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

(www.wsj.com)
370 points sillypuddy | 2 comments | 18 Feb 18 16:50 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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twblalock ◴[18 Feb 18 21:03 UTC] No.16408620[source]▶
I don't get it. I grew up in Silicon Valley and I work in tech, and so do many other people I know. They run the gamut from far-left socialists to libertarians to own a bunch of guns. They have all kinds of ethnic backgrounds and religious views.

Some of my most libertarian/pro-gun friends have not been shy about their political views and it hasn't hurt their tech careers at all. They are far more welcome here than liberals are in other parts of the country.

It seems to me, from personal experience, that the people who feel alienated are the ones who bring politics to work in an overbearing contrarian way, seeking to cause offense under the guise of "debate," and then pretend to be shocked when people don't want to put up with their shit. Work is for working; it's not a debating society, and especially not when the debating is done in bad faith.

Peter Thiel has been more politically vocal than most, and he is vocal about things he knows to be unpopular. He can't be surprised that people who disagree with him are also vocal. If he can't take the heat he should stay out of the kitchen.

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tomsthumb ◴[18 Feb 18 21:12 UTC] No.16408700[source]▶
On the other hand, I have seen a coworker strongly imply that someone is a white nationalist for suggesting that it’s possible to be a non-racist republican.
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enraged_camel[dead post] ◴[18 Feb 18 21:54 UTC] No.16408953[source]▶
One can be a non-racist conservative, in the sense of wanting a smaller government and less regulation. However, today’s Republican Party is undeniably racist, and supporting them also makes one racist in my opinion.

This is especially true since today’s Republican Party is not actually conservative. One cannot want smaller government while simultaneously supporting a drastic increase in immigration and border security and a whopping $25 billion for a 2000-mile long wall.

dang ◴[18 Feb 18 22:36 UTC] No.16409233[source]▶
Please keep standard political talking points off HN. If you repeat something stock, it will get stock responses. That makes it off-topic on a site dedicated to curiosity.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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tessierashpool ◴[19 Feb 18 00:00 UTC] No.16409713[source]▶
how is the entire topic of this discussion not a standard political talking point?
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dang ◴[19 Feb 18 00:22 UTC] No.16409816[source]▶
For one thing, many people are talking about their personal experiences, from many angles.

Comments like "blood on the hands of $movement", by contrast, are battle fodder. Irrespective of your politics, that's the sort of thing that provokes worse from others and leads to all-out war, which we're trying to avoid on this site. So if you'd please not post like that here, we'd appreciate it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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1. tessierashpool ◴[19 Feb 18 09:57 UTC] No.16411887[source]▶
ok, I'll try again. how is this notion that conservatives are not free to express their opinions not a standard political talking point? there's an entire genre of such articles in the mainstream media. it's a popular argument with white supremacists who are attempting to normalize fascism.

you're permitting a standard political talking point to be an entire topic of discussion, and then screening out some individual replies because they invoke additional standard political talking points.

you're allowing some standard political talking points and disallowing others. if you're doing that, it would be convenient for your users if you were to specify which standard political talking points are valid topics of discussion, and which other standard political talking points will get your comments banned.

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2. dang ◴[20 Feb 18 06:15 UTC] No.16418213[source]▶
I hear you, but it's more complicated than that. To judge by the reaction of HN users, not everyone expressing this point of view is doing so just as a political weapon. Some are struggling to articulate their experience with the intention of connecting with others. So it's both. From a moderation point of view, the goal is to encourage the one kind of discussion—sincerely articulating experience with the intention of connecting with others—while discouraging the other, i.e. repetition of weaponized rhetoric with the intention of defeating enemies.