Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 443 posts

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#311

Post by comex »

blusterXY wrote: post #260
nowo wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I haven't seen a single criticism of the paper that even recognizes the author is referencing large-scale incontrovertible research involving the Big-5 personality model (the giveaway is the use of terms "agreeability", "conscienciousness", "neuroticism"). Because it isn't relevant. The major weakness of the paper isn't that there are studies suggesting some differences between men and women, but that it doesn't co…

What you just wrote is the equivalent of a climate change denier writing: "The major weakness of the paper isn't that there are studies suggesting climate change exists, but it doesn't convincingly argue why these difference are relevant to environmental policy." The author doesn't need to "prove" the science he references is real any more than I have to "prove" that climate change exists in order to discuss it. At a…

No. If anything it is the equivalent of writing:

“The major weakness of the paper isn’t that there are studies showing a natural variability in Earth temperatures over time, but it doesn’t convincingly argue why that variability is the cause of recent sharp temperature increases.”

Well, the grammar of the sentence doesn’t really make sense (even in the original), but you get the point.

Intrinsic gender differences exist, like natural temperature changes exist. But in both cases, they do not explain all or even most of the observed variation; the rest is caused by society.

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#312

Post by Moshe_Silnorin »

mcappleton wrote: post #301

Women don't go into tech because they don't like it. Boys like legos, girls like dolls. Sure there are occasional tomboys but the fact is most girls just don't like engineering.

Don't try to gaslight people. Posting terrible arguments for sides you disagree with is lame epistemic pollution.

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#313

Post by thowaway26539 »

I think that it would not be a bad thing to have more diversity of thought in the tech community, or at least to have some basic level of considerate behavior toward people with different opinions.

I grew up in Red America; while I'm politically neutral/apathetic at this point, most of my friends/family are still varying shades of red. It was a drag to have all of my colleagues constantly and casually make insulting remarks about people that I care about.

Once, during an oncall shift, I pulled an all-nighter dealing with PagerDutys trying to keep our team's systems up; came in the next day and had to sit through a presentation where an assortment of republican party figures (no, not just Trump) were used as examples of "low IQ people" as part of some contrived metaphor that speaker was trying to make. Everyone laughed. No one made any comment about how this was unprofessional/inappropriate. Felt pretty angry.

This kind of environment is unhelpful to everyone. Obviously for folks on the right it is unpleasant, but for folks on the left it contributes to a culture of excessive contempt and hatred, increasingly detached from any actual contact with the people that they hate. This is not helpful for building winning coalitions.

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#314

Post by rhapsodic »

schimmy_changa wrote: post #270
rhapsodic wrote: post #179

No matter what side of this debate you're on, I don't think you can argue against the notion that there is only one side of it whose adherents can feel completely free to express their opinions or argue their case without fear of retaliation. Many stupid, unsupportable statements have been made by people on the left side, but I've yet to see much in the way of internet rage mobs formed against them. I think if google…

This sounds true, but is actually incorrect. Whenever women speak out on social media, they get at the very least abuse, but also often rape threats and death threats against them. That is retaliation, plain and simple. That's just the loud stuff. There's also the quiet "oh she's too much of a firebrand" or "oh she won't fit into the small team because she might call people out for their casual sexism" that happens a…

>This sounds true, but is actually incorrect. Whenever women speak out on social media, they get at the very least abuse, but also often rape threats and death threats against them. That is retaliation, plain and simple.

Rape threats and death threats are illegal. They should be reported, investigated and prosecuted. (As an aside, I've seen many instances where women claim to have received rape or death threats, with no mention that they reported them to the authorities. I find that perplexing.)

If by "abuse" you mean garden-variety insults and name-calling, well, that's been one of the left's go-to tactics for a long time. And women have certainly engaged in it plenty.

I'm referring to waging public campaigns to have a person fired or otherwise professionally, personally or economically harmed. The left has done this many times to people who have dared express wrongthoughts publicly. And it has had a chilling effect against others who might harbor similar wrongthoughts and are thinking of expressing them publicly.

So far, there's been no downside for the left for employing these tactics; only upside. That needs to be changed. They'll continue these bully tactics as long as they carry no risk.

I want to see this change. I want to see leftists who gin up rage mobs find themselves facing one themselves, more often than not. I want to see companies who capitulate to the demands of leftist rage mobs get besieged by an even more vocal and organized rage mob from the right.

In short, I don't like rage mob tactics, but the only way to fight against them effectively is with opposing rage mobs.

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#315

Post by Impossible »

geggam wrote: post #219
Impossible wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is constantly brought up as a counterpoint to women in tech on HN and it seems like no one that uses this argument ever does any research. Trying to get more men in nursing has been a thing for a very long time, in many ways its like the inverse of tech. A quick Google of "men in nursing" would show you a ton of resources and opinion pieces that look like a mirror of women in tech initiatives. Just because you a…

Yet with constant and proactive pushes to increase women in tech and men in nursing it doesn't happen. Ever think maybe men generally dont want to be a nurse and women generally dont want to be a nerd ?

