On managing outrage in Silicon Valley • Hacker News Board

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#81

Post by kristianc » Mon, Aug 07, 2017, 6:15 PM UTC

artursapek wrote: post #45

Why are people so outraged at this guy? I read what he wrote and it honestly sounds like he's trying to be helpful. It's at least polite. The knee-jerk "SEXIST!" reactions to him come off extremely self-righteous and immature. There are a hundred other male-dominated careers and I never, ever hear women complain about not being equally represented in them. Why? Because they're not attractive careers.

It seems that the focus is always on the reaction to these pieces, and I wonder why.

It's obvious why people are angry - he's trying to find a biological justification to exclude a class of people from a high-status career.

That's something that has mostly been dismissed as quackery, and has been shown to have some pretty negative consequences throughout history.

The onus of people who want to stick up for this guy is surely to find evidence to support his proposition, rather than go after people mad at the content of the post itself?

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#82

Post by Danihan » Mon, Aug 07, 2017, 6:15 PM UTC

blablabla123 wrote: post #70

geofft wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The thing is, the guy wrote what many people think - outside of tech. Sure, but tech is a field that requires intelligence, and Google a company that hires specifically for intelligence. The fact that people are stupid isn't news. The fact that a Google employee is, and that apparently a large fraction of the company agrees with his views, is definitely news. The entire foundation of this essay is based on assumpti…

Yes, Tech requires intelligence. Google in particular in famous for checking analytical intelligence in their interview. I know that's not 100% correct but I call this "pure number crunching intelligence". People there know how to solve this and that, can approximate problems and solutions. This gender thing might be formulated as an analytical problem but it suffers high complexity. It's better to be understood empi…

>I have an illustrative example: in Germany in those regions that have the least foreigners, there are the most Neo Nazis and people are more likely to vote for right wing parties.

As a counter-example: In the US, people living in the South are generally the most racist, despite Southern states having the most ethnic diversity.

https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-5b7d145c14255746125e39...

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#83

Post by turc1656 » Mon, Aug 07, 2017, 6:16 PM UTC

artursapek wrote: post #45

Why are people so outraged at this guy? I read what he wrote and it honestly sounds like he's trying to be helpful. It's at least polite. The knee-jerk "SEXIST!" reactions to him come off extremely self-righteous and immature. There are a hundred other male-dominated careers and I never, ever hear women complain about not being equally represented in them. Why? Because they're not attractive careers.

Exactly! I came here to essentially post the same thing. I can't remember ever, even once, anyone talking about how to get more women into construction, forestry, fishing, sanitation, etc. Curious, isn't it? Likewise, I never hear anyone asking how we can get more men to be pre-school or early education teachers, home health aides, social workers, etc. In fact, I genuinely don't think I've ever once in my entire life heard anyone say that there is a shortfall of males in any job/industry. Despite the fact that there are numerous jobs for which women hold 75% or more of the positions.

The argument simply doesn't add up given this information. It's clear they just want to get more women in high paying jobs only, not to even out the alleged imbalance across the board. If they were actually interested in that, we'd hear them talking about much more and it would be for both genders. Funny how they never talk about getting more women into logging, which only pays ~38k a year and has a fatality rate of 0.1%, isn't it?

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#84

Post by losteverything » Mon, Aug 07, 2017, 6:16 PM UTC

caseysoftware wrote: post #56

losteverything wrote: post #37

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.

Let's be honest. Many companies and people - such as yourself - don't want dissent. And that's fine. You'll have total agreement and get a lot done.. for a while. But then the clueful people will leave and be replaced with yes (wo)men who know what productive work looks like but are incapable of actually doing useful things. A great organization that makes leaps and bounds will turn into an okay company that grows by…

The author used the word "terrified" groupthink bullies. I say it is not a fear as being grown up means outlandish words are understandable ( ie not grown up)

Its not about dissent...

I put opinion texts in the same category as amazon reviews: the first few are not to be believed.

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#85

Post by steven777400 » Mon, Aug 07, 2017, 6:17 PM UTC

OoTheNigerian wrote: post #34

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://med…

This is basically a given/open intention.

