Slashdot Mirror
'Increasingly, People in Silicon Valley Are Losing Touch With Reality' (500ish.com)
Longtime commentator MG Siegler writes: You can see it in the tweets. You can hear it at tech conferences. Hell, you can hear it at most cafes in San Francisco on any given day. People -- really smart people -- saying some of the most vacuous things. Words that if they were able to take a step outside of their own heads and hear, they'd be embarrassed by. Or, at least, these are stances, thoughts, and ideas that these people should be embarrassed by. But they're clearly not because they keep saying them. This isn't only about Facebook -- far from it. That's just the most high profile and timely example of a company suffering from some of this. And in that case, it's really more in their responses to the Cambridge Analytica situation, rather than the situation itself (which is another matter, though undoubtedly related). They don't know the right things to say because they don't know what to say, period. Because they've slipped out of touch.
But again, I feel like this is increasingly everywhere I look around tech. It's an industry filled with some of the most brilliant people in the world, which makes it all the more disappointing. I won't name names but also because I don't have to. I'd wager everyone reading this will have clear and obvious examples of what I'm talking about in their own circles -- even if only in their own virtual circles. This is everywhere. I don't know the cause of this. Perhaps we can blame part of it on Trump, even if only indirectly (a man who has gotten ahead in life by saying asinine things). If I had to guess, I'd say the root is an increasing sense of entitlement as the tech industry has grown in stature to become the most important from a fiscal perspective and arguably from a cultural perspective as well.
But again, I feel like this is increasingly everywhere I look around tech. It's an industry filled with some of the most brilliant people in the world, which makes it all the more disappointing. I won't name names but also because I don't have to. I'd wager everyone reading this will have clear and obvious examples of what I'm talking about in their own circles -- even if only in their own virtual circles. This is everywhere. I don't know the cause of this. Perhaps we can blame part of it on Trump, even if only indirectly (a man who has gotten ahead in life by saying asinine things). If I had to guess, I'd say the root is an increasing sense of entitlement as the tech industry has grown in stature to become the most important from a fiscal perspective and arguably from a cultural perspective as well.
Starts off with: People in silicon valley are in a bubble.
True statement.
Ends with: It's basically Trump's fault that people in Silicon Valley are in a bubble.
Yeah... that basically shows the author is basically in the same bubble as the people in Silicon Valley.
Lemme guess: The main conclusion is that the elitists in Silicon Valley aren't Pavlovianly "woke" enough, which is why they are in the bubble?
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
That perhaps the real problem is that YOU are measuring reality differently than they are.
They're measuring reality with the relentless mathematics of financial analysis.
Your metric may simply be different.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Seems that a person in a bubble is aware enough to notice other people's bubbles but not his/her own bubble.
I guess the point here is that people cannot have their own opinions, or opinions that are different from yours?
First world countries that think Internet Outages are a disaster and where priorities are selfies and self-driving cars and toilets with LEDs in them ...
If I typed that much without saying anything or making a point.
Just say most Americans arenâ(TM)t rich. Silicon Valley is the 1 %. All rich people live in a bubble.
Tell us something we didn't know. Didn't even give us anything interesting that they had "heard". Bah. Waste of a couple of seconds to skim that fluff piece.
Listen, not that I disagree with you on silicon valley being out of touch, but WTF is this doing on slashdot?
/., go home. You're drunk.
> I won’t name names or give examples because I’m not an asshole.
ok, so I have no idea what you're referring to then
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
The halls of the US Capitol in Washington DC?
The Casino Floor in Las Vegas, Nevada?
The Trailer Park in Gadsden, Alabama?
The Fifth Floor of the Flatiron building in New York, New York?
The break room on the USS Carl Vinson?
Please tell us more.
Siegler's bit here reads like the writings of a person struggling with their own mental health. Nebulous negativity and ominous vacuousness.
"really smart people—saying some of the most vacuous things."
What things. Just one example.?
This article is a joke with no punchline.
This "article" or "summary" blathers on about nothing in particular with no examples or substantial points to make.
Is slashdot twitter now, with a bunch of outraged SJW mouthing off about things of which they have no ability to form an coherent opinion or logical train of thoughts?
Film at 11.
The entire article is written at this level of generality. As such, you can search/replace Silicon Valley with Wall Street and the same article applies. Hell, you can probably replace it with "That McDonald's, no the one by the Burger King".
His point may be valid, but he hasn't offered a single example to back it up.
And, as a public service, he has links out of his article that imply he links to the "vacuous things", but it's just another shitty page with nothing on it and he's just trying to drive up page views.... like those articles across 12 pages.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Color me shocked that an established echo chamber leads to unchecked bad behavior - as seen from the outside. Obviously the solution is to create new silicon valleys - like the 'silicon prairie' in the mid west, silicon hollar, or silicon river.
On that note I am pretty certain the Simpsons addressed this at Gazebo 7.
Why was this modded down? This is an anti-Trump post.
...the article itself was example.
At this point I'd vote for anyone that isn't Donald Trump. Including Eric Trump.
