4 ms·

Because it is not techies the ones that drive technology anymore. Wealth and fame attracted sociopaths that are now running the show.

xor1 9y ago
>sociopaths To be more general, Cluster Bs.
- drdeadringer 9y ago
  I had to look this up. Is this a usual consideration these days?
- sitkack 9y ago
  I think this overly broad. I can't just label everyone I don't like a Google employee.
briantakita 9y ago
Or the atomization, consolidation, & networkization of culture encourages sociopathic behavior in otherwise normal people while emboldening the psychopaths. Excessive amounts of ill gotten gain & subsidies adds fuel to the disconnect built on faulty presuppositions.
Top19 9y ago
Tim Ferris mentioned this recently when asked why he moved to Austin, Texas (from SF) during his reddit AMA. His term was “fair-weather entrepreneurs”. Essentially guns for hires without vision who will go wherever easy capital funding is to be found.
- goldfeld 9y ago
  Isn't Tim Ferris a good reminder of everything that's been going wrong with the web for a while?
- hkmurakami 9y ago
  fwiw Tim Ferris (a fellow alum) is not a techie/nerd type, though he is certainly an entrepreneur.
- mistermann 9y ago
  https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/7erct8/i_am_tim_ferriss_host_of_the_tim_ferriss_show_and/ https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/7erct8/i_am_tim_ferri... This was interesting to read: 5) Silicon Valley also has an insidious infection that is spreading -- a peculiar form of McCarthyism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism) masquerading as liberal open-mindedness. I'm as socially liberal as you get, and I find it nauseating how many topics or dissenting opinions are simply out-of-bounds in Silicon Valley. These days, people with real jobs (unlike me) are risking their careers to even challenge collective delusions in SF. Isn't this supposed to be where people change the world by challenging the consensus reality? By seeing the hidden realities behind the facades? That's the whole reason I traveled west and started over in the Bay Area. Now, more and more, I feel like it's a Russian nesting doll of facades -- Washington DC with fewer neck ties, where people openly lie to one another out of fear of losing their jobs or being publicly crucified. It's weird, unsettling, and, frankly, really dangerous. There's way too much power here for politeness to be sustainable. If no one feels they can say "Hey, I know it makes everyone uncomfortable, but I think there's a leak in the fuel rods in this nuclear submarine..." we're headed for big trouble.
  - passwordqq2 9y ago
    Lol you loser rather than apologizing on the other thread for your mistake you downvoted me. Pathetic, in the very literal sense of the word.
  - jgh 9y ago
    Hrm. I'm not really sure exactly what he's referring to there but it does kind of come off as something someone would say if their ideas on race realism were being shot down by people. Not that Tim Ferris is such a person (I have no idea) but you can see it all over the internet and wider media these days. Small, seemingly innocuous, doubts being sewn into the greater conversation of the time. The current cultural battle is an enormous push for civil rights, recognition, and acceptance. It's faux-pas to attack people who have generally been targets in the recent past (transgender people, for example), so the proxy war is "free speech". "My free speech is being encroached because I can't speak realistically about [transgender people, black people, whatever]". Note: I do not live, and have not lived, in Silicon Valley. So it could be my context is wrong.
- noncoml 9y ago
  Actually I was speaking about people like him. Tim Ferris "received a degree in East Asian Studies from Princeton University". When did he become a Techie and why? If he was born 30 years earlier he would be saying the exact same things about Wall Street.
notacoward 9y ago
That's a really important point. "Technology" is an almost uselessly broad term, which would logically include things like medical- or energy-related tech but in casual (especially Silicon Valley) conversation usually means things that are strongly computer-related. As it's very dependent on the finance industry for support, that kind of tech has been increasingly infected by finance-industry perspectives, politics, and cultural standards. Sand Hill Road is not a rival of Wall Street; it's a subsidiary. The "tech bro" CEOs that most of us hands-on-the-keyboard folks hate are just finance bros in different clothing. We - the ones who actuall do the work - are just the investments they prefer this year. It's not like real techies are all perfect or anything, but the reason we end up in the "bad guy" column is that we've chosen to ally ourselves with the guys who were always bad.

xor1 9y ago

>sociopaths To be more general, Cluster Bs.

drdeadringer 9y ago
I had to look this up. Is this a usual consideration these days?
sitkack 9y ago
I think this overly broad. I can't just label everyone I don't like a Google employee.

briantakita 9y ago

Or the atomization, consolidation, & networkization of culture encourages sociopathic behavior in otherwise normal people while emboldening the psychopaths. Excessive amounts of ill gotten gain & subsidies adds fuel to the disconnect built on faulty presuppositions.

