Earlier quoted context omitted.
"I was originally going to lump this article in with other "men's rights movement" stuff" What?
That is the text version of finger snapping.
I'm unfamiliar with what finger snapping means. Can you explain that to me?
The Yale Problem Begins in High School
261–270 of 526 posts
Re: The Yale Problem Begins in High School
#262Earlier quoted context omitted.
While their behavior was entirely legal and protected by the First Amendment, the problem lies elsewhere. It's in the utter lack of tolerance to the views not conforming to the group's, not unlike the reaction religious extremists would display. Can't help but quote: -- The Emperor summons before him Bodhidharma and asks: “Master, I have been tolerant of innumerable gays, lesbians, bisexuals, asexuals, blacks, Hispan…
You seem to have bought into fair and balanced horseshit. There are certain views that are morally superior to others, just as there are certain hamburgers that are better than others. Taking rights away from other people loosely based on ancient superstitions (the Bible says nothing about allowing gays to marry but says a lot about how to punish them -- the only reason Eich and his ilk aren't politically promoting t…
I think you're missing the point of the story. The point is, that unless you're tolerating something that you consider morally wrong or unethical, you can't really claim you're tolerant.
Re: The Yale Problem Begins in High School
#263This directly relates to us in tech. Specifically, there is a huge push to reach out to women and girls in CS. I am not opposed to females in CS at all. I will encourage males and females alike to pursue it, because I see CS as the great equalizer; the only thing that matters is what you produce. What I can't stand are these "Women in technology" conferences and workshops to "close the (gender) gap". Why? Because if…
Look at your upvotes, HN will not ostracize you. People here are predominately male and white. No need to have a victim complex.
However, I encourage you to understand why women attend these conferences. It's easy to write off everyone else as being irrational, but that just makes us narrow minded.
Re: The Yale Problem Begins in High School
#264This directly relates to us in tech. Specifically, there is a huge push to reach out to women and girls in CS. I am not opposed to females in CS at all. I will encourage males and females alike to pursue it, because I see CS as the great equalizer; the only thing that matters is what you produce. What I can't stand are these "Women in technology" conferences and workshops to "close the (gender) gap". Why? Because if…
I might agree that "CS is the great equalizer" if everyone is given an equal opportunity to pursue it. But I don't think they are. Boys are given the focus by default: just watch any Hollywood movie with a "hacker" -- are they a man or a woman? I believe girls are taught from a young age that CS isn't for them. How many potentially brilliant female computer scientists are we missing out on as a society because our me…
Movies about hackers came after hackers had existed for a while. They were mostly male and so it makes sense that that is who would be cast to play those roles.
Anyway, Acid Burn and Trinity are iconic Hollywood hacker characters.
Re: The Yale Problem Begins in High School
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Why aren't we as interested in getting, say, more men into nursing... I also don't see a lot of "Women in Pro Football" groups This is seriously your argument? That's so fatalistic: this is the way things are, so this is the way things will be. You're also arguing a very "us" vs "them" mentality, which is what makes professions gendered to begin with. >CS is intriguing to me precisely because it's such a great equal…
> This is seriously your argument? That's so fatalistic: this is the way things are, so this is the way things will be. You're also arguing a very "us" vs "them" mentality, which is what makes professions gendered to begin with. Yeah, seriously. It's my argument. Did I not sound serious enough? Are you addressing the content within my argument or the tone of my argument? I'm not being fatalistic, I'm genuinely asking…
Discussing nursing isn't relevant, and even if it is two wrongs don't make a right, which is the logical fallacy you keep making here. But if you want to hear me say it: there's a shortage of nurses and the fact that men aren't going into it due to social pressures is an issue.
>You know what we need more of in tech? People
Lowest hanging fruit: actively do something about the fact that half the population isn't going into tech. And this is what you're arguing against, even though you may not realize it. Those conferences and reach-out efforts are explicitly active attempts at solving the problem in a positive way. They aren't meant to exclude men (I was a member of the women in tech club in college), they're usually meant to undo harmful biases in society.
Re: The Yale Problem Begins in High School
#266It's difficult for me to twist my head around this as I plow through it. "The Yale problem" - like most people of the world, I can't conceived of what a Yale problem is, other than that Yale attendees are too privileged. Apparently the author feels they're not privileged enough. I'll get to that...our victims, according to the author, are heirs who go to presumably some $40,000 a year high school, "an elite private h…
Are you suggesting that people should be marginalized because they are white and male? How is this not hate speech?
Re: The Yale Problem Begins in High School
#267Earlier quoted context omitted.
The interesting part is not why these people do this, but why they are winning.
This is the most interesting part of the whole phenomenon. I think the answer is that everyone is scared to confront them. The modus operandi of this movement is to personally attack the character of anyone who disagrees with them. They've toppled university presidents, CEOs, and politicians. They got Rolling Stone to publish a completely unsubstantiated article falsely accusing a bunch of young men of a vicious gang…
Re: The Yale Problem Begins in High School
#268Look how Silicon Valley folks treated Brandon Eich when he made a donation to the majority side in a California proposition. It's not just academia where you can't speak freely.
Ugh. The Brendan Eich issue was about freedom of association -- in particular, the right of Mozilla employees and stakeholders not to be associated with the bigoted groups (and their hateful TV ads) Eich was supporting -- rather than freedom of speech. If you're still not clear as to the distinction, please see: https://xkcd.com/1357/
> Ugh
Congratulations, you just lowered the value of the rest of your comment significantly.
Do there exist any social circles where the use of the term "Ugh" is reflected positively?
Re: The Yale Problem Begins in High School
#269Just for everyone's awareness, there is a broad astroturf and professional political push that has been happening for over a year by FIRE, a right leaning think tank. This is a concerted effort to bring controversy around campus free speech into the news. My perception is that this is an effort to weaken student's ability to speak freely, but is coded as a "free speech" issue. Similar to how many churches coded marri…
>FIRE, a right leaning think tank.
Okay, I am sorry for the language, but this is absolute horseshit. They're a civil liberties advocacy group, similar to the EFF, or the ACLU.
Here is a talk given by Steven Pinker about FIRE, what they do, and why freedom of speech is important: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcdFI6Sda0k
Re: The Yale Problem Begins in High School
#270I've taught at two colleges and based on my (purely) anecdotal experiences and attention to the climate, I'd say that the number of students and faculty interested in stifling or censoring ideas is small but also very, very noisy. They also have no sense of humor and college administrators as a group have no sense of humor or perspective, and they're chronically worried about accusations of indifference or insensitiv…
The problem with "balancing viewpoints" argument is that it isn't based on a critical ethos and so it cannot progress on the basis of logos. You can have a "balanced viewpoint" and still have debates about "whether the moon is made of the body of Vince Foster or not." There are certain ideas that just don't belong in a university setting because they are bunk and this has nothing to do with diversity of opinion. It s…
I agree that artificially imposing a "fair and balanced" framework onto news/discourse is a bogus concept as, like you say, the centre of gravity can be shifted in favour of nonsense ideas just by posing the question.
But in your second paragraph, you seem to imply (maybe I'm wrong here) that there is a sense of objectivity inherent in news reporting, because the reporting leads logically from the facts. However, the facts are hand-picked, meaning bias is unavoidably baked into the premise. In which case we are no closer to avoiding "focussing on opinion diversity", as the same opinion diversity arguments apply to choosing the facts on which to report.
edit: RTFA