The best way to sum up the SF Bay Area is this: "The Deep South of the West Coast". They are every bit as willfully ignorant, deluded and brainwashed as the bible-banging racist MAGA-hat wearers. The SF Bay is an echo chamber of ProgLib Politics just as the Deep South is an Echo Chamber of the GOPs and Evangelical messages of "God and Country" and both of these communities have NO TOLERANCE for any form of deviance from their mono-culture
Frankly I think the US is in store for a mass civil upheaval, and considering one side is very well armed and "has god on their side", and the other are physically weak, deluded and over-confident assholes, take one guess about which side will win
By 2035 the US will be a 3rd World Theocracy on par with Iran or Afghanistan, with racial purges and religious persection
Look to the BRICS, the future of the Global Economy now lays with them
For themselves and everyone around them. From celebrities to soccer moms to, yes, why not SV inhabitants. I have no idea where this urge comes from, but listen to anyone, literally anyone, who doesn't have any real problems to deal with, i.e. those that have the first and pretty much the second level of the pyramid of needs fulfilled and overfulfilled. You'll notice them lament about problems that are none. They actually start inventing problems they can lament about if they really can't find any.
Meanwhile, out here in reality, we shake our heads about them and wonder whether these are really role models and something to aspire to.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
the show has been this way since the first season
No examples, no specifics, just some vacuous rambling.
Damn, I miss the good old days when Slashdot posted stuff of interest.
This has got to be one of the worst articles I have read in a long time. There isn't a single example of what he's talking about.
"I won’t name names or give examples because I’m not an asshole. But also because I don’t have to. I’d wager everyone reading this will have clear and obvious examples of what I’m talking about in their own circles—even if only in their own virtual circles. This is everywhere."
Actually, I have no idea what you're talking about. Maybe you could write an article to explain yourself.
Joseph Elwell.
I did RTFA and the brilliance of the author is mind blowing. In less than one page he provides a clear 1st hand example of the issue he is raising. Whether he knew it or not is another question altogether :-)
I would like to see our Silicon Valley bubble economy expand to include more of the US. Then maybe people would understand the draw of having an exciting career instead of simply working to pay the bills. The disadvantage to the easy investment money is there are a lot of loons running billion dollar companies, but most of us have learned to ignore the crazy flamboyant CEOs and focus on our work.
So, the author thinks that people believing absurd things, refusing to admit it, and instead joining other people with the same absurd ideas, is something exclusive to Silicon Valley? Maybe he should go out of his bubble and then realize that the entire world is made of bubbly foam.
There is far to little "naming of names" these days.
Without it... one cannot gauge the veracity of a conclusion.
Name names- or shutup!
Another consultant who stuck it out.
"We are the Priests, of the Temples of Syrinx..."
It's an industry filled with some of the most brilliant people in the world,
Hell, I've met more plumbers of high intelligence than I've met developers. To quote a wise Frenchman - doesn't take a lot of savvy just to be a whore. Tech workers are, by and large, dumbasses outside of a very narrow scope. Most people are, in fact; tech whores just love giving themselves airs, though.
I'd wager everyone reading this will have clear and obvious examples of what I'm talking about in their own circles -- even if only in their own virtual circles.
Sure. It's usually TDS-related. Every dumb fuck is an expert on the stock market, Syria, North Korea, every level of our legal system, et cetera, et cetera.
Perhaps we can blame part of it on Trump
And there it is.
Yeah, ideologues are at odds with reality. And ambition is looking past current reality toward a less real (but better) future. So when ambitious ideologues get ahead of themselves, they seem out of touch with reality — because they are.
It's not reality that Silicon Valley needs, it's humanity. Don't "make the world a better place"; make things better for people instead. People need your help, they don't need you to be their overseer, they don't need your ideas for how they should think or how they should live their lives. Don't impose. Don't preach at people. Don't try to engineer or optimize people who didn't ask you. Don't be a bully.
I see people here asking for examples of out of touchness:
https://ijr.com/2018/04/108406...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If you think nerds are alone when they make vacuous statements that show they're out of touch with reality, you don't listen to enough "normal" people. The same freedom to say stupid stuff wasn't enjoyed by geeks. They used to be "put in their place" at the first sign of uppityness. Their focus on arcane stuff and intricate details kept them busy anyway. Now they join the masses with too much time on their hands and an unjustified sense of accomplishment. They're becoming normal, so they do what normal people do: say stupid stuff.
I have a job and if the internet goes out, my job still goes on.
Thus making the kind of statement he's railing against.
Particularly when in tight groups or quarters.
Groupthink allows one to feel safe.
1) Reality is a crutch for people who can't handle science fiction.
2) The difference between fantasy and reality is that reality has so little to recommend it.
3) Go away, I'm off to play ‘Ready Player One: OASIS beta' on Steam.
human... possibly most existence is or has to be relative perspective.
The 1st world problems can feel just as severe and important to them as the 3rd world problems do to their people. Isolated, they won't ever be aware of what can happen outside of hypothetical fictional musings. Being aware does not put it into conscious thought all the time without reminders and your conscious mind has limitations on how many aspects it can deal with at a time.
For example, in the USA when it was 3rd world and quite barbaric (still left out of the history) they had a revolutionary war over less taxation and less representation than we have today; they also had less to lose by actually fighting and the majority were willing to harbor terrorists/traitors against the government while a minority of less 10% did the fighting until it was looking promising and even then probably only around 20% at peak. (please correct me if I'm not recollecting the numbers correctly; but remember the point is that a tiny group starts things and does the real hard work to build momentum where the majority of recruits who continue that momentum are often still not half the population. Passive and fickle is the majority... easily willing to praise successes and "join" them by word alone. )
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Ah, an example of MG Siegler losing touch with reality, saying some of the most vacuous, embarrassing things? Perhaps we can blame part of it on Slashdot, posting this nonsense?
Guy says tech people are in a bubble, blames Trump inside his blame Trump bubble.
