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Comment by omginternets | Hacker News Reader

It’s hard for me to read this kind of article because I share the author’s frustration on the one hand, and can’t help but feel he is making a spurious comparison on the other. Silicon Valley isn’t a person. If you take any sufficiently large group of people, the mass behavior will appear as a personality disorder insofar as there is a plurality of personalities involved.

If you want another example, look no further than hacker news.

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It really does a disservice to the cause as well. If we assume everything bad is the work of untouchable dark figures in smoke filled rooms, we'll never confront the real problem of various policies with broken incentives.

Silicon Valley does have untouchable dark figures in smoke filled rooms though. Many of them have a podcast.

Can't remember last time I met a Silicon Valley person that smokes.

Weed, there’s plenty.

Then you're not getting out there if you live in the Valley, lol.

As if that were the relevant part of the imagery…

Where else does the smoke that fills the room come from?

I’d be content with some recognition that there are multiple such figures with a plurality of opinions and impulses, and that this is the main driver behind SV’s apparent “personality disorder”. So framed, we can at least call for these shadowy figures (many of whom have names and public personas) to engage with some of the contradictions of SV and suggest ways to resolve them.

> If we assume everything bad is the work of untouchable dark figures in smoke filled rooms, we'll never confront the real problem of various policies with broken incentives

In that worldview I think it's the dark figures in smoke-filled rooms who are in charge of all policy, broken-incentive or not.

More seriously: in any system where broken incentives are [still] in place, isn't it typically those in power who are primarily responsible for that being so?

My point is that if you start from a position that the powerful make policy and we are not powerful then we accept hopelessness and cede any power or responsibility we do have.

No, it just means we accept that we have no power working within the system, only working against it.

Which, for every demographic in the US besides white, straight Christian men, has often just been the self-evident truth.

That’s not what this piece is saying. It’s calling out the toxic ideologies that are indeed common in SV, especially among leadership. There’s no question that those attitudes strongly influence how companies are run and what lobbying is done. That influence extends out to government and other companies that buy into that technocratic mindset.

The overarching policy here with broken incentives is the kind of relatively unrestricted capitalism which Silicon Valley would be loath to give up. Most of the attitudes listed in the article tie strongly into that: money is seen as defining worth, values that can’t be monetized or that inhibit profit are rejected, often vehemently, and so on.

If you’re inclined to dismiss a piece like this, it may be because you’re too enmeshed in at least some of the ideologies in question to recognize its accuracy.

She's not speaking metaphorically, in my read, she is saying people like "Thiel, Musk and Andreesen" don't just share an ideology, they share a personality disorder. The super-powerful companies they run and the ecosystem of people that idolize them for some reason are just outgrowths of their immaturity, self-centeredness, and so on.

No, she uses them as an avatar for the whole

> So, to the moderately powerful men who prop up and benefit from Silicon Valley’s ideology, and leave us the real work of fixing what it breaks...

Even if I were to accept your premise, I’d disagree with your conclusion. There will be powerful people with “personality disorders” [0] in any sufficiently large group.

Her analysis just isn’t very interesting. It’s merely a well-written rant.

[0] I am deliberately ignoring the fact that if we are being literal, these people most certainly do not have a personality disorder, unpalatable though their characters may be.

The author credited is Maria, presumably Maria Farrell who is listed as one of the contributors to the site, who proudly displays a "Tim Cook said something nice about me" excerpt on her personal home page.

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