
Silicon Valley Has an Empathy Vacuum - krsgoss
http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/silicon-valley-has-an-empathy-vacuum?intcid=mod-latest
======
atemerev
People had voted for Trump not because of lack of empathy, but because they
were fed up with being patronized, negged, treated like children, observed,
modeled and disempowered, belittled and generally discounted.

And this article is not helping it.

~~~
pmoriarty
And why were they patronized and treated like children again?

Oh, perhaps it was because they claimed Obama wasn't born in the US. Or
because they denied global warming. Or because they hate Mexicans and Muslims.

In short, because they bought in to the steaming pile of bullshit that is the
right wing media echo chamber.

When they think like children, talk like children, and act like children, they
shouldn't be surprised that they're treated like children.

~~~
teilo
What you fail to comprehend is that your contemptuous attitude is the _very_
thing that isn't working anymore. In fact, the more you crank up the rhetoric,
the more you will be ignored.

If this election has taught us anything, it is that if we continually scream
at and belittle adults, they will eventually ignore us. Every epithet, every
word of shame-speak will then fall on deaf ears. We will find ourselves in the
very position we placed them in: powerless and irrelevant.

You should be asking yourself: _Why_ was the birther and the racial element so
prominent during the Obama years? These things do not happen in a vacuum. They
have a root cause, and it is not, as you might conclude, because every Trump
voter is a racist, a bigot, or stupid. Think more deeply.

I might also add that by pigeon-holing the entire body who elected Trump into
the category of ignorant racist bigots, you are committing the very act of
stereo-typing you are decrying. You are discrediting yourself by accusing
people of things they know they are not guilty of, and reinforcing your own
irrelevance. If empathy is your concern, perhaps you should start with your
own.

~~~
pmoriarty
_" What you fail to comprehend is that your contemptuous attitude is the very
thing that isn't working anymore."_

You must be kidding me. What do you think Trump himself was doing? He is the
epitome of an obnoxious screaming asshole, and he won! His approach clearly
works.

It's a pity that the Democrats didn't have an anti-Trump on their side. Maybe
he could have been the kryptonite that cost Trump the election. As it was, the
old polite, wet rag politics that Clinton represented was defeated. (That's
not to say that I'd want an anti-Trump as President either, or that I like
screaming assholess, as long as they're on the left, but a more
confrontational, "tell it like it is" style is clearly what gets media
attention and is attractive to a lot of voters.)

In the future, the left needs to be more outspoken and confrontational towards
the right, not more compromising and conciliatory as Obama has been, because
the latter only leads towards moving the party further to the right.

Instead, the Democrats need to further differentiate themselves from the
Republicans, and move further to the left. Otherwise they're going to keep
being seen as Republican-lite, and few are going to get excited enough to vote
for them (rather merely than voting against an even worse Republican option).

Sadly, given how the Democrats have behaved in the past, it's more likely that
as a response to losing to Trump, the Democrats are just going to move even
further to the right, in an effort to capture the "independent" vote (who were
right-wing enough to vote for Trump this time around) instead of trying to win
over the many more people who didn't even bother to vote because they were
disillusioned with both the Republicans and Democrats.

~~~
teilo
You are making an essential error: that of false association. You are equating
the behavior of a candidate, and of the candidate's most vocal supporters,
with the general demeanor of the people who voted for him. If it were only the
vocal or even ardent Trump supporters who voted, he would have lost. He didn't
lose because the majority who voted for him were silent, in most cases brow-
beaten into silence.

You are also neglecting the fact that Trump won with only 1% more of the white
vote than Romney. This was not nearly enough to win. Trump won because of the
minority vote. Compared to Romney he won 8% more Latino votes, 7% more black
votes, 11% more Asian votes, and 1% other minorities. This statistic does much
to counteract the hysterical white resurgence rhetoric. (Source: NYT Exit
Polls).

