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161 sats \ 38 replies \ @Undisciplined 25 Jun \ on: Are software engineers more likely to be socialist? AskSN
Fits with my experience. I think it’s from thinking they’re smarter than everyone else and being completely oblivious to Mises’ Socialist Calculation Problem.
So you think it comes from a place of thinking that society just needs to be engineered by smart people and then we'd all be happy
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Yep, it’s just run of the mill technocracy, which they’re basically unaware has failed repeatedly already or they think it failed because the “right” people were never in charge.
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I think you are basically right....but as a Gen-Xer who has been in tech since the late 80s, it wasn't always like this.
The tech scene was decidedly libertarian borderline AnCap from 80s - mid-2000s.
I mean reddit was basically Ron Paul HQ Central at its founding.
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When/how did things start to change?
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When did the economics sub Reddit purge all the Ron Paul libertarians?
2009? 2010?
I know that many young people see the events of 2008 as a failure of capitalism. Perhaps that's why?
- Bush
- Iraq
- Obama
- news. YCombinator. com asturfing
is what happened, imo
Operation Wall Street was coopted by the feds. Turned it into feminism, gay rights, trans rights. There's a meme that compares transsexualism with nerds to crack in the 80s
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That’s interesting. Maybe once it became a major profession the types of people pursuing it changed.
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that seems like a very plausible hypothesis
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Reddit is a good example of how echo chambers are created by purging dissent.
I made a comment on Reddit recently in north county San Diego subreddit. I quoted a passage from WSJ editorial. One reply was you demonstrated that you get your news from social media.
Where do kids get their news today? Please tell me it’s not corporate legacy media
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I assume they get their news from online influencers.
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YouTube
TikTok
Instagram
Snap chat
No, the issue stems from the university system these engineers are coming out of. It’s part of a broader trend among graduates. They’re taught that capitalism and corporations are inherently evil, even as they draw six-figure salaries from those same companies.
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He probably means from other humanities or social science courses.
It's rare for economics to be required specifically and, as bad as mainstream econ can be, econ courses are not likely to directly advocate communism.
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I'm not exactly unbiased, but I think at least one econ course should be required of every college graduate.
Since we justify public funding of education by saying it's required to have informed citizens, we should at least train them in the subject most useful for understanding how the world works.
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I've always suspected that's precisely why it's not required.
Intro to microeconomics should be a requirement
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Most intro courses, at least for micro, are largely free market oriented. In part that's just because it's easier to teach the principles that way, sort of like introductory physics being frictionless.
Yes that engineers have central planning tendencies. I can write a program to optimize society whatever the hell that means
Definitely related to technocratic ambitions
Edit: I should have said technocratic hubris
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At least one of the people I'm thinking of didn't go to college, so I'm not sure that's it.
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Yeah, I know plenty that seem to think the problem with communism was that they didn't have the right people or systems in place and we can do it now with the tech we have....
I have never heard any mention Mises at all by these people. They aren't reading philosophy. I know one exception who is a big fan of decentralization but he's no socialist.
I mean, think about it. Communism was supposedly a society driven by science...
Of course that is incredibly naive.
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I think naive is exactly the right word. They have a lifetime of experience being able to solve problems that others can’t and it doesn’t occur to them that some problems are fundamentally unsolvable.
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It also hasn't occurred to them that many systems are not broken. They are working as DESIGNED!
I ALWAYS lead with this when I talk about the problems with communism/socialism.
Even if you have the smartest people in the world and the most moral people in the world setting it up and facilitating it you'd still fail. Why? The calculation problem. Of course the AI maxis will probably think they can do it... if people can't get that this is a fool's errand I don't waste my time.
Usually these people are very naive in many other areas as well. Looking at incentives is a great angle to take on so many things. Usually the people that get incentives aren't engineers unless they have worked with the UX or marketing side of the businesses. I've always worked closely with those sides and I'm able to talk to normal people and engineers alike. Bridging the divide. Empathy is undervalued as a learned skill IMO. It can be a multiplier for an engineer's career.
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It's a great point. Public Choice Theory is the other death blow to statism. Even if it could be planned, no group of real human beings would plan it to optimize the general welfare.
the AI maxis will probably think they can do it
They do...but, again, it's only because they don't actually bother to learn what the calculation problem is.
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