Silicon Valley’s Empathy Problem | Hacker News Reader

Silicon Valley’s Empathy Problem

chronicle.com

23 pointsjonathansizz28 comments

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I find the author's contention that we can solve this by paying more attention to the liberal arts franky self-serving. He presents no evidence for his assertion that a) there's a lack of people with a liberal arts background in large tech companies or b) that people with such a background design better social software than those without.

I see this as a structural problem rather than a problem of empathy. As long as you have one or two companies writing social software meant for universal use, you'll find areas where they lack imagination and fail to serve the interests of human beings different from them.

The fact that we're trying to shoehorn everyone into One True Social Network is a bizarre artifact of the way we currently fund the Internet. The same criticisms that apply to central planned economies also hold for this kind of universal social software. Even given the smartest engineers in the world all reading Proust on weekends, it's just arrogant to imagine you can think one step ahead of billions of users, and anticipate their every need.

In terms of identity, we don't just have to look at the modern 21st century to see that singular identity is too narrow. How many great historical authors and politicians wrote under pseudonyms?

The Supreme Court recognized this in 1995 when Justice Stevens wrote "Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority. It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights, and of the First Amendment in particular."

That said, the author is either intentionally misleading or hopelessly naive. The vast majority of big-money startups (venture funded and making a lot of noise, the kind we hear about) are only interested in money, and the fastest way to make a lot of money is to get people with extra money to spend it on your product or service. Business isn't charity.

And as for Zuck, I'm confident he doesn't believe his "lack of integrity" line about identities. That's just a soundbite. What's almost certainly really in Zuck's head: "Having two identities for yourself is an example of decreasing your value to advertisers, our actual customers."

The empathy problem is a symptom, not the disease. Or possibly the excuse.

It has become fashionable to dismiss the humanities and arts not because of an inability to see outside of one's own bubble, but because it isn't directly linked to profit. The result is that any university context that probably won't result in research grants, business endorsements, or endowments later down the road is relegated to TAs or worse, online-only classes.

And, yes, as a result of this, many people can't see outside the context of problem space that will result in steady, short-term revenue.

It's perfectly sensible economics 101 (a subject which is very popular these days) in a country like the US with such great inbred enthusiasm for capitalism. If there is money to be made, people will find reasons to be excited about making it.

One could argue that "profit" is a proxy for "making value for society". And hence, the dismissal to the humanities comes from the fact that they are not providing solution, and keeps posing challenges isn't productive. There are lots of goods to be gained in learning certain fields of humanities (history comes to mind), but there are just as many less than ideal part that isn't necessary for any universities students.

And exactly what should FB do? Changes their policy that "everyone can only have one identity, except if you're a drag queen, then you got 2" ?

>And exactly what should FB do?

This article is right about their "one identity" policy, if nothing else. This policy should simply be removed. Zuckerberg's response is impressively unthoughtful.

This assessment of the article I find the most accurate. I don't think the author is asserting that more liberal arts classes equals better products, rather that marrying the idea of profit and social progress is naive.

"It's in Apple's DNA that technology alone is not enough — it's technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the result that makes our heart sing and nowhere is that more true than in these post-PC devices..."

Steve Jobs

"The liberal arts get short shrift in Silicon Valley"

Steve Jobs had something to say about that: "..it's technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the result that makes our heart sing..."

I know many on here will discount that as marketing bullshit, but it really is woven throughout their products.

Can you give examples of how Apple products are technology married with the liberal arts and humanities?

Jobs himself liked to use the example of typography. He took a typography course on a lark, and it became a core differentiator in Apple products.

In an age where computers were only capable of printing utilitarian, fixed-width typewriter text, Apple made a computer that could render text in the same way it's published IRL. Jobs specifically cites this during his Stanford commencement speech:

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html

I think it's clearly seen in the focus on design details, software flows, abstraction of technical configuration, focus on Music, Art, Media, etc.

That was a sales pitch.

And if it was, so? Zuckerberg's identity gaffe was a total PR problem. Apple's Think Different campaign was very much informed by the humanities and liberal arts. To claim that the entirety of Silicon Valley doesn't get the liberal arts as the article claims is flat out wrong, just look at the company with the world's largest market cap.

Is this article really trying to say that one should not pursue a particular business model if that business model happens to hurt others?

