
Why Is Silicon Valley So Obsessed with the Virtue of Suffering? - wallflower
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/26/style/silicon-valley-stoics.html
======
nindalf
This article looks like an excuse to heap scorn on folks that the author (and
perhaps NYT generally) doesn't like.

* Kevin Rose, Jack Dorsey and a couple of others are into this subculture. From there the author makes the sweeping claim that "Silicon Valley" loves it. Sampling bias, much?

* "Rank-and-file tech workers frequently have more than one Stoic text on their bookshelves." [Citation needed].

* "Stoics believed that everything in the universe is already perfect and that things that seem bad or unjust are secretly good underneath. The philosophy is handy if you already believe that the rich are meant to be rich and the poor meant to be poor." Fuck no. Stoicism about personal responsibility, about changing what you can and accepting what you can't. Marcus Aurelius asks why _you_ think the world should be fair, he doesn't claim that it is fair.

A newspaper that publishes BS like this degrades itself.

~~~
magrimu
>Stoicism about personal responsibility, about changing what you can and
accepting what you can't.

Determining what you can and can't change is an (almost) impossible task on
its own. The way you describe Stoicism can be used to persuade a person that
their status is unchangeable and that it should be accepted as "part of
Nature's plan".

~~~
imgabe
>Determining what you can and can't change is an (almost) impossible task on
its own.

What? No it's not. You can't change the weather, you can't bring the dead back
to life, you can't force other people to think a certain way.

You can control your own thoughts and actions. These things seem very obvious
to me. What is difficult about this?

~~~
magrimu
>These things seem very obvious to me. What is difficult about this?

Clearly it's not that obvious, because all of your examples are wrong in some
sense. Weather can be changed, medically dead people are brought back to life
and people can most certainly be manipulated.

On the other hand, some people can't control their own thoughts and actions.

------
throwaway5752
This is actually an interesting article to me.

A lot of people are criticizing it here. There is a bit of condescension in
the tone of the criticism. It was not hard to search for the author
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nellie_Bowles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nellie_Bowles))
and find that she graduated magna cum laude from Columbia and was a Fulbright
Fellow. That certainly doesn't mean she's correct about anything, but I think
that casual dismissal of the article is a bit lazy.

On a personal basis, it seems worth looking at how certain intellectual trends
propagate through certain SV populations. Neotrophics/microdosing, Burning
Man, and Stoicism are examples off the top of my head. In particular, it feels
like the general point of the "Why are they attracted to Stoicism" section
isn't completely incorrect. It is definitely a topic worthy of a longer form
exploration.

~~~
joejerryronnie
> it seems worth looking at how certain intellectual trends propagate through
> certain SV populations.

Please keep in mind the SV populations sensationalized in articles such as
this represent maybe 1-2% of the people in SV. Everyone else is simply trying
to support their families and raise their kids the best they know how - pretty
much exactly what the rest of America does.

~~~
throwaway5752
I completely agree with you, and hope I didn't give an impression otherwise.

------
jasonhansel
It is worth noting that the Stoics in general were opposed to innovations in
technology. From Seneca, Letter 90: "Reason did indeed devise all these
things, but it was not right reason. It was man, but not the wise man, that
discovered them."

The early Stoics also opposed wealth inequality: they held that we should be
"like a flock feeding together with equal right in one common pasture."

Sources:
[https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Moral_letters_to_Lucilius/L...](https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Moral_letters_to_Lucilius/Letter_90)
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_(Zeno)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_\(Zeno\))

~~~
jasonhansel
Also: Cicero was not a Stoic, and did not claim to be one; in De Finibus book
4 he takes great pains to refute Stoic ethics.

------
hvs

      The philosophy is handy if you already believe that the rich are meant to be rich and the poor meant to be poor.
    

Wow. That's pretty succinct way to say you don't understand Stoicism at all.

~~~
fatbird
It's not an interpretation of stoicism, it's an observation about the
convenience of stoicism to a certain kind of self-interest--much like Reddit's
supposed commitment to freedom of speech also happens to be a much cheaper
option than thorough and effective site-wide moderation.

