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The Diversity Myth
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Ozzie_osman 3y agoI can't get over the fact that he attributed high rents in NYC and SF to.. Apparently the fact that gay people and women are too afraid to move anywhere else for fear of persecution?
- themitigating 3y agoDoes he show evidence that gay people are afraid to move other places, if so is the value high end to affects relative to the total population of either city
- dmvdoug 3y agoOr that multiculturalism is responsible for growing inequality, because the trends emerged at roughly the same time (failing to note that that was also the timeframe of emergence for a kind of conservatism that fetishized corporations and abhorred regulations). The whole thing is very painful to read, it’s so dumb. Not least because he very clearly sees himself as a Serious Person.
- sebastos 3y agoI personally find that some soft version of this idea rings very true. It feels like there's a big segment of the population that has inherited this assumption that they would hate living outside of the largest population centers. Of course, everybody's living preferences are always being pushed around by this trend or that, so I'm not saying this situation is unprecedented. But this idea that most of the country is unlivable for progressives seems particularly widespread in its influence, and particularly ill-fitting for most people's actual preferences. I'd wager a lot of people are missing out on a lot of living options they'd actually love because they've unknowingly imported some pernicious memes.
- inferiorhuman 3y agothey've unknowingly imported some pernicious memes https://www.usatoday.com/videos/news/politics/2023/06/11/nazi-flags-desantis-flags-seen-flying-outside-disney-during-protests/12087812002/ https://www.usatoday.com/videos/news/politics/2023/06/11/naz... What you call pernicious meme I call not wanting to live amongst neo-Nazis.
- kcplate 3y agoOut of the 23M people living in the 54K square miles of Florida you assume that 2 dozen idiots is the modal populace?
- inferiorhuman 3y agoBit more than two dozen I'd say. https://www.npr.org/2023/03/10/1158344050/florida-far-right-extremism-politics-desantis https://www.npr.org/2023/03/10/1158344050/florida-far-right-... https://www.local10.com/news/florida/2022/01/31/nazi-protests-held-in-florida-over-weekend-condemned/ https://www.local10.com/news/florida/2022/01/31/nazi-protest... https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/feb/01/ron-desantis-neo-nazi-protests https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/feb/01/ron-desantis... https://nypost.com/2023/05/08/florida-neo-nazi-who-became-muslim-admits-to-killing-roomates-for-insulting-faith/ https://nypost.com/2023/05/08/florida-neo-nazi-who-became-mu... https://hyperallergic.com/785647/alt-right-protesters-brandish-nazi-flag-at-florida-drag-event/ https://hyperallergic.com/785647/alt-right-protesters-brandi... https://www.floridatoday.com/story/news/2023/04/25/antisemitism-claims-after-photo-of-melbourne-firefighter-giving-nazi-salute/70148094007/ https://www.floridatoday.com/story/news/2023/04/25/antisemit...
- kcplate 3y agoInteresting that all your links never describe more than a single person or at most “15-20”. I have lived in Florida for more than four decades with family roots here going back to the 1930s…I can count on one hand with fingers leftover the number times I have encountered a “nazi”. But hey, feel free to stay away if you think you are gonna be surrounded by those assholes. You won’t be of course, because despite what the media and others might claim, Florida is pretty damned diverse and a quick visit to pretty much anywhere here would reveal that.
- thebigwinning 3y agoI have met a ton of greatly exaggerated fears about places > Oh I could never move to Texas. > Florida? What about desantis? The boogieman effect is real here, but I don't know if it causes what Peter says.
- TMWNN 3y ago>I have met a ton of greatly exaggerated fears about places >> Oh I could never move to Texas. Reddit (for example) is filled with human NPCs, who react in predictable ways without intelligence. One predictable trigger is "Texas". A recent Reddit post discussed something positive about Texas. The replies? Hundreds, maybe thousands, of comments by Redditors, all with no more content than some sneering variant of "Fix your electrical grid first", referring to the harsh winter storm of two years ago that knocked out power to much of the state. It was something to see. If we can dismiss GPT as "just autocomplete" as many do, I can dismiss all those Redditors in the same way; as NPCs. At least GPT AI can produce useful and interesting output.
- centmot 3y agoWhen you worship false gods, science may come as a shock.
- andreskytt 3y agoWhat Thiel is describing is a feedback loop: more people of x in a region means more people of x in a region simply because they will feel more comfortable among like people. These sorts of mechanisms certainly exist (Forrester on city planning), but with dynamic systems it’s always more complex than it would seem. Landlords definitely benefit from whatever feedback is making cities grow and are definitely interested in it continuing (thus probably investing in it), but its unlikely they are the ones behind the structure.
- readthenotes1 3y agoHe was simply using those as examples of the manipulations used to keep people living in high rent places where no sane person would live if they were not manipulated to do so. And I do not believe that he was saying it was the truth. Instead, I believe he was proposing it as an provocative answer to the question of why anybody would live in San Francisco, etc. when there are many nice places to live that cost less. Did you discard his provocation completely what do you use in its place? Good weather? Good theaters?
