"Right at the peak of our last pandemic, Founders Fund hosted the first Hereticon, a ‘conference for thoughtcrime.’ Our thinking was simple: dissent is worth protecting. Most new ideas are wrong, or useless. Some are even dangerous. But from science and technology to business and faith, progress is a history of persecuted weirdos, so that is where we stand, and that is what we celebrated."

Reading through the article's summaries of some of the talks, I really feel like humanity is beyond fucked up

One of the few good pieces:

For the overwhelmingly Silicon Valley audience reading this, just a thought: maybe you’re not autistic, you’re just an asshole.

Another piece on the event - https://www.mindingthecampus.org/2024/11/13/i-attended-hereticon/

I get why some people would resent academia, since no matter how much you try to avoid it, it has lots of internal politics and is influenced by external politics as well. Even if you had good data and good arguments, "problematic" topics could be vetted instead of attempting to discuss them. On the other hand. doing this kind of event where it just feels like "dissent for the sake of dissent" doesn't really help, imo.