Ah yes, those fucking selfish SV people. The fact that these people invent services to edit annoyance out of one's life is horrible. (insert eyes rolling here)

Seriously, I could practically taste the bile dripping off of those words as the author decried services which handle groceries and parking. What's the goal of that paragraph? Are we supposed to feel bad some people trade money for time? Guilty? Angry? My read is that they're trying to direct moral outrage at something, but didn't quite get around to telling me what or why I'm supposed to be outraged.

I'm starting to think "SV/startups suck because.." is the new rehash of "I quit $social_network and you should too" from a year or two ago. It's tired, it's preachy, it's shrill, and it doesn't contribute to any kind of productive discourse.

You're missing the point.

The problem is, we're focused on trivial bullshit. Parking, car services, groceries, housekeeping.

We're blessed with the most powerful software, hardware, all infinitely scalable and at the lowest cost ever (open source, AWS, cloud, whatever) and we're building bullshit lifestyle apps.

We're a long way off from the 70's and 80's. Steve and Woz's "bicycle for the mind" - Google's "information instantly for everyone" - we're building toys for the rich.

Make no mistake, Uber is for the rich. Taskrabbit is for the rich.

Average household income in the US. Remember, HOUSEHOLD. Is something like ~52K.

Do you think what you're working on will help that $52K household? Because Uber won't. Taskrabbit won't. Your new social network won't.

I know there are outliers. Theranos. 23andMe. Tesla (once it trickles down).

But most of us on here? We want a gadget, some sort of highly-viral network effect app that nets us a liquidity/exit event.

We don't care about income inequality, sexism, or the (middle) class. We want our stupid fucking house in Palo Alto, our Tesla S, and fuck all for anyone outside the bubble.

Maybe step back and decide if you're just selling digital sugar water or if you're actually going to change the world.

The author is cherry-picking, there's loads of tech startups that aren't "lifestyle apps." They're not outliers, it's just that a lot fewer people are interested in reading about payroll companies as compared to SnapChat

Agreed completely, but look at what is systemically rewarded in SV.

What do you think the Google X's and the Teslas and the Rosa Labs' of the world are doing?

Your kind of argument takes the same kind of judgmental tone i'd expect from someone criticizing what particular charity you decided to donate to, as if choosing to donate money to feed the children vs doctors without borders vs NPR vs the local animal shelter... is some kind of value judgement.

Really, it isn't. You're advocating a moral imperative which does not exist in the real world. You don't get to pooh-pooh someone that actually does something which solves some kind of problem as not solving the right kind of problem (and expect to be taken seriously, anyways).

No piece of code any of us can write is going to solve the problems of:

>income inequality, sexism, or the (middle) class.

And as to not caring, speak for yourself.

Google X hasn't shipped a product. Let me know when they do. I won't hold my breath.

I mentioned Tesla. Unfamiliar with Rosa.

I am being judgmental, because if most of us are honest with ourselves it's what is the motivation in the Valley.

Where do you live, where do your kids go to school? East Bay? East Palo Alto? Doubtful.

You mean the usual motivation of creating a business at the end of the day is some kind of profit?

Color me fucking shocked! What makes you think SV is unique in that regard?

At the end of the day, a corporation's job is to generate profit. If that is not their job, they are a nonpofit or similar.

We live in a capitalist society. There's no sense hating the player when you can hate the rules of the game.

> " Yet it’s hard not to notice its passion for issues that look like problems only to people who look like Silicon Valley itself: overwhelmingly white, male, young, educated, and affluent."

That stood out to me. The author is rather bitter as that they feel like they have to make a race point. SV responds to one thing: Money. They respond to people who will give them money. If they don't they won't exist; money doesn't care what race you are. California, and SV in particular, is not a cheap place to live.

You do realize that white, male, educated -- are usually the ones with the money, right?

Race baiting seems to be the order of the day anymore, and it's disheartening to see it getting play among rational people.

"White males are bad, mmkay?" That's all this is. Guilt tripping.

That essay is surprisingly scattershot and disorganized for a humanities doctoral candidate, much less one from Stanford. It's all over the place.

It's apparently the season for thumbsucker trend pieces that synechdochally insult 'Silicon Valley'. (See also: Sarah Lacey's 6000-word 'asshole' opus from a few days ago.)

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