In both cases there are gendered cultural associations built into the profession. Nursing is definitely viewed as feminine and software engineering is is still considered a masculine profession, although that perception is slowly changing as software becomes a more important part of everyone's life. Even if you get past that, the active shaming and harassment of people that enter or attempt to enter the respective fields keeps a lot of people out or drives them to quit.

The "men just don't want to be nurses and women just don't want to be programmers" standpoint usually assumes some immutable property (often genetics) that defends the status quo, and ignores mountains of other obvious problems that might lead to gender imbalances in a given profession. Obviously men and women are different, but there are many people that might enjoy and thrive in a profession they wouldn't otherwise consider because it's "not for them."

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#316

Post by s73ver »

Udik wrote: post #261
lawnchair_larry wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see that you said "compete". Testosterone has effects on competition, so there could still be bias there. Competitions are overrepresented by people who think they can win. We are taught that confidence and overconfidence skews male.

> Testosterone has effects on competition, so there could still be bias there Oh. And that would be a biological, innate difference in behaviour between men and women, wouldn't it? And even if women are as good as men at maths or computer programming- which wouldn't surprise me much- can't they be just less interested in it, just in the same way they're less interested (as you seem to imply) in competition? And could…

But are they less interested just because? Or less interested because of things like Uber?

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#317

Post by blusterXY »

Bukhmanizer wrote: post #277
blusterXY wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you just wrote is the equivalent of a climate change denier writing: "The major weakness of the paper isn't that there are studies suggesting climate change exists, but it doesn't convincingly argue why these difference are relevant to environmental policy." The author doesn't need to "prove" the science he references is real any more than I have to "prove" that climate change exists in order to discuss it. At a…

It's much closer to arguing that homosexuality is wrong because biological reproduction supports only heterosexual relationships.

There is strong scientific evidence of at least a partial genetic/prenatal basis for homosexual expression. If this were a discussion on that topic, the writer would be pointing this out and criticizing discriminatory policies that adversely affect homosexuals.

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#318

Post by ThrustVectoring »

wutbrodo wrote: post #140
untog wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The thing is, the guy wrote what many people think - outside of tech. I agree, but that's also at the core of my (internal) confusion about it. His arguments are not new, at all. As far as I could tell he doesn't present any new evidence to back up his argument, either. So, to those who say "it is important that he spoke out, and that we have this debate": when does this debate end? Assuming we have the debate and…

> As far as I could tell he doesn't present any new evidence to back up his argument, either. So, to those who say "it is important that he spoke out, and that we have this debate": when does this debate end? The problem is that (inside Google and elsewhere) the debate ended by fiat, not because one side made their case better; and it didn't end in favor of a side with tons of science to back it (not even close). My…

Does it matter, for Google, whether the gap in interest-in-engineering is biological or social? Either way, there's more men doing the sorts of things that get them the skills they need to succeed as an engineer at Google, and it's in Google's best interest to hire every engineer with the necessary skills.

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#319

Post by Shank »

rhapsodic wrote: post #314
schimmy_changa wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds true, but is actually incorrect. Whenever women speak out on social media, they get at the very least abuse, but also often rape threats and death threats against them. That is retaliation, plain and simple. That's just the loud stuff. There's also the quiet "oh she's too much of a firebrand" or "oh she won't fit into the small team because she might call people out for their casual sexism" that happens a…

> This sounds true, but is actually incorrect. Whenever women speak out on social media, they get at the very least abuse, but also often rape threats and death threats against them. That is retaliation, plain and simple. Rape threats and death threats are illegal. They should be reported, investigated and prosecuted. (As an aside, I've seen many instances where women claim to have received rape or death threats, wit…

> Rape threats and death threats are illegal. They should be reported, investigated and prosecuted. (As an aside, I've seen many instances where women claim to have received rape or death threats, with no mention that they reported them to the authorities. I find that perplexing.)

True! They should be, but they frequently aren't because there's a significant amount of time, friction, and effort required to do an accurate police report. Even more importantly, the internet's ability to enable harassment through pseudo-anonymity is unparalleled. It's really easy to send a death threat to someone over Twitter with a burner phone. It's not easy to come to the police and say "hey, throwaway99475 on Twitter posted a picture of my house and said he was going to rape me."

To quote yourself:

> So far, there's been no downside [for] employing these tactics; only upside. That needs to be changed. They'll continue these bully tactics as long as they carry no risk.

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#320

Post by thescribe »

mnm1 wrote: post #138

This idea that all opinions are equal and need to be respected is ridiculous and needs to stop. Politics is real and political opinions and actions have real consequences. Not all political opinions should be respected. In fact, it's our duty as citizens to evaluate and mock / scorn the opinions of others that we see as toxic. No one is protected from this and people that think they are, are feeling entitled to somet…

I agree as long as your ideas are equally mocked. Otherwise your position boils down to "No one should be able to disagree with me as long as I say the topic is sensitive"
Post reply on HN