Hacker News Reader

Comment by Der_Einzige | Hacker News Reader

Why should we expect "civic attachment" when nerds are literally hardcore bullied from the beginning in our media, in our schools, and now, they're starting getting bullied for being cerebral nerds by the bars of the one city that's supposed to be theirs.

I don't blame them tbh. Frankly, society should be very happy uniquely for the "nerds at the HF event" since those nerds are working very hard on open source and democratic AI, which is basically the only protection that the non nerds of SF have against the coming AI job apocalypse.

View on HN

> Why should we expect "civic attachment" when nerds are literally hardcore bullied from the beginning in our media, in our schools

You’re describing rich and powerful people. If someone with those resources can’t grow up, yes, it’s reasonable for others to dissociate from them.

What I’m describing is also uniquely San Franciscan. Tech workers in Berkeley, Oakland, Sunnyvale, Seattle, New York and overseas are civically engaged. They volunteer; join organisations, protests and campaigns; they run for office.

> the coming AI job apocalypse

It’s odd seeing AI embrace crypto’s language. Past revolutionaries for computers or nuclear power were motivated by the good they could do. They didn’t pat themselves on the back for riding a supposed pale horse. NLP has no more ability to bring an apocalypse than personal computers did, but it’s a call for regulation if this becomes mainstream.

Please don't do regional flamewar on HN. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

unlike sf, tech workers in pretty much every city you listed tend to actually live in those cities. hell, half the tech workers in sf live in berkeley, oakland, sunnyvale, or other bay area communities. when i was a tech worker in sf, i wasn't civically engaged in sf because i spent that budget in berkeley, where i actually lived.

I'm a hard core computer nerd and I'm from SF, grew up here. This is not the nerd city (although we have many fine nerds here!) It's the hippie city.

Anyway, we nerds help the normals despite their bullying and lack of respect because we are human beings and humane. It's not their fault they're stupid and ignorant, after all? And do we not enjoy pleasures and rewards beyond their understanding? It's not so bad, being a nerd.

- - - -

Did you watch "Avenue 5"? That scene where the folks are trying to leave the ship and the captain and chief engineer are trying to stop them... Wooo boy that was a horrifying scene, eh? But you can't just let them leave. You still have to help them as best you can, if only so you can live with yourself, eh?

Portland, Eugene or are hippy cities. SF isn't a hippy city anymore. The greatful dead went to Eugene OR ever year to "get away from it all" in SF.

> SF isn't a hippy city anymore.

Right, and that's my point: the old timers resent the new wave. The hippies didn't give us the city, we took it from them.

The argument that sways me (as an oldtimer who misses the way it was) is that this is the way of it here: The Ohlone were savagely fucked over by the Spanish, who in turn were run out by the Americans, then the Gold Rush folk gave way eventually to the Beatniks, who then yielded to the Hippies, who have now been displaced by tech bros. Seen from that perspective, we're actually making fantastic progress, in the sense that each wave is less violent than the last, eh?

It's not a society vs nerds thing. This is specific to SF and the SF tech scene and that scene's relationship to the rest of the community of SF.

> the one city that's supposed to be theirs

LOL. Since when?

SF existed in the 1850's. There was no such thing as a tech bro then.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com