Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’

Yeah I don't get it either, especially the "feeling alienated" part. Does that include being feted and having a respectful discussion with your liberal friend and old colleague, Reid Hoffman, on the Stanford campus on Jan. 31 of this year, moderated by a very sympathetic Niall Ferguson? With laudatory words and praise from the President and Provost? https://news.stanford.edu/2018/02/01/cardinal-conversation-r...

Look, if you're going to speak at the RNC and actively support Trump, you will be on the opposite side of a super-majority of college-educated people in this country at this point. And definitely a large super-majority of people under 35, women, Asian Americans, Latinos and African Americans. So if you're surrounded by such people, and are loudly promoting such views, don't expect your interlocutors to not criticize them, or necessarily want to hear them ad nauseum.

The evidence however suggests that Mr. Thiel is certainly being given PLENTY of platforms to continue expressing his viewpoints in a respectful manner in front of influential crowds of people, including students. Who is pushing this whole narrative?

This article isn't just about Peter Thiel, it's about tech workers in general. Not everyone has the luxury of being a billionaire, and knowing that they live comfortably for the rest of their lives even if they become unemployable. The sentiments expressed by quotes in this article:

> People in Silicon Valley “openly lie to one another out of fear of losing their jobs or being publicly crucified..."

> Sometimes Silicon Valley venture-capital investors and startup founders “have a certain way of thinking, and if you don’t fit into that way of thinking you’re not in the cool club”

are things that I can absolutely identify with. And I consider myself a moderate liberal, I can only imagine what mainstream conservatives are thinking.

Same, as another founder. And same, I would consider myself pretty liberal. Pro choice, anti military-industrial complex, anti prison complex, pro legalization, sex positive, pro gay marriage, pro universal healthcare, against church and state coupling, non-climate change denier, pro science, yada yada, you name it.

Admittedly, I don't even like the term "conservative", like Naval would say, pinning labels onto yourself only forces you into static positions that you end up having to defend, even if you don't 100% buy into them.

I simply happen to have certain stances and ideas that are in opposition to the mainstream thought of SV. As much as I'd love to discuss them, potentially learning more about them myself and (gasp!) even changing my mind in the process, I'm not comfortable doing it. There's a high chance I will be immediately labeled as "racist / sexist / bigot / white supremacist / [fill in the blank]" for even contemplating disagreement on these topics (let's take "diversity" or how we're handling it as a society as an example) without any supporting evidence.

Unfortunately, as of today, bigoteering has 0% burden on the person making the accusation and 100% of the weight put on the accused. It's always safe to call someone a witch, but proving them wrong in one's defense is nigh impossible.

Ironically, the most open minded and considerate conversations about diversity that I've ever had were with black coworkers. I've learned plenty from them, changed my stance several times, realized I didn't know that much before.

The worst were almost always with overrepresented majorities who were "stepping in to speak up for their less-advantaged brethren". I've never learned anything from them on the topics they were so zealous about. It's the diversity version of "white knighting".

It's hard not to become jaded and assume that most people in this latter category don't actually care, and just want to establish themselves at the top of the moral hierarchy through vacuous virtue signaling. It's disappointing.

Mrs. Clinton won college educated voters by 9 percentage points which is not exactly a super majority.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/09/behind-trump...

>super-majority

>definitely a large super-majority

Don't use phrases like this without defining them in concrete terms and providing stats. If 1/3 of the people supported Trump in those categories, opposition could easily be counted as a super majority but that would significantly weaken your case. Ignoring and belittling the views of 1/3 of your group is not really acceptable in other contexts.

So pro-choice activists are bigots if they're in deeply conservative parts of the US?

If it's implausible for someone to imagine expressing their beliefs without being labelled a bigot then it's just as much a statement about the environment they're in as it is about the beliefs in question.

Your attitude justifies Goldbloom's law.

this is an obviously disingenuous argument. bigot refers to prejudice. a person can be a pro-choice extremist, but not a pro-choice bigot. the phrase simply has no meaning.

Much I want to downvote you, I'd rather see how you try and answer why a "pro-choice" person who can't express that view in say, rural Kansas, without being called a "baby killer" shouldn't also consider that a "red flag about his beliefs".

Or how about a pro affirmative-action person in deeply conservative areas? Plenty of people would say that it's a bigoted view. Not to mention, affirmative action is explicitly treating people better or worse based on their race, sex, or other aspect of their identity which is the literal definition of prejudice. [1] Some may say that careful application of prejudice is acceptable to account for past injustices (and I do, for example), but that does not change the fact that it is an example of prejudice.

Again, the fact that the majority of people would call a given viewpoint bigoted is just as much a statement about the environment that calls the view bigoted as it is about the view itself. Plenty of mainstream liberal views would be considered bigoted in other developed democracies (e.g. a lot of European countries don't practice affirmative action). Conversely, plenty of mainstream conservative views would be considered bigoted by liberals (I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that I don't need to give an example).

[1] "Prejudice is an affective feeling towards a person or group member based solely on their group membership. The word is often used to refer to preconceived, usually unfavorable, feelings towards people or a person because of their sex, gender, beliefs, values, social class, age, disability, religion, sexuality, race/ethnicity, language, nationality, beauty, occupation, education, criminality, sport team affiliation or other personal characteristics. In this case, it refers to a positive or negative evaluation of another person based on their perceived group membership" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prejudice

> Sometimes Silicon Valley venture-capital investors and startup founders “have a certain way of thinking, and if you don’t fit into that way of thinking you’re not in the cool club”

This isn’t new; women have been telling us this for many years now.

I believe it's the definition of discrimination, not prejudice, that you're looking for.

You're not wrong, but in an election at the national level, 9 points is normally considered a pretty big spread (for example, Obama's victory over McCain in 2008 was pretty solid, and that was by a 7 point margin).

Note that none of those that Pew's counts as "college educated" in its surveys is in any way verified to be a college graduate of any degree or discipline.

It is a good sized spread. I do think there is more interesting things going on there if you really start pulling the data apart. Although there is no technical definition of super majority that applies to all cases I like the 66% number which would imply you are twice as likely to meet someone from group A as opposed to group B if everything was random. Others of course can have their own definition of what a super majority is.

>I simply happen to have certain stances and ideas that are in opposition to the mainstream thought of SV. As much as I'd love to discuss them, potentially learning more about them myself and (gasp!) even changing my mind in the process, I'm not comfortable doing it. There's a high chance I will be immediately labeled as "racist / sexist / bigot / white supremacist / [fill in the blank]" for even contemplating disagreement on these topics (let's take "diversity" or how we're handling it as a society as an example) without any supporting evidence.

Look man, welcome to being an underrepresented minority / woman in the US. This is our every day everywhere we go. We always have to watch our tongues make sure what we're saying doesn't get us labelled as "uppity" or "thuggish" or "bossy" etc etc etc.

You're coming to terms with the fact that in any society you have to consider how other people will react to what you do. Congrats.

Odd comparison. Nobody gets fired for being a woman or a minority. In fact, HR is terrified of doing it because of how bad that looks in the 2018 PC world. They have to think very hard and document performance of Fs or URMs very thoroughly to avoid problems when they get managed out for underperforming.

You can, however, get Damored though for expressing the wrongthink opinion.