- thebigwinning 3y ago> One of my smarter liberal friends said, “Maybe it’s all true, but isn’t it kind of pornographic, Peter? You just give us a bunch of pornography here, and it doesn’t really change anything.” This quote struck me. Journalists look for sins/dirt, why aren't they interested in this stuff happening all around (and involving powerful people)? I think they would give the same excuse. But Journalists criticize others using a moral framework that is never articulated. My best guess is they dont really have one, it's whatever they think you will find offensive and further their social goals.
- viknesh 3y agoDo journalists even need a moral framework? All they need is readership. I mean, doesn't that basically describe what happened to many of the Fox news anchors like Tucker? They knew they were spouting bullshit (and may not have liked it at first), but it got views...
- thebigwinning 3y agoJournalists argue they are important to hold others accountable. But it's a ridiculous claim without a set of principles they aim to uphold. Instead they use yours against you, attaching phrases and values you care about to get a response.
- eyelidlessness 3y ago> An old-school Marxist critique of what we call “cultural Marxism” would say that all these identity politics, the whole diversity agenda, has only served to divide the working class. I read this far in the spirit of curiosity, but I’ll bail here because it’s blatantly reinforcing antisemitism by citing blatant antisemitism that cloaked itself the same way.
- eyelidlessness 3y ago[flagged]
- ghusto 3y agoI understand you feel it's "blatant", but it doesn't seem to be so for others. Tell, how is it anti-semitic?
- eyelidlessness 3y agoIt’s the only usage of “cultural Marxism” that’s ever been used, and any conceivable cover that might be plausibly deniable is blown by contrasting it with Marx.
- MrJohz 3y agoCultural Marxism is an extension of the older idea of Cultural Bolshevism, which was a term used by Nazis (as in, the original 1930s-1940s ones) as an attack on modernist art and philosophy by associating them with the Bolshevik Revolution, and claiming that the Bolsheviks were using modernist thought as an attempt to subvert traditional values. It was antisemitic because it also involved the conspiracy theory that the Bolshevik Revolution was actually a Jewish plot and that the Soviet Union was controlled by Jews. Essentially, modern art, philosophy, and media was Bolshevik, and Bolshevism was Jewish, and the Jews were a priori bad, therefore modernism (and thus many critics of the Nazi regime) were bad and couldn't be trusted. (And moreover, the Jews controlled the Bolsheviks, and the Bolsheviks controlled modernist thought via cultural Bolshevism, therefore modernism is just a Jewish plot.) The modern variant is Cultural Marxism, which essentially makes similar claims about post-modernism. In fairness, Cultural Marxism tends not to be so blatantly antisemitic, although many of its early proponents in the 90s and 00s were themselves antisemitic. That said, it retains the same basic structure of claiming a conspiracy by a small group of philosophers (typically the "Frankfurt School") to subvert traditional values with a corrupt philosophy. It is principally antisemitic in that it is simply a rehashing of an older antisemitic conspiracy theory, proposed predominantly by antisemites. The parts involving Jews have been filed off to make it more palatable to a mainstream audience, but this is a pretty thin veneer over what is fundamentally a Nazi-era conspiracy theory. It's worth reading the Wikipedia article on Cultural Bolshevism (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Bolshevism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Bolshevism) and following some of the links from there to understand the progression between the two ideas, and why people are understandably quite concerned about how mainstream the idea of Cultural Marxism has become.
- viknesh 3y agoThiel comes from a place where he clearly understands the rationale & goals of the modern left's social wing wrt diversity. I want to agree with him that he's raising substantive issues. On the other hand, his whole piece has such a tone of arrogance that it's hard for me to get through. The obsession with "speaking truth to power" (the exact phrase & the concept behind it) feels so childish and seems to be something many people in the alt-right seem to have. I do think he makes some interesting points, especially at a high level. His "economically reductionist line of questioning" is something I think about... what are the incentives behind DEI, especially since DEI programs at large haven't seemed to accomplished their goals. And his point about rent/people wanting to live in cities seems true, too. Despite rent being crazy in NY/SF, for many people, those are the only cities they'd consider moving to.
- jmacd 3y agoThiel seems to conflate a valid criticism (he has many) with an invalidation of an idea. His objections and anecdotes are all very instructive. There is nothing wrong with shedding light on the motivations of people and the incentives in play when it comes to any social construct. Some (many) of those things should be changed. It's hard to see where his criticisms sum to any singular great point about something bad that is going on. If you want to be (economically) reductionist, there is nothing wrong with someone else being social maximalist. Is the total social good not better than all the reductionist arguments in sum? Some say yes, some say no. He's smart. Here he's being smart about specific little things. However, I did not finish reading the article with the feeling that Peter Thiel had some greater holistic and informed point of view than any of the people and institutions he is railing against.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- camdenlock 3y ago> “So in conclusion—and this is a simplification, perhaps a distortion, but I think you know what I mean—it would be healthier that, whenever someone mentions DEI, you just think CCP.”
- satisfice 3y agoThis could have been titled “Points Half Made.” Time and again he seems to set off on a path to saying something coherent, then mumbles snarky innuendo and changes to the next subject.
- wyclif 3y agoIt's amusing that this well-written article got flagged, I assume because it violates certain convenient narratives that many HN users cling to.