Hawaiian resort: https://www.theverge.com/2017/1/19/14327854/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-hawaii-kauai-property-lawsuits https://www.theverge.com/2017/1/19/14327854/mark-zuckerberg-...
- nsxwolf 9y agoI think you can say those things. You won’t get many takers but they aren’t as radioactive as LGBT issues, race issues, gender issues. Nobody’s going to call your boss and demand you be fired for saying those things.
- dulse 9y agoInteresting. What's your thinking for #1, #2, and #4? (I'm asking genuinely). Another I'll add from my list: "The social costs and spillover of disruption are not fairly priced today, representing a market failure; it's a problem akin to pollution in pre-regulation 19th century manufacturing." The election of Trump and enthusiasm to "build a wall" to protect manufacturing jobs reflects a real pain felt by a large number (maybe the majority) of Americans who are scared about their future job prospects and inability to provide for their families; many tech companies today are making their problems worse. These externalities are being foisted on society and these workers, who are not involved in the disrupting technology itself, and the companies have no obligation to pay for this cost. An assumption that disruption will "work itself out in the long run" isn't acceptable (nor is it necessarily true). I think it's like environmental pollution in the 70's, before we had the EPA to penalize the behavior. It's also accelerating, and could reach a tipping point that would put serious risks on our political system and social fabric.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- chasing 9y agoYou can say any of those things in Silicon Valley. I mean, people might make some judgments about you. But that happens whenever you state any opinion, especially if it isn't the mainstream. I think a lot of people are used to saying what's on their mind without consequence. They're used to other types of people remaining quiet on certain topics -- especially topics related to race, gender, and sexuality. And that's changing. So: For some people it's a shock and they suddenly feel attacked from all sides for opinions they've been vocal about for years. Feels weird. But in many cases what's actually happening is people who have historically been silent are suddenly speaking up and offering their own differing opinions. For example, it used to be acceptable to behave in certain ways towards women. Some men didn't see the problem because women wouldn't or couldn't speak up to make their opinions known. Now many women feel more empowered and it turns out many attitudes men have about women that seemed mainstream are in fact controversial (or, worse, actually destructive). And they always were. The opposing voices just hadn't been speaking. Now they are.
- ajross 9y ago> I think a lot of people are used to saying what's on their mind without consequence. No, it's simpler still. What is happening is that conservatives feel awkward and nervous being a minority (irony much?), so they look to strawman arguments to make themselves feel better. Obviously you can have those fights if you want. You just can't find many people to agree with you. This is like walking into a megachurch in Mississippi and complaining that no one wants to listen to your opinions on reproductive health care.
- T2_t2 9y agoI couldn't agree more. In a town like SV where almost everyone is liberal, the problem is conservatives. Oh, do I need to state that was sarcasm? > This is like walking into a megachurch in Mississippi and complaining that no one wants to listen to your opinions on reproductive health care. How can you not see the irony in this? Your example is a bad outcome. SV doing the reverse is bad. Not there are ideas that are OK and ideas that are bad, contextually, and alienating people is all good and fine, where my badness is OK if it is proportional and opposite to your badness. Intolerance ITSELF is the problem, fullstop, no matter the "rightness" of the idea. We live in a diverse world, and finding ways to get along is the key. How can we do that when any form of alienation is defended?
- dahdum 9y agoThat article is completely out of line. For the record: I think SF is doing a great job tackling homelessness, human excrement management, and broad daylight IV drug abuse. They just need to raise taxes to increase funding for all the really successful programs underway. I'm sure they've got a handle on it. It's a wonderful vacation destination for families. Affordable housing will definitely be solved by higher taxes, implementing rent control, and subsidizing below market rents in luxury buildings. It's important to keep the character of our neighborhoods by preventing higher density housing.
- aphextron 9y agoCan't tell if this is serious
- johndevor 9y agoI don't believe so. And I think SF has some real problems too.
- rahimnathwani 9y agoI can't tell if this is serious.
- Helloworldboy 9y agoTitle could just as well be: Things you can't say on HN without being censored by an archaic down voting system.
