Saaaaammmee
An actual genius would understand that they have expertise in certain things and not in others. Just because you're really smart when it comes to technology doesn't mean you have any expertise in unrelated fields.
To be fair, Musk never was a genius in tech, only in identifying businesses where he could profit off massive government subsidies. He couldn’t code or design his way out of a wet paper bag.
Absolutely. I’m not sure how often I’ve had to explain to stupid people that Muskrat DID NOT EVENT THE ELECTRIC CAR. He bought Tesla & our tax dollars underwrite all his misadventures.
He’s invented NOTHING. He just takes advantages of business loopholes & cosigns onto other’s new ideas!
Any moron, especially one with bags of money from his parents & no moral capacity, can push himself into a business & take it over & then steal others ideas & pitch them to the gov for handouts.
Moreover, there is no such thing as a business genius.
It’s like that 0.001% of the bacteria that are somehow resistant to the antibiotic. There’s just bound to be some that make it. The human version of that bacterium just gives itself credit for making it through the cracks
I respectfully disagree!
I created a general purpose AI. It can answer questions on all topics smartly.
Hence, by corollary, I must be a general purpose genius too!
Wait, you mean just because you're really good at coding doesn't mean you necessarily have a deep (or even shallow) philosophical insight on the human condition that is going to be heavily influenced by the wraith you're about to unleash on the planet, unchecked and untested? But you're arrogant..so
And the gatekeepers (journalists) *ahem* *ahem* who pretend to be a check on these monsters are actually all in bed with them until it's no longer societally acceptable *ahem* *present company *ahem* *name dropper* *ahem*
They are assholes who think they know everything. The most closed minded people I have ever worked with (20 years). When client describing their needs the programmers (not listening) are already writing code! They know better than the users what their needs are. Yes, that arrogant.
To a certain extent, it's an engineering culture thing. After an engineer solves problems related to a specific market or field of study, they may graduate to "subject matter expert." Their coworkers defer to their "subject expertise." That makes them feel good, and Dunning-Kruger goes into effect.
2/ Their true expertise is in how to apply technology to solve problems in the given market/field. The superficial knowledge about the rest of the subject gets inflated by DK.
So, yeah, the SV masters of the universe need to STFU.
Just so you know, we don't like them here in Silicon Valley either. Hell, they don't like them in their own companies.
Every single techbro is Obadiah Stane insisting that he's actually Tony Stark. How many people thought Stane's employees had fun in the first Iron Man movie?
You two fucks spent a decade gassing these assholes up first for your own access and gain and now that you’re at the end of the line to join the “maybe they’re bad?” club you want to act like a leader. Go walk into a lake, you shithead.
He has a BA in Physics. That's cursory, and not practicable knowledge in that field in any way. Shows how much conservatism really knows about the institutional vs practical reality of applying knowledge.
He just a has a bachelors. He’s never gone to grad school (almost certainly couldn’t hack it in a grad program). He has a 20 year olds understanding of the world which he’s never built on or expanded. He fundamentally lacks curiosity.
Is there something in human nature that makes power hungry individuals vulnerable to delusional, grandiose and flawed thoughts?
Trump the most flawed character for a position of responsibility and power. Untrustworthy, habitual liar, greed, delusional, lacks empathy, low intellectual capacity etc
This is so true. “I was lucky to be accepted at Harvard after the Dean from my elite boarding school and father’s investment banker both called the admissions office.”
“General-purpose genius” is a wonderful insult. I’d say we ended up here because we worship shareholder value and the tech kings have led the greatest increases there.
Man, me too! I am a highly experienced, nearly retired systems integrator with much of the skills that these DOGE people have and all I can say is based on what I have seen every one of these young fks would be fired by me if it were me running this show.
I980, the floor where we were coding was all women. Head of department was a woman. By 1988, when I left, there were few women, none in lead positions. They brought in the 'men'. I despise the word 'tech bros.'
Yes!!! This. Hidden Figures literally is about Black women, but the coders and mathematicians were women. White and Black. We got screwed by the education system promoting that men were "better" than we were. It was all a lie to give men with families jobs.
Me too.knowing how to hack a database doesn’t make you knowledgeable on title law, public education, congressional laws and its function. It makes you knowledgeable on how to obtain information, not how to use that information. It also does not create morality or empathy.
I’m mad these billionaire assholes ruined tech. What real problems have they solved in 20 years? Since the iPhone, it’s been a downward spiral into enshittification. I love tech and the internet, and I’m so disappointed by how Silicon Valley thinking wrecked such a creative, interesting space.
