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On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

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Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#31

Post by s73ver »

Quarrelsome wrote: post #5
whipoodle wrote: post #2

Maybe it's okay for people to be outraged about some things.

But is it okay to campaign towards the goal of firing someone for expressing an opinion they feel outraged about?

Let's be frank, here. This is not someone merely "expressing an opinion." This is someone rallying against diversity, using pseudoscience to back up claims that women and minorities are inferior, and thus shouldn't have been hired. On top of that, they ranted about how Google had not done enough to make conservatives feel they have a safe space, when the only thing Google has done on the subject is to make others feel safe at Google.

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#32

Post by Dude2018 »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #21

> He is one individual in a company that employs more than 72,000 people. Why has Silicon Valley spent the weekend talking about him Because we're not talking about a memo posted by one random engineer that got the reaction it deserved for declaring a large fraction of his co-workers sub-standard engineers (among the myriad broken things in that memo). That would have been a story for all of five minutes. Instead, we…

Well you cant have positive discrimination and claim it's meritocracy. It's a shame it casts a negative light on diversity people who actually joined Google through effort rather quotas.

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#33

Post by dragonwriter »

fireflash38 wrote: post #4
whipoodle wrote: post #2

Maybe it's okay for people to be outraged about some things.

Sure is! People can be offended all they want. Where things get really iffy is when they want 'justice'. It often means that they try to get that person fired or lambasted in front of their peers. I don't see how that's at all constructive, let alone 'justice'. At the very least, it leads to even more divisiveness, instead of rational discussion. As a thought experiment: have you ever seen someone change their mind o…

> As a thought experiment: have you ever seen someone change their mind or worldview as a result of being insulted & fired?

I have see people limited in their ability to cause further harm by being fired; not all consequences are directed at reformation if he offender.

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#34

Post by OoTheNigerian »

Silicon Valley controls a lot of the world's communication and we should be really worried if silencing of unpopular opinions is the order of the day.

As a "minority" I perhaps disagree with a lot of what this person has written but my reaction to it will be to counter his arguments with a better one rather than go on to silence him.

--

I have already written about this somewhat during the past elections.

https://medium.com/@oothenigerian/trump-v-clinton-silicon-va...

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#36

Post by arnioxux »

s73ver wrote: post #19
pnathan wrote: post #12

What happens when the lone voice is in the right, and the mass of people are in the wrong, and all of the preponderance of current science and wisdom is against the lone voice? It's no great stretch to find examples through history of this in different social contexts.

If the preponderance of current science is against the lone voice, then it's highly likely that the lone voice is not in the right.

"Science" is often thrown around to justify things it shouldn't.

Sociology hasn't had as much success as "hard" sciences so we should distinguish between the two. (for example with the controversy around major psychology experiments being unreplicable etc)

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#37

Post by losteverything »

This is called growing up.

We dont need to know how everyone thinks. We dont want to know either.

We tailor our words to our audience. We avoid saying or typing dumb things.

We only say what we really feel to our confidante.

These outwardly stupid writings are simply that: bad childish judgement.

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#38

Post by bkeroack »

Hacker culture used to trend towards libertarian ideals: free speech absolutism, cyberpunk freedom, etc. Now we have a huge mass of people at Google forming a rage mob to punish someone for expressing an unpopular idea. Should people lose their livelihoods and be blacklisted from the industry because you disagree with them? (see also Brendan Eich)

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#39

Post by Meekro »

"If Galileo had said that people in Padua were ten feet tall, he would have been regarded as a harmless eccentric. Saying the earth orbited the sun was another matter. The church knew this would set people thinking." -- Paul Graham, What You Can't Say [1]

"And worse than simply thinking these things or saying them in private, you’ve said them in a way that’s tried to legitimize this kind of thing across the company, causing other people to get up and say “wait, is that right?”" -- senior Google guy, in condemnation of the essay [2]

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html [2] https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/so-about-this-googlers-man...

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#40

Post by guelo »

So you like free speech except when people use their speech to call out speech they don't like?

Let's stop bullshitting, this isn't about any core principles, it's just another battleline in our ugly politics.

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