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Comment by bpolverini | Hacker News Reader

The personification of "Silicon Valley" into some giant evil blob-like entity attempting to consume innocent, creative counter-revolutionaries undermines a perfectly awesome, but 100% non-unique to SV opinion: Technologists (and any industry with any modicum of power) can suffer from a bad case of hubris.

Is creative destruction real and good (most of the time)? Yes. Is your startup selling SGaaS (scuba gear as a service) going to radically impact the disinherited and the poor? No. Is there anything new under the sun?

Still, the criticism of the author is received: More humility from the collective "we" of SV wouldn't hurt.

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I think the hubris is a necessary protection mechanism for the fact that without arrogance and conviction no progress would ever happen. Reasonable people get convinced not to rock the boat. Only unreasonable people ignore that "good" advice and fuck shit up for the benefit (or sometimes detriment, or sometimes both) of society.

Silicon valley entreprenerds are top-notch conformists. The fact that they're conforming to a culture that puts value on arrogance, megalomania, or "rocking the boat" doesn't make them agents of progress, any more than being a goth kid who hangs out at the Cinnabon threatens middle-class values.

You could say the same thing for every revolutionary ever.

Gavrilo Princip was just some angsty kid who wanted to fit in with his fellow revolutionaries. He still succeeded at starting a world war.

Every organization is composed mainly of followers, even ones that have recognizably brought progress to our world.

I don't think Gavrilo Princip is a great role model.

Of course not, but you were arguing that conformists can't move revolutions forward (whether for good or for bad).

That claim is demonstrably false.

I disagree. Take George Hotz and compare him to your everyday Harvard pedigreed Director of Sales at Facebook. Two stereotypes that look similar but require very different values, levels of conformity, etc. Just look at whoever is in tech but rejects SV culture - perhaps that is the real future.

I don't think the author wants humility. The author doesn't seem to think humility is required. As near as I can tell, the author thinks all the power is there, it just hasn't been used properly by a bunch of arrogant nerds who don't care about people.

I've known plenty of creative counter-revolutionaries in my time. They're often fascinating people. They're also often given to misplaces rage and nonsensical notions, like marching against the supposed dehumanizing influence of computers.

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