Politics and immigration

`4:37:14`

Yes, but not just that alone, I would say. It's more of the great divide that happened around 2020, where I think a lot of these political fault lines really opened up. And I mean, the shorthand in the US, I think is were you woke or not? And clearly, I had a bunch of people that I thought I had good relations with for many years, who suddenly once that political fault line opened up, they were clearly just not anymore. And I think that's regrettable. And I think I've, I've tried to put an effort into, um, sort of both understanding where that comes from, in part because I've changed my mind on several of these topics over the years, and it was like, well, sometimes you just change your mind after time. Sometimes you change your mind after you get new information. There's all sorts of reasons and moments why you may change your mind, and we don't all change our mind on the same schedule or at all. Um, so surrounding yourselves and, and or at least interacting with people that don't think like you on every topic, I think it's quite healthy. I mean, I occasionally discuss politics with my brother. I mean, we don't quite see eye to eye on all these topics, and sometimes the discussions can get a little heated, but then they'll also calm down and we realize, all right, okay, so we don't agree on this, and then we agree on a lot of other things. We appreciate a lot of the same things.

Now, this was actually one of the things when we had our big blowup at Basecamp, I came to appreciate in a whole new way this- Earlier norm that talking politics or religion or money with strangers or even acquaintances, and certainly with colleagues, was just not a good idea. That you had a much higher likelihood of being able to carry a good working relationship with someone if you're not rubbing your political differences up against each other all the time. So I actually think liberals and conservatives should work together. I think the country would be much worse off if there's a complete separation between the tribes, and then there can't be any overlap or interaction. And I think that mingling is so much easier to do if you just don't focus on your differences all the time. Focus on what you like together. I mean, this is some of the people I've had unfortunately drifted from in tech. We had so much in common, so much shared love for, say, Ruby or other things and, like, isn't that unfortunate?

`4:40:38`

One of the great illustrations of that for me was when I watched a clip from William F. Buckley's show. I think it was called Firing Line or-

`4:40:46`

... something like that. And he had a member of the Black Panthers-... on his panel. It was quite obvious that those two gentlemen did not share a lot of politics. They were able to carry a conversation for, I think I watched it, 25 minutes. And Buckley's just asking, like, "So what do you think about this? What do you think about this?" And like, the Black Panther would reply as you would expect the Black Panther to reply in the '70s. Like, there was not a lot of sort of conciliatory tones. And I just thought, like, wow, that is so rare. If you had seen that show today, it would've been a shouting match. It would've been just accusations being hurled back and forth. The fact that Buckley was able to just have these conversations with people he vehemently disagreed with and still explore all the intellectual facets of their standpoints and letting them speak to those facets, talks of a lost era that I'd very much like to get back to. I mean, I always actually loved talking politics with friends that I trusted could talk about these topics in a way where it didn't have to be existential.

`4:44:33`

Yes. And I've tried to be more conscious of that, too. And then when I do choose to speak about it, it's usually because I have deliberated, and I think-... "You know what? This is worth it." Now, I say that, and then I also catch myself thinking the opposite all the time, that I follow some person or another for whatever their technical work, and then I-... learned or political standpoint. And I often do think, "I wish I didn't know that." So, it's hypocritical-... then to think that of other people and then go like, "Well, occasionally I will-... chime in on a debate that's controversial," and then you have to accept that there is a price to that. And I do think you should, and more people should, be somewhat conscious about that. And again, we're both contradicting ourselves here, but saying like, "Wouldn't it be nice if we could talk about politics in a more free and open forum and just intellectually turn ideas around?" Yes, it would. Is that currently possible in the climate of social media and so forth? It's quite difficult. Now, some of it could simply also be a moment, and we could get past that moment.

`4:45:49`

Maybe there is a way to get back to Buckley's conversation with the Black Panthers, even on social media, in a way where those discussions don't lead to the sort of just vicious mob cancellation nonsense drives that we've had, right? I actually think we're closer there now than we were five years ago. Like, the tribalism and the sanctions those tribes were able to exact on heretics in 2020 was way greater than it was in 2025. Certainly within tech. Now, I know if you're in academia, I mean, try going into the sociology department at I don't know, Harvard and mention some right-wing ideas. I don't think it's gonna go over very well, and I don't think you're gonna recover from it quickly. But in tech and in many other business domains at least, it is now possible to have an opinion that does not square with what the consensus was in 2020. That's for sure.