The internet was always massively subsidized by private investors. If the internet grew in a sustainable way it would have been a lot more mundane. On the flip side, AI makes it easier for startups to compete with the big tech firms. Investors want their profits, making big tech finally vulnerable.
I can only ask you to go back to S Jobs presentation of the Iphone. It had nothing to do with tech, it was all about the immaterial rights government had given tech"bros". Remember there has been legal battles to patent "candy bar" shape!
Silicon Valley used to be the genius creators, the Wozniaks, the Ted Dabneys, the Allen Alcorns, the Vint Cerfs, etc; before the Bill Gates/Steve Jobs types saw that they could exploit them for infinity profit.
Yep, I loved tech and my career in it, now I'm going to art school. Just like sending me to Bible camp didn't keep me from turning queer, running a whole sector like an authoritarian regime didn't inspire me to climb the ladder, just to jump off it.
I work in tech -- back from when it was still punks, weirdos, autists, and other assorted misfits just trying to build cool things to make people's lives better.
Then everything changed when the Patagonia Vest Army attacked...
It’s the same in every industry, really - once the “business” is taken over from the creators/makers by the “money men” it inevitably goes downhill (not for the money men, of course, just for everyone else)…
Except in SV, only Elmo genuinely comes close to having the elevated self-regard and sense of infallibility associated with the average Hollywood showrunner.
And he has a ways to go to match up with, say, Titanic era James Cameron.
Hallelujah! I’m glad people are finally coming around. I grew up in Silicon Valley and now live in San Francisco. They ruined my city and they are up to no good. They need to be shut down at all costs.
Well let me say that’s fantastic and me thinks we need to add to that list. Great start though. Can I check are you happy for this to be posted on other platforms crediting you? If yes which account handle do you want mentioned? Bluesky?
real genius knows its limits, and is humbled by those limits just as it finds pride in its gifts. those who perp like their genius alone gives them swiss army style clairvoyance is sitting on the ignorant side of the knowledge curve
Can anyone tell me what the last forty years of tech has really done for society, the world as a whole?
Yes, we got some fun toys like our handheld communicators but beyond that, what have they really produced that has changed the world for the better?
I am still waiting for my jet pack.
Not everyone from Silicon Valley is rich or like this…. Let’s not forget these greedy bastards weren’t from the Bay Area , they started their business here . Making it the most expensive place to live because tech jobs pay so much more than the median .
A massive exposé on these assholes is needed. Most of the general public don’t know anything about their ongoing fuckery or the twisted philosophy behind their agenda.
To get the full experience, wait until they start killing USA citizens in large numbers. It shouldn't be a long wait given that they have "disrupted" public health, environmental protection, emergency response, and put malevolent idiots in charge of national defence and security.
I think they may start Dogeing the population. We are going to cull the population by 5% but don't worry it will only be people who are criminals and don't contribute to society. Next day - so we made some mistakes. About 20% of the people we killed were good for society but we are learning.
Growing up in Cupertino in the 70s/80s, I remember when the founders were hippies. But I also remember the toxic culture brewing by the time I left the Valley in 2004 and the fucking bros who were coming to SD from the Valley by 2018ish.
Palo Alto is such a beautiful city. You can see it's old humble beginnings in the architecture that is slowly being replaced by soulless metal and wood boxes. Such a bummer.
The Silicon Valley fucks are bad, for sure, but it’s the spineless army of spines, ass-kissing, yes-men the fucks surround themselves with, who are the real weenies!!!
I like how they especially trashed many non-STEM majors for joining a "useless" field when the oceans of money Silicon Valley used to drown in back in 2010 was the only thing saving their asses from also having to deliver the fries /src
It's like they are beginning to figure out that you can't hook up 9 go pro cameras to a car and make it Full Self Driving, or that Musk will never make it to Mars.
No shit. Me too. I’m ready for some taxation retribution when common sense comes back to town. Bring back the Eisenhower tax rates. Watch America rock for real when that happens.
Microsoft is a tech company, google is a tech company. Apple is a tech company.
Confusing avaricious two bit opportunist bankers with tech companies is an offence to the language.
Still, Google's underlying technology like their search mechanisms, phones, android and so on are tech. Paypal and all the fallout from that crap is purely financial. These clowns are not tech: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PayPal_Mafia
maybe this is why these useless money masturbators are so desperate for their LLM predictive text machines to lead to AGI because if THAT'S not real, what does it say about THEM?
No, we just need to nationalize, er, tax their exorbitant wealth & build a broligarch-proof election system & fed govt.
Oh, and also rebuild our fed infrastructure, social safety net & overhaul our K12 education system.