------
adamnemecek
This Neo-Luddism feels really misplaced. Do you know why some people are
getting the short end of the stick? It's because the educational system has
failed them by wasting their youth and giving nothing in return. But I can't
blame a guy who founded a SV-centric blog to see all problems through a SV-
centric lens.

~~~
noir-york
> It's because the educational system has failed them by wasting their youth
> and giving nothing in return

Ah, the deserving poor!

Some never consider getting an education because it was not something to
aspire to, let alone spending enough time in the system to fail them.

Maybe these people are getting the short end of the stick not because they
were idle, but because their family were too busy working three jobs trying to
make ends meet, maybe because their mother wanted to read to her children but
was working some late to pay off medical bills, etc.

A strong welfare state and job security can break the cycle, but who is
willing to pay - in taxes - for that?

~~~
adamnemecek
> A strong welfare state and job security can break the cycle, but who is
> willing to pay - in taxes - for that?

Don't get me wrong, I fully agree. But I think that if I were to pick a single
element of a welfare state that can bootstrap the whole thing, I'd pick
education. It seems like a lot of the largest country growths were
bootstrapped by betting on the educational system (Finland, Singapore and
South Korea come to mind).

~~~
internaut
I really really disagree with this.

I think the evidence is against you. The economics research shows that the
'best returns' come from early education, with diminishing returns the further
progress is made.

It is counter intuitive I know, but mass education is similar to macro
economics. Helping everybody can help nobody.

South Korea and Japan put a lot of focus on education, work insane hours for
comparatively low pay, pay stupid rents and are also in a wage stagnation.

Put it like this:

You get to a middle income economy by doing 1 thing. You get to a high income
economy by doing another thing. It is unlikely getting to a very high income
economy is accomplished by replicating the former process that took you up a
step originally.

~~~
adamnemecek
> I think the evidence is against you. The economics research shows that the
> 'best returns' come from early education, with diminishing returns the
> further progress is made.

There isn't a single country where majority of the population does some sort
of research. And guess what, that's what people in the future will have to be
doing for their jobs.

> It is counter intuitive I know, but mass education is similar to macro
> economics. Helping everybody can help nobody.

You need a new system though. Fundamentally I think that one of the issues of
the system is a lack of exploration. Like there are so many areas where you
can go to extreme detail but people don't explore them because the educational
system limits your worldview by limiting your choices. I guess it does get
slightly better in college but not by much.

> South Korea and Japan put a lot of focus on education, work insane hours for
> comparatively low pay, pay stupid rents and are also in a wage stagnation.

I think that some of these issues are somewhat cultural though. To me it feels
like both SK and Japan still cling to old social structures to a detriment of
the society. The recent president Park scandal highlights quite a few of these
issues.

~~~
internaut
> that's what people in the future will have to be doing for their jobs.

We'll have to agree to disagree.

Most post-2008 grads today are living hand to mouth in the cities. They are
the new working poor. This isn't going to change. The market is saturated.

It is just that nobody wants to believe this. Not the teachers, not the
parents, not the students.

> Fundamentally I think that one of the issues of the system is a lack of
> exploration. Like there are so many areas where you can go to extreme detail
> but people don't explore them because the educational system limits your
> worldview by limiting your choices.

We certainly agree on that.

Interdisciplinary pollination is all but forgotten. There's a cheap source of
growth right there and few are picking up those dollar bills on the street.

If we lived in a world of economic growth (I'm convinced we're not, you see. I
think ex-computation there is no real growth in the developed world for a long
time) then we should see a flowering of new fields, new explorations, new
businesses. What the GDP statistics say is only tangentially connected to
reality.

The solution I would throw out is the use of AI, particularly agent based AI
capable of nudging researchers and regular people along interesting lines of
inquiry. I know that sounds vague but unless you think radical government
reform is possible (you know: the other half of the workforce that has never
seen genuine automation)... Almost any reform would probably spark a civil
war.

What solution would you put forward?

> I think that some of these issues are somewhat cultural though. To me it
> feels like both SK and Japan still cling to old social structures to a
> detriment of the society.

Maybe. Maybe they're caught in the same trap we are.

I think 'Japan' is our future unless we solve for X here. They've been caught
in a stagnation for decades. They don't have much social unrest, I doubt the
United States would be so lucky.

------
noir-york
On one hand you have increasing immigration increasing the supply of labour.
On the other hand, you have increasing automation reducing the demand for
labour. And in the pinched middle you have falling wages. This cannot end
well.

I don't know which is the most dangerous scenario: the working classes taking
it out on immigrants, or the working classes making common cause with
immigrant labour against a Victorian economy of squalor, ill-health and
poverty (which is good, but dangerous it had to get to this point) and turning
revolutionary. The latter is a failure of politics.

