101–110 of 161 posts
Why is this on the second page with 246 points in 1-2 hours? Seems strange...
1) Users flagged it. There are many reasons to flag a post - it's too political; the discussion is toxic; etc.
2) It set off the flame war detector. This is an algorithm that looks at stuff (who knows? Number of posts? Speed of posts? Depth of posts? Numbers of flags to comments? Amount of votes?) and penalises threads that trigger it.
3) In rare situations mods take action. The mods would be either dang or sctb, and they always say they've taken action.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The context of this discussion, diversity in gender and race, already contains a lot of implicit meaning in the form of the historical development of the culture of discrimination. It's not at all harmful to acknowledge the long, deep history of the use of dog whistle language and malicious intent disguised as thoughtful rhetoric, especially by those who are in the position of power (men, whites, and especially white…
No. This is precisely why we're stuck where we are in the first place. If you allow people to call "dog whistle language" and attribute "malicious intent disguised as thoughtful rethoric", you give everyone a fully general counterargument against anything. I could accuse you right now of using "dog whistle language" and there's literally nothing you can do to prove me wrong. Those ideas are conversational equivalent…
No it isn't. It's a failure to acknowledge the reality of society we live and the language that powers and enables the status quo. It's an uncomfortable truth and one that has been painstakingly dug up over decades, but for every two steps forward on this subject the powers that be cause us to take one step back. Your unwillingness to substantially acknowledge such realities is what is stagnating this conversation, because certain ideas and solutions need to be repeated over and over again and sometimes re-branded to make it more appealing to people who don't want to address the problems present in our society.
Here we have a "memo" that uses credible science but has conclusions and ideas completely detached from that science, and then when it is pointed out how incredibly shit his conclusions are, it suddenly becomes an issue about "free speech." It's pretty akin to the whole "states rights" branding that happens with certain other political conversations. It IS dog-whistle language and utilizing such language while pretending you're not, and even worse pretending like you're actually making a point, is incredibly counter-productive to advancing anywhere on gender/sexual issues for everyone. It's dishonest at worst and ignorant at best.
This whole topic has PG's psuedo-philosophical musing's stink all over it and it's quite nauseating to have to dig through it. It's the bullshit asymmetry principle in action.
Why is this on the second page with 246 points in 1-2 hours? Seems strange...
Not sure if you'll see my reply, but this happens often to HN submissions on politically charged topics. The topic gets flagged to death. It's been like this for a long time.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And you believe those differences to be meaningful? To programming? And appropriate to discuss with coworkers?
What happens with all the correct things that are now inappropriate to say in this brave new world?
Thank God I'm getting old and will be exiting the workplace (relatively) soon. Repeating lies out of fear for your job is corrosive to the soul.
Harvard University President Lawrence Summers [was fired] for
mentioning at a January 14 academic conference the entirely reasonable
theory that innate male-female differences might possibly help explain
why so many mathematics, engineering, and hard-science faculties
remain so heavily male.
Or as someone else has already phrased it nicely:
"After all, if freedom of speech means anything, it means a willingness
to stand and let people say things with which we disagree,
and which do weary us considerably."
Regardless on your opinions of the memo, this article nails it right on the head; Gizmodo and other major news outlets handled this very irresponsibly, posting their version that had no citations, and leading the reader, even at the very beginning, into forming the opinion that this was simply a guy being "anti-diversity". Whatever your thoughts on the subject are, it needs to be pointed out that this type of journal…
There are no neutral journalism. If you want a reporting of facts unbiased by opinions, it would be "viral Google employee memo on the subject of diversity recruitment." Any editorial on the matter would necessarily make a subjective evaluation. I'm torn by the two sides. On one hand I see the rational and level headed language in the memo versus the reactionary bait-click headlines. On the other hand I sense a mens'…
Agree, but how do you know that you won't be the one sacrificed in the name of diversity? How does one fairly choose which member of the more prevalent gets sacrificed if there is limited headcount? How do you prove that diversity generates more value than stronger individual members regardless of identity?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What happens with all the correct things that are now inappropriate to say in this brave new world?
"When"? We're pretty much already there now. Thank God I'm getting old and will be exiting the workplace (relatively) soon. Repeating lies out of fear for your job is corrosive to the soul.
If anything, IME watching people fall into this trap is a pretty reliably useful indicator of someone's intelligence. I tried it the last few days with a handful of people with whom I'd never discussed politics: "Did you hear about that Google manifesto thing?". I tried it with 8 different people both at and outside of work, and every single time, the people who were uncritically outraged were the ones who I already knew were pretty stupid. Not a single person that I already knew was intelligent had this kind of wild-eyed negative reaction to a guy saying "maybe we shouldn't assume that differences in the employee population aren't due to differences in the input population".
FWIW, my personal best guess is that what biological differences there may be between men and women aren't sufficient to explain the tech gender gap. I just think that it's fucking insane to pretend that the science has conclusively shown that there are no such differences and to attack a guy who dares mention them. The notion that scientists can talk freely about something but laymen can't scares the shit out of me.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The author feels comfortable making the claim women are biologically more neurotic, in a professional setting, no less. His "citation" for this fact is Wikipedia. This is unimaginative sexist bullshit that everyone has heard before. That people feel the impulse to defend this is disgusting. Wikipedia might not be the most credible source, but the differences in big 5 personality traits between men and women are wel…
And you believe those differences to be meaningful? To programming? And appropriate to discuss with coworkers?
It would have been much more fair to call it an "anti affirmative-action memo". Framing it as an "anti-diversity screed" is a pretty biased move, not to mention how they removed his supporting content as well. Certainly there are many who hold the opinion that "anti affirmative-action === anti diversity", which is a point worth debating separately, but I still find the framing used by most of the news articles very m…