I don't think it's a numerical bias. Rather the extreme left are just hyper-aggressive in ways other parts of the spectrum aren't, especially libertarians are not aggressive and they were traditionally a big bloc inside tech firms.
As for the belief that the left are intellectually superior, that's not specific to tech firms. You get empty slogans about being "reality-based" from the left in all walks of life. It's why the left are struggling so much with COVID and lockdown: it's been chaos and incoherence from scientists/academics from day one so people who define themselves as superior due to their higher faith in "the science" have been taking a self-image beating. Or simply have gone into denial about it.
> As for the belief that the left are intellectually superior, that's not specific to tech firms.
IMHO, I feel this is an organic collusion of messaging. Like the boomers felt a little envious to Leftist ideas and it shows in how boomers are teaching future generations. I don't think this is intentional but there does seem to be an implicit shift in the writings that teach the youth. I grew up in the public education system and various books almost assume that Leftists are more critical thinkers. It could be a phrasing of a topic or a popular narrative that has taken root in the culture. Compound this overtime, you have a new generation that assumes the indirect messaging that they've been conditioned on.
In conclusion, I think you're getting a lot of downvotes for two reasons. 1. You're making grand/general statements without supportive points. 2. You are contrarian to the current zeitgeist. I happen to agree with your main points (sheep are sheep and wolves are making sheep frantic). I wish more people were critical thinkers.
Thanks. Having had many years of being downvoted on HN I can assure you it doesn't matter how specific you are, if you aren't leftist here then leftists will downvote you as much as they can. Sometimes an especially aggressive leftist will go through your comment history and downvote every single comment as well in retaliation, which is how you can get a series of technical posts about technical topics that were upvoted at the time suddenly going to -1 after an unrelated later post on a topic the left cares about.
This is why I call the left aggressive. I've never seen those sorts of tactics from libertarians and I have years of experience of them, or even conservatives. I have seen people who claim to be libertarian suddenly turn out to be totalitarian and start behaving in ways that are totally opposite to their prior stated positions once they got hold of some power, though. So I think there are some people out there who self-identify as libertarian because they came to associate it somehow with critical thinking or other positive qualities, yet never truly adopted the world view. But this is rare. Most people who claim to be libertarian act in ways that are relatively consistent with that claim.
I agree that leftists push hard the idea that leftism is the same thing as critical thinking. This confusion can be especially seen in universities, which regularly claim to be teaching students critical thinking yet in which leftists have steadily pushed out anyone not aligned with them over the decades. People truly trained in critical thinking would ask what justifies the claim that universities teach critical thinking, but of course none of them ever seem to do this. It's just taken as given.
We can see the results: academia is filled with groupthink, in which people's worth is based on vague groupthink-oriented concepts like "reputation".
As for the belief that the left are intellectually superior, that's not specific to tech firms. You get empty slogans about being "reality-based" from the left in all walks of life. It's why the left are struggling so much with COVID and lockdown: it's been chaos and incoherence from scientists/academics from day one so people who define themselves as superior due to their higher faith in "the science" have been taking a self-image beating. Or simply have gone into denial about it.