~~~
jmkni
Yeah I agree.

At the moment the anger felt by people who fear for their jobs seems to be
focused on immigration and free trade deals.

Immigration because people fear that somebody will come from another country
and take their job, for less money, free trade deals because people fear their
job will be outsourced to somebody cheaper in another country.

I believe this was a primary driver behind Brexit/Trump.

At some point these people will start to understand that it isn't just the
immigrants threatening their jobs, it is also the programmers at home who
automate them.

~~~
noir-york
> believe this was a primary driver behind Brexit/Trump.

Yep. The feeling of being forgotten, of not being in control of one's life.

> At some point these people will start to understand that it isn't just the
> immigrants threatening their jobs, it is also the programmers at home who
> automate them.

Exactly. And once that anger turns inward, it can tear society apart.

------
doubleunplussed
It's not a private company's job to have empathy for the people affected by
progress. Don't get me wrong, I have plenty of empathy. But petitioning
private companies to change their ways will get you exactly nowhere unless it
comes with a corresponding profit motive.

It's the government's job to redistribute wealth and income to the needy, and
provide safety nets and retraining opportunities for people whose industries
have been disrupted. Not Silicon Valley businesses.

~~~
illumin8
Right on. Silicon Valley may have an empathy vacuum/problem, but let's place
the blame for this problem where it really lies: government policy makers.
They are the ones that have watched globalization gut the middle class, while
sitting back and collecting their fat stock grants and salaries for sitting on
the board of the companies that are the beneficiaries of these policies.

We need universal basic income to soften the impact of the rise of automation
in the workforce. The problem is that the same people influencing government
to write policies that are clearly against the middle class also control the
media, and they seem to have just convinced a majority of US voters to vote
for a government that will create more income inequality by cutting taxes for
the wealthy.

In a masterful stroke, now the policy makers pulling the strings are using the
media to blame silicon valley for creating these problems. As if Facebook's
news feed is the sole cause of the decimation of the middle class that has
been happening for about 40 years now...

~~~
talideon
> We need universal basic income to soften the impact of the rise of
> automation in the workforce.

People need to feel useful. Universal basic income doesn't give that to people
by itself.

~~~
c0nducktr
True, but neither does a job.

~~~
talideon
With a job, at least you've an outside chance of feeling useful.

------
amelius
> However, when you are a data-driven oligarchy like Facebook, Google, Amazon,
> or Uber, you can’t really wash your hands of the impact of your algorithms
> and your ability to shape popular sentiment in our society. We are not just
> talking about the ability to influence voters with fake news. If you are
> Amazon, you have to acknowledge that you are slowly corroding the retail
> sector, which employs many people in this country. If you are Airbnb, no
> matter how well-meaning your focus on delighting travellers, you are also
> going to affect hotel-industry employment.

Yes, it is not fair if a small part of the population reaps all the benefits
of hundreds of years of progress, while the majority has to fear for losing
their jobs.

A lack of fairness means a lack of empathy.