Top19 9y ago

Tim Ferris mentioned this recently when asked why he moved to Austin, Texas (from SF) during his reddit AMA. His term was “fair-weather entrepreneurs”. Essentially guns for hires without vision who will go wherever easy capital funding is to be found.

goldfeld 9y ago
Isn't Tim Ferris a good reminder of everything that's been going wrong with the web for a while?
hkmurakami 9y ago
fwiw Tim Ferris (a fellow alum) is not a techie/nerd type, though he is certainly an entrepreneur.
mistermann 9y ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/7erct8/i_am_tim_ferriss_host_of_the_tim_ferriss_show_and/ https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/7erct8/i_am_tim_ferri... This was interesting to read: 5) Silicon Valley also has an insidious infection that is spreading -- a peculiar form of McCarthyism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism) masquerading as liberal open-mindedness. I'm as socially liberal as you get, and I find it nauseating how many topics or dissenting opinions are simply out-of-bounds in Silicon Valley. These days, people with real jobs (unlike me) are risking their careers to even challenge collective delusions in SF. Isn't this supposed to be where people change the world by challenging the consensus reality? By seeing the hidden realities behind the facades? That's the whole reason I traveled west and started over in the Bay Area. Now, more and more, I feel like it's a Russian nesting doll of facades -- Washington DC with fewer neck ties, where people openly lie to one another out of fear of losing their jobs or being publicly crucified. It's weird, unsettling, and, frankly, really dangerous. There's way too much power here for politeness to be sustainable. If no one feels they can say "Hey, I know it makes everyone uncomfortable, but I think there's a leak in the fuel rods in this nuclear submarine..." we're headed for big trouble.
- passwordqq2 9y ago
  Lol you loser rather than apologizing on the other thread for your mistake you downvoted me. Pathetic, in the very literal sense of the word.
- jgh 9y ago
  Hrm. I'm not really sure exactly what he's referring to there but it does kind of come off as something someone would say if their ideas on race realism were being shot down by people. Not that Tim Ferris is such a person (I have no idea) but you can see it all over the internet and wider media these days. Small, seemingly innocuous, doubts being sewn into the greater conversation of the time. The current cultural battle is an enormous push for civil rights, recognition, and acceptance. It's faux-pas to attack people who have generally been targets in the recent past (transgender people, for example), so the proxy war is "free speech". "My free speech is being encroached because I can't speak realistically about [transgender people, black people, whatever]". Note: I do not live, and have not lived, in Silicon Valley. So it could be my context is wrong.
noncoml 9y ago
Actually I was speaking about people like him. Tim Ferris "received a degree in East Asian Studies from Princeton University". When did he become a Techie and why? If he was born 30 years earlier he would be saying the exact same things about Wall Street.

notacoward 9y ago

That's a really important point. "Technology" is an almost uselessly broad term, which would logically include things like medical- or energy-related tech but in casual (especially Silicon Valley) conversation usually means things that are strongly computer-related. As it's very dependent on the finance industry for support, that kind of tech has been increasingly infected by finance-industry perspectives, politics, and cultural standards. Sand Hill Road is not a rival of Wall Street; it's a subsidiary. The "tech bro" CEOs that most of us hands-on-the-keyboard folks hate are just finance bros in different clothing. We - the ones who actuall do the work - are just the investments they prefer this year. It's not like real techies are all perfect or anything, but the reason we end up in the "bad guy" column is that we've chosen to ally ourselves with the guys who were always bad.