@chilaxe

I would hope that the people being subsidized by the "smart" people aren't generally the ones paying the outrageous prices for attending most sporting events (ie american football). I think most people in attendance at these events are your "average joes" working 9-5. Government subsidized programs wouldn't provide enough money for those collecting it to regularly attend these large events (hopefully... I'm honestly guessing here)

For cheap events, like supporting local athletes in smaller events, I don't have a problem with attendance, even if supported by government programs, since that benefits the community.

In reference to your work situation, that's great that you're so engaged in your job and are lucky enough to have found something you are passionate about that lines up with your career. I think you (and I) are in the minority of people who genuinely love our jobs and so don't really view that completely as "work." For everyone else, you've got to unwind a little after dealing with your crappy job all week. I've certainly worked these jobs in the past and valued my down time tremendously. Someone telling me that I should be spending my free time benefiting other people after I had just worked 80 hours at a construction job I once held would not have been received well...

What do you do in silicon valley if you don't mind me asking? It sounds intriguing

Thanks for the discussion

@residue

That's a good response.


• "It's up to the consumer to decide if their money is worth attendance or not..."

Society is arranged so that smart people subsidize the rest's lifestyle in countless ways, so we have a right to criticize how they spend our money.


• "What would you propose as an alternative that wouldn't carry the same generalization of "a more intellectual venture?" We can't spend ALL our time thinking.."

I spend around 80 hours per week here in Silicon Valley working, and it's fun. Other things don't seem challenging and deep enough to hold my attention for very long. The rest of the world benefits from every hour worked. Short breaks from work are enough.

@longde

As long as Whites are being underrepresented relative to their proportion of the population, and Asians and Indians are being overrepresented, that sounds like the most heavenly type of 'discrimination' in the world.

In practice, most startups find much greater access to capital and connections in Silicon Valley than anywhere else, and in any social interaction, we have about 15 seconds to convince someone we're an interesting person.

There are plenty of startups that have reasons to go abroad, but saying discrimination is one of them doesn't seem consistent with the numbers.

@longde

The last Silicon Valley event I went to was a startup demo day for an incubator, and about 1/3 of the startup founders were White.

The event before that was an industry event/mixer for which the speaker was non-White, the event manager was non-White, and about 1/3 of the audience was White.

The event before had 5 CEO speakers, and only 2 of them were White. About half of that audience was White.


Perhaps we need affirmative action for these White minorities who are being underrepresented relative to their proportion of the population.

There are endless high profile Chinese and Indian angel investors and venture capitalists, and all Silicon Valley investors regardless of ethnicity have 1 concern: are you or are you not going to achieve our investment objectives?

The first rule of entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley is that there are no excuses, and if countless other people can solve whatever problem you believe you have, then you can solve it to.

@chilaxe The article is about all californian students. It has little bearing on the top of the class or the elite.

Also, how do you know Silicon Valley is a meritocracy? Have you worked in tech companies. Are you involved with venture capital? I'd like to see you tell some of my friends, who are highly accomplished in academia and industry, and decided to move back to China to run tech companies that they somehow can't measure up. They'd laugh you out of the room. Why would anyone willingly choose to be a marginalized minority when they can live in a place where their culture is dominant and they can get better rewards for their effort?

Don't get me wrong. I love the Bay. I think there is opportunity there. But to say that it's some ideal meritocracy or that it has a monopoly on opportunity or innovation is wrong. You have to get out more and travel.

@longde

Did you read the article showing that California is now the dumbest state in the country, despite being a global center for many industries? No reasonable person could be dismissive of that decline.

If people want to believe that Silicon Valley, which definitely has leaders from more ethnic groups than any place on Earth, has a glass ceiling, that's they're choice. People who don't have a meritocratic temperament probably wouldn't be very successful in the culture here anyway, where all people care about is what you can do.

@chilaxe Honestly, I don't think california has ever had many high contributors as you are defining it. This group has always been a highly visible minority in the state. And this is probably shrinking as people move to greener pastures and better opportunities overseas. Frankly, I see more opportunity in Asia and Africa than in Silicon Valley, which is rather cliquish. More and more of my foriegn born Chinese and Indian colleagues agree, and there are more and more high skilled people avoiding the glass ceiling and cliques by going back.

Liberals depend on the suffering of the lower classes for votes. The oligarcs of the Republican party use them for cheap labour.

Both want liberal immigration laws. Only the true conservative want restrictive measures. The ones that care about a strong government and rule of law. Also they ususally favour a mono culture. Trust issues and family first and all that.

I believe the word your looking for is clusterf**k>> ^chilaxe:

@longde
"Yes, let's let high skilled workers in. The US probably does that more rigorously than any country."
The US is definitely the worst country in the world in terms of immigration skill level. 21st century workers in Silicon Valley get kicked out all the time, along their with brilliant tech start ups that were providing 21st century jobs. However, unskilled workers who will be in poverty for generations... we imported 80 million since the 1970s. That's more than the entire population of most countries.
Virtually all liberals advocate increased importation of unskilled workers, and they sabotage rational efforts to restrict it. They don't prefer societal decay, but they do prefer the conditions that cause societal decay.