~~~
hash-set
Is Amazon really corroding the retail sector or is brick and mortar largely
just obsolete?

~~~
apozem
Both. Amazon corrodes the power of brick and mortar by obsoleting it. Why go
to a store limited by shelf space when you can shop at one with essentially
infinite inventory?

------
internaut
Silicon Valley threatens the majority of blue collar workers last. This is
Moravec's Paradox. The kinds of jobs blue collar labour does flexibly and in
situ are extremely difficult for robots and AI to accomplish. The jobs that
are rote and can be performed in a centralized production _have already been
automated or outsourced to China!_

That is why blue collar workers are more worried about migration and
globalization than computing technology. The 'robots' that threaten their jobs
are other people.

It is the white collar jobs Silicon Valley is destroying. Journalists,
Accountants, Lawyers and many more to come.

Solution definitely isn't education, or at least not education as it is
classically understood.

Korea and Japan have already tried the education route and they have met
diminishing returns. Go there if you want insane working hours for low pay and
pointless competitions.

Here's a crazy idea.

Maybe young people should leave the universities and exit the cities
altogether. They could live in small communities in the countryside and be
ramen profitable. Integrating into the broader economy could be accomplished
by traveling to like-minded communities to avail of services there e.g. an
artist's colony, a computer person colony, etc

I think this is happening already but it's flying under the radar of
journalists as some kind of Timothy Leary move.

------
ocdtrekkie
There's a lot of clear failures of technology, especially coming out of
Silicon Valley, to mesh well with society which highlights how difficult these
companies have grasping real people and their emotions.

Security vs. privacy is the big one for me. Companies like Google try to treat
"privacy" like it's an ACL: You either make something private or public, and
if it's public, we can disseminate it. In reality, people do lots of things
publicly within a narrow scope of attention. I post stuff on roleplaying
websites which are publicly available to the Internet, but I wouldn't point
them out to the people I work with, and they'd never see them, normally. I
don't want Facebook or anyone else recommending them to my coworkers just
because I may have people from both of my social circles friended on Facebook.

With Silicon Valley companies hiring for "culture fit" over other
qualifications, they surround themselves with long hours with only people who
think like they do. Since a lot of people move to work in Silicon Valley,
they're likely more distant from siblings and parents than the average worker
as well. It's unsurprising folks have a difficult time understanding everyone
else's problems, because they experience them so little. I've long wished a
few Google designers would be forced to help some senior citizens figure out
how to use Gmail.

------
misiti3780
“Productivity is at record levels, innovation has never been faster, and yet
at the same time, we have a falling median income and we have fewer jobs.
People are falling behind because technology is advancing so fast and our
skills and organizations aren’t keeping up.” It is, he said, “the great
paradox of our era.”

While I believe this is true, and understand why it is a problem, I do not
think there is anything that can be done about it. Now that billions of people
are online, Moore's law has made hardware cheap and fast, and anyone can build
a piece of software with a chance of viral growth (if lucky), we have to
establish that we are in a winner-take-all environment. This is simply the
power law at work.

I would also say that we are without a doubt, in the early phases of this
period - going forward, any job that can be automated will be, eventually. If
my company can front the capital expenditures to build/buy a robot that can do
my job for $4/hour (with out lunch and coffee breaks) instead of $35/hour w/
benefits, my new salary should be $4/hour per basic economics of supply and
demand.

Is this a huge problem, absolutely. Is it going away - not a chance. The
writing is on the wall for a lot of repetitive tasks - the best thing everyone
can do is vote for people who want to improve education, starting and
elementary level in the US and push more kids in the STEM careers. If you want
to contribute on an individual level, consider tutoring / mentoring younger
kids in your free time. Show them that instead of pissing their entire
youthful lives away scrolling through the useless feeds that are facebook,
instagram and/or snapchat, they could actually build their own
facebook/snapchat.

~~~
douche
One of the things I think we forget about here, where most of us are smarter
than the average bear, is that there are a lot of people that aren't so smart.
If you have an 80 IQ, you might be able to learn how to code, but it's going
to be really hard and you're never going to be as good as somebody with more
mental resources to start with. My mother works as a special ed teacher - her
main concern is trying to get her kids reading and doing math within one or
two grade-levels of where they ought to be, and with a lot of effort and one-
on-one work, she sometimes succeeds. Some years, 25% of the entire grade will
be on her case-load.

A hundred years ago, these people could do pretty alright working on the farm.
Fifty years ago, they could do real well working in the mills. Today, they
struggle to subsist on WalMart and McDonald's wages. Already, we're automating
those jobs away.

~~~
misiti3780
I agree in spirit, but I think most people are capable of obtaining an STEM
degree (you're being too pessimistic). You just have to work a bit harder than
say you work for an art history degree (and you certainly come out of college
less well-rounded, which is also a huge problem).

There are always going to be good jobs that don't require college degrees.
Plumbers can make $100K a year if they're good and work hard. I'd rather be a
plumber making $100K any day then working for $25/bucks per hour trying to pay
off my $180K in student loans from a B+ list law school. (a lot of people are
in this position)

If you can get through law school, you can certainly get through any STEM
degree.

