[orthoganol]

> I felt more comfortable discussing controversial ideas in Beijing

You're reading too much into Sam's quote. This is almost certainly because East Asia has zero PC culture (homogenous populations; nothing in history), so he doesn't feel those particular pressures there that he's reacting against here. That's all.

[avs733]

I think I read it pretty much at the surface level. I'm not interested in reading into what he meant, his choice of words is plenty to interpret.

'PC culture' is not a thing. what you call PC culture is free speech working as designed...everyone has an equal right to free speech, free action, and free thought. What you call PC culture is in reality nothing more than a group with power demanding their thinking be privileged above critique.

The fact that a person with extreme financial and social power feels 'freer' expressing their point of view in a totalitarian regime than in a place where someone with lesser power might have their own free speech rights is a demonstration of how free speech fails not how it thrives.

Fetishizing rights, as is becoming common in the US, is an impediment to equitable access to the power those rights give. It confuses the issue and is nothing more than a recuperative act[0] designed to reinforce existing structures of power.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recuperation_(politics)

[seanmcdirmid]

Ya. I mean, Trump has far more overt supporters in Zhongguangcun than Silicon Valley. Nothing is off the table for discussion, though you only talk about Chinese politics in smaller groups.