- eclectic 9y agoDownvoting = groupthink enforcement
- AaronFriel 9y agoIt's interesting that lists of the verboten keep rising to the top of Hacker News. If this keeps happening, it would only be rational to believe these things aren't verboten and their authors (whose work keeps rising to the top of link aggregators like this) aren't writing in good faith that they were. In fact, isn't it - to a degree - virtue signaling to write that one thinks it's such a shame that these verboten things are so verboten as to write an article enumerating them and describing how verboten they are? And yet, ctrl-f, "virtue". Ah, there it is.
- photik 9y ago... it has since been modded off of the front page.
- AaronFriel 9y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15938241 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15938241
- vbtemp 9y agoI'm glad it mentions H-1Bs. Similarly to identity-conservatives, for whom belief in global warming is heresy and tax cuts are gospel, I believe there is a similar phenomenon with identity-progressives around immigration, in this case specifically the H-1B program. There seems to be some belief in its sacred power that is not to be questioned and not to be curtailed. As I see it, big businesses - not least the major tech companies - are loaded with incredibly bright, incredibly well-compensated staff. These companies can figure out solutions to the toughest scientific and technical problems, can create new markets when regulations shift, and change the world. They sure as sh*t will figure out how to adapt if immigration policies change and the H-1B program is reduced. As it stands right now, to me it seems - by and large - a handout for companies to get mid-range IT talent enslaved to them for a fractional price of what they'd pay an American.
- dmode 9y agoDo you know anything about H1B ? Have you checked the average H1 pay in SV for H1 before making an asinine observation that H1 is used to enslave mid range IT talent. Disclosure: I am on H1 and I know alleast a 100 people on H1
- calvinbhai 9y agoHow about the ones born in India /China/Philippines on h1-b? They are not treated equally (compared to a h1-b born elsewhere), and Indians are the most abused (by law). Basically Indians on h1-b are highly paid shackled slaves of America, because they wait crazy number of years (10-70 years) to get a green card. During that wait their options to demand better pay/raise/jobs are extremely limited. And these shackles are the source of conscious/ subconscious abuse. Now try saying to anyone in America who is a DACA sympathizer that those in the green card backlog are in a much worse situation. (I did to one in Bay Area and it didn’t end well)
- dahdum 9y agoH1B programs at the top tech companies aren't the problem, they're hiring the best they can and paying them well. It's the H1B mills and other abusers of the program (like Disney) that are dragging it into the political limelight. Reform is needed but ending it would be a terrible loss.
- mcguire 9y ago"If San Francisco residents really believed that sea levels were rising, they’d have all sold their homes by now." To be fair, that probably hits too close to home.
- roenxi 9y agoPeople cannot make decisions using facts; there are too many issues at play and the interactions between the facts are too complicated. In practice decisions are made by copying other socially successful persons. It seems completely obvious to me that any social grouping will have some strongly held convictions that are not based on fact. A unique set of sacred cows that persist because it is orders of magnitude faster to copy successful examples than figure out why they were successful. I mean, I applaud efforts to align cultural conversation with fact. Very worthwhile activity. But it seems more important to me to accept that social groups can behave erratically, and that nothing should be taking precedence over the rule of law; and anything that looks like mass hysteria should be resisted. The enemy is the idea that 'everybody knows' something and therefore due process can be thrown out. I recall the slogan 'Not My President' being trotted out when Trump won. That sort of thing is dangerous. Disagreeing with the result of an election? That is fine. A bout half the population can do that. Chipping away at the legitimacy of the electoral process, because you can't say and do what Trump says and does? Huge threat.
- mcguire 9y agoWeirdly, that doesn't seem to have been a problem for those whose president was Charlton Heston.