~~~
mercer
You're very optimistic. I suspect there are _tons_ of people who can not get
through law school _or_ get an art history degree!

I've spent quite a chunk of my life around people who are somewhere on the
lower half of the intelligence curve. I grew up in poor neighborhoods, and
attended a pentecostal church for much of my life (which at least over here
contains the full spectrum of 'classes', but skews working class).

Lots of these people just cannot handle the level of abstraction (or whatever
the thing is they need) to obtain even the easiest of college degrees.

On the other hand, I also learned that 'smart' is a very multi-dimensional
thing and from their perspective 'academic me' is a complete idiot in so many
ways. I'm just saying that the particular skills needed for (most of?) college
are skills that a lot of people don't have.

------
discordianfish
...as you see by the rank of such articles here on HN.

For real, I'm not saying SV is doing enough but taking SV as the prime example
of everything bad in capitalism has a weird touch as well..

~~~
Bartweiss
I realized we were doing another one of _those_ articles when I hit "Others
have decided that the real villains are Silicon Valley giants, especially
Twitter, Facebook, and Google, for spreading fake news stories that vilified
Clinton and helped elect an unpopular President."

That's not a Valley opinion, it's a traditional-media opinion. In my
experience, Facebook and SV types more generally are acutely aware of how
unhelpful and oversimplified the 'fake news' panic is. Facebook's "news"
sidebar sucks, sure, but they can't actually stop people from sharing crappy,
dishonest information back and forth. And the lines between fake and
misleading and simply uninformed are blurry - anything that stops fake news
will have people screaming censorship in a heartbeat.

This feels an awful lot like the usual gimmick of "SV is powerful, therefore
all societal problems should be solved by SV - even the ones we blame it for!"

------
whistlerbrk
I think it runs a bit deeper than "Silicon Valley" which makes for a nice
headline and is the new scape goat. My opinion:

1\. computer science has an ethics problem due to the lack of modernization of
and membership in professional societies like the ACM.

2\. Technology moves so fast that the ethical dilemmas created by it aren't
explored and debated quickly enough, nor are the long term impacts able to be
understood in time.

3\. We fail to learn from our history and our own writings. Seriously, science
fiction writers of the 60s and 70s have explored so many issues we grapple
with today in such incredible detail yet we haven't synthesized this beyond
Asimov's laws.

------
TulliusCicero
> If you are Amazon, you have to acknowledge that you are slowly corroding the
> retail sector, which employs many people in this country. If you are Airbnb,
> no matter how well-meaning your focus on delighting travellers, you are also
> going to affect hotel-industry employment.

> Otto, a Bay Area startup that was recently acquired by Uber, wants to
> automate trucking—and recently wrapped up a hundred-and-twenty-mile
> driverless delivery of fifty thousand cans of beer between Fort Collins and
> Colorado Springs. From a technological standpoint it was a jaw-dropping
> achievement, accompanied by predictions of improved highway safety. From the
> point of view of a truck driver with a mortgage and a kid in college, it was
> a devastating “oh, shit” moment. That one technical breakthrough puts nearly
> two million long-haul trucking jobs at risk.

Ok, and? What exactly do you expect these companies to do? Is it Otto's
responsibility to provide new jobs to all the displaced truck drivers? Or
should they just shut themselves down, letting all the benefits of self-
driving trucks come to naught?

> we need to learn about those who are threatened by it.

I don't see what the author expects to happen here. To the extent that people
get screwed over by the free market and we, as a society, want to do something
about that, that's clearly the government's job.

And if people vote for representatives that oppose stronger social safety
nets, as people literally just did a couple weeks ago(1), then apparently our
country -- not Silicon Valley, but the whole voting populace -- is not
interested in providing additional assistance to those hurt by technological
advancement.

1 - with the obvious caveat about the popular vote

~~~
throwaway729
Exactly. These are the same truck drivers who have overwhelmingly conservative
political views.

