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> “Who invented the computer?” A 20-year-old might say “Steve Jobs."

It may well be a complex question of who invented the computer. But I think it's safe to say that it was certainly not Steve Jobs.




Have you ever seen a young person's reaction to an Apple ][?

They say, "What is this?" as they try touching the screen. The older kids look for the mouse, but can't find it. When you show them a floppy, they are perplexed.


It's also safe to say that no one would give that answer to that question. I mean, I'm sure there are tons of people on the Internet who complain about other people thinking that, I just don't necessarily think those other people actually exist in meaningful numbers.

I've come to a similar opinion about people who see "SJWs" all around them. I see people complain about SJWs all the time, but the complaining seems to be about imaginary people who mainly exist as caricatures in their heads. I live in the Bay Area and I don't think I've seen anything resembling an SJW in the wild, aside from some isolated individual posting angry rants to Tumblr.


In SF I've witnessed, first hand, people accusing others of "cultural appropriation" which is about as silly as you can get. I only visit now and then though, so I don't know if a lot of people are like this or I just had an unlucky experience. But look at Github and their racist and sexist policies disguised under "social justice" (their words). It's safe to assume those people live there and actually believe those things.

Sure though, it might not be "all around them", unless they're at college.


Oh I don't deny any of those incidents or that such people exist and have been responsible for some bad things, but in my experience for every actual SJW stereotype that exists in the world, there are hundreds or thousands of very vocal people who dedicate utterly tremendous amounts of time, energy, and vitriol to public hand-wringing about such people.

Oddly enough, the people who put the most time and energy into publicly venting about racism and sexism practiced in the name of social justice don't seem to spend much of their remaining time fighting against other forms racism and sexism. Oddly enough, by some strange coincidence, the more likely someone is to point their finger at a conspiracy of SJWs for being a meaningful source of racism and sexism in the world, the less that same person seems to be concerned about racism and sexism in other forms.

To me it often comes across as little more than one group of people taking pleasure in hating on another (possibly imaginary) group of people, sort of like football rivalries for people who aren't into sports. Unlike football rivalries, it actually influences how the general population thinks about real world issues, which sucks, because voters need to have as much clarity as possible. Otherwise we end up doing things like naming Donald Trump as one of two options for one of the most powerful and influential political offices in the world.

Sorry HN, I fully deserve and accept downvotes for offtopic political ranting. This has just been a peeve of mine lately.




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