I don’t think it’s unfair to call out the first sentence of the argument, if you’re trying to persuade with several paragraphs of content and the very first sentence has a gross error, it transcends pedantry in my opinion.
Rather, I think it makes the original argument look irrational if they have an extreme exaggeration if they have to use that to make their point.
It's a typo. There isn't some kind of grave epistemic problem with the first sentence where everything that follows is predicated on a falsehood. We don't discard the contents of books just because the publication has a typo.
As noted in their other reply, it is actually not a typo. A central part of their point is in that first sentence they note the extra eyes on marginalized people making more money than other marginalized people, but it’s blown out to being extremely exaggerated.
So yes, I think there is a “grave epistemic problem” with the first sentence that hurts the argument and its credibility as a whole, without having to get into the details of the argument itself.
That you called the first replier “stupid” or even their argument “stupid” is wholly unjustified.
The charitable interpretation of the argument was the exponent was intended to be a multiple of two. That's reasonable when comparing salaries in big tech to elsewhere, and I agree with this.
The fact nobody will engage in the good faith argument, but rather take the least charitable interpretation and spew verbal diarrhea around the assertion instead of directly addressing it is further evidence of the point.
What I get from this whole experience is big tech employees, likely on a wage double their national average, are able to communicate more widely to the world about their disenfranchisement about being unemployed than others made unemployed who are not.
Now that I've done the hard work of fixing the typo that apparently invalidates the argument, it ought to be trivial to provide a counter-argument.
Orders of magnitude are typically in log 10, 2^2 being 4 is in the same order of magnitude.
The national average wage for the USA is roughly 70k according to a quick Google search, unless you’re suggesting the devs are making $4.9 billion per year I think you’re not using exponents correctly.
> What I get from this whole experience is big tech employees, likely on a wage x^2 their national average
> According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the median wage for workers in the United States in the second quarter of 2022 was about $1,041 per week or $54,132 per year
Which puts your estimate of the average silicon valley wage at $2,930,273,424 per year.
You can spot stupid[*] replies miles away when there's no attempt to engage with the substance of the argument.
[*]: Yes, stupid. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ww47bR86wSc