- cannonedhamster 9y agoYou can say all of these things anywhere with minimal actual consequences other than social consequences. You have to be so deep into first world problems that you can't see that social consequences are not the biggest problem for most Americans right now. * You can support Trump, it doesn't mean other people don't have the right to think you're a moron, bigot, or supporter of fascism for doing so. You go right ahead and think the same thing about them. NO ONE ACTUALLY CARES. Most people are too busy working to get caught up in politics. * Diversity of thought often comes with diversity of skin color because people with different skin color have a hell of a different experience than white people. They even have different experiences among their different ethnicities. Does it mean white people can't have different thoughts? No, but when you're in a bubble how would you even know? * The way the H1-B is written now is terrible both to the H1-B holder and American workers. It forces workers to get paid below what they should get paid both as an H1-B worker and as the American worker. H1-B holders should not require sponsoring by a company. If their skills are in such high demand they should have no problem getting a job. * If they could afford to sell. If they were stupid. Maybe they are optimists? Seems like San Fran has a ton of optimists. Maybe they plan on selling before sea levels rise or trust their government to bail them out. * If this was all he said, sure, there's room for conversation about how and why we got into this situation, but it was a stupid screed against diversity. This guy is no champion of discourse. I doubt you could do what he did anywhere and have it go over well. You keep your politics out of your work whenever possible and speak your mind at home. A company is not a free speech zone. * Equality of treatment doesn't mean equality of outcomes. That's a strawman argument.
- awaythrowaway 9y ago> Diversity of thought often comes with diversity of skin color I definitely agree (ethnical?) diversity is desirable, but the idea that differences in race correlate highly enough with differences in thought to justify largely using race to locate thought diversity is the very racist idea itself; that people who look like this think one way, and people who look like that think another way. It's a low-resolution view of the world; in reality, the variance between individuals within a given race is greater than that of individuals between races.
- rectang 9y agoI don't miss hearing the voices of the historically dominant. Other voices are being heard instead: the voices of those who have long been beaten down. As someone who is loyal to the human race before my demographic, I'm thrilled.
- sunseb 9y agoYes, I am kind of tired of this dictatorship of the minority too. It's like everybody need to receive a gold medal for being different nowadays. But we never speak about the average Joe, who struggles in life too!
- mc32 9y agoI think one problem might be that people don't want to tolerate anything, any exception to a position, that while true, might perceptively undermine their narrative. Essentially, in colloquial, they don't want to give an inch for fear they'll grant a mile. For example. A position might be, yes, means yes, but it can also mean no, if the person saying yes, feels they were forced into yes. So unless it was a resolute yes, it means no. Someone might want to take exception to that and say that, no, it depends on the situation and personality, etc., and that there are grey areas and there will always be and we also know people might initially think something is a good idea and retroactively take back a yes. But some people may not want to admit that people do on occasion retroactively change their minds on something.
- prepend 9y agoThis article seems to be debating an issue that doesn’t exist. It seems to call Ferriss for not speaking his mind, but I listened to the podcast referenced and it was one short statement amongst lots of other stuff. I would like to hear an entire podcast from Ferriss. But this author seems to criticize a Ferriss for not going into detail and that’s inappropriate. It would be valid if Ferriss left out these details in a book or in depth coverage, but he author is taking a few sentences and reading way too much into it. What do you call it when someone uses a bigger name to try to rouse controversy in order to get clicks? It’s not yellow journalism, but there must be a term for this kind of shitposting.
- gamechangr 9y agoI posted Tim Ferriss direct words...He didn't leave out details. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15937836 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15937836
- closure 9y agoI stopped reading here: “If San Francisco residents really believed that sea levels were rising, they’d have all sold their homes by now.” Apparently the author has never been to San Francisco or seen the sea level estimates for the next 30-70 years. The last time I looked the northernmost and easternmost parts of SF will have some trouble, but by far the biggest areas of concern are east of 101 south of the city. And yes, if people thought ahead that far they would probably be concerned but even in the areas that are predicted to have the most impact we’re still talking 25+ years.
- Naritai 9y agoI was going to comment on this one too. There are lots of projections of which sections of SF will be underwater, and those are the cheapest places to live. It is already priced into the market.
- yongjik 9y agoYeah, seriously. Anyone who's ever driven in SF should know this city is not going to be underwater (well, mostly). There are hills smack in the middle of SF that are > 200 ft (~60 m) high[1]. Meanwhile, to pick a random example, "Much of Florida has an elevation of less than 12 feet (3.7 m), including many populated areas such as Miami which are located on the coast."[2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hills_in_San_Francisco https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hills_in_San_Francisco [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Florida https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Florida
- BashiBazouk 9y agoExactly. The highest point in San Francisco, Mount Davidson is 928 ft above sea level and is close to three times as high as the highest point in the entire state of Florida, Britton Hill at 345 ft...
