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

(www.wsj.com)
370 points sillypuddy | 1 comments | 18 Feb 18 16:50 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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wpietri ◴[18 Feb 18 19:47 UTC] No.16407907[source]▶
> they feel people there are resistant to different social values and political ideologies

This is just bizarre to to me. I moved here from the Midwest, which I found stifling. There's a far greater variety of social values and political ideologies (not to mention backgrounds and interests) here than pretty much any place I've lived. The main hostility I see is to intolerance, but that's hardly surprising given SF's long, welcoming history and the paradox of tolerance. [1]

If I were to worry about any sort of uniformity, it wouldn't be political, but in startup culture. 20 years of success has created some very well-greased rails into which most innovation has to fit: bright young founders, seed round followed quickly by A and B rounds. That can be fine as far as it goes, but it has become so orthodox that I think we're not a great place for doing anything other than a plausible Next Big Thing.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

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friedman23 ◴[18 Feb 18 20:53 UTC] No.16408525[source]▶
> This is just bizarre to to me. I moved here from the Midwest, which I found stifling. There's a far greater variety of social values and political ideologies

Really? Because the only values I've heard expressed have been standard democratic talking points and once in a while far left ideologies.

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refurb ◴[18 Feb 18 21:01 UTC] No.16408606[source]▶
Precisely! Not what OP's political views are but I would guess if he found the Midwest "stifling" and SF "a breath of fresh air", it's because he's aligned with the politics in SF.

Having also lived in the mid-West and SF, I would agree the mid-West leans more conservative, but in any decent sized city you'll find both view points (election resulted confirm it).

I would say SF is just the opposite of a hardcore conservative town. There is almost no consideration for having a different viewpoint. And if you happen to express one, you're certainly made to feel their is something wrong with you.

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1. wpietri ◴[19 Feb 18 17:16 UTC] No.16414122[source]▶
This is definitely not my experience. Your framing that there are only two significant viewpoints (thus, "both") is exactly part of what I was glad to get away from.

There are many different sets of "social values and political ideologies" in the Bay Area. That was the glory of it for me. I have met all sorts of radicals and artists and weirdos here. And plenty of perfectly normal people, but whose notions of "normal" don't overlap all that much. E.g., the Lebanese-American family that ran a store in my neighborhood. The Latino family in the apartment next door. GLBT families far more into normcore than I'll ever be. Etc, etc.

I think the problem with both the WSJ piece and your approach is that "social values and political ideologies" is some sort of code, an attempt to frame a very particular strain of conservativism as just another kind of viewpoint while carefully not looking at the contents of that strain.

The only viewpoints I've seen people be actively hostile to here are ones that already include active hostility to other people. If you start out with some anti-gay slurs in the Castro, for example, and you will definitely be made to feel that there is something wrong with you. And that's not shocking to me at all; after a lifetime of hostility and abuse from self-proclaimed conservatives, gay people are quite reasonably sensitive.