No substance, no point, just saying people are out of touch about... uh about .. he doesnâ(TM)t say... and the problem is... wait there is no problem... and the cause of this he says is... maybe trump because... uhh ... well that was a very big waste of time. If you havenâ(TM)t read the article donâ(TM)t bother.
Lets think about other recent vapid silicon valley cycles: app economy, social, messaging, sharing economy.
Exactly how many of these changed the world?
App economy - people churning out bad games designed to prey on suckers
Social - while a few sites survived every beneficial use of social graphs failed leaving only sleazy actors like Cambridge Analytica
Messaging - still irrelevant, no western company managed to replicate the Asian market where messaging apps became platforms (probably because those apps started before smart phones)
Sharing economy - not actually sharing, taxis with apps behaving badly and short term rentals crowding out the market and causing disturbances
AI - not actually AI, so far deployed in a haphazard fashion with two companies (Tesla & Uber) causing deaths, and one of these companies continually points the finger at the victims.
Proof positive.
...SJWs sitting around SV cafes and coffee houses virtue signaling about segments of a first world society being "privileged". The truth is that the first world society as a whole is privileged. It doesn't generally lack for clean running water, toilet facilities, sanitation, rudimentary housing, adequate food, etc. Overeducated, elitist assholes lack a sense of proportion about these things. They've an foetid, bloated sense of self importance where their common sense should reside.
The source article reads more like a conclusion in search of an article than an article. "Smart people not in touch with reality" - In this case tech workers, but can also be said of academics, politicians, journalists, writers, musicians, barristas, or the village idiot; especially when there is no context. Without illustrations of HOW they have lost touch, there is no pretty much in having written word one.
And, no, I don't think this is something anyone should try and pin to a generation. Millennials may make for a popular target, but most of the upper echelons are now in their 40s, and likely promoting the stupidity that inspired the author int he first place.
The submitter will continue to be only a commentator. The post meanders along with no substance, then eventually gets to the point that it is just a political hit piece.
I think the post makes a good point, but it isn't specific to the tech industry. Our brains are complicated systems for forming quick heuristics to guide our behavior, with a more recent sophisticated layer on top that rationalizes our opinions to ourselves and to each other. This rationalization is as close to "reasoning" as any of us – any of us – can generally get, without feedback from others. Many studies have shown that we form opinions first, subconsciously, and then derive rationalizations of them. Even in science (I am a PhD student studying machine learning) we depend on our intuition and hunches – our unconscious bias – to guide us toward problems and solutions. Most of the training one gets as a scientist is informing those biases toward productive directions. There's nothing inherently bad about it. It's just how human brains work. We should just acknowledge that we need to listen to dissenting opinions in order to become aware of our own biases. A concrete example from research: when your paper is rejected by reviewers who object to your methodology or the set of experiments you chose to run, they are providing you with the feedback you need to escape your own bias (toward the experiments YOU find convincing) and communicate something to someone else with their own bias (the experiments THEY find convincing). It's foolish to complain that "they just don't get it." It's your job to figure out how to communicate it to them.
Getting back to the original post, this is a ubiquitous problem across all communities of people. We can call it an "echo chamber," but this is really just how brains work. We only know what we can perceive ourselves and what those around us force us to look at, through voicing dissenting opinions. A person like me who was raised on computers, hasn't left the USA much, hasn't even experienced life in most corners of the US or most neighborhoods of the cities where I have lived – such a person is going to miss things due to lack of exposure to them. The Wikipedia article about Ghana tells you nothing about what the experience of living in Ghana is like. You have to go there. If such a person has the power to create tools that affect the lives of people in all those places, they are inevitably going to make decisions that negatively impact some of those people some of the time. It's not because of any kind of moral flaw or lack of intelligence or wisdom. It's just because we are not omniscient. We don't have the information we need to make better decisions. (A clear example: voice recognition systems which can't handle certain accents well. An easy problem to fix, once you know it exists, and surely not intentional. There are just a lot of accents, and you need to collect more training data for your system.)
I'm not reading "It's Trump's fault" in there.
He's saying all their silly valley "friends" including the VCs are egging them on to stay in that bubble. Because it's great to be in the bubble because that's where the happens happen. That's how silly valley attacks all the world's ills, you know.
Anyway, it's not a particularly insightful piece of commentardery. The "wake up call" is particularly poorly done. But I don't see the political sauce you're projecting on it.
Tech people are really good at falling victim to the Dunning–Kruger effects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.... They equate their highly specialized technical abilities or "smarts" with being at the upper end of the cognitive spectrum overall. Where in fact, they are unable to baseline a "smart" person, so they assume they are one, because of their success in a very limited area. This is reinforced by people telling them how smart they are. Where in reality they understand a somewhat simple topic that the person giving the compliment lacks an understanding of.
The Dunning–Kruger effect is not just in tech, most people who are less than average overall assume they are at the upper end of the spectrum. This is entirely caused by a lack of a real point of comparison, they are ignorant of what they are ignorant of and no one dares tell them differently. They then feel they have authority to speak on topics where they have no more expertise than the average fifth grader. A great example of this is a genetics professor I once had given a lecture (in a high-level genetics class) about computer security. He was repeting a perspective that had recently been published in the media. He spoke with complete authority on the topic, but due to my lifetime in security, I know everything he was saying was sensationally fake. He lacked the perspective to understand that he wasn't smart in this area but claimed his high-level knowledge in biology allowed him to be an expert in every possible field. This is the exact same force at work...
... with meager quality hippster column on how silicon valley is bad, Peter Thiel and Co. are on koke, Ellison and Co. can be A-grade dicks and Mark talks big nothing in press release. Film at eleven.
