[toraway]

It's certainly ... convenient that any criticism of a wealthy tech oligarch can be dismissed as "anti-education" as a rhetorical cudgel. It's not like others may actually have problems with say, his actual beliefs, the specific methods Tan uses to "promote" education (attacking school teachers/etc), further concentration of power to SV billionaires, etc.

And as you say, somewhat comical to lob that accusation given the current crop of tech oligarchs are firmly aligned with a overtly intellectual/anti-education movement on the right and are systematically working to dismantle higher education at this very moment.

As an aside, there has been a crazy amount of (brigaded?) flagging/downvoting of comments critical of Tan in this thread. Each time I check back I see fairly anodyne comments go back and forth from grey, with a few eventually nuked by flagging). Can't think of a similar recent example of an HN thread with the same patterns even with highly charged/controversial topics.