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This was something that blew my mind when I visited out there. Visited every space I could, and the startup/commercial culture was just incredibly pervasive. Co

This was something that blew my mind when I visited out there. Visited every space I could, and the startup/commercial culture was just incredibly pervasive. Couldn't talk about a cool idea for more than a minute or two without some tech bro trying to monetize it. Maybe that's someone's jam, but I just wanted to hang out with some nerds that reminded me of back home. Everywhere else I've traveled, I could visit the local hackerspace and get my fix, but the bay area was..... different.

thrown123098 4y ago
[flagged]
- gtirloni 4y ago
  That's a false dichotomy. You don't need be sexist, racist, transphobic or smell bad to be interesting.
  - Jensson 4y ago
    Depends on how strict your definitions for those things are. The kind of person who works hard to not be sexist, racist, transphobic or smell bad is often very boring. A person who cares less about those things will have more interesting things to say and opinions, and about the smell thing a person who doesn't dare to smell differently will constraint their hobbies and activities. For example, you have probably heard people say they don't want to do X since it would make them sweat. That makes them more boring than a person who would just do it without caring that they might smell a bit afterwards.
    - atleastoptimal 4y ago
      > The kind of person who works hard to not be sexist, racist, transphobic or smell bad is often very boring Most smart people don't need to "work hard" to not be any of those, it's a bare minimum and takes barely any effort. To think that avoiding smelling bad or being racist is some sort of mental drain that leads to people becoming boring is a silly notion. It romanticizes a kneejerk contrarian misanthropy that's just as boring.
      - Jensson 4y ago
        > Most smart people don't need to "work hard" to not be any of those, it's a bare minimum and takes barely any effort. That was exactly my point, those things doesn't take any effort. But if you put in a lot of effort to get as far away from those things as possible then you will be boring. And such people will often accuse others of being racist or sexist even when they weren't, thus forcing the entire environment to become boring. If I didn't agree with your here I wouldn't say "depends on how strict". But of course you here is too strict, since me even talking about that made you judge me. Thankfully this website is pretty open and not very strict, so interesting opinions are allowed here, while you seem to want to shut down interesting discussions even when they aren't racist or sexist. > It romanticizes a kneejerk contrarian misanthropy that's just as boring. How is diversity ever more boring than monoculture? I support diversity and therefore I am against monoculture. The important part here is to not judge people. Traditional internet forums were full of feminists etc as well, they weren't mono culture, it was very rich.
        atleastoptimal 4y ago
        > you seem to want to shut down interesting discussions even when they aren't racist or sexist I'm not shutting down the discussion, I'm adding to the discussion by offering my opinion. You're adopting a persecution complex when there isn't one to the extent you're implying. I do agree there are the normal people who are honest about their biases but generally try to treat people fairly, and the "hyper-PC" people who make it a game of being the most "on the right side of history" to the extent that it becomes all they care about. I know those people and they are just as annoying and vitriolic as those who are openly sexist. However my point is generally that isn't not a simple "both sides" issue. The golden mean isn't a medium amount of sexism and transphobia, it's a neutral yet accepting attitude, which by default isn't anything phobic, thus leans more towards not being either than being either.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        Jensson 4y ago
    - sprkwd 4y ago
      > The kind of person who works hard to not be sexist, racist, transphobic or smell bad is often very boring. Yeah. That’s a weird hill to die on.
      - Jensson 4y ago
        Do you agree with "racism and sexism are bad for all definitions of racism and sexism"? I disagree with that statement, I don't think it is wrong to disagree with that. But lots of people agree with it, and then define racism and sexism to be whatever they don't like and you get a boring monoculture. That is why I hedged my comment with that it depends on how strict you are. Depending on how you define racism and sexism all of those things will change. So blanked statements that we need to ban them without properly defining exactly what we are banning is really bad, but that is what happens almost everywhere in discussions.