I want my 3 minutes back.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
And then came the Assumptions
And the Assumptions were without form
And the Plan was completely without substance
And the darkness was upon the face of the Workers
And the Workers spoke amongst themselves, saying
"It is a crock of shit, and it stinketh."
And the Workers went unto their Supervisors and sayeth,
"It is a pail of dung and none may abide the odor thereof."
And the Supervisors went unto their Managers and sayeth unto them,
"It is a container of excrement and it is very strong,
such that none may abide by it."
And the Managers went unto their Directors and sayeth,
"It is a vessel of fertilizer, and none may abide its strength."
And the Directors spoke among themselves, saying one to another,
"It contains that which aids plant growth, and it is very strong."
And the Directors went unto the Vice Presidents and sayeth unto them,
"It promotes growth and is very powerful."
And the Vice Presidents went unto the President and sayeth unto him,
"This new Plan will actively promote the growth and efficiency of this
Company, and in these Areas in particular."
And the President looked upon The Plan,
And saw that it was good, and The Plan became Policy.
And this is how Shit Happens.
No content was harmed in the making of the article. 500 words on a complex social, economic, political, labor, gender roles, and political topic. Common now there is no way to do that except to rely on sweeping generalizations, stereotyping, unsupported assumption, and simplistic conclusions. Maybe this actual is intended to be an illustration of the arrogance and lack of intelligence I see in Silly Valley.
And a slashdot post is too short for me to even begin my ranting and raving. Maybe a journal entry.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Due to limited resources for intake, analysis, correlation of information, EVERYONE lives in a bubble. If it was possible for one person to know and understand everything, we would elect that person king of the world.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
From the article:
"Instead, I fear IQ has won at the expense of EQ"
In his own words, rational thinking has won out over emotions. If that's out of touch then I fear his idea of in touch.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
People -- really smart people -- saying some of the most vacuous things.
It's an industry filled with some of the most brilliant people in the world, which makes it all the more disappointing.
an industry which purports itself to be full of the most brilliant people in the world
Perhaps we can blame part of it on Trump, even if only indirectly (a man who has gotten ahead in life by saying asinine things). If I had to guess, I'd say the root is an increasing sense of entitlement as the tech industry has grown in stature to become the most important from a fiscal perspective and arguably from a cultural perspective as well.
ohhhh. So close. You almost had it! The are all entitled fools! Not brilliant at all! This is the cognitive dissonance you feel, the realization that only assholes who think too much of themselves think they are "standing on giant shoulders".
captcha: bigness
What if those are VR bubbles?
"Losing touch with reality" -- makes the implication that someone has an authoritative perspective on reality.
, perhaps in theory the author is more contemplating a general idea of change in the atmosphere, but is more aware of an industry of which the author is a part. It is more likely something to do with the massive amounts of propaganda the US population has been experiencing particularly since NDAA 2012 allowing Psyop to be established news while leveling the playing field under the guise of fake news while constantly peddling disinformation. The end result is a nation of high functioning retards that certainly does not exclude the tech industry being full of academics who are never wrong.
We're nerds.
We say blunt and undiplomatic things, and are comfortable with other people like ourselves because it's easy to know what's on their mind. Of course that's a stereotype; it represents the extreme of the scale, but most of us at least lean a bit toward that end of the spectrum.
The thing is as you get older you realize that sustainable success in life has two sides: exploiting your strengths and compensating for your weaknesses, and a preference for bluntness over social nuance is both a strength and a weakness. The dangers of social nuance are a fact, as objective as any other fact, and that means you can't blythely ignore other peoples' feelings and consider yourself a realist.
Mark Zuckerberg is 33, an age which, back in the day, a bright young guy would maybe have just clawed his way onto the bottom rung of the upper management. Now he's one of the masters of the universe, and still making the kind of mistakes that didn't prevent him from getting where he is today. The thing about mistakes though is that they don't always get you right away. Sometimes they catch up with you. But he's a young dog yet; maybe he'll learn new tricks.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
That's because "Silicon Valley" is in the people's republic of Kalifornia
How is this different from Wall Street plutocrats of the Thurston Howell type? They've been with us since the industrial age, and in royalty before that in the "let them eat cake" sense.
Table-ized A.I.
They have been 'out of touch' for decades, and it has fuck all to do with trump.
Try looking in a mirror, you dumbells.
The topic is right on. I see it all the time in trading... The Firehouse Effect is a notion attributed to a veteran market trader Marty O’Connell “that firemen with much downtime who talk to each other for too long come to agree on many things that an outside, impartial observer would find ludicrous”. Also Silicon Valley violates the principles of good decision making as outlined in Wisdom of the Crowds by James Surowiecki. Good decision making by groups: Diversity of opinion - Each person should have private information even if it's just an eccentric interpretation of the known facts. Independence - People's opinions aren't determined by the opinions of those around them. Decentralization - People can specialize and draw on local knowledge. Aggregation - Some mechanism exists for turning private judgments into a collective decision. SV has become a hotbed of McCarthyism in reverse.
Seriously, this is like Antifa trying to explain fascism to itself.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
The commentator's rant is perfectly self-referential: an apt example of everything he's complaining about. I can't decide if he's a complete genius or utterly clueless, but in either event, his rant is a work of art.
Also, can we just stop patting tech people on the back for being brilliant? There's little evidence of that these days. A lot of tech people now are highly trained performers who are skilled at the one thing they actually do, but maybe not overall the brightest crayons in the box. Tech hiring practices emphasize jumping through hoops to the exclusion of creativity or the ability to think about problems from multiple angles.