~~~
lutorm
Except stoicism doesn't say what the article claims it does, so maybe it's
about the convenience of a _corruption_ of stoicism.

Kind of how the "prosperity gospel" is a very convenient form of Christianity
to have if you're wealthy, even though it seems in opposition to the general
interpretation of the teachings of Jesus. You can't blame Jesus for people
thinking their wealth is sanctioned by God just because people adhere to the
prosperity gospel.

------
walkingolof
And from reading that article, it seems that they got it all wrong, its all
about virtue and your inner citadel, not about "bringing the pain"....

But if you want to really know what Stoicism is really about, here are some
links

An introduction, Stoicism 101:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seLLJP3H1FU&t=201s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seLLJP3H1FU&t=201s)

A pod cast
[https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations](https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations)

~~~
lutorm
The book by Irvine mentioned in the article is also pretty good, but it's
pretty clear the author didn't read it since it then proceeds with a complete
mischaracterization of what Stoicism is about.

------
robenkleene
Mark Greif (of n+1 fame) has addressed this in a slightly different context:

> Many of us try to justify our privileges by pretending that our superb
> tastes and intellect prove we deserve them, reflecting our inner
> superiority. Those below us economically, the reasoning goes, don’t
> appreciate what we do; similarly, they couldn’t fill our jobs, handle our
> wealth or survive our difficulties. Of course this is a terrible lie.[1]

[1]:
[https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/books/review/Greif-t.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/books/review/Greif-t.html)

~~~
MFLoon
That doesn't really sound anything like misdirected stoicism... that's just
being a garden variety asshole.

~~~
Pharmakon
There seems to be significant overlap between the two populations. SV “Stoics”
are not the most loveable or even tolerable folks, and it’s not a shock that
they draw a degree of scorn, mockery and ire. Where I think that reaction goes
wrong is that assigns to malice what is more properly explained by a
combination of cluelessness and a lack of social skills. Instead of blaming
the cogs who drank the Kool-Aid I wish people would direct their scorn to the
people pulling their strings.

Recognize it for what it is, a pseudo intellectual means of control for a
group that would be largely unmoved by more common religious, or social
structures. It’s also a coping mechanism for people working jobs they hate in
a place they can’t really afford, while surrounded by the lottery winners of
their field.

------
geoka9
> who likes to walk five miles to work each day

The author must really hate walking if she thinks it's an example of stoicism.

~~~
Mr_Shiba
I take 5 miles of walking over 5 minutes of traffic everyday.

~~~
alkonaut
If you have 8h of time to do work _including_ commute, like most parents with
kids in daycare, then taking long walks is a pretty big luxury. Unless you can
do work (calls etc) during the walk of course.

~~~
ip26
If you would otherwise take time for exercise at other points in the day,
you're actually saving time by walking :)

~~~
dwighttk
5 miles would take me 80 - 90 minutes walking... that's a lot of exercise
time. (I walk about 2 miles every day)

------
robertelder
I think the famous 'lorem ipsum' text (the English translation of it) is very
instructive on this topic (see Wikipedia for full translation):

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorem_ipsum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorem_ipsum)

~~~
robertelder
Might as well save you a click I guess:

[32] But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing of a
pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of
the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the
truth, the master-builder of human happiness. No one rejects, dislikes, or
avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not
know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are
extremely painful. Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires
to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but occasionally circumstances
occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a
trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise,
except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault
with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences,
or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?