@longde

People e.g. engineering the Paypal backend contribute more to society than people e.g. doing simple tasks that would be easy to automate. California doesn't automate some areas like agriculture that the most efficient countries in Europe and Asia automate because we have so much more uneducable labor than those countries have.

More students going to college relative to 1985 doesn't mean more useful workers in society, it means more students studying dumb, easy areas of study. Silicon Valley always has a shortage of talented 21st century workers, regardless of the incredible compensation we offer.

@longde

"Yes, let's let high skilled workers in. The US probably does that more rigorously than any country."

The US is definitely the worst country in the world in terms of immigration skill level. 21st century workers in Silicon Valley get kicked out all the time, along their with brilliant tech start ups that were providing 21st century jobs. However, unskilled workers who will be in poverty for generations... we imported 80 million since the 1970s. That's more than the entire population of most countries.

Virtually all liberals advocate increased importation of unskilled workers, and they sabotage rational efforts to restrict it. They don't prefer societal decay, but they do prefer the conditions that cause societal decay.

@messenger

If you wish to dispute mainstream economists regarding straight-forward issues, please provide other sources.


So now 99% doesn't mean 99%. Brilliant. You would equally support Republicans saying "We are the 99%. We represent the 99% of the population that suffers from the importing of long-term poverty via open borders. Any references to 99% are no longer a numerical reference, although we'll pretend they are when it's convenient."

Such sophistry is embarrassing. If it was so easy to not be fooled by this linguistic trickery, you yourself wouldn't have been fooled when you titled this video in a misleading way. I know from your past comments that you're one of the most mature and intelligent people on the sift, so I can only imagine the mental states of the rest of the sift.

The US is entering a prolonged period of economic decline because liberals practiced population replacement by importing 80 million permanently poor and less educable people in the last 40 years --precisely when unskilled labor has been rendered useless by global labor arbitrage and ever increasing automation. If you want to import people, import them from north-east Asia next time, and they'll be contributing more to society per capita than white people within a generation. All statistics are bunk when they don't take this population replacement into account.



Everything you hope to happen is going to fail, just as your ideology destroyed the California economy (which you'll never be honest about) despite it's ultra-high taxes and liberal policies. There is no reform movement within liberalism from the perspective of intelligence, so we can safely assume liberalism will remain frozen in time as it has been for the last 40 years.

I should probably stop commenting on videosift. Compared to the Silicon Valley people I spend my time with, videosift culture appears to be permanently anti-success. That's why they need income redistribution in the first place. There are never enough talented 21st century workers in Silicon Valley because it's so on the right side of history. People should learn from the culture here.

@bcglorf said: Can you please describe the other path you speak of?

Become an advocate for careerism. It's better for the world and better for us as individuals. Devote all waking hours to reading, working, and exercise. Don't limit your intellectualism to a single ideology.

Disdain meaningless experiential pursuits and don't get entangled with romantic pursuits until as late as possible. Even where I live, hyper-focused Silicon Valley, people who do these things are very rare, so the world is basically just waiting for people like that to come along.

>> ^chilaxe:

1. Fairness:
How many people do you know who follow the path I described? Even here in Silicon Valley, people like that are rare, so the world is basically just waiting for people like that to come along.
I doubt most people are genetically incapable of following that path, if that's what you're suggesting.

Genetics isn't the only thing you inherit from your parents. You also get citizenship in the country they live in, you get raised and educated in their social and economic class, and you might also be able to take advantage of their network of business contacts. And that's not even mentioning the potential differences in parenting techniques and lessons they impart.

When I say "you think life is fair", I'm mostly saying that you seem to think we all have the same paths in front of us to choose from. We don't.

I had a lot of opportunities available to me that other kids from my neighborhood didn't, not because I'd done anything to earn them, but because my parents were well off.

I had a lot fewer opportunities available to me than my classmates at school, not because I hadn't earned them, but because I wasn't the child of the owner of a multinational corporation.
>> ^chilaxe:
2. Racism:
You could call me an intelligencist if you'd like... I believe immigration slots should be given to that portion of poor people who can, regardless of ethnicity, be statistically shown to have good odds of doing well in the US, both regarding themselves and their children born here.
Remember that it's liberals who believe in institutionalizing racism. Here in California, liberals are fed up with Asians contributing so much to society, so liberals are currently seeking to restore racist discrimination against Asians in universities.
California outlawed such racism in 1996, so schools like UC Berkeley and UC Irvine are almost majority Asian. Personally, I like 21st century societies, so I think Asian studiousness is good.

There's a pretty big difference between having a debate over what the most fair (i.e. non-racist) admissions policy would be -- policies that promote racial diversity, or policies that discount race altogether -- and what you were talking about.

