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Is Silicon Valley Actively Biased Against Certain Viewpoints?

31 points by bkohlmann 9y ago

crsv 9y ago
Is (small place with intense concentration of a single demographic) actively biased against X? This and more shocking click bait next time on Hacker News! Interesting topic, but a bit off putting with the disgusting clickbaitery.
- rwill128 9y ago
  Didn't even click because it was so obvious. Why ask such a silly question when everyone can just nod their head, say 'yes' to themselves, and move on?
mtraven 9y ago
A survey on a self-selected group is kind of worthless. Eg, their results show a plurality of libertarians, which may be the case in reality but is much more likely to be an effect of libertarians being more likely to take the time to fill out the form.
- bkohlmann 9y ago
  That's a valid criticism. However self-selected group surveys can show important trends. For instance, if they said that "as a whole, 25% of Silicon Valley believes that they are discriminated against," that could clearly be an invalid interpretation. However, if they said, "150 people who identified as libertarians took this survey, and among them, 45% felt like their productivity was inhibited because of perceived viewpoint bias, whereas of the 100 self-identified liberals who took it, only 10% felt the same," that would be a very telling statement. [these numbers are made up for illustrative purposes only]
Feniks 9y ago
Ofcourse. That's a basic feature of humans. Group think, don't want to stand out from the crowd, a sense of belonging. We're social animals. We adapt.
SocksCanClose 9y ago
It’s interesting to see the swing of the valley — from military-industrial tech to consumer tech. Did the beat movement of the 1960s and onward stoke the anything-goes (burning man style) attitudes that seems to have have led to today’s tech companies? What might come next, as a reaction to the modern culturally Marxist SF monoculture?
joeblow9999 9y ago
Utterly unsurprising as the majority of SV employees are in a demographic that leans heavily left and has been shown (over and over) to brook no dissent. Duh. Yeah, Trump supporters, libertarions, social conservatives and all others who are not lock-step mainstream liberals have a hard time when they expose themselves in a work environment mostly staffed by liberal millenials. This is not a surprise nor something even worthy of discussion. Don't talk politics at work or at Thanksgiving dinner. It's not that hard.

31 points by bkohlmann 9y ago

crsv 9y ago

Is (small place with intense concentration of a single demographic) actively biased against X? This and more shocking click bait next time on Hacker News! Interesting topic, but a bit off putting with the disgusting clickbaitery.

rwill128 9y ago
Didn't even click because it was so obvious. Why ask such a silly question when everyone can just nod their head, say 'yes' to themselves, and move on?

mtraven 9y ago

A survey on a self-selected group is kind of worthless. Eg, their results show a plurality of libertarians, which may be the case in reality but is much more likely to be an effect of libertarians being more likely to take the time to fill out the form.

bkohlmann 9y ago
That's a valid criticism. However self-selected group surveys can show important trends. For instance, if they said that "as a whole, 25% of Silicon Valley believes that they are discriminated against," that could clearly be an invalid interpretation. However, if they said, "150 people who identified as libertarians took this survey, and among them, 45% felt like their productivity was inhibited because of perceived viewpoint bias, whereas of the 100 self-identified liberals who took it, only 10% felt the same," that would be a very telling statement. [these numbers are made up for illustrative purposes only]

Feniks 9y ago

Ofcourse. That's a basic feature of humans. Group think, don't want to stand out from the crowd, a sense of belonging. We're social animals. We adapt.

SocksCanClose 9y ago

It’s interesting to see the swing of the valley — from military-industrial tech to consumer tech. Did the beat movement of the 1960s and onward stoke the anything-goes (burning man style) attitudes that seems to have have led to today’s tech companies? What might come next, as a reaction to the modern culturally Marxist SF monoculture?

joeblow9999 9y ago

Utterly unsurprising as the majority of SV employees are in a demographic that leans heavily left and has been shown (over and over) to brook no dissent. Duh. Yeah, Trump supporters, libertarions, social conservatives and all others who are not lock-step mainstream liberals have a hard time when they expose themselves in a work environment mostly staffed by liberal millenials. This is not a surprise nor something even worthy of discussion. Don't talk politics at work or at Thanksgiving dinner. It's not that hard.