Comment by archagon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by archagon | Hacker News Reader

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I hate how politically ambivalent and "both sides are the same" people here are, despite it being shown again and again that this is simply not the case.

I hate how free speech is unduly prioritized over everything else, even when it marginalizes people and whittles away at our separation of powers.

I hate how often social issues are eye-rolled or actively decried. I hate how rarely policies such as WeWork's meat ban or California's mandate to put women on corporate boards are discussed in good faith. I don't always agree with these kinds of drastic actions, but I enjoy talking them over with my social science friends. You simply can't find this kind of discussion here.

I hate how engineers often don't see themselves as rich. I make FANG salary and feel absurdly wealthy. My grad school friends are squeaking by on $30k a year. I hate how "get as rich as humanly possible" seems to be the unstated goal of so many tech founders, and how any discussion of CEO salary caps or wealth redistribution is quickly shut down.

It bothers me that such an intelligent community is often seemingly devoid of deeply-held values. People here aren't nearly angry enough about the political clusterfuck going on in the US. People here want to make nice and are unwilling to burn bridges to stand up for what's right.

And finally, I hate how people have the gall to say that they'd rather shut their ears and avoid politics altogether, even when it's affecting everyone around them in drastic ways.

A furious and motivated Silicon Valley could change so much in the world. Instead, we'd rather just shrug and collect our paychecks.

I've seen a lot of comments on HN saying how good the level discussion is here. It's true if it's talking about JS engines or term sheets, but when it starts moving towards social issues or politics, I see better discussions on Facebook.

Thanks for the stimulating post! I do have a few comments/disagreements -

> And finally, I hate how people have the gall to say that they'd rather shut their ears and avoid politics altogether, even when it's affecting everyone around them in drastic ways.

I mean, it's kind of explicitly the idea of this forum to not involve discussions of politics. I guess you could claim otherwise, but I for one think it's legitimate to have a place where people choose not to talk about politics. Not literally every discussion has to be about politically charged topics.

(Which is not to say they don't get discussed here anyway.)

> It bothers me that such an intelligent community is often seemingly devoid of deeply-held values. People here aren't nearly angry enough about the political clusterfuck going on in the US. People here want to make nice and are unwilling to burn bridges to stand up for what's right.

I'm not in the US. But, there's a lot to be said for calming down - it seems to me that a big part of the problem today is exactly that too many people are too emotional/angry about everything, without necessarily having a reason to be. The reason there's a political clusterfuck, to me at least, seems to be exactly because people are willing to burn bridges, refuse to compromise, refuse to listen to one another, etc.

And btw, as to your "deeply held values" thing - this is a technical/business forum. It makes sense that the forum as a whole doesn't have "values" - it's made up of a very diverse group of people (well, not very diverse actually, but that's another problem). A diverse group of people getting together to talk about e.g. sports, wouldn't necessarily be expected to have more shared values than just people in general have.

> I hate how politically ambivalent and "both sides are the same" people here are, despite it being shown again and again that this is simply not the case.

Look, it's not that I disagree with all of your post or something, I thought it was well written and interesting. But you seem to be operating under the assumption that your view of things is clearly right, and other's views are wrong, which is why it makes you angry that others don't buy in wholesale to your views or values. For example, you write "It bothers me that such an intelligent community is often seemingly devoid of deeply-held values.", but also write "I hate how free speech is unduly prioritized over everything else, even when it marginalizes people and whittles away at our separation of powers.". Some people's deeply held values are that free speech is prioritized over (almost) everything else. You might not agree with that deeply held value, but it is one that supposedly the community here values (I don't know if that's actually true).

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