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'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.
Seems that a person in a bubble is aware enough to notice other people's bubbles but not his/her own bubble.
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.
Listen, not that I disagree with you on silicon valley being out of touch, but WTF is this doing on slashdot?
> 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...
"really smart people—saying some of the most vacuous things."
What things. Just one example.?
This article is a joke with no punchline.
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.
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...
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?
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."
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.
Silicon Valley was out of touch way before Trump was elected. They've been out of touch since pretty much the beginning.