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Posted by evo_9 16 hours ago

Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy(techcrunch.com)
258 points | 209 commentspage 3
eikeegi 12 hours ago|
I very much doubt that Silicon Valley people actually read the books they talk about.
ang_cire 15 hours ago||
Being and especially growing up rich tends to shield you from seeing the consequences of bad decisions, and I think that results in a lot of these rich tech bros being unable to properly analyze not just risk, but any negative externalities.

Every child starts out thinking, "if I was in charge, I could fix this. It's so simple!"

Then you actually see that when you make bad choices, you or others get hurt, and you realize that you don't always know what's best.

But these guys never get hurt, because they have the money to be shielded from it, so they end up being these delusional wrecking ball assholes, who think they know better than everyone else and don't need anyone else's consent (I.e. votes) to make whatever overly simplistic or authoritarian changes their underdeveloped brains concoct.

JohnFen 15 hours ago||
I think you're talking about a specific form of the larger problem. The very wealthy only know the world of the very wealthy. They know nothing, let alone care, about people who aren't "in the club".

Every worse, they -- like pretty much all of us -- tend to think that most people are just like them, so they think not only that they understand normal people, but that they are normal people. And the ones that don't either tend to think that their will should be imposed on the rest of us because we're too stupid to understand what's good for us and/or just view us as resources to be mined.

hunterpayne 15 hours ago||
I think that's true for one specific kind of wealthy person. Specifically those born into it. Its absolutely not true for the self-made. I do have a solution to this.

If you haven't paid your own bills with money you earned (no jobs from family) for the last 10 years, you can't run for office. Literally the mayor of Seattle has never paid her own bills and her husband has never worked either. There is no universe where someone with that life experience makes a good leader.

Jtsummers 14 hours ago|||
> Literally the mayor of Seattle has never paid her own bills and her husband has never worked either.

Where is your evidence for this? It's a pretty strong claim.

hunterpayne 14 hours ago||
The fact that its been verified by multiple sources, including the mayor herself.
Jtsummers 13 hours ago||
That's just a claim, not evidence. If she's said it, it should be easy to link to an interview or an article showing these statements.
bonsai_bar 14 hours ago|||
You're making it seem like the mayor is an out of touch nepo baby when she's living a regular life dedicated towards helping others.

You may want to get your info from more places than Fox News.

hunterpayne 14 hours ago|||
She is an out of touch nepo baby. Her policies haven't exactly been big successes. Jobs are leaving and the specific stated reasons usually have to do with her. Because of her tax increases and the Laffer curve, tax receipts are falling and there are now significant budget shortfalls opening up. If you didn't know this, perhaps you want to get your info from more places than MSNow/MSNBC.
lelanthran 13 hours ago|||
> You're making it seem like the mayor is an out of touch nepo baby when she's living a regular life dedicated towards helping others.

If it's true she has never paid her own bills and her husband has never had a job, then I'd like that sort of regular life.

If she has been paying her own bills or her husband has had a job in his life, then say so.

bawolff 14 hours ago||
> Being and especially growing up rich tends to shield you from seeing the consequences of bad decisions, and I think that results in a lot of these rich tech bros being unable to properly analyze not just risk, but any negative externalities

other than musk, were the tech bros rich? most seem to have grown up middle class.

that said, the fact they are still rich suggests that they do know how to analyze risk. You don't keep your money if you dont have any concept of risk.

MarkusQ 12 hours ago||
Musk didn't inherit his wealth, nor did he receive above average family support.

https://thetechleaders.com/was-elon-musk-born-rich-exploring...

AngryData 11 hours ago|||
Compared the the majority of the population in the US, and like 95% of the population in South Africa, he seemed to grow up pretty damn wealthy. Musk himself told stories about his father having stacks of cash.

No, that isn't what made him rich now, holding onto paypal shares did, but part of the reason he could hold onto those shares is because he had a wealthy family supporting him so he could just sit on them.

If you don't think Musk grew up wealthy after listening to what he says about his childhood, I could only assume you also grew up in an extremely privileged environment and just don't realize how far above the median your life was.

MarkusQ 6 hours ago||
> Musk himself told stories about his father having stacks of cash.

Do you have a credible source for this? At best I'm seeing EDS conspiracy nuts (and Erol, though he seems to be all over the place).

> No, that isn't what made him rich now, holding onto paypal shares did

I think there's a little more to it than that.

> Part of the reason he could hold onto those shares is because he had a wealthy family supporting him so he could just sit on them.

He didn't hold on to them long, at most a year or so after he left (the sale to eBay was 2002).

And why would his family be supporting him when he was already a millionaire and had paid off his 100K+ student loans?