- pwaai 9y agoAn overwhelming sense of relief washes over me as I read your comment. It's obvious the author of the article doesn't know what the fuck she's talking about.
- publidat 9y agoI feel like it’ll take another dozen years before some people are ready to admit that “Liberal McCarthyism” is exactly what emerged around 2017. And in the meantime, as someone who’s not interested in waiting on the current power-brokers in SV to admit to it, I think it makes sense for those who are the primary target of this new McCarthyism to engineer a way to preseve their rights. Depending on SV’s prevailing power structure is obviously a terrible idea.
- the_cat_kittles 9y agoi dont know, i dont see alot of damage from the pendulum swinging "too far"? i guess some of the speaker harassment on college campuses and some calling for some prof's heads is bs... what else? probably jeffery lord (despite sucking super hard) shouldn't have been fired. i dont know, maybe im missing some, but it seems like this is not sufficient grounds to feel so aggrieved.
- mcguire 9y agoPersonally, I wouldn't start worrying about "Liberal McCarthyism" in the United States until liberals have control of the presidency, the congress, and at least a fair majority of the states.
- publidat 9y agoThe fact that this post, and the Sam Altman posts, have been made invisible on this site is the millionth depressingly predictable example of why it's well past time for the people who are endlessly silenced to engineer their own solutions and not rely on the infrastructure of the current power-brokers.
- the_cat_kittles 9y agoim sure you dont care how correct i think the statements you make in your piece are, so ill just address the larger point you seem to be ignoring: there is no shortage of things to say that are correct, but serve no purpose. are you really shocked that people would not like you if you went around calling every fat and ugly person "fat and ugly"? given that our attention is a finite resource, the choice of where to focus it itself carries significant meaning. i suspect that many of those statements, when contextualized, imply things beyond their literal meaning. you are acting like its unfair to make this interpretation, and im sure there are many cases where it is. but you are pretty dumb if you really dont understand why saying "diversity of thought is more important than diversity of skin color" can sound like "im racist" depending on the context.
- goseeastarwar 9y ago> If San Francisco residents really believed that sea levels were rising, they’d have all sold their homes by now. What an absurd argument. Is it possible instead that people are capable of believing that sea levels are rising and the US government wouldn't allow $500B worth of GDP to sink into the Bay?
- superquest 9y agoThis post has 195 points in an hour, and it is currently #20 on the front page. Why isn't it higher?
- dang 9y agoFor the usual reasons: user flags, software, and a moderation penalty. The latter can vary in weight but at the moment is a small downweight applied to follow-up discussions that don't contain significant new information. The software involved is HN's flamewar detector a.k.a. overheated discussion detector. All of these are typical responses to articles with a large heat-to-substance ratio.
- superquest 9y agoHuh, ok. Thanks for quick answer. Edit: Looks like you edited your answer to include flamewar info. That makes a ton of sense.
- dang 9y agoSorry for the edit on the fly! You responded fast to my fast response.
- gkop 9y ago> All of these are typical responses to articles with a large heat-to-substance ratio. To save others from having to look it up themselves: according to [0], it took 13 hours for Sam's article to fall off the front page, while this article fell off after about 1 hour. dang didn't say it was ONLY heat-to-substance ratio causing the downmod. Clearly, there are other factors than heat-to-substance ratio causing it though. It's hard to dismiss the suspicion that either "embarrasses YC president" could be a factor in downmodding this article or that Sam's article was not downmodded in order to avoid embarassing Sam :( HN is tremendously influential in tech culture, so even a tiny difference in moderation of similar articles reflecting opposing points of view could compound to a very destructive effect. [0] http://hhn.domador.net/ http://hhn.domador.net/
- whatshisface 9y agoIf political opinions can impact your career, then there's a massive potential for abuse. What happens if your boss fires you for supporting a measure that would damage your employer? Even worse, what if some corporate interest issue got programmed in to people by a PR campaign, and then your boss fired you for resisting that? You'd be torn apart by the public. There would be nowhere to turn.
