> people who are marginalized don't have the luxury of putting it down the list of their priorities
Yes they do. High income tech worker are not oppressed in any meaningful way. It’s just a coincidence that they look similar to people who have real problems.
I'm very confused as to what you mean. Are you saying it's not possible for people who get paid above a certain threshold to be bullied and harassed at work? I strongly disagree with that.
If people are telling you that they're leaving their job and salary because of those problems, then it probably is a big deal. Also, telling people who have voiced concerns to "just shut up" is not the way to foster healthy communication at work.
It’s a good thing when people leave for a place that suits them better. I would leave a team that made issues I don’t care about an important part of the job, but that doesn’t mean I think they’re doing anything wrong.
Telling employees there are other places they can go that are less hostile is still not a justification for having a hostile workplace. If everyone thought that way, nobody would ever tackle these problems. It's a mistake to try and equate this with some other technical choice, this is not the same as quitting a team because the boss wants to use C++ and you want to use Java.
> Basecamp should be a place where employees can come to work with colleagues of all backgrounds and political convictions without having to deal with heavy political or societal debates unconnected to that work.
I completely agree with this and it’s the kind of environment that I would prefer to work in.
That just isn’t true. Meeting a stranger, realizing you enjoy their company, trading contact info, deciding to spend “structured?” time together. This is most of my friendships and all of my relationships after university.
Only the first meeting has to be incidental. Expecting all future contact to be incidental is how you let all could-be friendships and relationships pass right through your fingers.
I met a very good friend of mine in line at a restaurant. I'd argue it all comes down to your mindset - I'm not even that extraverted. At least in the midwest this is incredibly doable and common.
I would say the lesson is can we stop trying to prove him correct. I am getting a bit sick of conspiracy theories going from "that's absurd" to "oh, hey, about that, uhmm, we are actually doing that".
Idiots are like Nostradamus because their incoherent ideas can cover a very large space of possibilities. Especially when steelmanning is taken too far and goalposts are allowed to slide from "this specific resturant is selling child sex slaves in their basement (when in reality it doesn't even have a basement because Washington DC is swampland)" to "my political opponents are all child molestors based upon a tortured redefining of innocous emails" to "child molestors exist!".
Lets be real here, Alex has made a lot of really specific allegations that turned out to be true : he's also said a lot of complete fucking nonsense, but he never "moves the goalpost" ie he doesnt make claim A and then when B turns out to be true he makes claim B. Rather he makes claims A B and C and then B turns out to be true.
Sounds trivial but it is not. He actuall has said a lot of shocking and true shit way before it was public knowledge : e.g. he's been talking about epstein since way before any mainstream media was.
Recently he has been saying that the government is using methods of intravenous dmt injections to talk to interdimensional aliens in order to obtain next gen technology. Inb4 that's true. (/s)
I think the idea is that financially secure people are more willing to speak their mind. Getting salary upfront means everyone has small scale “fuck you” money. The problem here is that most people don’t actually have a reason to care about their employer’s problems, so not speaking up is often just a strategy of least resistance.
> It's obvious: you have a cultural problem, and you can't change people... so have to replace people.
This makes no sense at all. The government exists to serve those people who are getting replaced, so if you fix their problems by replacing them then nothing has actually been solved. You’re putting the importance of the government and the region over the people which is backwards.
> Gamification will be rampant and will absorb people in to it.
When I see how much mundane grinding people are willing to do for video game rewards, it makes me wonder if status or cosmetics in a virtual world will ever be used in place of real compensation for work. Maybe as a gig economy thing? That would effectively give the world controllers the ability to create currency. Virtual economics are already huge and people work in them for fun.
There is so much abuse potential here. Psychologically, it has the potential to change what people are. They will be able to shape people as they see fit --just gamify to achieve whatever goal.
There is no need to confront all the blemishes and warts of actual reality when you can have a perfect universe customized to you pleasing all your psychological needs. Everyone can have their own reality they live in. You can live your life within VR. The more you live in VR, the less you need from actual reality. It's a perfect way to indoctrinate and manipulate people however you wish.
Anyone working on this should understand the consequences of their work down the road and get out and not contribute to this.
Imagine that Openwater.cc is successful, and we have the ability to extract and replay memories in full “lived experience” resolution. How many people might choose to spend their ~75 years “living” in the peak experiences of mankind rather than the mundane struggle of real life? Would that be a social paradigm we want to support, to allow?
You're still ultimately stating an intent to limit other people's freedom of thought and leisure "for their own good" - it's baked right into this idea.
If people choose to spend more time in the virtual then the physical, then that's a pretty good sign you've setup your society wrong and need to work on fixing that.
I don't think that's an apt conclusion. If you addict people to something psychologically it does not imply that thing is better than reality. You can get addicted mice to consume themselves to death via addition, is that better than whatever mouse reality is?
Conversely, an individual in an uncontacted tribe, do they miss out on this? Do they feel left out of anything modern? No. What about most people if they were dropped into an isolated tribe, how would they feel. Why so? Point is, you can deal with reality just fine, you don't need distraction. Distraction is a distraction from reality but is unnecessary and completely disconnects people from their selves.
Could we get a regular uncontacted tribesperson hooked on a VR future, you bet, even if they were living out their lives just fine before ---just as they could get addicted to hard drugs even if they did not need that before.
“ You're still ultimately stating an intent to limit other people's freedom of thought and leisure "for their own good" - it's baked right into this idea.”
Where does free will absolutism end? The tip of my nose. Truthfully, I couldn’t care less on an individual level, so the concern is not “their own good”. Such a system would be the ultimate drug. The concern is species level. For instance, physical reproduction would be a dim, depressing shadow compared to the heights of ecstasy the system can produce on tap. Better ramp up that robot womb research...
Yes they do. High income tech worker are not oppressed in any meaningful way. It’s just a coincidence that they look similar to people who have real problems.