I've seen this effect outside of Silicon Valley as well. Particularly in a one company or industry town. Seattle and Boeing some 20 or 30 years ago come to mind. People only associate with their company/industry peers and they develop a group think that begins to diverge from the rest of the world.
Scott Adams (Dilbert) referred to these people as technological savants. Smart enough to solve the most challenging problem in their own field. But too stupid to compare two paychecks. The problem goes way beyond paychecks in that management is most content when they don't have to put up with people who point to another industry and tell them that someone else might have a better idea.
Have gnu, will travel.
Sounds like a white knight inferuority issue to me. The boomers are complete idiots and its just tremdy to talk shmack about milennials. How is the Valley less out of touch than the racist republicans? They're regressing back to drug war dog whistle and abortion politics.
The author makes some vague references, but doesn't provide any examples. I don't know what he's talking about. For all I know the people in Silicon Valley are in touch with reality and the author is so far out of touch that he can't recognize when he sees it.
And a pretty shitty one at that. While I might agree, (also I don't have to....) author shows no reason I should; it's written at the level of middle school, as is The New York Times these days. The Valley isn't getting dumber; Americans are. Crap sites like what Slashdot has become are contributing factors, and people are, evidently, willing test subjects.
> I won't name names or give examples because I'm not an asshole.
well he probably should, otherwise what's the point of the article?
Horoscope: Someone you thought was pretty smart will say something odd.
Reader: Odd how?
Horoscope: You don't know the first thing about horoscopes, do you?
... about your self for belonging to the group of people you hate on. Including your apparent resemblance with Trump. At least Trump doesn’t lie about his intentions like you do.
You imply people are saying and doing things that are out of touch but you never say what those things actually are and who they're out of touch with? This is akin to the homeless guy on the corner constantly saying "it's the governments fault!".
a man who has gotten ahead in life by saying asinine things
The left, and many on the right, fail to grasp how incredibly shrewd Trump is. I don't much care for him as a person but the facts are undeniable that he is a successful real estate developer in NYC. It doesn't matter if his original seed money came from his father, one does not build ANYTHING in Manhattan without having a lot of clues. A great many things involving a large number of stakeholders have to happen to build a project and he did it multiple times.
In his first full attempt at public office (continued to the actual election), he ran for the highest office in the world and won. The man beat first the GOP, of which he was only peripherally a member that was united against him, and then beat the MSM and the career politician who was supposed to be the pre-determined next POTUS.
People think him to be a clown because he doesn't talk like a lawyer and then underestimate him. Sun Tzu said "If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles." Only one side in this battle knew the truth about the enemy.
Most people forget that what a person wants is very different from what they buy. A person buying a drill didn't want a drill, they need to make a hole. Even the hole was only necessary because the person actually just needed to mount a shelf. The Democrats kept saying "Look at our great drill and all the features it has. You have to get it because it is the best drill." Trump said "I'll hang your shelf."
Quote: "I'd wager everyone reading this will have clear and obvious examples of what I'm talking about "
I have no idea what you are talking about.
You lost the bet MG Siegler.
Anyone paying attention over the last 5-7 years knows this is true.
Seriously some of my brain cells died a little reading this. It looks like something the author scribbled in his My Little Pony journal.
I don't work in Silicon Valley; I went there once. My parent company is there, and the people who work on the campus there are smart, insightful, and hard working. I have no idea what the "author" is talking about, and from the other comments, neither does anyone else.
- Vincit qui patitur.
The journalism in this article is deplorable. Give me a quote from a person who works in silicon valley that makes me agree with their article. The whole thing is written as if its just an opinion piece.
The REAL issue with media today is that somehow, not backing up your argument with fact is just ok.
I remember working in a moving company in high school, some of the guys would make ridiculously racist jokes they'd be ashamed to repeat elsewhere.
I've been in a bar with skilled labour types, they made dumbass political statements that have no bearing on reality.
Every little subculture creates their own little reality, of course silicon valley folks are making statements among themselves that make sense in no other context. I don't think silicon valley is worse than any other culture in this regard. And outside of the occasional bad startup idea I don't think their weird quirks are really causing problems.
I stole this Sig
I think this guy seriously lack self-awareness.
"I won’t name names or give examples because I’m not an asshole."
Proceeds to throw out a couple names... Trump and Zuckerberg both who are right now easy targets.
" Though, admittedly, I sometimes play one on the internet too."
Perhaps he should have stepped outside before posting this on the Internet.
There is no actual content in this article beyond its headline.
It's seemed like everywhere I looked, not just Flint, Michigan, had lead in their drinking water or something, because it's seemed like people were getting dumber and dumber over time, and more and more disturbed, instead of smarter and more stable. But perhaps this person has hit upon it: more and more people are out-of-touch with reality? Consider also the opioid/fentanyl addiciton/overdose problem, and more and more people (apparently) taking up smoking in one form or another, regardless of the mountains of evidence that shows it's just plain bad for you; are people just trying to escape a world that's getting shittier and shittier, year after year? I think that might be why. I read in bed for a few minutes every night so I don't go to sleep thinking about the days' problems, and I get lots of exercise (7 to 15 or more hours a week, every week) both of which help me combat a shitty world dragging me down. Perhaps too many other people are escaping in other ways?
I don't know what the deal is with people confusing the two, but San Francisco is NOT Silicon Valley (the cool/hip guys up there called us residents of Silicon Valley "Nerdville" when I lived in Santa Clara during the 1980s/1990s!)