        throwaway173738 4y ago
        I think you’re painting a lot of people with a really broad brush and you should cite some specific examples of category. What, exactly, is an example of racism and sexism that shouldn’t be banned? Why?
      - splistud 4y ago
        [dead]
    - asveikau 4y ago
      > The kind of person who works hard to not be sexist, racist, transphobic or smell bad Agree with the sibling comment to say this isn't hard work. Generally speaking you're saying basic requirements to be a functioning human in society, which also involves a certain amount of emapthy. > is often very boring. I don't understand the correlation here. There are plenty of sexist, racist, smelly transphobes who are also boring.
      - Jensson 4y ago
        > Agree with the sibling comment to say this isn't hard work. Read my first sentence: "Depends on how strict your definitions for those things are." Or do you think that the strictest versions of anti-racism and anti-sexism are easy to adhere to? If not you agree with me.
        cafeinux 4y ago
        Maybe a more appropriate term would have been "pedantic" instead of strict, to avoid the miscommunication? I think I understand what you mean. I am nor racist nor transphobic nor <insert-minority>-phobic (at least I hope so), yet I think that the debate about, for example, biologically male people in female sport competitions ought to be (whatever my opinion on the matter might be) and that alone could flag me as transphobic to some people. But I'm not sure they are more "strict anti-transphobe", I just think they are more pedantic, that's all. Anyway, in the end of the day it was clearly a miscommunication, not necessarily a divergence of opinion. Words are hard.
  - thrown123098 4y ago
    Then why are all the most anti-ist people dull as dishwater and working in hr? If you have no opinions that mainstream culture finds repulsive then you're not done much thinking. There's even a pg essay about it: http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html
    - alexvoda 4y ago
      Or maybe you can have opinions that mainstream culture finds repulsive without being "sexist, or racist, or transphobic, or smell bad". Just because the US media landscape has split the people into 2 camps engaged in culture war does not mean that most people neatly fit into one of those categories. Many are a combination of both categories, with opinions on one subject matching one camp and another subject matching the other camp. With your comment you are merely repeating stereotypes we already know are just that and therefore inaccurate. All humans are flawed and we should not use positive traits to justify or excuse negative traits. There is no net total of a persons personality. Why do you engage in trying to associate the traits you listed with being interesting and their absence with dullness?
      - calderknight 4y ago
        I don't see any of those as negative traits. Beliefs that are labelled as racism, transphobia, and sexism are often sensible beliefs. Combined with smelling bad, they imply to me in a person a prioritisation of sincere intellectual pursuit over popularity and financial success/social success more generally. Pretty much every interesting person has at least one proscribed but sensible belief. Sure, it doesn't have to be one of those listed, but it will be socially indistinguishable from them. If you don't allow the expression of such beliefs you lose every interesting person who is in the habbit of speaking his mind.
escapecharacter 4y ago
Part of why I moved out of the Bay Area and to NYC! I'm not anti-monetization by any means, but so often I'd end up in conversations that the other partner wanted to be a startup pitch, and I wanted to just talk about something cool. There's so much premature optimization of monetization out there.
- lasermatts 4y ago
  +1 for the New York tech scene. I spent a few months going to Meetup events around Manhattan and Brooklyn and the people were so friendly and full of ideas. Really great environment.
weld 4y ago
In the 90s the L0pht was not commercial and was funded as a hobby. Nearing 2000 we wanted to make it our day job and not a hobby and transition from to jobs we all had working for someone else. It was the beginning of my journey to entrepreneurship but this transition was very rocky. Manu didn’t survive. It was a huge learning experience documented in Space Rogue’s book.

