Next time he's in China maybe he should think about donating some money to a local union and see how free the speech is there. I'm no fan of the Bay Area but comparing to China freedom of speech is a bit weird.
And the government is at least sort of predictable, and is unlikely to make you disappear without any warnings. Social circles and careers can flip at a moments notice based on criteria no one is exactly sure of. A less than favorable opinion on any racial or sexual minority group or gender? A too favorable opinion on something sexual? Some comment regarding a woman's appearance? Support for a certain political party? Not thinking some individual woman/minority is amazing? Desiring the (il)legality of guns? Desiring the (il)legality of abortion? Other opinions on healthcare? Expressing a preference to (fe)males for some occupation? Acting on the belief it is okay to flirt in a workplace environment? Believing 'political correctness' is bad? Thinking human engineering is a good thing? Being for/opposed to the trans movement? Having some religion? Not having a religion?
You never know which one of these is capable of killing off your career/social group. In your average environment today, you really just can't tell which of them will set off the bomb. So you're silent on all.
It's a good thesis to try and prove.
How would you even fix this freedom? Somehow constrain people to not speak their mind when they disagree with you? Constraining them through government would obviously make us less free so that's out. Constraining them through culture is no different than what's already happening, it just makes people like Sam the winner instead of people who disagree with him. So again no freedom difference.
No, this is not quite as severe as being arrested and imprisoned for thinking the wrong things. But career-wise, at least, it can be almost as disastrous.
It surprises me that Sam didn't include instances like that in his essay; maybe he wanted to avoid specifics so his argument couldn't be attacked on an individual case level, but nonetheless.
Side note: Are there any other alternatives that take privacy as seriously as Apple?
You can't place the companies you buy from under too strict an ideological purity test, either in one direction or the other, or else you'll never be able to buy anything.
I recall Facebook arguing that Peter Thiel offered diversity to their board, and I don't think anyone was fired for it.. sadly, though, they're also arguably the most frightening behemoth when it comes to tracking users.
Eich was free to think whatever he wanted, and he spent many years doing exactly that. What he turned out not to be free to do was enforce certain ideals he held on others.
In the US, there is a long history of self-appointed leaders in moral and political panics shutting down dissent via social norms and pressure, with or without the blessing of a government institution.
That's why we have an appeal from Sam who is suggesting that people willingly open their minds to debating ideas and not demonizing the people espousing them.
This is a freedom that could be fixed only through the people's choice to acknowledge it and fix it.
Maybe, in Altman’s Panglossian view, house arrest is just an opportunity to think deeply about inconvenient truths.
Furthermore, what is he really ostracized from? He never makes that clear. His anecdote about " radical life extension" relies on literally the worst version of criticism of life extension, the kind you would get from the angriest and least informed type of person. It's a bad argument.
Furthermore his argument about Newton undermines itself. Newton hid his work on alchemy and it was uncovered after his death, because he'd have literally been imprisoned for it. That wouldn't happen if Musk tried to turn lead into gold today.
Again, the mention if Elon Musk is ridiculous, because plenty of people ridiculed SpaceX when he started it, but he push on anyway.
Sure, occasionally good ideas get shouted down throughout history by small minded reactionaries, especially slightly transgressive ones, but that's just the hurdle you have to cross to execute on brilliant ideas sometimes. This whole thing seemed extremely thin skinned and petulant to me, and I definitely have diminished respect for Sam after reading it.
And, if indeed he is correct and SF has entered a phase of reactionary response to new ideas, then that change hasn't happened in a vacuum.
Don't get me wrong. I don't agree with China's treatment of public protests, and think it's despicable. And I find that free speech in the US is one of the only things that we are right about when it comes to exceptionalism. It's maybe the last thing that is special about the US, and that's why I don't like attacks against it. Only a few weeks ago during "free speech week" at Berkeley and the South Carolina protests I had leftist friends and acquaintances advocate for limitations on speech, and violence towards those who use hate speech, despite the fact that the first amendment protects hate speech. It's ass backwards, and exactly what China's faux-leftist policies advocate. In any case, that is not the topic of this post, which is topics of daily conversation.
However, none of that changes the fact that Sam Altman is playing loose with some sloppy analogy. No one is stifling his speech.
I think it's pretty obviously the latter....
You say it's common to talk about weight or salary without people taking offense. Fair. On the other hand, in the US it's common to talk about the misdeeds of the President, express disagreement with the legislature, or question the government's policies. These are day to day conversations too. I don't think I've ever heard anything like that in China.