I don't think there's a whole lot of heresy along the lines of his original post ("doing something the government had already decided was too hard") in practice in SV. If he wants to discuss actual heterodoxies that he thinks actually exist and are dangerous, let's enumerate.
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Replying to @wycats
I'm not "he" who "wants to discuss" (but ICYMI, see https://elaineou.com/2017/11/24/stuff-you-cant-say-in-silicon-valley/ …). All societies punish deviance from norms, some more than others. The Enlightenment project differed only in degree. It's dead now, no going back. The most interesting part of sama's post was re: China.
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Replying to @BrendanEich
I don't buy the China point, having also spent years in SF and having travelled to China. It must be some kind of VC-specific perspective.
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Replying to @BrendanEich @wycats
Beyond that, from sama’s text itself + work Steve Hsu was involved in, Chinese efforts to identify alleles associated with intelligence + greater willingness to gene-engineer humans (https://www.nature.com/news/chinese-scientists-fix-genetic-disorder-in-cloned-human-embryos-1.22694 …) = designer people. This is problematic but also likely very profitable.
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Replying to @BrendanEich
I can believe that if a VC is very interested in profitable ideas that Americans have moral qualms about, there might be some cases where such a VC would find it easier to discuss them in China.
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Replying to @wycats @BrendanEich
I also am surprised that the "sense of freedom" about being able to talk about (things like) designer babies more freely is making
@sama think of China as freer in this way.1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes -
That aspect is not surprising.
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Replying to @BrendanEich @sama
I guess I don't consider it constricting in the way
@sama is describing that American norms cause us to be more skittish about starting certain kinds of companies ("designer babies") and don't see it as evidence that "wow! China is freer than SV!"2 replies 0 retweets 0 likes -
Many in seats of power here deny existence of alleles associated with intelligence. Crazy unscientific, right? Others less situated object to embryo experimentation. Nutty but true. China doesn’t scruple. (They did ban head transplants recently, though.)
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I don't get the sense that SV is afraid to disrupt in this sense. 23andMe exists, which was initially perceived as out of bounds. The idea that intelligence has some genetic component shouldn't be heretical, but people overrotate on IQ and its consequences big time.
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