José Ancer
@ancerj
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Startup Consigliere @ Optimal. VC law blogger + firm builder. Cringemaxxing dilettante intellectual. Dad to 3 w/ Mrs. of 15+ yrs. @UTAustin + @Harvard_Law
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Joined November 2010
Critical commentary about "tech bros" and "mediocre white men" has been circulating the news and mediasphere lately. This inspired me to write another (a third) essay in my years-long rumination on "diversity" in the startup and broader tech world.
siliconhillslawyer.com
Disclaimer: This post, like all posts on SHL, represents solely my personal thoughts and opinions; in this case with respect to a topic I have spent years thinking and writing about as a Mexican-A
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People do over-romanticize farming, as do many of running a small business. And yet a tiny minority thrive, and we get great bougie produce, meat, bakeries, restaurants, etc. as a result. Mass affluence -> mass career optionality for the neuroatypical.
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This, in essence, is why you can simultaneously agree with many armchair professors constantly critiquing what MAGA is doing, and also recognize MAGA is getting a whole lot more done in the IRL arena than what those professors would have achieved themselves.
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Logic tells you centrism is best. But psychological realism tells you that extremists have energy / agency dominance, and so any centrist policy must be arrived at adversarially, because the ideological centrists can rarely “hang” in the arena.
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Based.
Earlier this year, a 17-year-old high school student named Hannah Cairo solved a 40-year-old mystery about how waves behave, surprising and exciting mathematicians. @KSHartnett reports:
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Son, budding armchair anthropologist, points out how many more “blue hairs” & therians he sees at inner-city bouncy place than bougie suburban. Then convo about class, family, why we homeschooled for elementary, why we go to church.
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Critical commentary about "tech bros" and "mediocre white men" has been circulating the news and mediasphere lately. This inspired me to write another (a third) essay in my years-long rumination on "diversity" in the startup and broader tech world.
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10yr-old son complaining about a girl who stepped into the dodgeball room at the bouncy place and then screamed at him when she got hit in the face. Son, trust me on this, it’s not going to get better. Prepare.
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Hence a balanced equilibrium: you get to be rich with your IQ luck, but close the borders and let me bargain for my share because of my ancestral luck. Let’s not over bullsh** about who “deserves” what. That’s not how this works.
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A cognitive elite says well I deserve to be rich because I’m smarter than you, and there are fewer smart people. A nativist populist response is IQ is no more “deserved” than citizenship passed down from ancestors who built a country. Strip the pretense, it’s class power.
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Left seeks to characterize nativist instincts of American populists as Marxist. Yet median blue collar worker respects a Bezos/Musk far more than a typical bougie laptop classer. What they resent is an economy in which hard work in one’s “station” no longer generates progress.
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Over-preoccupation with social mobility, including pretending it is far more prevalent than reality, is propaganda of cognitive elites born with unearned privilege (genetic luck) to make normies believe they must stay poor and uncomfortable because they “deserve” it.
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Until technology completely eliminates uncertainty as to a child’s market prospects, social insurance & nativist policies to promote QoL for *all* established citizens, irrespective of class, reflect enlightened self interest. Hyper-meritocracy is self-destructive.
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Thus east and south Asian immigrants and progeny need more effort to be “taught” that being “smart” isn’t everything. Wholesale IQ supremacy doesn’t get you America or even Europe. It gets you something like caste system India or the CCP.
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Asians far more likely to be “IQ supremacists” than westerners, who more often “get” pluralist meritocracy. Western nations evolved toward democracy, whereas East/South Asian far more autocratic run by mandarins/brahmins. Brains, balls, charisma, creatives, takes all kinds.
For professions that require technical skills, more intelligence is better. For leadership, though, too much smarts can backfire, as followers will feel unable to relate to you. All else being equal, people report that they find leaders (and, interestingly, romantic partners) to
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RT @avidseries: The body positivity movement wasn’t really about celebrating women. It was about neutralizing beauty. — Kara Kennedy.
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Not wrong.
A Palestinian state is recognized by over 140 states, while Taiwan is recognized by barely 12. Turns out a flourishing society depends on who runs it, not who recognizes it. Hamas will never "govern" the Palestinian beyond indoctrinating them into a death cult.
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Neurodiversity is our strength . Hug an autist today.
It took 21 years for this guy to build this…and it’s incredible
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Believing that anyone from anywhere deserves equality and “representation” without any merit: Marxism. Believing that families who’ve built a place, risked for and defended it, preserved it, deserve some priority before outsiders get a say: literally how countries work.
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