We can accurately predict that billions spent on trying to close the achievement gap will never succeed. We can accurately predict that hyper-liberal Berkeley will always have the highest crime rates in the San Francisco bay area regardless of legislative policy because it's sandwiched between Oakland and Richmond, which have collected genomes that are bad at complex society.

We can know that it was probably a mistake for liberals to import 80 million permanently poor people from other countries between 1970-2010.

In that short little quote you asserted:

1. Some races can't be educated, no matter how much money we spend trying to educate them
   
2. Some races will always commit lots of crimes, and no amount of policy change will stop it
   
3. Some races will be "permanently poor", and no amount of economic opportunity will change that
   

That's more or less the soul of the Jim Crow style of politics. There are good races, for whom higher education spending, and economic opportunity will work, and there are bad races, for whom such things are a waste. Therefore, the logic goes, smart policy would be to reserve that spending and those opportunities only for the good races, since they're the only ones who could ever make use of it.

Oh, and keep an eye on your valuables whenever one of those bad races comes by. You never know about those people.

You sure that all people in that kind of world can determine their ultimate fates, purely through their own individual choices? Hasn't that been disproven by history time and time again?
>> ^chilaxe:
3. Human rights:
Yes. People are free to work for anything they want.


Really, that's the only one? Rather than open that can of worms, I'll just follow through with my original line of thought -- that's a right you think everyone should have, right?

Why? Why not abolish such liberal ideas as "equal rights", and tailor our legal system to the findings of your studies?

>> ^NinjaInHeat:

As much as I'm loving this rant, Louis is making some inconsistent arguments, especially regarding Apple. He starts by presenting Apple and Microsoft as the 'Tesla and Edison' of our age and saying how lucky we are to have escaped the clutches of Bill's inferior technology and his evil empire, then he goes on to rant about the state of online consumerism today and how we've abandoned certain ideals for the sake of comfort.
Honestly it just feels like ignorance on the subject on his part. In this argument he's making, if anything, the 'Microsoft' era would be the equivalent of the 'local businesses' and Apple would be the Starbucks. Not that I'm suggesting Microsoft is a small business, but from a consumer point of view - the rise of Apple is an exact example of the process he's describing, he even admits it by ranting about iTunes, how we all 'share' our likes, god-forbid we 'exist on the fringes'. Apple IS a big 'fuck you' to anything independent, it's the personification of the 'evil corporate empire' he's talking about. But they make a PC that looks nicer and an OS that works smoother, so fuck all that idealistic shit, let's just buy their products and welcome our new overlords in all things technology-related.
I honestly do not understand how Apple have generated this public image of excellence for themselves, a future in which these types of business practices are common-practice in silicon valley is a scary one...


To me it's not ignorance because he's obviously knowledgeable about the subject matter. The problem is this is a radio show and he's supposed to be off the cuff this isn't a prepared rant or anything like that it's stuff that's in his head rattling around and some of it may be a bit more polished than other parts.

If he say ordered his thoughts into a paper say or a talk and presented a case then it would be much more coherent. We can't expect everyone to be coherent especially when they're going off the trial from accepted dogma. If you tune into a political program and someone says "Iran is evil cause they are doing.." whatever, it's taken as read. Iran is evil, they're being accused of evil things blah blah blah don't need any more information it's accepted, mainstream thought. If however someone comes on and says something like Chomsky's quote "education is a system of imposed ignorance" that's a seriously against the grain statement...it seems to make no sense. You'd need a LOT of examples and well ordered explaination to break down the already ingrained beliefs.

So Louis CK maybe a bit all over the place...that's cause he's not giving a talk or presenting a paper. He's speaking off the cuff on a radio program and I think we can give him a pass because he's doing his job, being entertaining. He's not a professor he's a comedian.

>> ^NetRunner:

@chilaxe it seems to me that you do believe life is fair. Why you believe that is beyond me.
It also seems to me like you want to institutionalize racism again (and on pretty thin grounds at that).
I guess this begs the question, do you believe in fundamental human rights?


1. Fairness:

How many people do you know who follow the path I described? Even here in Silicon Valley, people like that are rare, so the world is basically just waiting for people like that to come along.

I doubt most people are genetically incapable of following that path, if that's what you're suggesting.



2. Racism:

You could call me an intelligencist if you'd like... I believe immigration slots should be given to that portion of poor people who can, regardless of ethnicity, be statistically shown to have good odds of doing well in the US, both regarding themselves and their children born here.

Remember that it's liberals who believe in institutionalizing racism. Here in California, liberals are fed up with Asians contributing so much to society, so liberals are currently seeking to restore racist discrimination against Asians in universities.

California outlawed such racism in 1996, so schools like UC Berkeley and UC Irvine are almost majority Asian. Personally, I like 21st century societies, so I think Asian studiousness is good.



3. Human rights:

Yes. People are free to work for anything they want.