https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36344205
Irony is, those in need of deprogramming the most are the ones into programming. How is it even possible that people that are supposed to be so intelligent/logical/rational are actually this gullible to state's propaganda that they believe it without a shred of doubt.
Partly inflated egos, partly being so well paid by the spoils looted from the imperial periphery that even if they do realize it's bullshit that they'll keep up the anticommunism to defend their treats.
I'm a programmer as well, but being good at your job does not mean your political ideas are better as a consequence. It just means you have the capacity for it, not that it's being used.
Also, programmers are paid better, so I'd imagine they would believe we live in a meritocracy and tend to ignore those below them (they don't know they exist).
I'm sure it's not just programmers who have this issue.
been reading hackernews for years, can say with no doubt they are utterly reactionary fascists generally, who have extremely inflated egos and genuinely believe in things like "value add", "market incentives", "CEOs aren't paid enough because their 'value add' is so high", "governance models", "technocracy", but the worst is their "debate" bro culture
everything is a debate, and it's their elevated minds who need to be convinced by the common poors of anything. they'll often question flippantly extremely basic concepts like whether quality of life is bad for poor people, whether black and or LGBT people are genuinely oppressed, but posture it as a debate and that they're just "curious" and "looking for evidence" when they prove in their first few sentences they haven't spent even 1 minute looking for evidence, or they'd already know
their average immense wealth (I would say hackernews readership is 100k+ typical income, and heavily biased towards the viewpoint of 500k+ job hoppers and multimillionaire tech "leaders") blinds them to everything that isn't a javascript framework
they genuinely believe they are the cutting edge of humanity and the only hope for leading the world towards full automation, good "governance" through decentralized or even literal feudal kingdom style arrangements, etc
i have nothing, nothing good to say about hackernews demographic. any time you see anything even remotely left wing or pro union let alone socialist or anything not in line with the US imperialist line, it's piled on by a bunch of fascists and downvoted or hidden
genuinely believe in things like “value add”, “market incentives”, “CEOs aren’t paid enough because their ‘value add’ is so high”, “governance models”, “technocracy”
UGGGGHHHHH, Don't get me started about the corporate culture devs are. I can't fucking believe I entered a field of so well-educated people with such strong blinders for non-capitalist ideas. The exception is open source coders, but it's getting more niche every day :(
but the worst is their “debate” bro culture
More UGH
their average immense wealth
Unfortunately I think this is the root cause of their capitalist mindsets. The system works out great for them. Why doesn't everyone just drop all hobbies/families/life and become 10x programmers????
The exception is open source coders, but it's getting more niche every day :(
Even the open source community tends to attract anarchists, libertarians, and fascists, both as users and developers, which can be attributed to the inclusive nature of open source technology. I find more FOSS advocates to hold socialist beliefs, especially in regards to protecting the freedoms of technology, including the the four essential freedoms from the GNU philosophy, digital media preservation, net neutrality, right to repair, and right to encryption. Those who especially care about owning the means of computing, passing code stewardship between developers and users, and realizing freedom through the collective are on the road towards socialism or are already there and beyond. Don't forget that 83% of Americans supported net neutrality, more than 7 in 10 Americans want national data privacy laws, and over 80% of Americans want the right to repair their own equipment and to have the resources and documentation provided by the manufacturer to either independent repair professionals or the product owners.
It should be noted that open source is not free alone, and it is only free if (but not solely if) code can be given to a user with sufficient documentation and is written to be well-structured to make it feasible and accessible to understand and modify while ensuring the code is freely distributed and contributed to without corporations snatching the code for their own benefit and giving nothing in return. A free license is just the nominal aspect of freedom, whereas helping the end-user reach autonomy and self-determination with their own tools is the substantive.
Learning about Linux for the first time led me down the path to being a free and open source software and hardware advocate. I became more politically active in regards to technology. After net neutrality was repealed, I realized that our current system does not work for the majority of the people, and I began researching alternative governments and economies. This led me down towards technocracies (specifically the movements that proposed socialist-leaning ideas), The Venus Project, and The Zeitgeist Movement, which eased my transition into socialism and communism a few years later. I am a "lower middle class" IT contractor even though I have a 2 year degree in Computer Information Systems, which is essentially Computer Science. I am currently aiming towards pursuing an Electrical Engineering degree since that is the degree I was originally trying to pursue, but I unfortunately had to dropout of college multiple times as I struggled to make ends meet and had a hard time managing my Autism/ADHD as an adult. I was able to complete my 2 year degree with flying colors since my mind was more developed, I acquired an affordable apartment, I had support from my SO (now wife), my tuition was completely paid for, and the degree was completely online. Unfortunately, it did not help me progress my career, but my mother said she is willing to invest in my education if she makes enough from her settlement for her permanent disability from Amazon, which is why I am fortunate enough to even consider going back to school.
