The "cracked coder" fetish: Epistemic arrogance in Silicon Valley

I miss the sensible, hilarious, considerate, chill hippies culture and people of the Valley I grew up with, the one's who didn't change or sell their souls.

Not the one who became rich, suits, Republican, and/or moved to Idaho.

Like my neighbor in San Jose who was a Danish-American who worked at Spectra-Physics and drove a brown, Wankel-powered RX-7. Or a friend's parents from high school who had 7' tall ornamental glass bongs. (Lol. There was more weed at my high (not pun intended) school than alcohol and cigs, but not much because of how straight-laced and over-achieving "Asian parents" pressured it was.)

Pre-internet, community and socializing also existed.

PS: I live as a blue dot in Texas hill country now having been priced out of where I grew up.

"most prominent non-testicular name"

Makes me doubt there's going to be a rational discussion of a Nobel prize syndrome

Is this the new way of issuing a cringe announcement for “rockstar” people

Hmm. I think the overarching theme of the article is sound. Although somewhat obvious, the idea that individuals who are exceptional in a narrow aspect of intelligence (ie. coding) can carry over their prowess to other fields is valuable to discuss, especially in the current context of Silicon Valley thought leader billionaires who believe they have the answer for all of societies issues. However the article quickly turned into a low-brow political hit piece which turned me off of it. Most egregious was the assertion that those who cut funding for aid are morally culpable for the deaths associated with said cuts, the absurdity of which should be immediately obvious to all readers as it implies that individuals are not only murderers for donating less to charity, they are also murderers for not donating the theoretical maximum. Some charities claim that it costs $3000 to save a life, so anybody with more than that in their savings is a de facto murderer if you follow this line of thinking to its logical conclusion. There were other moments where the author cheapened their article by resorting to cheap political shots but this was the most egregious.

And it's a shame because I think the article would have been much stronger if it stuck to it's original premise; There is an increasing tendency within the en majorité culture in Silicon Valley to dramatically overestimate one's own abilities (cracked, 10x, etc), especially outside their domain of expertise, and even more so with the rise of AI tools providing a facade of proficiency in completely different fields. I would imagine it not uncommon for an aspiring "cracked, 10x founder" straight out of school to find the legal domain of their venture non important, as they along with their superior intelligence and favoured AI model can do the job of a legal team - this kind of hubris appears to be taking over with parts of Silicon Valley and I do wish the article had been more focused and less political. Ah well.

The ideology of SV will only get more dangerous the more government contracting becomes ingratiated into the business models there. Extremely scary in our world of Palantir, Anduril, NSO group, etc.