How Basecamp Blew Up • Hacker News Board

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#431

Post by prawn » Wed, May 05, 2021, 3:14 AM UTC

jgwil2 wrote: post #328

JPKab wrote: post #209

"But Fried and his co-founder, David Heinemeier Hansson, had been taken aback by an employee post which argued that mocking customer names laid the foundation for racially-motivated violence, and closed the thread." Children understand that calling people names isn't the same as violence. At some point can we all admit that the most narcissistic, dramatic people are overly-indulged by this garbage? I'm at a startup n…

> My favorite moment was sitting there, and having a coworker (US born, but of Arab descent) who grew up in an extremely wealthy neighborhood with immense privilege, lecturing a blind white male employee about how much privilege he had, and then going on to talk about how white people were uniquely tainted by the slave trade that some of their ancestors engaged in. I find it pretty hard to believe this went down the…

My interpretation of that latter line was that you can end the names list, gently rebuke the creators who were most likely oblivious (and collecting names from all cultures), but without taking the discussion into "genocide is a potential extrapolation". And not that this person favours name-calling at the office.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#432

Post by thrownaway564 » Wed, May 05, 2021, 3:16 AM UTC

edoceo wrote: post #373

willcipriano wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My daughter will be a hacker if she wants to follow in her old mans footsteps. Please don't take that away from her.

mines only 6, shes defeated some child locks and found a "cheat" in one of her kid games on the iPad and presses every button on every machine she sees. Hack the planet kiddo!!

Good! we'll need her in a few years once these kids' anxiety drives them out of the wokeforce

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#433

Post by tomlockwood » Wed, May 05, 2021, 3:16 AM UTC

anon7725 wrote: post #418

tomlockwood wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's Marxist about it, then?

Marxism is about the politics of the underclass - the revolutionary struggle to achieve a just society by upending the inequities of Capitalism. So the proletarian uprising wrests control of society from the bourgeoisie. Cultural Marxism redefines the oppressed and oppressor along the lines of identity rather than economy. This makes it much more palatable to a capitalist society.

Ah, so it's just like Marxism, except without any of the discussion of Capitalism? And its an ideology about identity, which you feel sets it clearly apart from other ideologies?

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#434

Post by bhupy » Wed, May 05, 2021, 3:17 AM UTC

sagichmal wrote: post #355

seriousquestion wrote: post #148

white su·prem·a·cy; the belief that white people constitute a superior race and should therefore dominate society de·fund; prevent from continuing to receive funds Courtesy of the dictionary. This is not hard. Stop entertaining people who redefine words.

You don't get to assert what other people mean when they say things (shrug)

And conversely, you don’t get to assume that others understand you when you use language in ways that aren’t colloquial.

Shared definitions is the bedrock of human communication, and absent that, we’re no better than chimps just grunting past each other.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#435

Post by chris11 » Wed, May 05, 2021, 3:17 AM UTC

x3n0ph3n3 wrote: post #378

chris11 wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what was said at the meeting. But Singer did start making comments about white supremacy in America at a meeting about banning political discussion at Basecamp. I could see how it looked like his opinions were given more respect than others. If he made statements about white supremacy not existing at basecamp, then that was a horrible defense to accusations of white privilege at Basecamp. Shutting down d…

> I don't know what was said at the meeting. But Singer did start making comments about white supremacy in America at a meeting about banning political discussion at Basecamp I'm sorry, but do you or do you not know what was said at the meeting? Those two statements contradict each other, unless you're talking about two different meetings. I quoted something provided by an employee who was there, at the meeting that…

Singer was quoted as saying “I strongly disagree we live in a white supremacist culture,”. Your quote implied that Singer was making comments about white supremacy, and Singer's reply to Casey Newton primarily focused on white supremacy in America.