If they don't want to help themselves then I'll take the tax breaks and avoid
being affected by their self inflicted pain.

~~~
talmand
Maybe they view that "helping themselves" is stealing from their children's
future with unsustainable debt and taxes?

~~~
TulliusCicero
Helping people back on their feet, if anything, should result in a stronger
fiscal future, not a weaker one. Just letting people languish in unemployment
tends to result in people acquiring physical health problems, mental health
problems, even drug dependency. And then those people get stuck on the
disability rolls, draining taxes rather than contributing them.

Just look at all the stories around opioid abuse throughout rural white
areas/the rust belt; you think those places are setting us up for a stronger
fiscal situation in the future?

~~~
talmand
I would have to say I haven't seen anything from either party that would
address any of that, directly or indirectly. The problems you describe have
been ignored for years.

------
robbrown451
I don't see how the things he discusses have to do with empathy in Silicon
Valley. Driverless trucks, for instance, have nothing to do with empathy and a
lot to do with simple economics. Someone is going to build them if they can
make a buck doing it, and empathy isn't going to somehow stop that.

On the other hand, I do think companies like Facebook and Google and the news
sites (or whoever makes their comment systems) can do a lot about "the impact
of their algorithms and their ability to shape popular sentiment in our
society," as he alludes to in the article but fails to explore in any depth.

What if there were simply richer tools for users to rate things? For instance,
to tag a post as "+1 nuanced" or "-3 overly divisive" or "-2 unsupported by
evidence" or "-3 inappropriately political" or "-5 bigoted", and then have
algorithms (and user interfaces) that deal with this additional information in
ways that actually are effective while also being careful not to discourage
those who don't like getting downvoted? (e.g. only show downvotes to users a
month after they appear so the user is less likely to emotionally respond, but
still gets feedback as to why their microphone is getting the volume turned
down)

Then of course give users tools to control what they see....e.g. hide (or
suppress) divisive political content, etc.

There are any number of things that can be done to tone down the hateful
divisive rhetoric that pervades online social spaces, and lets the insightful,
nuanced content float to the top. Is anyone doing this? Are they even
experimenting with it? Are they so scared that users will run away if there
are too many options? (you know, you can always put them behind a "show all
ratings options" setting that by default is off)

This isn't censorship, this is just putting into place things that have in
place in the real world for millennia, but that disappear in naive approaches
to bringing conversations online. It won't be perfect initially, but it can at
least be a lot better.

~~~
talideon
> I don't see how the things he discusses have to do with empathy in Silicon
> Valley. Driverless trucks, for instance, have nothing to do with empathy and
> a lot to do with simple economics. Someone is going to build them if they
> can make a buck doing it, and empathy isn't going to somehow stop that.

But whether or not you consider what happens to the people who used to drive
those trucks and what they, their families, and their communities are going to
do when they no longer have work has everything to do with empathy.

~~~
robbrown451
Ok, tell me what good it is going to do to consider those things. Are you
suggesting that if we all collectively decide that building such things hurts
people, no one will build them? And that such an idea is remotely realistic?

~~~
mercer
Another option would be to commit to setting aside some of the profits for a
fund of some kind to address the externalities in whichever way seems most
effective at reducing the negative effects. I'm not saying I expect a company
to do this, but why can it not be considered an option?

~~~
rescripting
Because in a competitive marketplace the company that doesn't do that has an
edge over one that does.

I don't think it's Silicon Valley that lacks empathy, I think it's the system
that rewards profits and growth over anything else...

~~~
mercer
We're still humans within this system, and there are a number of examples of
companies that do things differently and stay in business.

To be clear, I agree with what you're saying as an _observation_ of how things
work much of the time. I also don't think Silicon Valley is any better or
worse than the rest of the 'system' (honestly I don't know).

But generally speaking I'm inclined to believe that 'this is just how things
are' is one of the main reason why things don't change. Things don't have to
be the way they are and it takes individuals working within (as well as
outside) the systems that are in place to change this.

------
lucio
If you are Edison ELC, you have to acknowledge that you are slowly corroding
the candle-making sector, which employs many people in this country.