My dream goal is to start a semiconductor manufacturing cooperative focused on developing a completely libre (likely to be licensed under AGPLv3) architecture (either using RISC-V or developing my own instruction set) designed for high performance motherboards and chipsets (and more). I want to ensure people have full sovereignty of their own devices from their hardware to their software, especially to help protect against surveillance of socialist movements and potentially revolutions. I also want to make my devices as modular as possible to be resistant against needless e-waste and to push actual innovation in the tech sector, which would hopefully make computers more affordable, interoperable, easily upgradeable, and longer-lasting to the general public. I also want the cooperative to start immediately with its own union to ensure redundancy in workers' protections and to hopefully expand the union into other businesses. I am also interested in quantum computing, and I would like to specialize in this field to provide quantum computing to the public to ensure people have access to, for example, quantum encryption to be resistant against data mining and surveillance. I also have thought about certain programs for my business, including a "bartering system" available to the public, where people can trade materials and equipment (for example, to help expand the facility) in exchange for my devices. This way I can help build and improve poor communities as well as be resistant towards relying on profits in a capitalist system and to avoid being acquired (which I absolutely will fight tooth and nail to prevent, even if it means the collapse of the business). I also want to provide other means for people to pursue a career within my business as well as improve digital literacy in the general public by creating educational programs made freely available. I don't know if there will be a revolution before or after I achieve this, but I am working towards this goal to help as many people as I can (I have recently started the process of becoming a member of the PSL as I have been wanting to be more active in the socialist movement in the meantime, especially if my goals never come to fruition, leaving my efforts wasted).
I apologize for going on a tangent. The point I was meaning to come to is to not lose hope. I once fell for right-wing ideologies, even during my gradual transition to becoming a Marxist-Leninist (I still need to read theory). Maybe being poor and neurodivergent made it easier for me to deconstruct the propaganda I was fed during my childhood, but I believe that making leaps and sacrifices and going into rabbit holes, such as my transition to being a FOSS user and advocate, then my transition to resource-based economies and learning about the atrocities of the US made to protect its inefficient, destructive, imperialist system and hegemony, and my transition towards communism (solidifying my understanding of the world gained from my previous transitions), helped me overcome years of indoctrination. Perhaps a similar path can help other confused techies become socialists, too.
Thank you for the thorough response! I'm sorry my response is going to be much shorter, I'm on a time crunch right now.
As someone who works in open source software myself, I agree with the problems you outlined above. And it's just hard to get away from the stranglehold of capitalism, even if we do work on FOSS.
No problem! I'm pretty busy myself, but I have a day off today, which is why I am able to make such a long response. I appreciate you took the time to comment. :) Solidarity forever, comrade!
Knowing how to solve problems doesn't make you a genius in politics.
See Von Neumann for example, he was a genius in math (this means he was very good in problem solving) but a total idiot in politics.
I know about Van Neumann architecture, but I'm unaware of his politics. Was he the early 20th century equivalent to a tech bro?
He was literally an Anti-Communist.
Von Neumann entered government service primarily because he felt that, if freedom and civilization were to survive, it would have to be because the United States would triumph over totalitarianism from Nazism, Fascism and Soviet Communism.[77] During a Senate committee hearing he described his political ideology as "violently anti-communist, and much more militaristic than the norm". He was quoted in 1950 remarking, "If you say why not bomb [the Soviets] tomorrow, I say, why not today? If you say today at five o'clock, I say why not one o'clock?"[391][392]
take it from a programmer, folks: knowing how to make computer do magic doesnt equate to general intelligence or automatically make one better at unrelated things like politics. computer shit is a skill like any other that just happens to have a (false) connotation of "high intelligence" whatever that means.
sorry fellow nerds, you aint special. read lenin.
Also a code monkey. Programming requires very little intelligence (not that intellugence is even real).
We are overpaid to produce useless shit that is overvalued under monopoly capitalism because software as a service is hyper efficient rent seeking. Because we make rich people so much money there is industrial level propaganda to make our work out to be some revolutionary science that will solve all of humanities problems.
Can't agree enough.
industrial level propaganda to make our work out to be some revolutionary science that will solve all of humanities problems.
It's such garbage. Not to mention just the corporate propaganda for other corporations. Not even 'solving humanities problems' but simply just 'how can we revolutionize some fucking bank so that they can fire more people and extract more wealth from the ones left?'. That's what passes for revolutionary in my works garbage view.
Intelligence and political awareness aren't correlated. Confrontation with politics in everyday life and political awareness are.
Maybe a hot take, but we really shouldn't be glorifying intelligence the way we do, it has a lot of resemblance to fascist ideology.
The spread in intelligence really isn't that wide. People without clinical impairments or other disorders can specialize in practically whatever field they like. It's primarily just a function of wealth and mental health. What distinguishes 'intelligent' people' from the less intelligent is that, for whatever reason, they have an edge in learning speed. That's it. They're not transcendental beings who somehow have more access to 'the truth' of the universe.
Of course, on the very rare occasion, there are people who excel at very specific tasks but even then that says nothing about their ability to do anything else.
I think intelligence is a completely bullshit concept. There is no such thing as being smarter than someone else.
I wouldn't go that far. Intelligence is still a physical phenomenon produced by highly complex and somewhat varied systems. There's going to be different levels of intelligence, like there are different levels of empathy, of strength, of immunity, and so on. Strong evidence would be needed to counter this. That doesn't mean people don't exaggerate these differences, look at them too uncritically, or misunderstand both what they are and their origins (which are mostly in child-rearing).
What is more likely bullshit is the concept of "general intelligence" or "G", which is basically an illusion of statistical question-begging that has been very useful to phrenologists and basically no one else.
Intelligence and political awareness aren’t correlated. Confrontation with politics in everyday life and political awareness are.
This makes so much sense. I came into software development after being poor, and that allowed me to insulate myself against some of the crap the lifelong developers buy into.
I grew up middle/upper class, but did not conform to capitalist ideas after high school (Went to college and got a psych degree, was super into science regardless of pay, graduated with no "marketable skills"), of course ended up poor. I went back to college for C.S (Which is lucky I even had that opportunity), bought into the capitalist mindset for awhile, and now I make good money. But that class consciousness (I just never had a term for it until about 6 months ago) never went away, and now that I've discovered what communism actually is, I feel stuck, surrounded by a culture I no longer respect.