[33] On the other hand, we denounce with righteous indignation and dislike men
who are so beguiled and demoralized by the charms of pleasure of the moment,
so blinded by desire, that they cannot foresee the pain and trouble that are
bound to ensue; and equal blame belongs to those who fail in their duty
through weakness of will, which is the same as saying through shrinking from
toil and pain. These cases are perfectly simple and easy to distinguish. In a
free hour, when our power of choice is untrammeled and when nothing prevents
our being able to do what we like best, every pleasure is to be welcomed and
every pain avoided. But in certain circumstances and owing to the claims of
duty or the obligations of business it will frequently occur that pleasures
have to be repudiated and annoyances accepted. The wise man therefore always
holds in these matters to this principle of selection: he rejects pleasures to
secure other greater pleasures, or else he endures pains to avoid worse.

------
onemoresoop
"The Cicero Institute promises to fight for the business opportunities of
entrepreneurs by focusing on deregulation, with special attention paid to
making it easier to build start-ups around prisons, health care and education.
Mr. Lonsdale proposes that “private prison contracts tie financial incentives
to performance measures,” for instance."

------
floatingatoll
The article misses a key reason why Silicon Valley tech industry leaders would
become Stoics: to learn to live with the misery their wealth is built upon.

Many, if not most, Silicon Valley innovations over the past ten years have led
directly to human suffering and misery. Facebook has inflicted widespread
psychological damage to humanity's self-worth. Loot boxes introduced gambling
to young children. YouTube recommendations promote racist and fascist content
to adults and machine-generated content to children.

I don't agree that this is a correct implementation of Stoicism, but from the
decade I lived in SFbay, the following accurately models how I have seen many
tech founders warp Stoicism into a way to avoid confronting their immoral
behavior:

Step 1: Have an idea that's profitable, at the cost of inflicting suffering on
others.

Step 2: Inflict that suffering, while twisting Stoicism to make "suffering"
seem a virtue.

Step 3: Profit from the results of your now-virtuous efforts, free of moral
consequences from the 'virtue' you inflicted.

~~~
FabHK
As you state (I believe), that's not what Stoicism is about - it does not
advocate to impose suffering on others. (It does suggest to voluntary undergo
deprivations occasionally to reset the hedonistic treadmill: Seneca is said to
have slept on the floor every now and then, to appreciate the bed afterwards.)

Interesting theory though, that a simplistic caricature of Stoicism is invoked
to justify immoral behaviour. Pity the article didn't seriously investigate
that.

~~~
notfromhere
the stoicism of marcus aurelius is about personal responsibility and accepting
what you can't change, which seems a handy ideology to push so that people
don't try to affect change.

~~~
floatingatoll
"I can't change the outcome of self-worth destruction from my billion-dollar
idea, so I'll just have to learn to accept what I can't change."

As opposed to:

"I should try to change the outcome of self-worth destruction from my billion-
dollar idea, even if I think I can't or it might cost me my wealth."

Again, I am not saying that this is Stoicism. This is the misuse of Stoic
principles, by declaring that wealth-generating activities as "things that
can't change" and then applying Stoicism to bear the burden of the resulting
harm that they "can't change".

------
astine
_“As Rome took over, it surged in popularity because it was the one system of
ethics that worked well for the rich and powerful.”_

Is this really true? Were Epicureanism or middle Platonism really adverse to
being wealthy and powerful? I haven't gotten that impression.

~~~
j-c-hewitt
Uh... Rome did not conquer Europe by being gathering a lot of Facebook Likes.
It did it by defeating the surrounding tribes, kingdoms, and rival empires.
The Legions imposed Roman law and encouraged the adoption of Roman culture and
ethics. Popularity did not have all that much to do with it.