- pkd 9y agoSaying things has consequences. All these articles seem to be complaining about the sudden realization that you can't say something without suffering from consequences in SV. I don't generally care about SV and I think it has its fair share of problems but being accountable for sharing your (mostly ill-informed) beliefs, especially when you have the social reach to influence millions is not "oppression". It's the simple fact of there being consequences of what you say and do.
- chipotle_coyote 9y agoI see that a new poster was quickly downvoted into oblivion for writing "Clearly you can say this stuff. It's just that the speakers seek to demand no consequences from their speech," but...I think that's largely true. I'm not making a moral judgement about that, per se, but it's worth engaging with the sometimes uncomfortable truth that free speech entails both what you say and how people react to it. Furthermore, this isn't a new thing. One of the other things "you can't say in Silicon Valley" is that black people are only fit to be slaves to white people, but if anyone's out there shaking their heads and clucking their tongues about how great it'd be to be able to say that if it weren't for those terrible lefty PC liberals always SJWing up the place, do you wanna be associated with them? It turns out that being openly racist in that way is, to most people in most parts of the country, really unacceptable. Also, I've noticed that when these discussions come up, nobody ever talks about the "stuff you can't say" in more conservative parts of the country. Perhaps part of the reason people out here in the Bay Area are so "intolerant" is because so many of us have suffered consequences for what we say--or even what we don't say, but just what we are--when we've lived in other parts of the country. Try putting a "Black Lives Matter" bumper sticker on your Prius, drive to rural Alabama, and strike up conversations about your strong support for Obamacare, abortion rights, and gun control. Then get back to me about how gosh-darn friendly everyone was to you.
- swimfar 9y agoHave you actually ever lived in Alabama? Or are your views based on anecdotes and stereotypes of the South? I lived there for a short while and it's not Deliverance. In my experience it's a lot more integrated than the Bay Area. Note: (spoilers?) Deliverence doesn't actually paint the negative picture of the south that people associate with the movie. It's just as much about prejudices people have against rural people.
- gamechangr 9y agoI Second that. The south is much more accommodating of opposing views. I've been to Alabama with a large group of friends that were very liberal and I have to admit...the people were incredibly friendly. (maybe not always willing to engage on the issues - but clearly friendly).
- sunseb 9y agoThis story is not on HN front page anymore...
- calvinbhai 9y agoIf a white male (the google guy) can get fired for being open about his views, imagine how tough it can be for minorities to be open about their views! It’s like everyone knows they are in an echo chamber but not daring to be the first one to speak up.
- photik 9y agoThat entirely depends on the arena in which one finds oneself. In far-left circles women and minorities tend to be given carte blanche, while in far-right circles older white men receive similar treatment. It is a spectrum of acceptable norms based on implicit values surrounding group identities. e.g. if a white man offers a controversial opinion in a left-leaning arena, he is more likely to be dismissed.
- calvinbhai 9y agoAgreed. As a brown guy (I think right of Center) my views tend to piss off the far right/left equally. And I think there are many like me who are just keeping their mouth shut listening to garbage from both the far ends.
- mythrwy 9y agoWhen I was a kid in a deeply religious community I never could keep my mouth shut and irritated a lot of folks until I was big enough to leave home which I did at the stroke of 18. This cost me a lot of effort and struggle and I had to make my own way and was behind others who just went along. Because what I saw were a bunch of smug, self righteous hypocrites with a dubious moral code based on non-realistic understandings proffered by cynical opportunists who's real agenda was far from what they preached. Remaining true to myself, to my understanding of objective reality, to not be afraid to give voice to that reality was every bit worth it then and it's worth it now. Smug hypocrites suck and it isn't worth becoming one at any price, no matter what flavor the unrealistic hypocrisy and groupthink is.