Although TFA actually does use the word "blame" it's obvious that blame isn't what he really meant:
He's actually citing Trump as an example. And Trump really does say outright obviously stupid, asinine things. Instead of taking that as an attack on Trump, though, maybe people ought to take that as evidence that it's ok to say stupid, asinine things. Maybe it really is ok to talk out your ass. Just what are the consequences?
If you say stupid things, people won't hold that against you in a voting booth.
If your service is stupid, inconvenient and causes harm to users, users won't hold that against you.
Losing touch with reality is just fine. Dare to be stupid!
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Silicon Valley is full of members of the intellectual-yet-idiot class:
https://medium.com/incerto/the-intellectual-yet-idiot-13211e2d0577
Do less.
..do they? Nope. Youre just igorant assholes, aka Anericans, and you ALL sound like morans to the rest of the world.
Based on what? Slinging some shit code around to process ad data? Who cares.
You can see it in the tweets. You can hear it at tech conferences. Hell, you can hear it at most cafes in San Francisco on any given day. People -- like M.G. Siegler -- saying some of the most vacuous things. Words that if he were able to take a step outside of his own head and hear, he'd be embarrassed by. Or, at least, these are stances, thoughts, and ideas that he should be embarrassed by. But he's clearly not because he keeps saying them. This isn't only about Facebook -- far from it. That's just the most high profile and timely example of a company suffering from some of this. And in that case, it's really more in his responses to the Cambridge Analytica situation, rather than the situation itself (which is another matter, though undoubtedly related). He doesn't know the right things to say because he doesn't know what to say, period. Because he's slipped out of touch.
Warning: Teh poster of this messaeg is lysdexic
I'll give it a shot.
An SJW is someone who thinks that people who do not support their pet issue should be publicly shamed and extra-judiciously punished for not supporting their pet issue. Typically they identify themselves as victims of straight white males. When not online, they enjoy spending time in mobs while repeating slogans and protesting the world.
Not really that hard.
Unsurprising, really. Technolibertarian idiots were spending so much time getting high on their own farts to notice that the real world is NOT a nice place. That it's full of criminals, opportunists and fascists who are only too happy to exploit the weak and vulnerable -- and with the powerful tools that techno-liberscum handed to them, can now brainwash people in the West at a click of a mouse.
Thus, the Russian aggressors were pushing on an open door. Silicon Valley have betrayed us all, by handing the criminal Chekist scum that hijacked Russia, the keys to the Western kingdom.
I've always hated techno-liberscum, but after seeing how they facilitated Russia's mind-rape of the West in 2014 onwards, I felt vindicated.
Propaganda works. And the enemy is as much Silicon Valley, as it is Putin's Russia.
"I won't give examples because I'm not an asshole..." I get not providing names. That part made sense, cool. But he provided no examples of exactly what sort of language he was referring to. Period. There are several inferences I can make regarding this being associated with the Facebook handling of data and similar situations. But there's literally NOTHING providing an example of what language. This is just... vapid pandering. It's like the author wanted to develop a piece that everybody that didn't like tech could pile on and link to reliably. You can't argue him in any capacity - because he provides nothing to argue against specifically. You could bring up any aspect of the conversation related to the response to FB/CA and the entire Trump/Russia thing and he has the full ability to say "I wasn't talking about that."
This work seems, quite literally, whether right or wrong headed, designed to just rile people up and say nothing.
The bubble is also DC, the NYC area, LA/Hollywood. In other words, the "elite" of society, thing EVERYONE, lives, breathes, acts like they do, think like they do. The 2016 election, shook them up a bit because the country didn't side with Hillary.
... because we already knew about it and we've fixed it.
WE VOTED TRUMP INTO THE WHITE (GLASS) HOUSE
Yes, we targeted Trump and his entire orbit including those guilty of systemic sexual harassment, white nationalism, fraud, blackmail, money laundering, electioneering and, yes, even the people who wouldn't do anything sensible to at least try to reduce injuries and deaths by way of personal handguns and rifles.
We knew that Trump, as a president, would be under the microscope.
The Access Hollywood tape had been around awhile and we wanted that out there.
During the campaign, sure enough, the KKK people took off their hoods! Bonus. Notice that fire is tamped down now, but it's too late. Our LEOs have a year of video and photographic evidence that we have scanned through facial recognition and all your base are belong to us.
Our work has been fruitful.
Think of the many politicians that have met their political demise via exposure of their sexual indiscretions.
Look at Trump's lawyer, Cohen, who is in deep shit.
Look at Hannity. We wanted him and Bill O'Reilly and. we calculated to bring down Fox News and flat-line its bias and influence as fake news. That's a work in progress.
Appreciate that all the work done by lawyers and acquaintances of Trump, intended to shield him from negative press during the campaign, have a dollar value and are categorized as campaign contributions.
In some cases where individuals said they did shit for Trump on their own, the value of the work exceeds the limit of private campaign donation limits.
Cohen created companies in Delaware as a dodge in order to hide the transactions, but the companies did not claim the payout as campaign contribution. That's money laundering and other stuff.
==
Intelligent, reasonable, people have long asked for implementation of rational firearm regulation.
We were not out to get the guns.
Because more traditional approaches failed to move the needle, (and for other obvious reasons) we decided to pass on Hillary Clinton in favour of Trump.
Our strategy has worked in that gun sales are at record lows and some gun manufacturers are having fire sales because the batshit crazy #2A assholes were gearing up for a Hillary win and the manufacturers over-produced, and have a shit-load of inventory.
