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On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

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Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#331

Post by Udik »

matt4077 wrote: post #324
Udik wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Reading the reactions to the manifesto I'm left feeling like I'm taking crazy pills I've discovered several years ago, debating very similar issues on usenet, that people (maybe some people, but a good proportion in any case) have the ability to make themselves perfectly blind to aspects of reality they decided to disregard. They'll be even ready to contradict themselves multiple times in the space of a few sentenc…

> They'll be even ready to contradict themselves multiple times in the space of a few sentences > Climate change (irrespective of its scientific validity) is another of those.

If you mean I'm contradicting myself, not sure: one thing is something being true or false, another is how you defend it and how capable you are of even taking in consideration that you might be wrong.

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#332

Post by PrimalDual »

jjirsa wrote: post #279
asciicircum wrote: post #189

Could someone opposed to the arguments the manifesto makes explain to me what quotes caused them to strongly dislike it? Reading the reactions to the manifesto I'm left feeling like I'm taking crazy pills. I must have read a different manifesto. AFAICT the main idea of the manifesto is that biological differences between men and women account for part of the representation gap. This seems to be perfectly logical and…

I find this to be well written: https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/so-about-this-googlers-man... Notably: 1) The document makes a fundamentally flawed argument - that is, he's based his whole argument on a flawed premise that women just aren't interested in being engineers (and it's clearly wrong, because gender ratios were nearly identical until about the mid 80s; it's not a biological difference, it's a social and c…

1. I could not find the source stating that gender ratios were identical before the 80's in engineering. I do know that there used be a more even ratio of male/female programmers but I think the field has changed enough from those times that I would be wary of anyone claiming to make an apples to apples comparison.

2.His points about what makes a good engineering manager skips over the fact that to get good at engineering you have to practice it a lot. You have to spend a significant amount of time alone coding/engineering to grasp well enough that understanding the customer starts mattering a lot more. The guy that wrote the post seems to come from a perspective of so much experience and talent that he forgot or perhaps doesn't even know how hard it is go get started in the field.

3. I think the part about alienating women comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of the manifesto and probability in general. Saying that women in general are less interested or less capable to be a google enginner says essentially nothing about the individuals before you. Trying to infer qualities of an individual from a distribution is racism but making statements about distributions shouldn't be. You can only talk about the whole distribution of google employees and perhaps justify(or fail to justify) the imbalance. Obviously, being a google employee is a much more informative prior than the gender of an individual.

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#333

Post by rcoveson »

vkou wrote: post #263
rcoveson wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While the author used dubious rhetorical tactics (e.g. stating scientific "facts" without citation), he was never hostile towards any one person or group of people. Even if the argument he was making was that Google should fire or cut the pay of its female software engineers (which it wasn't), it wouldn't necessarily be aggressive. That word is not applicable here. And yes, I have been in a situation where my merit a…

> he was never hostile towards any one person or group of people. Even if the argument he was making was that Google should fire or cut the pay of its female software engineers (which it wasn't), it wouldn't necessarily be aggressive. Let me present an argument: "Black people are killers, thieves, and lazy layabouts. Statistics [Citation, Citation, Citation] support me. The only reason employs black people is affirma…

> Black people are killers, thieves, and lazy layabouts.

Introducing "killers" and "thieves" to this example distances it from the discussion we are having, since you introduced words with violent connotations. Let's leave it at:

> Black people are... ...lazy layabouts.

This is still a far cry from the contents of the memo, but we can work with it. There are a lot of negative adjectives that can be applied to this sentiment: Racist, wrong, counterproductive, even evil. But aggressive is still wrong. It just doesn't fit the definition. Stereotyping a group of people as "lazy" or even "useless" is not violent. It doesn't threaten violence, and it's intention is not necessarily to cause harm. Have a talk some time with an actual racist who is otherwise a peaceful person. They used to be very common. You'll hear them make all sorts of generalizations about black people that sound totally insane and horrible to us, but they don't mean it in an aggressive way. They wouldn't wish harm, physical or otherwise, on anybody. They genuinely believe that that is simply "how God made them" or something like that. Judging from the tone of the memo, plus the benefit of the doubt which we owe even those we disagree with, I think it's plain that the author of the original memo feels similarly.

Again, aggression is all about intent. You have little evidence to back the idea that our author guy wishes women, or any other person or group, harm.

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#334

Post by rhapsodic »

pavlov wrote: post #296
rhapsodic wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Fight angry outrage with threats of angry outrage? It's hard to see how that makes sense. Not threats of angry outrage, actual angry outrage. The left's tactics should be used against them, in greater degrees, until they cease using those tactics.

You mean there is not enough angry outrage on the right? Are you serious? Your comment highlights the main problem in American politics, on both sides: a vicious cycle of self-victimization where participants seem to become completely blind to how their own actions are a reflection of the hated others'.

>You mean there is not enough angry outrage on the right? Are you serious?

My point was not that there is not enough angry outrage on the right. There certainly is. My point was that the right's angry outraged is not as organized and focused as the left's. In addition to random angry tweets, they need to wage public campaigns against the employers or businesses of their counterparts on the left to get them fired or professionally destroyed, the way the left does to people on the right who express badthink in public.

