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Comment by jerf | Hacker News Reader

I live in Michigan, but work for a company headquartered in the Valley and I've flown out there a few times for them. You might be used to it if you live there, but it is something worth seeing, trust me. Yes, there's even more than that, but just the seeing is itself a worthwhile endeavor. The mountains, the houses, the downtowns, the campuses, definitely worth seeing.

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I agree, but you're entirely missing progrium's point.

I think PG's emphasis on places like Skyline and 280 was trying to help compensate for the fact that a lot of people come here and stick close to highway 101, which leads them to think this is an ugly place. But in focusing so much on the landscape stuff, he left out some of the best people stuff.

And I daresay you're missing mine. Making a particular point doesn't obligate you to make any other particular point. It's OK to just talk about the stuff there is to see, and it doesn't incur an obligation to talk about the other "more important" stuff, even discounting the fundamental relativity of "more important". If you take such logic to its logical conclusion (which I really mean, as opposed to its illogical conclusion), one can never talk about anything except matters of immediate life and death.

Yes, you may have preferred that pg talk about something else, but it is sufficient and OK to talk about the things to see if he wishes to. (It's not just landscape, either, believe me. The "tour of Silicon Valley corporate campuses" was almost as interesting for me, if not moreso. I've done the tourist thing quite a bit all over the place, but that's not something you can do anywhere else.)

I can't be missing the point if I'm disagreeing with it, now can I? (And no, I don't think that defense applies to your post.)

Fair enough.

Um, but that's just seeing the Bay Area. Sure, that's worthwhile, but what about that makes it the Silicon Valley? The mountains, the houses, the downtowns -- those have very little to do with what Silicon Valley is.

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