Gun maker stocks are down and some are even filing for bankruptcy.
SO, WE DIDN'T TAKE THE GUNS --WE FIXED IT WHERE FEW PEOPLE ARE BUYING THEM
OK, You may applaud now, and thank you for not cheering and yelling during this presentation.
Tip jar's on the piano, try the fish.
.
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© 2018 CaptainDork
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
The big takeaway I had was that people are deriving identity from self-labeling far more than other places in the country I've lived, and I've lived all over. It seems like it's so terribly important to live up to your label in the bay area that it really defines you, and is how others define you. Everyone is a type of extremist and like any extremist, they place overlarge attention and emphasis on their key issue well past the point of rationality, to the detriment of any other issue, no matter whether it's related or not.
So the people there made it a horrible place to live.
I wrote this https://slashdot.org/comments.... about my experiences in the bay area back in the heady days of 1998. It even has some examples.
I don't think we need to invoke Trump, as per the article. The bay area has always been up it's own ass, though I'll concede it may be getting worse.
Reality is perception based upon your existence. You can only truly be in touch with your reality, that which you live. Attempts to sympathize with someone living a vastly different existence simply modifies your reality, but you're still in touch with it - it's impossible to not be, unless you are experiencing a psychotic break. Watching a TV documentary about poverty in sub-Saharan Africa might cause a small modification to your reality - greater empathy, perhaps a donation to a related charity. Going to work there with Medicins Sans Frontieres is going to create a much larger modification to your reality, but in both cases you'd be in touch with it.
It's the author who's lost touch with reality.
He never does say what "it" is, and somehow expects us to know.
"Perhaps we can blame part of it on Trump..." which is exactly what he is talking about in the first place which only goes to show how out of touch he is.
"It's an industry filled with some of the most brilliant people in the world, which makes it all the more disappointing."
Being smart at programming a widget or gathering Investment money doesn't mean you are smart in any other thing. It only means you are brilliant at making a widget or gathering investment money. It doesn't mean you have any clue about how to fix race relations or the economy or that you know a damn thing about the importance of the 2nd amendment.
When humans attempt to fix any complex system, they almost always make it worse.
I honestly have no idea what this guy is going on about. I hear people say things that sound like technical jargon, I have no idea what they are saying, but it's not really "out of touch".
I hear a lot of political crap, mostly from facebook, mostly from the opposite of Si Valley, and honestly most of it sounds like russbot vomit. Either that or the US is on the edge of a civil war, waged by a secret far right militia against some "liberal soft coup" that I've never heard of. Does this make me out of touch with reality? Or them? It's difficult to tell sometimes, and depends heavily on reference point.
I'm thinking this guy is just fishing for examples so we can write an article for him. I conclude this with my need for a tactical retreat to enact my vertical strategy.
Here's a more apt article: 'Increasingly, People Everywhere Are Losing Touch With Reality'
Fuck a Zuck.
It's pretty easy to spot signaling behavior.
These are the people who change their Facebook background quickly and call out anyone who doesn't. The ones who show up to protests and then can't even explain a single thing they want changed. I expect you haven't seen them, but there are lovely videos of chanting people where they interview *everyone* at the protest and not a damned person gives *even one* idea for change, it's all yelling and screaming.
Whatever your take on this story is, read Chris Hayes' "Twilight of the Elites". A lot of the stupid shit you seen in politics, academia, and well, SV, it's all about elites and supposed meritocracies that, acting as optimization systems without proper health-checks, then end up moving into a degenerated state.
When people are incentivised to think outside the box of course they will be bored shitless with reality - especially the traffic jams! And microdosing lsd before lunch helps that detachment :)
"Longtime commentator MG Siegler writes" should now be shown as "Know nothing blatherista MG Siegler spews"
get a life!
I won’t name names or give examples because I’m not an asshole. But also because I don’t have to. I’d wager everyone reading this will have clear and obvious examples of what I’m talking about in their own circles—even if only in their own virtual circles. This is everywhere.
Hey, those people over there, they are out of touch. I won't say how, but you know what I mean. If you don't, make up something in your head. Then think it, and imagine that's what I'm talking about.
This article is a big fat troll. Zero substance or data. Just hopping on the "Facebook bad!" bandwagon, but too lazy to discuss why.
Being smart is very often associated with someone is lands somewhere on the Autism Spectrum.
Of course that also means that they suffer from a lack of socialization skills, and thus, say stupid shit.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
#CreimertardVirgin
As time goes on the whole country and even the world becomes more self-absorbed by day. The usual suspects are even showing up here, the right calling out the left, the left calling out the right, Baby Boomers calling out millennial as self absorbed and entitled when baby boomers are the most self absorbed and entitled generation in human history while the selfie obsessed Millennials never fail to point this out. It applies EVERYWHERE, screw you all, and screw /. for letting this obvious vapid click bait onto the front page when it belongs on Facebook.
Seriously, this is considered worth posting? Don't get me wrong, I live out here, I've watched things progress, but it's not like reality had a hole where tech fits. Instead, for the most part, tech makes shit up and some of it changes reality. But the vast majority of it is just insanely ill-thought-out and sinks back into the swamp. That's not some weird new state we need to recover from, that's been the status quo in tech for decades. And the tech sector has grown tons in spite of that, with commentators grousing all the way.
[The above should not be taken as a blessing on the status quo. I've been one of those grousers since the early 90's. But I am also keenly aware that for all that I feel like how things work is embarrassing and we need to do better, I still have no fucking clue how to fix it.]
