I never liked him, I worked for Apple in the mid 90's and Apple is worse than Convergence, he rewarded people that worked 90+ hours a week and if one of them happen to doze off he would go into major rages and fire them publicly in front of everyone. He had major problem with anger in the office.

That movie pirates of silicon valley was dead on how Steve was in real life. It led to him being fired by the board but he did return of course and after his firing he cooled down a bit.

I worked there for 3 years and saw a couple of his major rage outbursts publicly firing several for not meeting a deadline, yelling, cursing and throwing his patented Steve fits.

Overall he was a nice guy, but I swear he was bipolar.

I left on my own when I had to move due to financial issues and wound up moving to easy coast and working for Mythic before they were bought by EA games then was part of the massive layoffs by EA.

EA is the real devil

>> ^chilaxe:

If being a decent human being is based on how much we contribute to humankind, the round-the-clock Silicon Valley work schedule I advocate makes me comfortable with that equation.
I don't see any way to argue that liberalism doesn't on average reduce career outcomes for its followers.
I'm open to changing my mind, though. If Rachael Maddow or TYT started devoting an entire 1% of their on-air-time to knowledge on how to build great careers (one of the most interesting areas of intellectualism), I'd applaud them.
>> ^NetRunner:
>> ^chilaxe:
Anyway, it still seems fair to say that if liberalism had successfully trained him to blame others for his problems and reject careerism, he would probably still be living in the impoverished environment of his youth.

You really should try to learn something about liberalism. Might make you into a better, almost decent, human being.



Being a decent human being, as far as I see it, is largely about empathy, sympathy, and compassion.

Saying "I work a job that I think is awesome" doesn't give you license to say "everyone who makes less than me is lazy and worthless". Decent people instinctively understand that.

Decent people have some basic sense of humility. They realize that while they have some control over whether they make the most of the opportunities they're given, they have very little control over the opportunities that get made available to them. In other words, life isn't fair.

You should know this, given how often you talk about how much genetics factors into people's successes in life. Nobody chose their genes. Nobody chose to be white or black. Nobody chose to be born a man or a woman. Nobody chose to be born in America or Afghanistan. Nobody chose to be born to rich parents or poor parents. Certainly nobody chose to be born into a society where their race, sex, or class is treated badly.

Now someone could choose the other way to look at life. They could say to themself that life is completely fair, and everyone who struggles with it is just inferior. They could resent any and all schemes designed to make helping those inferior people automatic -- they want to choose whether to help or not, emphasis on the not.

Now someone who thinks that way might also believe that the people who think the other way are ipso facto inferior. They might even proclaim, without a single shred of evidence, that having a more grounded view of reality is in fact some sort of detriment to their success.

But personally I think harboring such petty notions only serves to handicap you, in all aspects of life.

Pirates of Silicon Valley is a very interesting movie that offers a rounded portrait of Jobs as driven, visionary, and sometimes lacking perspective or empathy for the more petty aspects of fulfilling that vision. I think most highly successful people or large-scale leaders must be perceived that way by a certain portion of the people they encounter. You have to be a bit hard-nosed in order to think about the big picture.

Triumph of the Nerds gives more detail on the story in Pirates.

If being a decent human being is based on how much we contribute to humankind, the round-the-clock Silicon Valley work schedule I advocate makes me comfortable with that equation.

I don't see any way to argue that liberalism doesn't on average reduce career outcomes for its followers.

I'm open to changing my mind, though. If Rachael Maddow or TYT started devoting an entire 1% of their on-air-time to knowledge on how to build great careers (one of the most interesting areas of intellectualism), I'd applaud them.

>> ^NetRunner:

>> ^chilaxe:
Anyway, it still seems fair to say that if liberalism had successfully trained him to blame others for his problems and reject careerism, he would probably still be living in the impoverished environment of his youth.

You really should try to learn something about liberalism. Might make you into a better, almost decent, human being.

>> ^schlub:

Last I heard, it was called "programming", not "hacking", still, interesting


Here in Silicon Valley, I often see the terms used somewhat interchangeably.

It seems like a problem that Ron Paul is like 80 years old.

Since it's probably a safe bet that libertarians have the highest average IQ and net worth of the 3 major parties, why aren't there young, dynamic libertarian leaders on the national stage? For instance, here in Silicon Valley, we have young super-competitive hyper-intellectual libertarians like Peter Thiel.

Seems like the Libertarian Party should be grooming talented young libertarians (particularly women) for the national spotlight as part of their long-term strategy.

@marinara, friend, I'm not shouting

You are indeed against R&D. I am in high tech with many years, projects, and products under my belt. One thing I will tell you: even the best, well-thought-out ideas can fail. Risk is part and parcel of effective and innovative R&D. You want to take an example of one failure, and say we shouldn't have taken the risk. If the investors who put $1B into Solyndra shared that attitude, we'd never have a Silicon Valley.

http://alum.mit.edu/pages/sliceofmit/2011/09/01/manufacturing-a-recovery/
decline in high tech is due to lack of manufacturing and exports. Read above.

So, then you agree with me? This article is nothing if not a case for investing in Solyndra. Did you read the article? Hockfield makes a case that directly contradicts your main points. And she even points to examples of the US government subsidizing high tech companies.

Are $288 billion in tax cuts worth going into debt for?
What exactly does $275 billion in contracts, grants and loans buy?

If you go to the website, there are links which give a detailed account of what has been spent. To answer your first question, if the tax cuts can help to stimulate the economy, then they would be worth the debt.

