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Comment by mephitix | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, whatever points this article had were completely marred by terrible examples.

Saying it's easier to talk about things in China vs US. I've been to China and you can get thrown in jail for saying the type of things we say re. our political environment. My friends there have to speak in whispers in public while people in SF have no problem raging about our politicians.

And saying we should "allow people to say disparaging things about gay people if we want them to be able to say novel things about physics". At its least a really poor choice of words there. The choice of words makes it sound like it's okay to stand aside while they spout bigotry. Perhaps he meant it's okay to say it, but we should argue against it - but unfortunately for him that point was not made because the intention of the article was to support free speech. Bad example.

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> Yeah, whatever points this article had were completely marred by terrible examples.

The article isn't that complicated. He meant to say exactly what he did say.

Which makes sense, given the entire point of tolerating free speech is that people are free to say terrible things, not "moderately uncomfortable" things.

Executive summary: (1) Open societies are more innovative. (2) Silicon Valley is becoming less tolerant of divergent viewpoints. (3) This is primarily culture-driven, but will likely have an effect on innovative science, which by definition starts as sounding somewhat crazy.

> (2) Silicon Valley is becoming less tolerant of divergent viewpoints.

As measured by what? Are there people being jailed for expressing a divergent opinion, or being refused service in restaurants/hotels/shops/etc, or unable to find employment?

For the latter point, employment, some people are likely to pick one of the few examples that routinely get reused in this discussion - such as Damore + Google, or Eich + Mozilla. But are these kind of things actually happening at an increasing rate? Because I recall similar things happening in the 2000s, and 90s, and I wasn't around before but they likely did too (and go back a few decades earlier, and it'd be saying something like "women can be engineers just like men" or "black people can be doctors just like white people" that'd get you ostracized, so yeah). So unless you have actual data showing that there has been an increase in people getting fired/being denied employment in the past 5-10 years for having divergent viewpoints, there's nothing there.

If your main measure for "less tolerant of divergent viewpoints" is "people being mean to you on Twitter", well yeah, that's part of living in an open society. In fact one could equally argue that people feeling more empowered to call out things they disagree with is the very hallmark of an open society.

My main measure for that happened is that Sam Altman feels like that may be happening.

Appeal to authority, but I admit he's in a better place than I to see whether it is or isn't in funding circles.

People are actively trying to make others "unemployable" so, yes, unable to find employment.

> I've been to China and you can get thrown in jail for saying the type of things we say re. our political environment.

It's jail vs sacking; different aspects of the same reaction.

Huh? In SF I can walk down the street or go into a restaurant and hear people saying how bad Trump is. In China if someone hears you, they will report you and you will be taken in. How in the world is this the same reaction?

Try explaining to your colleagues at work that the distribution of certain traits is slightly different in different genders and see what happens. In at least one company this didn't go well. The reaction is the same because those in power punish instead of explaining, only the aspect is different. Obviously I much prefer the SF version as at least I'm not in jail and can look for work somewhere else, but the feeling of lost freedom is in there, in many people.

To give another example, imagine if the in a short while the Supreme Court rules that in favor of the CO baker and says that he is not compelled to create a cake for a gay wedding. Would you feel safe expressing support for the decision at a lunch with your team?

That's a pretty terrible example. Instead try telling people in SF how great Trump is, and see how many friends you make.

(Not that this reflects my opinion of Trump.)

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