It isn't just silicon valley.
It is California - mainly coastal regions.
It is NYC.
It is Washington D.C.
It is London, Paris, Hong Kong, Tokyo, BsAs, J-Burg.
It is in rural places around the world too.
For example, I think:
* religious people have a mental disorder
* all drugs should be legal for use by adults
* all men/women are responsible for their actions.
* people for gun control have never been confronted by a bull moose or 500+ lb wild hog or black bear charging. Or even been target shooting.
* people who think solar can solve everything don't live were it rains 200+ days a year.
* people against all fracking worry too much.
* people for all fracking don't get hydro-dynamics.
* people who live were earthquakes and hurricanes happen are idiots.
But that is just me. I can appreciate that other "smart people" might see things differently and might come up with really good solutions. But we've also seen really stupid solutions proposed for non-issues.
Peace out, dudes.
I'm not sure I've ever seen such a huge response to a textbook troll.
All you have to do is rotate the view spline and blockchain the option, and everything will be left as dry.
It's simple when you do that.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
rofflycacklolulzasaurusmeistersaurusburger
Americans think: if i am richer than you, I deserved it, you did not deserve it and so you are inferior and I am allowed to treat you like dirt and make up nonsense speak that excludes you from the conversation.
Remember, the richest man to come out of the Dot com boom was Warren Buffet, because he refused to listen to Silicon Valley's self congratulations.
Insert Morpheus meme picture.....
What if I were to tell you that it's possible to be anti-Trump, but even more anti-Hillary?
I didn't like Trump, and didn't vote for him. But President Hillary would have been immeasurably worse.
I have a political button with a cartoon of Cthulhu, tentacles raised in a "V"; "Vote for Cthulhu! Why Support the LESSER Evil?"
people in silicon valley are just like people anywhere else. we all do and say stupid things sometimes.
That ship sailed about 20 years ago dude. You're way too close to the problem to see that. Better late than never I guess.
Bannon/Nunes 2020
If only the plebs would vote for expert killers like you, paradise on earth could be built. On the bones of hundreds of millions of Arabs, which you would kill in the process.
Post about vacuous speech and losing touch then asks if we can blame Trump?
Pot - meet kettle.
I think the joke is on everyone inveigled to read the article.
but this is the dumbest, whiniest, smell-of-hot-garbage, article I've ever read. Not a single example is provided. What an extreme waste of time.
Perhaps we can blame part of it on Trump, even if only indirectly (a man who has gotten ahead in life by saying asinine things).
You need to have been out of touch with reality in the first place to have voted for Trump.
Trump is just further perpetuating "fake realities"!
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
Tech used to attract and hire the best and brightest, but it doesn't anymore.
Current tech industry leaders have apparently never heard of the Dunning-Kruger effect. They hire people who are great at talking the talk. However, really good people -- truly smart and creative people -- are usually not the look-at-me, look-at-me type.
The best are the best because they know enough to know how little they know and are always trying to learn more. Tech companies only hire people who already know everything, or at least think they do.
I actually find it ironic that they like to refer to themselves as bar-raisers, rock stars, super heroes, brogrammers, etc.
On the plus side, they will likely Darwin themselves out of existence with fads like 'raw' water.
EQ isn't emotions. EQ is the ability to deal with emotions.
How would Hillary, owned by wallsteet but actually competent, have possibly been worse than the con artist salesman that is Trump?
Are you so willfully ignorant that you don't see how disastrously awful he is?
Or are you so delusional that you think global warming is fake, poor people are just lazy, and nuclear war just wouldn't be that bad?
Because you idiots have literally doomed humanity, we're actually right properly fucked and you're responsible
The author may or may not be right, but he gives no examples and names no names. His "article" is just an assertion that is repeated several times. It appears that standards have fallen at Slashdot.
The Topic Summary is completely unintelligible.
If there is a crisis in Silicon Valley, it's clearly a crisis in literacy.
Be it Silicon Valley or the government itself, the problem is that all those people are living in bubbles brought by income inequality.
Doesn't matter how much sympathy you have, when you live your life completely surrounded by people that are in a similar situation to yours, and you cannot bother to see other peoples' needs and everyday lives outside your bubble, you cannot understand what you need to do to get in touch with them.
But this has always been a reality. Silicon Valley is no exception. It's just another elite group.
The major problem I see these days with Trumpism and all is the polarization and absolute unwillingness to recognize that such a thing exists.
It is no secret, perhaps only not perceived by the most fanatical Trump fans. He doesn't and has never leaded anything "for the people". He does it for himself. He only "gets" his own interests, the only right thing for him is the way he does things, he's never wrong, and he accepts no outside input unless it's aligned with his own.
If there are any good outcomes from his government, it'll be about things that attend his own agenda.
This is nothing new. It has been clear as day and out there for anyone to see for years before the election - he's basically just acting the way he always did, as a prepotent boss, on his shows, and whatnot.
Silicon Valley is much of the same crap. People keep throwing money at these self professed geniouses that seemingly never had any experiences hanging around with us "normies".
What you get is a bunch of startups creating crap that only makes sense for themselves. An overpriced juice pack squeezer, a hipster vending machine, urban mobility for the 1%, mobile apps that only solves their own perceived problems.
The US will never get out of those loops until it seriously starts working on the income gap problem.
This is also why China is winning. Despite all the flaws of the country, which are huge, the people working there to make things are closer to the average worldwide citizen reality. And even China is quickly becoming elitized, because that's just the model it's following.