Hacker News Reader

Comment by favflam | Hacker News Reader

I have an irrational hatred of someone who believes in "reality distortion fields". Over the last 10 years, I also have come away with an intense impression that Silicon Valley is full of the self-delusional type, as evidenced by Sara's book, Palantir's weird advertising and CEO, and the insane Nimbyism.

I believe it is in the best interest of the United States if the center of power shifts back from West Coast "tech bros" to the East coast. I and many others had enough of Silicon Valley.

Side note: I find it illuminating that one of the most popular social apps that birth social trends did not come from Silicon Valley, but China. I don't think Silicon Valley can drive social trends at all (anti-humanity types are too prevalent).

View on HN

> I have an irrational hatred of someone who believes in "reality distortion fields".

Can you clarify what you mean by "believes in"?

I believe Steve Jobs had a reality distortion field, that he was an expert convincer. Do you hate me or do you hate him or do you hate something else entirely?

That power, today, is expressed through technology, and these overlords hold their control via proprietary software and anticompetitive business practices.

To seize power back, you need to relinquish their shackles by using technology that is designed with user freedom in mind, not "lock-in", and support businesses constituted of that ethos.

We don't need to support business. We need to support political institutions that oppose proprietary software and support people's right to general purpose computing

It's exactly this over reliance on companies to shape society that got us in this mess

Free as in freedom!

> I believe it is in the best interest of the United States if the center of power shifts back from West Coast "tech bros" to the East coast.

Yes, because Wall Street is a paragon of ethical corporate behavior.

The fact that they're at least honest about what they care about (money) makes them far simpler to deal with than these entities (both private and public) that spin complex webs of half truths about how they're making the world better by implementing 1984.

> I believe it is in the best interest of the United States if the center of power shifts back from West Coast "tech bros" to the East coast

I'm not an American, never set foot in the US for that matter, but I'd say I'm pretty sympathetic to the people actually living there. All this to say that I've recently had the same realisation as you when it comes to West Coast people vs East Coast people, by this point the SV automatons are way, way outside of "normal life", maybe that has always been the case but for sure back in those days SV didn't have the same power as it has now (I'm not talking money, even though that is important, I'm talking actual power to have control over people's lives), not by a long shot.

Silicon Valley must be destroyed to save America. Gladly more are waking up to this. There’s been a surge on both the right and left in my state of people wanting to reject the place and it’s disgusting “culture”.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com