But first, we need to convince the 70M apathetic non-voters that this matters.
Every democratic presidential administration since Carter has had to clean up the mess that a rethuglican left behind.
It's easy to take for granted when we're just regaining previous ground, but at least we're doing that.
The reforms after 2008 & covid relief in 2021 were invaluable.
Tax policy...
They didn't make the apps, any more than Bill Gates 'made' Micro$oft. They're low-level techs with 'certificates' earned in a couple of 5 hour classes. And they don't know that either COBOL or even EDLIN still exist - much less how to deal with UNIX.
Yes alot of them are geniuses in their field of expertise but most can hardly regular " human". They are surrounded by a bunch of people who never challenge them so they believe their own hype. Please stay in your lanes especially Elon I don't need to hear your dysfunctional take on everything
As a Valley vet I only encountered merit-based morons who lack basic people skills. Spreadsheet jockeys who live in a tight bubble and know zero about real leadership.
A lot of bad shit is going to happen but if one outcome of all of this is the idea any of these douchebags is remotely special it's a real genuine positive.
Of course it was possible to have never elevated them in the first place, as plenty of people were pointing out at the time. But nevertheless.
Me too! Bored rich boys club with such limited imagination, all they can come up with is wanting more and thinking they’d be great rulers of the world.
The general sense for these folks is that "data are data" and so if you know some data science you can analyze data without understanding the context of the data. That's what happens when you're pretentious moron and think data = information.
Same! I'm sick of my party as well who lost not just once, but TWICE to this fascist buffoon. Nothing will change until we overhaul our party and separate it from Big Money.
I worked for some of them over the years and this is a very apt description. They're geniuses at showboating and pretending they knew what "creativity" means, but other than that, they were only in it for the stock options.
Broadly, 1 might say they were lured to both by “tax benefits”+++, aka lured by greed/market place (blood for oil mentality) rather than a passion for advancing tech/science. For 30 yrs. + a concerted conservative effort to undermine the progress (subsequent wealth) of CA was/is operative.
Over 20 years Silicon Valley tech bros railed against regulation but really railed against regulation that threatened their dominant positions. That’s why MAGA appeals to them. It aligns with destroy others to maintain dominance.
The tech Bros always rally against de- regulation esp. now w/AI (ie. Altman/Andreeson) but there was a crucial moment when the blinders of greed/power went into hyper-mode as the sole motivator…little else matters, ie climate/people.
Many of them are actually very good at SOMETHING, and very knowledgeable about it. SOME of them recognize that this does not make them experts in every OTHER field, but some don't. I've met both kinds, and the self-declared "experts in everything" are annoying and DANGEROUS.
Thank you.I am very glad that they can make billions of dollars, but can they make forty thousand dollars stretch for a year. Seeing is how most of them started off wealthy. We will never know.I used to at least have respect for bezos.Till he decided to sell us all out.
Nice to hear this from someone else. Just 'cause you're good at math doesn't make one wise. The Jeenyus 5 y.o. is the prototype for kiddie ass-hats who think code is some kind of guide to Human Civilization. Civilization will disagree over time, and these spoiled children will learn at OUR expense.
The thing is nothing this generation of Silicon Valley “geniuses” has done comes remotely close to the impact of electricity or antibiotics or the microprocessor etc. It’s mostly been social interaction candy with some worthwhile b to c and b to b applications.
They have had a very significant impact. Not in the genius/human progress way, but in the ruin our society because of their insatiable greed way. We gave them that power for free.
I honestly think some of us didn’t realize how either overwhelmed or neurodivergent/disabled we were until all the conveniences of the internet compensated for the mental load. And by the time we figured it out, it was too late.
Tbf, I don’t think it’s our fault for needing help or getting it.
The Internet is not the problem. Being neurodivergent and needing extra support in a neurotypical world is not the problem. Most people use social media. The algorithms these companies use to monetize our attention & sell our data is the problem. The people in charge of the algorithms are at fault.
Agree, and I’ve noticed that in general popularity in one area seems to confer expertise in other areas. Maybe GOOGLE, wiki, and AI have contributed to these delusions. Frightening, nevertheless.😳😵💫
How about we all agree to stop creating revolutionary solutions to problems none of us knew we had. And just make hanging out together with each other a thing again...
Other fun things:
Stop measuring the success of a political campaign by how much money it raises.
Stop measuring a person's importance by their bank balance.
Comments
An actual genius would understand that they have expertise in certain things and not in others. Just because you're really smart when it comes to technology doesn't mean you have any expertise in unrelated fields.