thrown123098 4y ago

[flagged]

gtirloni 4y ago
That's a false dichotomy. You don't need be sexist, racist, transphobic or smell bad to be interesting.
- Jensson 4y ago
  Depends on how strict your definitions for those things are. The kind of person who works hard to not be sexist, racist, transphobic or smell bad is often very boring. A person who cares less about those things will have more interesting things to say and opinions, and about the smell thing a person who doesn't dare to smell differently will constraint their hobbies and activities. For example, you have probably heard people say they don't want to do X since it would make them sweat. That makes them more boring than a person who would just do it without caring that they might smell a bit afterwards.
  - atleastoptimal 4y ago
    > The kind of person who works hard to not be sexist, racist, transphobic or smell bad is often very boring Most smart people don't need to "work hard" to not be any of those, it's a bare minimum and takes barely any effort. To think that avoiding smelling bad or being racist is some sort of mental drain that leads to people becoming boring is a silly notion. It romanticizes a kneejerk contrarian misanthropy that's just as boring.
    - Jensson 4y ago
      > Most smart people don't need to "work hard" to not be any of those, it's a bare minimum and takes barely any effort. That was exactly my point, those things doesn't take any effort. But if you put in a lot of effort to get as far away from those things as possible then you will be boring. And such people will often accuse others of being racist or sexist even when they weren't, thus forcing the entire environment to become boring. If I didn't agree with your here I wouldn't say "depends on how strict". But of course you here is too strict, since me even talking about that made you judge me. Thankfully this website is pretty open and not very strict, so interesting opinions are allowed here, while you seem to want to shut down interesting discussions even when they aren't racist or sexist. > It romanticizes a kneejerk contrarian misanthropy that's just as boring. How is diversity ever more boring than monoculture? I support diversity and therefore I am against monoculture. The important part here is to not judge people. Traditional internet forums were full of feminists etc as well, they weren't mono culture, it was very rich.
      - atleastoptimal 4y ago
        > you seem to want to shut down interesting discussions even when they aren't racist or sexist I'm not shutting down the discussion, I'm adding to the discussion by offering my opinion. You're adopting a persecution complex when there isn't one to the extent you're implying. I do agree there are the normal people who are honest about their biases but generally try to treat people fairly, and the "hyper-PC" people who make it a game of being the most "on the right side of history" to the extent that it becomes all they care about. I know those people and they are just as annoying and vitriolic as those who are openly sexist. However my point is generally that isn't not a simple "both sides" issue. The golden mean isn't a medium amount of sexism and transphobia, it's a neutral yet accepting attitude, which by default isn't anything phobic, thus leans more towards not being either than being either.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        Jensson 4y ago
  - sprkwd 4y ago
    > The kind of person who works hard to not be sexist, racist, transphobic or smell bad is often very boring. Yeah. That’s a weird hill to die on.
    - Jensson 4y ago
      Do you agree with "racism and sexism are bad for all definitions of racism and sexism"? I disagree with that statement, I don't think it is wrong to disagree with that. But lots of people agree with it, and then define racism and sexism to be whatever they don't like and you get a boring monoculture. That is why I hedged my comment with that it depends on how strict you are. Depending on how you define racism and sexism all of those things will change. So blanked statements that we need to ban them without properly defining exactly what we are banning is really bad, but that is what happens almost everywhere in discussions.
      - throwaway173738 4y ago
        I think you’re painting a lot of people with a really broad brush and you should cite some specific examples of category. What, exactly, is an example of racism and sexism that shouldn’t be banned? Why?
    - splistud 4y ago
      [dead]
  - asveikau 4y ago
    > The kind of person who works hard to not be sexist, racist, transphobic or smell bad Agree with the sibling comment to say this isn't hard work. Generally speaking you're saying basic requirements to be a functioning human in society, which also involves a certain amount of emapthy. > is often very boring. I don't understand the correlation here. There are plenty of sexist, racist, smelly transphobes who are also boring.
    - Jensson 4y ago
      > Agree with the sibling comment to say this isn't hard work. Read my first sentence: "Depends on how strict your definitions for those things are." Or do you think that the strictest versions of anti-racism and anti-sexism are easy to adhere to? If not you agree with me.
      - cafeinux 4y ago
        Maybe a more appropriate term would have been "pedantic" instead of strict, to avoid the miscommunication? I think I understand what you mean. I am nor racist nor transphobic nor <insert-minority>-phobic (at least I hope so), yet I think that the debate about, for example, biologically male people in female sport competitions ought to be (whatever my opinion on the matter might be) and that alone could flag me as transphobic to some people. But I'm not sure they are more "strict anti-transphobe", I just think they are more pedantic, that's all. Anyway, in the end of the day it was clearly a miscommunication, not necessarily a divergence of opinion. Words are hard.
- thrown123098 4y ago
  Then why are all the most anti-ist people dull as dishwater and working in hr? If you have no opinions that mainstream culture finds repulsive then you're not done much thinking. There's even a pg essay about it: http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html
  - alexvoda 4y ago
    Or maybe you can have opinions that mainstream culture finds repulsive without being "sexist, or racist, or transphobic, or smell bad". Just because the US media landscape has split the people into 2 camps engaged in culture war does not mean that most people neatly fit into one of those categories. Many are a combination of both categories, with opinions on one subject matching one camp and another subject matching the other camp. With your comment you are merely repeating stereotypes we already know are just that and therefore inaccurate. All humans are flawed and we should not use positive traits to justify or excuse negative traits. There is no net total of a persons personality. Why do you engage in trying to associate the traits you listed with being interesting and their absence with dullness?
    - calderknight 4y ago
      I don't see any of those as negative traits. Beliefs that are labelled as racism, transphobia, and sexism are often sensible beliefs. Combined with smelling bad, they imply to me in a person a prioritisation of sincere intellectual pursuit over popularity and financial success/social success more generally. Pretty much every interesting person has at least one proscribed but sensible belief. Sure, it doesn't have to be one of those listed, but it will be socially indistinguishable from them. If you don't allow the expression of such beliefs you lose every interesting person who is in the habbit of speaking his mind.

escapecharacter 4y ago

Part of why I moved out of the Bay Area and to NYC! I'm not anti-monetization by any means, but so often I'd end up in conversations that the other partner wanted to be a startup pitch, and I wanted to just talk about something cool. There's so much premature optimization of monetization out there.

lasermatts 4y ago
+1 for the New York tech scene. I spent a few months going to Meetup events around Manhattan and Brooklyn and the people were so friendly and full of ideas. Really great environment.

weld 4y ago

In the 90s the L0pht was not commercial and was funded as a hobby. Nearing 2000 we wanted to make it our day job and not a hobby and transition from to jobs we all had working for someone else. It was the beginning of my journey to entrepreneurship but this transition was very rocky. Manu didn’t survive. It was a huge learning experience documented in Space Rogue’s book.