- dmode 9y agoThese "Silicon Valley and free speech" articles are so laughable that it is hard to believe that they are taken seriously in HN. It is literally a first world problem. Compare this to the other #1 article where Trump admin is literally banning words in CDC, Project Veritas is sending fake people to malign journalism, an out of control President is on constant tirade against media, mention of climate change is systemically purged from government websites. Those are serious issues
- 21 9y agoI'm in London, and the day after the US elections we needed to name an internal project, so we just named it Trump. One of the team members also had for a while a red Trump hat on his desk (if he was alt-right in any way, I couldn't detect it). None of us was a US citizen. I'm genuinely curious if such things would be accepted in a SV software company.
- throwaway177171 9y agoThe trend to refuse debating is more harmful than it looks. Here are some defences I've seen so far 1. Debating is pointless because the person wont change their mind On the Internet, you're not debating a person. You are also debating for the benefit of uninformed (yet potentially well meaning) bystanders that are watching and reading. Hard as it may be to imagine, a lot of these people just don't know what you know. This is the exact time to bring out your best, most convincing material and information. Why not do it? Its not a stretch to assume a lot of generally well meaning people will be sceptical to progressive ideas at first. After all, isn't the whole premise that we've normalised unfair behaviour so much that people can no longer easily see it from within their bubble? Can we really afford to write off everyone that is like that completely? Why not try and give them a peak outside their bubble instead? 2. Debating will legitimise the other person's reprehensible point of view. We are taking a huge step backwards just by engaging. Assuming no other information is available to the uninformed bystanders, here is how this looks like to them: * Person A makes a plausible-looking argument; * Person B says they're wrong, * wont even dignify that with a debate * will continue to be enraged * will do everything in their power to get person A fired. A bystander might try and find some resources on their own. Or they may conclude this is a matter of "free speech": person B, having no arguments in their favour are just trying to shut person A down. 3. I'm outraged right now. Not quite in the state to educate people. I also just debated with 50 others before this person and I'm sick of doing it over and over. Thats understandable. Please though, if at all possible, consider the potential consequences of continuing to engage without a debate.
- fmihaila 9y agoWow, that didn't take long. Why is this discussion being flagged?
- r00fus 9y agoBecause it's uninformed clickbait.
- evo_9 9y agoThe fact that this is flagged just reinforces his point about frail narcissists in the valley.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- jancsika 9y agoDoes this qualify: "Use my code as you please. Just promise to contribute back any improvements you make to it."
- grandalf 9y agoApparently this story is one such thing, as it has been flagged.
- gamechangr 9y agoIs McCarthyism in Silicon Valley real? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15937836 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15937836
- pwaai 9y agoI'm glad this submission was flagged as I've done so as well out of sheer disbelief. It's baffling why somebody who spent so much time building up their reputation would throw it under the bus for ideological cause. You can say anything you want, write what you want in SV but do not mistake people distancing from you afterwards as 'silencing' you. If somebody goes around saying it's okay to love Trump, as a women AND as a minority is just pure mind fuckery. I can see why some people feel threatened by the sudden rise of opinions that differ from the mainstream narration but this is precisely because the silenced voices are SPEAKING UP. The most bizarre part about this is that a minority female would openly become a doormat for the very people that told everybody who wasn't like them to shut the fuck up.... This is hardcore Uncle Toming from a woman who wouldn't be viewed as a white women by mainstream America but through the lens of fetish. Especially, shaming another Asian American women like Ellen Pao to further her article's message. I apologize for any harsh words but as a minority myself, it was hard to contain the anger.
- akhilcacharya 9y agoIt never ceases to amaze me that some people that went to the best schools, make the best salaries and occupy the highest levels of the social ladder still find ways to feel oppressed.
- nautilus12 9y agoHmm flagged eh? Maybe title should read stuff you cant say on hacker news..
- RickJWag 9y agoIt's true. PC culture is so strong it's dangerous to have an opinion outside of what popular culture pushes on us. It's not a good situation. There's blatant hypocrisy in the air as well. (Many of the same voices calling out politicians for past sexual misdeeds have yet to sever ties with the Clintons, for example.) It's to our collective detriment. I can't wait for the pendulum to swing back the other way so we can all speak what we think without fear of falling on the wrong side of the PC police.