NYT reading level keeps plummeting every year to new bottoms.

~~~
adrianratnapala
The claim is not that Roman ethics was spread through popularity with the
rich. The claim is that one particular strand of ethics within Roman culture
did so.

That said, I am not sure that Stoicism was particularly rich-friendly, nor
that it was necessarily more successful than its competitors.

------
CalChris
I'm skeptical about this Cicero Institute. Palantir, Niall Ferguson, private
prison contracts, ...? It strikes me as west coast version of the Cato
Institute. Also, I also don't think of Cicero as any sort of _stoic_. He was a
lawyer, a politician and a republican. He certainly _used_ stoicism in his
orations from time to time but only out of convenience in the way an American
politician might appeal to our 'rugged individualism'.

------
rhacker
All of this stuff is related - from open source - stoic, to google - do no
evil to Apple - we won't compromise privacy even for murderers because hey
rights.

I do feel like the walls are starting to fall. The friendly attitude is
dropping and we're starting to see through the fake promises and platitudes.

We have startups that claim they are housing the poor or cleaning drinking
water for people in Africa, and time and again someone investigates the truth
and things fall apart. In the end we find out those were all sales tactics.
Maybe even believed by the people selling them, but in the end it HAS to
somewhat fit into some exact money making puzzle. It doesn't matter if the
REST of the corporation they are building is robotizing jobs and getting rid
of employees (hey they are freeing the burdens of people - who cares if they
can't afford the house anymore).

Then comes in Basic Income. And there is no effort from Google or Facebook to
foot the bill either - they're merely doing the cheap thing - lobbying - to
have our taxes pay for it. These are all showmanship efforts to justify the
rest.

What is worse is that each of these companies is like a magnet with Good [ ---
] Bad poles. ALL of the Bad on the right is justified by some platitude
connected to the Good. The goal is to simply hide the bad.

So if stoicism is part of all of it, I think that's just another self-lie. I
do think that people are good, in general, but in modern society we have made
justification part of the mental process. The first step in creating your
company is to convince yourself that you're doing good. Then you can turn on
the steam roller.

I guess see also:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19492813](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19492813)

------
pmoriarty
The article claims that:

 _" Stoics believed that everything in the universe is already perfect and
that things that seem bad or unjust are secretly good underneath. The
philosophy is handy if you already believe that the rich are meant to be rich
and the poor meant to be poor."_

But here are some of the things Seneca, one of the greatest of Stoics, said on
the matter of wealth:

 _" Would you rather have much, or enough? He who has much desires more - a
proof that he has not yet acquired enough; but he who has enough has attained
that which never fell to the rich man's lot - a stopping-point."_

 _" Money never made a man rich; on the contrary, it always smites men with a
greater craving for itself."_

 _" we must spurn wealth: wealth is the diploma of slavery"_

 _" Why of your own accord postpone your real life to the distant future?
Shall you wait for some interest to fall due, or for some income on your
merchandise, or for a place in the will of some wealthy old man, when you can
be rich here and now. Wisdom offers wealth in ready money, and pays it over to
those in whose eyes she has made wealth superfluous."_

 _" It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is
poor."_

 _" What does it matter how much a man has laid up in his safe, or in his
warehouse, how large are his flocks and how fat his dividends, if he covets
his neighbour's property, and reckons, not his past gains, but his hopes of
gains to come? Do you ask what is the proper limit to wealth? It is, first, to
have what is necessary, and, second, to have what is enough."_

Quoting Epicurus:

 _" Whoever does not regard what he has as most ample wealth, is unhappy,
though he be master of the whole world."_

------
brians
The quoted Dr. Palmer’s novels caricature a far future SV ethos well. Start
with _Too Like the Lightning_ and believe the narrator when he tells you he’s
a bad dude.

------
tqi
Seems at odds with the stereotype of SV companies having to court their
employees with an endless supply free food and cushy perks.

Though I suppose "Why [is this non-representative subset of] Silicon Valley So
Obsessed with the Virtue of Suffering?" is less catchy.

------
anigbrowl
A culture of occupational martyrdom makes it much easier to build a pyramid.
People are rushing to supply correct definitions of stoicism but oddly those
stoic sentiments rarely appear discussions about IPOs and how to be a
billionaire.