Again, do you have any credible sources for any of this?

bawolff 4 hours ago|||
> Musk didn't inherit his wealth, nor did he receive above average family support.

that is an entirely separate question from if he grew up wealthy.

to be fair, i dont actually know how wealthy he grew up, i was relying on the general internet view that he did, but i haven't actually looked into it, so maybe that is wrong.

RevEng 16 hours ago||
They know exactly what they are doing. Elon Musk talks a lot about freedom but he has never practiced it with regards to others, only himself. He has always considered the technologically well educated to be superior. He is also an egotistical narcissist. You can't believe anything he says he believes because he projects what he wants others to believe of him, not what he truly believes. The same is true of many of the techno bros whose actual technical abilities are heavily accentuated by their salesmanship. They lie and manipulate and call it human progress while actually being focused on their net worth. It's exactly what these sci-fi stories warned us about, but they used it as a playbook, not a warning, because they envisioned themselves as the tyrannical leader, not as the repressed masses beneath them.
WalterBright 15 hours ago|
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SamoyedFurFluff 15 hours ago|||
??? Elonjet????
WalterBright 15 hours ago||
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newspaper1 15 hours ago||
It's not doxxing, it's posting public information and it's 100% free speech.
WalterBright 14 hours ago||
It certainly is doxxing (although there is no legal definition of it that I'm aware of). I also wrote that X has the least censorship of any social media platform. If you have to dig down to elonjet, it just affirms my statement.

Elon also has legitimate concerns for his safety.

newspaper1 13 hours ago||
It's public information, it's not doxxing.

> Elon also has legitimate concerns for his safety.

Musk constantly posts racist and violent provocations. Free speech for him, brutal censorship for everyone he disagrees with.

bonsai_bar 14 hours ago||||
X has probably the lowest level of censorship for right-wing racist incels of any social media platform.

FTFY.

watwut 15 hours ago||||
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WalterBright 15 hours ago|||
> It has pro-far-right censorship which is something different.

Just what is he censoring? I've seen plenty of far-out posts from both the left and right on X.

notahacker 14 hours ago|||
I saw plenty of far out posts under the previous owners too...

But X banned accounts for non-spam content violations at a much higher rate than Twitter and approved content censorship requests from authoritarian states at a higher rate

WalterBright 10 hours ago||
Twitter banned the President, and also throttled Scott Adams.

In any case, what social media platform do you assert censors less?

keeda 13 hours ago||||
In this algorithmically recommended world it would be naive enough to think that censorship is as binary as “you can’t say that!” or “now you see it / now you don’t (because we took it down!)” It’s all about the reach these days, i.e. “you can say whatever you want but we control how many people actually see it”:

https://theconversation.com/a-few-weeks-of-xs-algorithm-can-...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/10/29/elon-mu...

newspaper1 15 hours ago|||
Here's one example: https://x.com/PushDemsLeft/status/2085803160342241367
WalterBright 14 hours ago||
And there it is, posted on X.

BTW, if I owned X, I would also not allow pictures of mutilated people or sexual content. The previous incarnation of Twitter did not allow that either, but did censor right wing content and anything that disagreed with Fauci covid policy.

selimthegrim 12 hours ago|||
So what was your considered alternative to Fauci Covid policy I wonder
WalterBright 10 hours ago||
Fauci was given a blanket pardon for what he did, and pled the 5th on any questions about his role.
sjsdaiuasgdia 13 hours ago|||
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tomhow 1 hour ago||
We've banned this account.
cindyllm 13 hours ago|||
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newspaper1 15 hours ago|||
X has massive censorship. Not only are pro-Palestinian accounts regularly banned, reach is restricted on any anti-Israel content. They even censored the Iranian flag! If you post it, X replaces it with their own, incorrect version.

Here's an example of recent censorship: https://x.com/PushDemsLeft/status/2085803160342241367

WalterBright 14 hours ago||
Why are you repeating the same link? And it's still up on X.
jmyeet 15 hours ago||
Silicon Valley has been heavily influenced by a different author. It just happens to be Ayn Rand. Ayn Rand sold this idea that selfishness is a virtue. Taken further, you see a strong thread between objectivism and transhumanism.

In the early days of Silicon Valley, tech companies were disrupted. But we shouldn't forget that the true origins of Silicon Valley were in defense contracting. Modern tech companeis have become so large that they have become almost indistinguishable from the state (ironically, in a way that people accuse Chinese companies of doing). Google, Microsoft, Meta and Amazon are now in the same category as Lockheed Martin, RTX, Northrop Grumman and Boeing.

Put another way, tech companies haven't sought a utopia, they've simply amplified the current system, which is one of increasing inequality.

hunterpayne 14 hours ago|
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Conol_ai 16 hours ago||
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mnmnmn 14 hours ago||
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aaron695 15 hours ago||
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729374929292 14 hours ago||
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729374929292 14 hours ago|
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