You asked why this video was relevant. Well it is. After some lobbyist in our government gives out billions of dollars, all we have is some bad loans, and construction workers now on unemployment.

So this one example invalidates the stimulus? Then, if I can point to a success story will you change your mind?

Rather than cut into corporate profits making profits on exploited Chinese workers, we've build a lead zeppelin of an empty factory. Throwing money at a problem doesn't fix anything. Don't construe this to say that I'm against funding for R&D.



Why can't we both tax corporations that manufacture overseas and invest in innovative companies that manufacture here? The two are not mutually exclusive.

What kinds of problems do we solve in life outside of career? However we would describe those problems, they're all simplistic compared to solving complex professional problems, like writing a 30 page technical specifications document for an innovative product that's going to make people's lives better, or planning and executing a business strategy to outcompete our undeserving competitors.

In my experience, people who don't invest themselves in their professional lives are boring to talk to because their not really engaged with the world and they're not meaningfully challenged by life so they don't develop their human potential.
>> ^gorillaman:

There's far too little time in life to spend it on a career. When you're working you're not thinking.
I'm practically teetotal, in fact. I use drugs recreationally no more than once or twice a year. When I talk about pro-lifers instead of cops do you picture me laying around having abortions all the time?
In reply to this comment by chilaxe:

Expand your intellectual horizons
Where I live, in Silicon Valley, we work round the clock because we're doing good things for the world, getting excellent compensation in proportion to our contribution, and there are never enough talented 21st century workers to fill the job openings.
There's far too little time in life to do drugs or wish there was less law enforcement / more street crime.

There's far too little time in life to spend it on a career. When you're working you're not thinking.

I'm practically teetotal, in fact. I use drugs recreationally no more than once or twice a year. When I talk about pro-lifers instead of cops do you picture me laying around having abortions all the time?
In reply to this comment by chilaxe:

Expand your intellectual horizons

Where I live, in Silicon Valley, we work round the clock because we're doing good things for the world, getting excellent compensation in proportion to our contribution, and there are never enough talented 21st century workers to fill the job openings.

There's far too little time in life to do drugs or wish there was less law enforcement / more street crime.

@gorillaman


Expand your intellectual horizons

Where I live, in Silicon Valley, we work round the clock because we're doing good things for the world, getting excellent compensation in proportion to our contribution, and there are never enough talented 21st century workers to fill the job openings.

There's far too little time in life to do drugs or wish there was less law enforcement / more street crime.

@NetRunner

The 10% unemployment rate is a fiction... it doesn't include hidden unemployment that doesn't get counted in the official government statistics: people who want work but have stopped looking, and people who have part-time jobs but want full-time jobs. Also, people living off of disability payments soars during economic downturns because they tend to work when it's easy to find a job, but rely on the government when it's difficult to get a job.

In general, working to counter a fictional alien threat isn't as comparatively inefficient as it sounds, because our economy is already a fiction... many people have jobs that don't really need to be done, but we figure we might as well pay them for it anyway. For example, the US doesn't use labor-saving agricultural innovations that are used in other parts of the world because we have endless supplies of workers who can't easily be trained to do 21st century work.

In Silicon Valley, the unemployment rate is about as low as possible because the world can never have enough talented 21st century workers.

>> ^chilaxe:

I'm actually not in the corporate world but in Silicon Valley startups, which seems to me to be humankind's global capital for innovation. I think most people's dreams for what humankind can become will be possible, but only through technology.
Overall, it seems fair to say I'll probably contribute more than 100x to humankind than each of the experientialist friends I grew up with, who seek to follow their instincts for pleasure rather than reshape their instincts for productivity (contribution to humankind).


Setting aside the rather gross display of immodesty, you're making the pro-market argument that appeals most to a utilitarian like me -- it provides people incentives to channel their activities into work that is of benefit to everyone. The whole "invisible hand" argument.

My problem with that is that those incentives don't work, and are often too severe. Your "lazy liberal" friends still exist despite our largely Randian society (not to mention, I suspect they don't share your dim view of the state and quality of their life).

Markets provide much greater rewards to people who establish monopolies, defraud customers, and squeeze labor forces than it does to the professionals who develop the technologies that shape and reshape our world. It makes the concentration of wealth by any means necessary the highest cause of our society, and attempts to moralize all sorts of actions that would be considered grossly immoral in other contexts.

Like, say, soliciting young women to become prostitutes.

@longde @jwray @NetRunner

I'm actually not in the corporate world but in Silicon Valley startups, which seems to me to be humankind's global capital for innovation. I think most people's dreams for what humankind can become will be possible, but only through technology.

Overall, it seems fair to say I'll probably contribute more than 100x to humankind than each of the experientialist friends I grew up with, who seek to follow their instincts for pleasure rather than reshape their instincts for productivity (contribution to humankind).

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...

@messenger

One of the purposes of society is communication. Not having access to sophisticated culture because you don't speak the language needed for success is bad. (Doesn't it seem like being able to communicate with your boss would be useful? Why does that have to be pointed out?)

Many of humanity's capitals for intelligence, like Silicon Valley and Cambridge, Mass. speak English, and it's a professional disadvantage to not have good English skills.

Encouraging people to not assimilate into successful habits promotes decay because long-term low education levels, poverty, etc. are part of decay. Your self-caused decay doesn't personally affect me as much for the reasons stated in my previous comment, but I think it's good to want society to move closer to success rather than farther away.