"If Fentanyl was killing 60,000 Yale grads, instead of 60,000 working class people, we'd be dropping a nuclear bomb on whoever was sending it from South America," Karp said. "At Palantir, we are on the side of the average American who sometimes gets screwed because all the empathy goes to elite people, and none of it goes to the people actually dying on our streets. And that's why, when you have an open border, it means that the average poor American earns less."
Not quite there yet, are we?
The left is perfectly happy to burn money to save the environment, feed the poor, educate the stupid, whatever. The right has joined the money-burning party, pushing for deglobalization, propping up dying companies and industries, re-establishing industries that haven't been viable in a long time. Who still cares about profits? Surely investors do? No, not really, certainly not in tech. Investors will happily throw money at tech companies who never make a dime, as long as they are vaguely saying the right kinds of things, being attached to the right kinds of hypes, and fitting in with the right kinds of herd dynamics.
Generating or destroying money is not going to help or hurt anyone's career these days. Being on the currently-career-promoting side of the "woke" issue. Now there is something to take seriously.
The issue is that progressive-leftist ideology itself is rapidly changing as its adherents purity-spiral, but that's separate from what woke means.
No it isn't, and to say so is some hyper-polarized bullshit. For instance: if you were to call someone "woke" I'd be far more likely to picture a white person than anyone from a minority group.
Most HN posts about anything controversial are flagged to death until nobody can learn about a given topic
It’s by and for established tech VCs and the types of startups that get funded
In today’s political climate, HN is ultra-conservative in terms of what ideas are welcomed for discussion and that couldn’t be further from what hackers really stand for
I wonder if they’ll feel any guilt or responsibility when it all burns down for not letting hackers talk about things that very clearly need to be talked about.
zzzeek•4h ago
Despite growing up in these places, I had no idea about any of this - Black people, to me as a youngster, just seemed to be these people who all seemed to live in other neighborhoods and were seen in 1970's Long Island as people to be wary of. "Woke" to me meant, holy shit look how badly these people have been treated, no wonder things are this way.
So then WTF is "anti-woke"? is it the claim that none of that documented, well known systemic racism for decade after decade, after 300 years of slavery, actually matters and the real reason for racial disparities is genetics or something? I mean what else could that mean ?
marstall•4h ago
This guy is smart on so many levels but maybe needs to check himself out on this one.
testing22321•4h ago
Yes, exactly.
“Anti-woke” is racism, homophobia, misogyny and a whole lot more vile attitudes repackaged with newspeak.
Jonovono•4h ago
This is a better example: https://www.reddit.com/r/UBC/comments/197gid8/segregated_bla...
It’s weaponizing people emotions and instinct to want to “be a good person” to push policies that are actually harmful to the people they claim to care about.
All this to say I still think Karp is corny.
marstall•4h ago
JohnFen•4h ago
add-sub-mul-div•4h ago
It's the Current Thing you're intended to be mad at so that your attention won't be on other things.
hnuser123456•4h ago
bko•4h ago
Woke to me in the simplest sense if a form of extreme egalitarianism, collectivism with some blank-slatism.
Let's take your example: poor and Black people don't live on LI with equal representations based on other groups. Let's unpack that:
1. You have some definition of "Black" that's very broad. What does someone from Sub-Saharan Africa whose ancestors came here on a slave boat have to do with a 0 generation Nigerian immigrant who is significantly better off than the median American? Then you have the whole "Brown" category which is equally ham-fisted.
2. Ignoring any differences in group preference and autonomy. There could be no reason that the proportion of said group would be unequal in that area if not for some force outside of their control. You ask why aren't there enough of [group] in some extremely competitive professional field, but you don't work backwards. For instance, federal judges -> prestigious law school graduates -> prestigious undergrad graduates -> high school graduates -> parents in home. Woke ignores the chain and usually just jumps to the end result. Of course this is ignored in some domains. No one argues that prisons are overly harsh (lenient) on men (women) when it comes to criminal punishments relative to each other. Or why are there so many central / South Americans in MLB. It's uncritical.
3. Groups are the organizing force (collective guilt). [Oppressor] group did this to [oppressed group] so we need to change the balance of power of [oppressed group] in relation to [oppressed group], when in reality there are only individuals.
Overall, things are simplified to oppressed vs oppressor. It's an oversimplification and leads to bad things like shutting down accelerated math programs because we don't like the makeup of the student body
zzzeek•4h ago
bko•2h ago
I claimed that it's not the sole contributor. I don't think we have laws anymore that target one group over another. There are some that disproportionally impact certain groups, but that's my entire point. You can't look at the end result.
> genetic inferiority
I'm not very interested in genetic differences among groups, because I reject the whole "groups" thing all together. So why would I talk about it? But I guess if you do look at groups, cultural similarities are more obvious than genetic differences. And those are driving most of the differences IMO
> what was the Civil Rights movement about, exactly? What does "Colored" mean in this sign?
Correct, it was equally wrong to group people based on "Colored" back then as it is now. I'll also add that back then there was a lot less immigration so the group made slightly more sense (uniform), but it was still wrong.
cholantesh•3h ago
Man, HN is really bought in on treating subjective value judgements as universal laws.
testing22321•2h ago