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by cohnnton
3104 days ago
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With regards to Sam Altman, he is a clear Chinaphile, based on his essay before: http://blog.samaltman.com/china. He ignores the facts that China is a bad actor in the world, rules its citizens with iron fist, disregards human rights and freedom, and is a possible threat to jeopardize the future progress of democracy and freedom we have around the world. People like Sam Altman are concerning, since he holds the top spot in the world's best startup accelerator. He alone can give China unlimited power in accomplishing their goals: silencing dictatorship critics, bankrupt other countries, etc. |
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I think more concerning is the underlying perspective rather than his specific views on China. What you see is the assumption that one's experience generalizes and is the experience of all. The internet in many ways has made this worse rather than better because it removes some of the few remaining structures that force you to regularly and meaningfully interact with people of different life experiences (and no...your uber driver doesn't count).
His views on China, based on his experiences in China, are no different than the critiques of silicon valley startup culture as a whole. THey beleive their experience generalizes.
I talked about this in a class I taught once where we were trying to engage students in seeing the limits of their understanding of the user's they were designing for. I had them read an article from fortune/Inc....some magazine I can't remember or find... that was about startups related to pregnancy. The decidedly white-male founder base really stood out. If I remember, there were only 3 of the 10 startups that existed a year after the article...2 of those 3 were the 2 of 10 with female cofounders.