I'm an example of the unorganized, unfocused anger on the right. I've never yet taken concrete steps to bring about the change I'd like to see, beyond talking about it on HN.

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#335

Post by AnimalMuppet »

geofft wrote: post #59
jblow wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read the memo? It doesn't seem like it.

I have read the memo, and this seems like an accurate summary. It's phrased in words that sound reasonable, but the ideas aren't reasoned, and it's a particularly common trick to use reasonable words to express unreasoned ideas to fool those who only skim a text.

See, that's kind of the problem right there. You define the ideas to be "unreasoned", and therefore any presentation of those ideas is unacceptable, no matter how stated.

Can you state why you find the ideas unreasonable, without some variant of "all right-thinking people know", and without misrepresenting the ideas?

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#336

Post by ZeroGravitas »

gerso wrote: post #242
currymj wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

calling someone a Nazi is a strong accusation, but the guy did repeat some extreme-right talking points. one of the footnotes basically repeats the argument that "cultural Marxism" has taken over the left. This is a common right-wing talking point often connected to an antisemitic conspiracy theory involving the Frankfurt School. I doubt the guy is an actual Nazi, but just like you I'm not specialized enough to evalu…

Huh? I assume you're talking about footnote #7: [7] Communism promised to be both morally and economically superior to capitalism, but every attempt became morally corrupt and an economic failure. As it became clear that the working class of the liberal democracies wasn’t going to overthrow their “capitalist oppressors,” the Marxist intellectuals transitioned from class warfare to gender and race politics. The core o…

He seems to be claiming that black people, gay people, women, trans folk and the poor were in no way oppressed and it was all made up by Communists to take down capitalism.

You can probably find some people who agree with individual parts of that but if you get a full bingo then you're basically dealing with a Nazi.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_School#Cultural_Ma...

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#337

Post by rhapsodic »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #287
rhapsodic wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Fight angry outrage with threats of angry outrage? It's hard to see how that makes sense. Not threats of angry outrage, actual angry outrage. The left's tactics should be used against them, in greater degrees, until they cease using those tactics.

Show them how wrong they are by becoming like them? That's... not very wise. Also cowardly.

>Show them how wrong they are by becoming like them? That's... not very wise. Also cowardly.

I have no interest in showing them they're wrong. I just want them to stop trying to destroy people who publicly express opinions which with they disagree.

As to whether or not that's "cowardly", I'm not really concerned.

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#338

Post by stefantalpalaru »

jerrylives wrote: post #129
copx wrote: post #104

Try to find even just one female neuroscientist or evolutionary biologist who argues that men and women are not fundamentally different at a biological level and that the different behaviors, the different interests and preferences we are seeing are not largely rooted in biology. The author of this piece pretends that the opinion of ignorant far-left loonies is somehow the reasonable and intelligent one while the eng…

> But the truth is that there are far less women than men who are like that, and that this will never change because of biological factors. What about all the women through the 40s up until the 80s who worked as computer programmers? For a while it was a seriously female dominated field. A woman wrote the first compiler. A woman wrote the code to help get us to the moon. A woman taught my CS courses in high school an…

> A woman wrote the first compiler.

That was actually just a linker/loader. What we call a "compiler" today is very different than what Hopper called back then.

This was the first actual compiler, in today's meaning of the term: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autocode

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#339

Post by CalChris »

asciicircum wrote: post #245
CalChris wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Discrimination to reach equal representation is unfair, divisive, and bad for business. He's telling this to a $650B company. And then just to cover for himself, he says: > I strongly believe in gender and racial diversity, and I think we should strive for more. And then: > My concrete suggestions are to: De-moralize diversity But my favorite is: > Stop alienating conservatives.

I don't want to put words in your mouth and would be happy to hear more of what exactly you disagree with in these quotes. Nevertheless, here's my take: >> Discrimination to reach equal representation is unfair, divisive, and bad for business. > He's telling this to a $650B company. I assume your reaction is towards the "bad for business" and I agree, without any supporting evidence he is not qualified to tell google…

Perhaps if I reversed the order of these sentences:

> I strongly believe in gender and racial diversity, and I think we should strive for more. [But] Discrimination to reach equal representation is unfair, divisive, ....

This just makes no sense to me. As the $650B number suggests, whatever Google is doing it sure works for them. However Trump now wants his Justice Department to look into affirmative action as a form of anti-white discrimination [1] so maybe you will have the law on your side.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/08/02/o...

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#340

Post by Bukhmanizer »

blusterXY wrote: post #317
Bukhmanizer wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You've missed the point. The point is that just because you've pointed out a biological fact doesn't mean that you can extend that to societal truths. Cancer also has a genetic basis. Does that mean we should stop researching how to cure it? The point is that arguing over how Homosexuality is like or unlike Cancer is completely pointless and irrelevant to the wider conversation.

Likewise, biological arguments are irrelevant to the overall conversation about diversity in tech. And I'm speaking as someone who thinks that there are a lot of flaws with the current attempts to solve these problems. I think diversity policies are often misguided and lead to suboptimal solutions. But I think this is a hard problem, and there are not going to be any easy solutions. The argument that women aren't biologically suited for working in tech is the lazy and stupid solution. All it does is draw lines between us and them and give newspapers a bunch of trash to print.

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