------
ambivalence
> The streets of San Francisco—spiritually part of the Valley—feel less
> crowded. Coffee-shop conversations are hushed. Everything feels a little
> muted, an eerie quiet broken by chants of protesters. It even seems as if
> there are more parking spots.

Or maybe it was just Thanksgiving week?

------
blakecallens
This article is the embodiment of the South Park, San Francisco stereotype of
the guy enjoying the smell of his own farts.

The idea that they might be living in a bubble that is totally out of sync
with 95% of America (geographically speaking) is unfathomable to an elitist.

------
Tempest1981
Wow, I read this, and thought "hey, maybe there is an opportunity here...
another problem to solve, to make society better".

I'm a bit surprised by the amount of denial and "not my problem" comments (or
perhaps "what problem?" comments).

Yes, it's a very difficult problem -- maybe more on par with a Mars mission
than the next chat app. Was hoping to see more interest and ideas. I don't
think it's a sign of weakness to show empathy, or to advocate for the greater
good vs. greater efficiency. Or try for both.

------
lambdasquirrel
I'm just going to cut right through this from the start.

Unlike most of my tech friends, I actually have tried to reconnect outside our
privileged circles (and if you don't think that's what they are, you're
kidding yourself). And you know what I found? A lot of echoes of the personal
past.

Lets face it. A lot of techies — engineers specifically — are who they are
because they were socially rejected in younger years. And you know what? When
you try to reconnect with normal people, you will find that the whole
popularity complex never really ended. The difference now is that you are
economically on-top with all the abuses that that tempts.

Are you prepared to be othered and ostracized again? Because that's what's
going to likely to happen. But I think you will find that the ordinary people
have dignity too, and that there is validity to many other paths that don't go
through the worldview of science and technology. And yes, it will lend
credence to those "feels" things, like the Facebook timeline disaster
mentioned in the article.

Just don't expect any fairness or warm, loving reconciliation is all I'm
saying. This isn't some feel-good Hollywood movie. Don't expect as the hippies
say that we are all one people, veda-this, spirituality that, blah blah blah,
because we are quite frankly not.

But that doesn't diminish the importance of bridging the empathy gap,
especially if you want to design and build things for other people, including
yourselves.

~~~
noir-york
I was the first in my (working class) family to go to university, followed by
my younger siblings. We may not now move in the same circles as the other
children of the neighbours on our street, but we sure don't patronize them,
think them any less, or dismiss their and so many other people's genuine
concerns be it immigration, or crime, or job security. Unlike certain media
and others who claim to be left-wing in the outlook, but may as well be from a
different planet.

No one is asking anyone to hang out or connect with "normal" people, but we
can surely start with the generally valid assumption that most people act in
good faith and not dismissing anyone as being "deplorable" or any of the
-isms.

~~~
rhodri
> we sure don't patronize them, think them any less, or dismiss their and so
> many other people's genuine concerns be it immigration, or crime, or job
> security

great! perhaps you have been raised well and have managed to recover from
emotional trauma you may have experienced in life so far. some people
unfortunately have not been so lucky.

~~~
noir-york
Yes, we were lucky and raised well.

> have managed to recover from emotional trauma

????

~~~
rhodri
> you _may have_ experienced

no amount of good parenting can protect us from real badness

------
77pt77
> There will be a recognition that if we don’t have control of the nation
> state, we should reduce the nation state’s power over us

Does this mean he's defending separatism?

Am I reading this wrong?

------
Mao_Zedang
It is disgusting that this newyorker article is flagged. HN has really jumped
the shark, if this isnt on topic nothing is.

~~~
grzm
There's been a lot of that going around the past couple of months. You feel
pretty strongly about it. What makes this submission particularly on topic?
Note that even though it was flagged (but not killed), it's garnered 129
comments so far. Reviewing the discussion, what in particular do you find
substantive and civil about it? Why do you think users flagged this
submission?

------
TAForObvReasons
Not sure why the post title is different, article title is "SILICON VALLEY HAS
AN EMPATHY VACUUM"

~~~
krsgoss
Apologies, that was a mistake on my part when I submitted.