He’s invented NOTHING. He just takes advantages of business loopholes & cosigns onto other’s new ideas!
Any moron, especially one with bags of money from his parents & no moral capacity, can push himself into a business & take it over & then steal others ideas & pitch them to the gov for handouts.
Moreover, there is no such thing as a business genius.
I created a general purpose AI. It can answer questions on all topics smartly.
Hence, by corollary, I must be a general purpose genius too!
So, yeah, the SV masters of the universe need to STFU.
Would be an excellent band name.
He's just figuring it out now?
Ooh, I like that. Gonna reuse
https://open.substack.com/pub/demodirge/p/new-deal-to-raw-deal?r=9gmmo&utm_medium=ios
When he pumped Dogecoin. That lead me to look into Tesla and their hiring practices and employee safety practices…
They are some really inept founders and execs from Silicon Valley
I knew ones who couldn’t do such basic things
Don’t get me started on the ones I had to explain basic import and export concepts to - and they got just as dumb VCs to fund them again and again
They understood so little it was embarrassing for the rest of the team
Of course half of them couldn’t do a document import or export either
Then the travel with them 😳
Every single techbro is Obadiah Stane insisting that he's actually Tony Stark. How many people thought Stane's employees had fun in the first Iron Man movie?
Josh isn't much better. I dunno what turned him *recently*, but these two going back and forth is nauseatingly hysterical.
I hate Issacson more tho.
A coprologist or scatologist then.
Trump the most flawed character for a position of responsibility and power. Untrustworthy, habitual liar, greed, delusional, lacks empathy, low intellectual capacity etc
Then everything changed when the Patagonia Vest Army attacked...
And he has a ways to go to match up with, say, Titanic era James Cameron.
The EU appear to be considering not enforcing US intellectual property rights within the EU. That means free Netflix etc. Bring it on!!
The fallout is going to be so interesting.
Genius
I had two Accenture newbies in my office at BCM in Houston and hand to God one of them said "you're going to have to spoon feed us on how to do this"
that's their currency.
I've been around the world a couple times before these kids have stop contemplating their navels
Pathetic.
Yes, we got some fun toys like our handheld communicators but beyond that, what have they really produced that has changed the world for the better?
I am still waiting for my jet pack.
PS: Former Demand Media here (and I was at eNom for years before). I loved your coverage - it was always fair and correct. Thank you.
“Learn to code?”
Yeah, learn to code indeed.
Where the fuck is he been?
ffs 🇺🇸
makes concerning names…
it’s just a clusterfuck mystery. always
https://youtu.be/GmJI6qIqURA?si=j_hTD_Iw1crFD8iY
Agree 💯
Confusing avaricious two bit opportunist bankers with tech companies is an offence to the language.
Who is going to rectify it now?
6:05 AM - The Independent :)
If we stop using their products maybe they'll go away?
https://fleximize.com/paypal-mafia/
Oh, and also rebuild our fed infrastructure, social safety net & overhaul our K12 education system.
But first, we need to convince the 70M apathetic non-voters that this matters.
I've never seen an election change a darned thing...sorry.
Who pays the taxes of billionaires?
Ask the Waltons (owners of Walmart) if they pay their taxes or if their customers do?
More will vote if there are options besides one genocidal maniac v. another.
It's easy to take for granted when we're just regaining previous ground, but at least we're doing that.
The reforms after 2008 & covid relief in 2021 were invaluable.
Tax policy...
Neo-libs/neo-con ZioNazis...
Obama bailed out Wall Street.
He took Bush's 2 illegal wars of aggression & started 5 new ones.
Trump and Biden's policies have led to the largest upward transfer of wealth in US history.
https://jacobin.com/2017/12/obama-foreclosure-crisis-wealth-inequality
Neither were Gammas. How did Trump get there?
They go from "Woo hoo, we're really doing this!" to "My shit don't stink" to "Christ and Einstein had a baby and I am HE!"
Might be a few who navigate with humility and grace, but not many
It's broader. Much.
A wild boys club.
Of course it was possible to have never elevated them in the first place, as plenty of people were pointing out at the time. But nevertheless.
I fled from SV to the Oregon coast during Covid and I have zero regrets for that.
https://youtu.be/IQHt-9ayIFA?si=IsgJziLS-0q3ZMoR
I code. I'm *really* good at it. The secret part is ...
it's not that hard.
rich kids who have never opened even command prompt in their lives seem to think they can write a hello world program and make six figures.
—Chuangtse
Tbf, I don’t think it’s our fault for needing help or getting it.
Stop measuring the success of a political campaign by how much money it raises.
Stop measuring a person's importance by their bank balance.