Discussion

@Tofu_Golem

We've talked about Cambridge Analytica before. People greatly exaggerated its effect. It was a convenient boogie man to try to justify how many many white Americans would vote for open racism and fascism.

The percent of white people that consistently choose the most racist candidates on the ballot, has not changed in 80+ years. There was no significant increase before, during or after the existence of Cambridge Analytica. 🤷🏿‍♂️

https://hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/115682148738502054

@JizzelEtBass

I'm disagreeing with both, and making the explicit point that "tech companies" is an unclear term that hides the real point. It's not tech companies.

Because most tech companies don't act like this. It's a tiny fraction of tech companies, that just so happen to overlap with the ones run by people that write papers and blog posts like "👴🏻I hate society, and my own employees, and my own children, and people I don't even know thousands of miles away in Africa, and also, you!🤡"

Most tech companies don't do this. Most are relatively normal.

Eg Mastodon is a tech company.

Every solo Indy game dev is a tech company.

Every self-employed software engineer is a tech company.

Etc.

The distinction is important, because this extends well beyond tech companies.

@mekkaokereke I guess the question for me is: do people become VCs because they’re genocidal maniacs, or do they become genocidal maniacs because they’re VCs? I tend to think it’s the latter: it seems like all that money somehow creates sociopathy. If that’s the case, I would say that there’s something evil about VC itself - it somehow structurally creates sociopaths. (I have no evidence here, this is just a thing I feel and might be very wrong.)

@mekkaokereke of course in the real world, the dead people are pretty much guaranteed and the 50x profit is a possibility rather than a guarantee.

The problem with the VCs you're talking about are that they don't see the former as a problem. Some have clearly stated that it would be a good thing. Just like the slave traders, Klan members and robber barons they're descended from (or for those born outside USA, the appropriate colonial structures in those countries).

@mekkaokereke i think it’s performative puritanism. Tech solves no problems… only my preferred purity does

@mekkaokereke
Agreed. Capitalism is just a tool, like a hammer. You can use it to build a house or hit someone over the head with it.

The problem is that those starting with the wealth were the slave owners, who effectively stole wealth from Black people (free slave labor is stolen income. It’s not free for the Black person).

They had a choice between feeling shit about themselves or dehumanising people so they don’t have to feel anything. You know what they chose and in doing so built the system where people like them would prosper.

As long as there is racism favoring whites anywhere, we (white people) have privilege regardless of wealth.

@mekkaokereke

There was a Dean Koontz book which had a plot revolving roughly around "Either someone you love or a random stranger has to die tomorrow: you choose which one."
So I know I'm not as nice a person as I like to pretend.
I think part of the problem is around the remoteness of consequences from actions. As a for instance, a number of people in the current US administration who view waging war as little more than a video game- the consequences don't impact them personally, therefore they don't matter.

All I'm saying is that if you believe that your problems are caused by:

"1) technologists, 2) that are genocidal maniacs, 3) and that allocate most of society's resources"

then maybe focus on the "genocidal maniac" part, or the "most of society's resources" part, before the technology part.