[HN Gopher] You Are Not the Man in the Arena
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You Are Not the Man in the Arena
Author : nickwritesit
Score : 35 points
Date : 2023-08-30 18:59 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (wheresyoured.at)
(TXT) w3m dump (wheresyoured.at)
| rexpop wrote:
| > The valley's valorization of "disruption" -- a euphemism for
| destruction -- allows bad people to keep winning.
|
| I've spent most of my life following this religion, but over the
| last couple of years I've started to think that we maybe can't,
| as a species, afford to entertain this "disruption" model. We
| need less disruption, and more resilience. You can make the
| argument that disruptive startups play "chaos monkey," hardening
| the economy through adversarial inoculation, but I'm not
| convinced we're building anything useful--only exploiting local
| optima with structures that will collapse like California's
| aquifers as they undermine the economic sustainability of their
| own milieu.
| cjs_ac wrote:
| TL;DR: Some venture capitalists are charlatans. Specifically,
| while the accumulation of great wealth in the hands of a small
| number of individuals allows those individuals to embark on great
| projects, many of the great projects that venture capitalists
| embark on are actually just swindles.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Very well said. It omits another point, though, which is that
| SV's cultural failure to reject con artists and abusive methods
| is what has led directly to the very dim view the general public
| increasingly has toward the industry. And that dim view is well-
| earned.
|
| We as an industry really need to right this ship.
| gipp wrote:
| I (vehemently) agree with the article's points.
|
| But can we stop referring to this class of delusional oligarchs
| as "Silicon Valley" or "the tech world," etc? Rank and file
| engineers, even most of the exceptional and high ranking ones,
| simply do not share the worldviews of the VCs and Musks and
| Thiels of the world. Many do, sure (probably over-represented on
| this site), but nothing like a majority. And I'm tired of being
| implicitly lumped in with them as part of "the tech world." This
| is an oligarch problem more than a tech problem.
| dee-bee wrote:
| [dead]
| JohnFen wrote:
| I hear you. But on the flipside, everyone who works in the
| industry and isn't pushing to fix the problem is helping to
| perpetuate the problem (myself included). We are enabling them
| to operate as they do, after all, regardless of whether or not
| we share that worldview.
| fsaid wrote:
| When insulated elite take on the identity of some ancient
| philosophy or pragmatic quote, these ideas also tend to spread to
| the gestalt. Or maybe it's vice versa.
|
| As a younger adult and fresh college dropout I used to cling to
| stoicism around the time "Meditations" by Marcus Aurelius become
| popular again.
|
| Super embarrassing, but I even had a picture of Elon Musk hanging
| on my mirror. But, this also helped me ignore some painful
| aspects about my life and move on.
|
| When I could finally do something about my problems, the idea of
| stoicism slowly outlived its utility for me. Sure as hell didn't
| stop me from burning out multiple times afterwards.
|
| I picked up Chekhov years ago and this quote from Ward No. 6
| helped me gain some perspective:
|
| _" You should go and preach that philosophy in Greece ...
| Diogenes did not need a study or a warm habitation; it's hot
| there without. You can lie in your tub and eat oranges and
| olives. But bring him to Russia to live: he'd be begging to be
| let indoors in May, let alone December. He'd be doubled up with
| the cold._
|
| At this point I just believe that most of these high-minded ideas
| are after-the-fact reasonings about how or why ones life went
| well or poorly.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| From what you wrote, it seems like you were fundamentally
| misunderstanding Stoicism. Not unusual for a young person just
| learning about philosophy, but still, and important
| distinction.
|
| The core idea of Stoicism is identifying what is actually under
| your power and control, and focusing your energy on that. It is
| in some sense, virtually the opposite of it's popular
| perception (e.g. "little s" stoicism) of just accepting things
| as they are and suffering quietly.
|
| I think the book Thoughts of a Philosophical Fighter Pilot by
| Jim Stockdale is a good example of how effective stoicism is
| actual "cold weather" so to speak.
| UltimateEdge wrote:
| > When I could finally do something about my problems, the idea
| of stoicism slowly outlived its utility for me.
|
| Can you expand on that? Isn't one of the ideas of stoicism to
| focus on the things you can do to solve your problems?
| fullshark wrote:
| As far as I can tell most philosophy/thought is really
| rationalization not reasoning. In the information age the clay
| at your fingertips to mold the strongest and most effective
| rationalizations to allow you to get through the day is near
| infinite. You can pick and choose the exact ideas you need to
| allow you to accomplish whatever goal or self-image you want.
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