There was an HN thread a week ago [0] wherein Google indicated they were using new metrics to identify and remove "terror content". The metrics include input from a variety of groups. One of the top HN comments said, "Those groups have very specific agendas. They shouldn't be allowed to block articles which disagree with their agenda." [1]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14903370 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14904016

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#86

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Aug 07, 2017, 6:17 PM UTC

blablabla123 wrote: post #70

geofft wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The thing is, the guy wrote what many people think - outside of tech. Sure, but tech is a field that requires intelligence, and Google a company that hires specifically for intelligence. The fact that people are stupid isn't news. The fact that a Google employee is, and that apparently a large fraction of the company agrees with his views, is definitely news. The entire foundation of this essay is based on assumpti…

Yes, Tech requires intelligence. Google in particular in famous for checking analytical intelligence in their interview. I know that's not 100% correct but I call this "pure number crunching intelligence". People there know how to solve this and that, can approximate problems and solutions. This gender thing might be formulated as an analytical problem but it suffers high complexity. It's better to be understood empi…

[deleted]

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#87

Post by bbctol » Mon, Aug 07, 2017, 6:19 PM UTC

EddieRingle wrote: post #43

One of my first exposures to this "manifesto" was on Twitter with someone starting a thread with "Google has a Nazi problem." The majority of the other responses I read either attacked the author, dismissed the entire text in whole, and/or refused to actually argue the paper's points because they saw them as so ridiculous or "obviously" wrong. I read the paper. I don't see at all how it relates to fascism, Trumpism,…

Because you were on Twitter? The most annoying thing about this back-and-forth ping-ponging of increasing outrage is that everyone, on both sides, only reacts to the silliest arguments. Sturgeon's Law holds up pretty well for hot takes, and the majority of anything written on an issue is likely to be bad. If most of the responses you read struck you as irrational, that's a function of the infrastructure that sends you information more than the quality of either side.

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#88

Post by artursapek » Mon, Aug 07, 2017, 6:19 PM UTC

kristianc wrote: post #81

artursapek wrote: post #45

Why are people so outraged at this guy? I read what he wrote and it honestly sounds like he's trying to be helpful. It's at least polite. The knee-jerk "SEXIST!" reactions to him come off extremely self-righteous and immature. There are a hundred other male-dominated careers and I never, ever hear women complain about not being equally represented in them. Why? Because they're not attractive careers.

It seems that the focus is always on the reaction to these pieces, and I wonder why. It's obvious why people are angry - he's trying to find a biological justification to exclude a class of people from a high-status career. That's something that has mostly been dismissed as quackery, and has been shown to have some pretty negative consequences throughout history. The onus of people who want to stick up for this guy i…

> biological justification to exclude a class of people from a high-status career

No. He's proposing a biological explanation for why the career is not split 50/50 between men and women. An explanation which frankly sounds plausible.

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#89

Post by shaftoe » Mon, Aug 07, 2017, 6:19 PM UTC

drewrv wrote: post #69

bkeroack wrote: post #38

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)

Most people don't want to work with jerks, and in a libertarian ideal would be free to choose whether to do so. Most companies choose to get rid of jerks for a ton of sensible reasons. In a libertarian ideal they'd be free to choose who to hire/fire. Large groups calling for someone to lose their job is totally in line with libertarian ideals. Nobody is calling for government regulation, this is just the (employment)…

That's all well and good, but one of the core instincts of libertarianism is a deep distrust of angry mobs.

I don't think the SV crowd gets how reasonable the author looks to everyone else and how unreasonable the angry rants on Twitter look.

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#90

Post by TallGuyShort » Mon, Aug 07, 2017, 6:20 PM UTC

kristianc wrote: post #81

artursapek wrote: post #45

Why are people so outraged at this guy? I read what he wrote and it honestly sounds like he's trying to be helpful. It's at least polite. The knee-jerk "SEXIST!" reactions to him come off extremely self-righteous and immature. There are a hundred other male-dominated careers and I never, ever hear women complain about not being equally represented in them. Why? Because they're not attractive careers.

It seems that the focus is always on the reaction to these pieces, and I wonder why. It's obvious why people are angry - he's trying to find a biological justification to exclude a class of people from a high-status career. That's something that has mostly been dismissed as quackery, and has been shown to have some pretty negative consequences throughout history. The onus of people who want to stick up for this guy i…

No, he's using a biological justification to openly discuss different ways to foster diversity. This is one of his points: the most common argument against him is just that you think he's a sexist, not because you don't think his ideas will actually foster any kind of diversity. And I don't understand that. The reaction here is the opposite of tolerance and diversity.

edit: I'm going to give a personal example: I strongly supported legalizing gay marriage, but I also support the right of anyone to refuse to bake a gay wedding cake or to run a church and not perform gay marriages. And I've had numerous former friends chew me out and shun me for being "intolerant". It's that attitude that makes reasonable political discussions harder and harder (at least in the US right now) because it makes everyone fear to give up anything to reach a compromise or to even understand each other.