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I'm finding it really hard to escape the impression that the author just thinks Silicon Valley is full of nerds and wants to stuff them in lockers. I'm far from
by SpicyLemonZest 6mo ago
I'm finding it really hard to escape the impression that the author just thinks Silicon Valley is full of nerds and wants to stuff them in lockers. I'm far from an Elon Musk fanboy these days, but how can you be so incurious that you watch a video of him explaining the practical obstacles to robotic hands, and retort that this is "101-level stuff" because other people in other fields also know hands are complex?
There's real points scattered throughout the article, to be sure. It's a problem that AI slop is polluting the commons. But, like, this:
> How is it that all these wunderkinds trying to build the next product to take over the world haven’t thought about this? I think the answer is simple. They do not have much in common with normal people, and haven’t thought much about what normal people’s lives are like, or what normal people value. What they have been doing instead is getting high on their own supply — listening to VC podcasts, freaking themselves out about whether they’ll be able to keep up with AI agents, and otherwise getting increasingly more detached from reality.
is not a paragraph written by someone who feels that techies or their interests are worthy of respect.
- JohnFen 6mo agoHe's not talking about all tech people here. He's talking about a narrow subset: > a certain kind of tech enthusiast, particularly the ones who are most interested in startups and entrepreneurship.
- SpicyLemonZest 6mo agoI'm sure she thinks she's not talking about all tech people, but she began the article with an anecdote about an acquaintance of hers, describing how it was "mortifying" to listen to him talk about his ideas and directly contrasting him with a "regular human" (who of course would be familiar with Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure). I don't want to overindex on the one anecdote, because I recognize this is a pretty hostile interpretation, and I could just as easily read it as playful ribbing if the rest of the article were consistent with that perspective. It's kinda not, though.
- JohnFen 6mo agoI assume that acquaintance was in the narrow subset of techies that she's talking about.
- saltcured 6mo agoFrom your opening sentence, I really expected you to go in a different direction... I think the funny thing is how many supposed "tech" people are nothing but business/investment people with a high risk/high reward mindsets. They are not the nerds. The tech is just a contemporary set piece for their visions of revenue and capital gains. In another era, they'd be dreaming about selling movie tickets, or controlling shipping routes. Not because they care about film making, or transport, but simply because they salivate over the captive market. Because of the gestalt merger of tech, consumerism, media, and advertising, I think there is a VC mindset that know thinks they can just define the Next Thing and inform the public of their next craving.
- SpicyLemonZest 6mo agoI just don't think any of this is correct. Why would a business/investment person who doesn't care about tech focus on strange-sounding things that most people don't want? If they didn't care which market they capture, they'd pick one of the many normal-sounding things that people do want, or perhaps go become a quant and farm their money directly from Wall Street.
- Nasrudith 6mo agoI don't necessarily agree with the thesis but the venture capital model is a bit weird in ways that explain why a business/investment person would do that. From my understanding 'Strange things most people don't care about' may fail (and indeed, probably will fail) but they have also been major lottery tickets in the past. When you have enough money to throw around 'buying every lotto ticket' has a record of paying off better as a strategy than taking a 'rational' approach of only investing in those which you have strong fundamentals in. It takes a stupid amount of money to diversify in such fields so it isn't for everyone of course. Tech just has the best record for it so far with highly scaleable businesses. They just care about the returns. If instead of what we know as 'tech' the big field was, say, genetic engineering or for the sake of absurdity - literal magic. If it somehow scaled better they would throw their money at that.
- saltcured 6mo ago
- jrflowers 6mo ago> the author just thinks Silicon Valley is full of nerds That hasn’t been the stereotype for Silicon Valley in a long time. There was a whole HBO comedy show about a small group of nerds in a town where every other character is a variation of “made a bunch of money overnight and then declared themselves God”
- linksnapzz 6mo agoI'm finding it really hard to escape the impression that the author just thinks Silicon Valley is full of nerds and wants to stuff them in lockers. The author is a Vox Media journo; the very definition of someone who could be replaced by a very small shell script, and she is keenly aware of it. Hence the hostility.