In defence of Douglas Crockford • Hacker News Board

Re: In defence of Douglas Crockford

#191

Post by hackaflocka » Sun, Sep 04, 2016, 9:14 AM UTC

David Crockford, if you are reading this:

You need to declare yourself a closeted gender-queer trans-sexual immediately. After that, anything you say will be excused due to past oppression. And the conference will re-instate you.

Drop a message below if you want my help with this. I will give you a step by step PR strategy to achieve this.

Paul Graham: if you're reading this, would this be a viable startup idea? Helping people declare themselves closeted gender-queer trans-sexuals to escape oppression from SJWs?

Re: In defence of Douglas Crockford

#192

Post by niftich » Sun, Sep 04, 2016, 9:17 AM UTC

scbrg wrote: post #190

iopq wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I learned English in my teens and I use "he" as the default pronoun because that's what everyone uses.

Indeed. It would be great if everyone who claims that gender neutral pronouns should be used could give a few examples, at least for us non native speakers. I get strange looks whenever I refer to people (hypothetical, or not) as "it", which would be the obvious gender neutral pronoun.

Currently it's 'they'. Yes, there's some confusion about whether it refers to one person or more, but that confusion already exists with 'you', in all except regional usages.

Re: In defence of Douglas Crockford

#193

Post by scrollaway » Sun, Sep 04, 2016, 9:18 AM UTC

throwway1111 wrote: post #60

This is happening in all parts of society. So-called "social justice warriors" and parts of the liberal left have sprung up that are very hostile to free speech and seek to destroy and silence anyone whom they oppose. Unfortunately, they have the full support of not only college administrations, but increasingly HR departments as they ascend into the workforce, and PR departments as they air their grievances over soc…

I'm really tired of shit like this being bucketed as "the liberal left" when it has just about nothing to do with liberalism or leftism.

I suspect I'm just as tired of that, as actual conservatives are of their views being mixed in with Trump's.

It's censorship and bullshitocracy.

Re: In defence of Douglas Crockford

#194

Post by fahrradflucht » Sun, Sep 04, 2016, 9:19 AM UTC

I don't have a clear opinion on the Crockford discussion but this post would be more convincing if it didn't put the lambda conf issue into the mix. I hope for Douglas Crockford that he doesn't want to get compared with Curtis Yarvin...

Re: In defence of Douglas Crockford

#195

Post by mpweiher » Sun, Sep 04, 2016, 9:21 AM UTC

inopinatus wrote: post #97

monkeywork wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe focus on the actual meat of the argument rather than the plate it's served on and you'll enjoy your meal more.

Ok sure. In that case, I'll point out that being "a common practice going back hundreds of years" should lead you to question something, not accept it. It reminds me of the time I recommended (to the Unix team at a major financial institution) that they use ssh rather than telnet, and being rebuffed with "that's the way we've always done it". In this case, since you want to be specific, the practice of defaulting to…

> the practice of defaulting to "he" correlates with hundreds of years of treating women as chattels

Er, no. It just means it is the unmarked/unremarkable case corresponding to males being generally worth less and discardable ("save the women"...).

It is also a quirk of some of our languages that the gender-neutral pronouns are considered derogatory when applied to people. German and English have this problem ("it", "es"), whereas French "on" seems to be okay.

So the language requires gendering when no gender is semantically intended. In German, every noun is gendered. So "person" is "she", whereas "human" is "he", "Civilisation" and "Society" are both "she", "state" is "he". "Lampshade" is "he" whereas "Lamp" is she, etc. You can try to read deep meaning into these quirks, or you can just not.

TL;DR: Not only are you reading way to much into linguistic quirks, your analysis is also at best shaky.

Re: In defence of Douglas Crockford

#196

Post by lake99 » Sun, Sep 04, 2016, 9:23 AM UTC

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #160

The Nodevember folk(s) posted a statement regarding this whole kerfuffle [1]. It's pretty hollow IMO. > While we have a tremendous respect for Mr. Crockford's abilities as a speaker and his contributions to our craft, we became aware that based on private feedback - not simply the dialogue on Twitter - that his presence would make some speakers uncomfortable to the point where they refused to attend or speak. Okay so…

> You apologized for lacking nuance on Twitter with your "announcement" and yet continue to do so.

I saw parallels of this earlier this year against Richard Dawkins, when the NECSS uninvited him over twitter, followed it with a longer post on their blog[0]. After their actions caused a blowback, they apologized for their lack of professionalism. NECSS backtracked on their position[1] because the blowback was from prominent people.

I don't think prominent people in CS will band together like that, so I don't think the Nodevember folks will backtrack either.

[0] http://necss.org/2016/01/27/a-statement-concerning-richard-d...

[1] http://necss.org/2016/02/14/statement-from-the-executive-com...

Re: In defence of Douglas Crockford

#197

Post by erpellan » Sun, Sep 04, 2016, 9:24 AM UTC

rdtsc wrote: post #34

> We will also be removing Douglas Crockford from our keynote speakers list to help make the conference a comfortable environment for all. If they are going to insinuate things about what he said, they should mention exactly what he said or did. The fact that they don't somehow tells me there is not much there to go on. To put it another way, if they have the guts to remove Crockford that should have enough guts to c…

I certainly wouldn't feel 'comfortable' speaking at a conference with a reputation for publicly character-assassinating their invited speakers. Especially as the worst accusation I could find on twitter was that he used the word 'stupid'. Several times! Throw away the key...

Re: In defence of Douglas Crockford

#198

Post by mpweiher » Sun, Sep 04, 2016, 9:29 AM UTC

nradov wrote: post #174

tzs wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm pretty sympathetic to the cause of feminism especially in technology and I cringe hard at a lot of the casual sexism that gets thrown around, but this is truly baffling. It's not that baffling. Being a victim of harassment raises your status in certain circles. People in those circles tend to accept your word without requiring any other evidence, and so naturally some people will find harassment in anything tha…

Since the number of people actually abducted by UFOs is 0, it's trivially true that the number of claimed abductions is higher than actual abductions.

How dare you deny the lived experience of the UFO abductees!!

Re: In defence of Douglas Crockford

#199

Post by dlmetcalf » Sun, Sep 04, 2016, 9:45 AM UTC

eli wrote: post #92

aikah wrote: post #41

TLDR; personal vendetta against Crockford led to accusations of "sexism", and him getting uninvited from Nodevember conference. There is absolutely no proof of sexism anywhere ,only a bunch of people who want to take him out professionally because he might have pissed them off for whatever reason in the past. Only now these people can use dubious political arguments to justify their vendetta. This can happen to anybo…

I don't think public evidence of sexism matters if other speakers were uncomfortable enough to withdraw from the conference. They're trying to run a conference where people feel comfortable, not hold a public tribunal.

So because someone else decides to withdraw, for whatever reason no matter how petty and irrational, that's now grounds for public character assassination of another professional and their being cast into exile? That's insane. The bar shouldn't just be automatically dropped down to whichever crybully can play the biggest victim.

You don't need a public tribunal to understand this failed the reasonable person test.

Re: In defence of Douglas Crockford

#200

Post by xwvvvvwx » Sun, Sep 04, 2016, 9:46 AM UTC

10938101 wrote: post #168

tamana wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the normal thing marginalizes people, marginalized people are hurt. In recent years, they have started to defend themsves in force, the ks to unifying power of the internet. The insecurity you observe is feeling of the erosion of privilege.

If you wrote some software instead of talking, like Grace Hopper, Barbara Liskov and thousands of others, people would respect you automatically in this space.

Ugly words from a throwaway account. Do you really believe that women should be seen and not heard?