Learning from Silicon Valley Bank’s apologists

What they think we think.

Next Monday (Mar 20), I’m doing a remote talk for the Ostrom Workshop’s Beyond the Web Speaker Series.

My weird hobby is taking pictures of signs, especially “vernacular” signs, handwritten and odd. The best kinds of signs tell you what other people think you are thinking, or what you don’t understand. I’ve nabbed over 4,600 of ‘em:

https://www.flickr.com/search/?user_id=37996580417%40N01&sort=date-taken-desc&text=sign&view_all=1

I think you learn more about the world by delving into others’ misconceptions than you learn from their factual understandings. Facts are out there for anyone to discover, but when someone inadvertently affords you a glimpse into their wrong beliefs, well, that’s something that can’t be learned in any other way.

Which brings me to the apologists for Silicon Valley Bank, who are busily churning out incredibly revealing bad takes about why bailing out SVB was the right thing to do, and why you’re wrong to call it a bailout, and why all of this is Very Regrettable but nevertheless The Right Thing To Do.

Here’s a terrible reason to support the SVB bailout: because if we let all the tech companies who did business with it fail, you might not be able to get into your house…