~~~
darkpuma
I don't know what it's like to be you, but IPOs and being a billionaire are
well outside my sphere of experience.

~~~
anigbrowl
You'll see plenty of conversations on the topic here if you hang out long
enough. I'm not a billionaire either so I have to store my cash in a swimming
pool like everyone else.

------
mbrodersen
The # of people who don't understand Stoicism but think they do clearly
outnumber the # of people who actually know what they are talking about.
Beginner mistake #1 is to think that Stoicism is about accepting suffering. It
is the complete opposite. The key idea is to focus 100% on what you can
change. And not waste _any_ energy on things you can't change. You can think
about it as optimizing the value generated of the limited time/cycles you have
to impact things.

------
LifeLiverTransp
Everytime stoicism comes up, im reminded of the seneca reading cyborg in the
"Last of his kind" from andreas eschbach. Its a fantastic view on the space
age dream crippling a human beeing and the recovering of its dignity and will
to live through stoicism.

Stoicism- is to have the dignity of not beeing a slave of ones own emotions,
in happiness as in suffering.

------
qmanjamz
What a ridiculous, terrible article. To describe silicon valley as being
obsessed with the virtue of suffering is just an outright lie.

------
toddh
Other people's suffering OK. For any of our suffering we immediately make an
app to relieve it.

~~~
darkpuma
Does seeing other people suffer cause you to suffer? Probably, right? Unless
you're some sort of psychopath who has no capacity for empathy. Therefore a
stoic is encouraged to alleviate the suffering of others, when it's possible.

The idea that stoicism calls on people to ignore all the social wrongs of the
world is a malignment of the philosophy. It's not fatalistic, nor is it
isolationist. Somebody who is a stoic acts to improve the world when it's
possible.

------
hellllllllooo
This goes hand in hand with the culture of "anyone can do anything as long as
the have an idea and are willing to work hard" culture of silicon valley.
Experience in an area definitely reduces the suffering because you have a
better idea where the problems are and know where to most effectivly apply
effort.

------
return0
maybe because if they were epicureans they wouldn't be successful in a
competitive environment. and its not like stoicism makes suffering a virtue
(but maybe makes pleasure a guilt)

------
munificent
I think many of the commenters in this thread doth protest too much.

I do think there is something to the article. What do you do when you've been
raised with progressive liberal values that rail against inequality but then
find yourself wildly rich? How do you feel good about yourself while knowing
you have access to power and privilege almost no one else does?

One option is to plow a lot of that money back into programs to help increase
the prosperity of everyone. But then you end up poorer and who wants that?

A simpler approach is to find some symbolic hair shirt you can wear, a little
token suffering, as a way to assuage your guilt without making any real
sacrifices. Of course, the irony is that the only reason these people do any
of this "opt-in suffering" is because they are secure in the knowledge that
they can stop it whenever they want.

Dorsey's contemplative long walk is a lot less fun when it's your only way to
get to work, and Rose's cold shower loses some of its charm when it's because
the power's been cut off.

~~~
darkpuma
The problem is what you're describing has more in common with Catholicism
(particularly penances) than it does with Stoicism. The article is poorly
argued. For instance, the article provides no real evidence that Dorsy gives a
shit about Stoicism, and provides no real evidence that a few anecdotes of
penance-like behavior is a trend, let alone has any causal link to a perceived
trend of Stoicism.

Other HN commenters have suggested that the discrepancies between the
behaviors described in the article and Stoicism are the result of techies
corrupting Stoicism, but I think an alternative hypothesis should be
considered: that the author has corrupted Stoicism in order to create a
palatable narrative.

~~~
munificent
For what it's worth, I've seen Stoicism mentioned on HN way more than any
other philosophy, except possibly libertarianism. The most frequently
mentioned philosophy book is definitely Meditations.

I don't think the author is off-base for claiming it's a thing in SV.

------
youeseh
I really wish the New York Times would stick to news reporting.

~~~
endorphone
Given that they've always had lifestyle, arts, food, fashion and other
writings under their umbrella, I'm going to guess that you're not a patron and
your spurious opinion isn't relevant to them.

------
perfmode
See Weber’s Protestant Work Ethic

