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> A popular criticism of Silicon Valley, usually levied by people not building anything at all themselves, is that no one is working on or funding “hard technology”.

Lost all interest in saltman's point when I read this line.

It's a valid criticism, regardless if the people who are making it are "builders" or not.

It was a turn off, because it makes the author seem bitter about (what I think is) a valid criticism.



I don't understand -- you had a bad reaction to a single line in the introductory paragraph and knowingly let this turn you off to the entire post? Is that a valuable type of filter for you?


It's a bad way to respond to an argument, because it subtly undermines everyone who is critical of Silicon Valley. They either don't build things (and they're unqualified to have an opinion) or they do build things (but they're being brushed aside because they're a minority).


Seems like you understand just fine.

Time is valuable. When writing an essay, the introductory paragraph is how the author gets the reader involved in it.

That line reads to me like bitterness, so I concluded that it wasn't worth my time to read any further.

And this being the internet, I felt it was worth my time to post a comment saying how I feel.

It wasn't my intent to post a comment about the other points in the article (which I obviously did not read).


Agreed. The notion that you can't criticise something unless you've tried to do it yourself is nonsense.


The notion is actually that criticizing something you don't understand is valid but not necessarily useful.


Fallacy: you don't need to understand the internals of something to critique its utility.


Does that mean saltman spams alarmist Medium thought pieces?




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