I wasn't at the meeting, and it sounds like it was extremely charged. I don't think I can make nuanced comments about what was said there. But it seems clear that Singer made comments minimizing white supremacy in America, even his emailed reply does.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#436

Post by simondotau » Wed, May 05, 2021, 3:21 AM UTC

prepend wrote: post #190

thrownaway564 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The culture here is getting bad. We have an "inclusion council" that hands out these diktats. The word ban list (not blacklist!) is approaching 100 words including husband, housekeeping, normal, hacker and meritocracy. Worse part is we're a security company edit: "here" is okta, not basecamp

Why hacker?

If Paul Graham doesn't rename this site "Hackex News" tomorrow, the woke brigade must cancel it immediately!

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#437

Post by cm2012 » Wed, May 05, 2021, 3:22 AM UTC

JPKab wrote: post #209

"But Fried and his co-founder, David Heinemeier Hansson, had been taken aback by an employee post which argued that mocking customer names laid the foundation for racially-motivated violence, and closed the thread." Children understand that calling people names isn't the same as violence. At some point can we all admit that the most narcissistic, dramatic people are overly-indulged by this garbage? I'm at a startup n…

Matt Yglesias has a good theory on this.

"My suspicion is that this is a weird tic of campus politics that has followed graduates into the professional arena where they unconsciously started deploying it in less appropriate contexts. If you’re in a dorm at a fancy college and you can convince an administrator that something is racist, the administrator will probably put a stop to it. At the same time, “this is bad for poor people” just isn’t going to get you far as a campus argument. After all, these schools more or less openly auction off a number of admissions slots to wealthy donors (while, of course, practicing affirmative action to keep things diverse) so they can hardly take a hard line on class politics."

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#438

Post by sagichmal » Wed, May 05, 2021, 3:22 AM UTC

bhupy wrote: post #434

sagichmal wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't get to assert what other people mean when they say things (shrug)

And conversely, you don’t get to assume that others understand you when you use language in ways that aren’t colloquial. Shared definitions is the bedrock of human communication, and absent that, we’re no better than chimps just grunting past each other.

> And conversely, you don’t get to assume that others understand you when you use language in ways that aren’t colloquial.

Yep! It was a failure of all parties involved that the two competing definitions of racism weren't laid out on the table, when people started getting huffy.

> Shared definitions is the bedrock of human communication, and absent that, we’re no better than chimps just grunting past each other.

(laughs) Lay it on thick, why don't you?

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#439

Post by gustavo-fring » Wed, May 05, 2021, 3:22 AM UTC

treeman79 wrote: post #297

JPKab wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Academia is where this ideology originated. It's where virtually all of the terminology came from. It's also where these employees were taught that collective identity dwarfs individual identity.

Your being downvoted but it’s true.

Using all encompassing terms like "academia" is the problem.

I've been in academia for more than a decade. We're a regional school with lots of foreign students as well as commuter students. The professors that I've interacted with regularly (and are in a dept that deals with that stuff) have never been anything but professional and they understand the importance of rigor. I've yet to see them make emotional caustic and overreaching claims because they can. I suspect most of academia is like this, you just don't hear about it, cause it's boring. If you desire it, you too can work at bad wages for 2 decades before hoping for tenure at a place you barely get to choose.

Many of these terms that cause so many issues are those that are working jargon within a domain and make sense within the context of that domain with lots of awareness of the terminology, but when they are extracted out of that context and used by people (for a variety of reasons) for political and cultural battles, it becomes an issue.

So academia is perhaps responsible, but all of academia is not.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#440

Post by prepend » Wed, May 05, 2021, 3:23 AM UTC

MattRix wrote: post #327

prepend wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we disagree on this. I have worked with and for many great leaders who never “acknowledged white supremacy” so it is definitely possible for me, and others to trust such people. I’m not arguing semantics as my point is that there are many things more important than acknowledging white supremacy exists. This may not be true for others as it seems it’s super important for some. But if I’m in the business of cou…

There are certain issues (like this one) where silence has historically been used as a form of endorsement. It is certainly not irrational to perceive it as being an endorsement.

Perhaps not irrational, but incorrect. I’d like to see whatever evidence means silence is a form of endorsement.

It’s hard to know, but I have one data point in my own self in that I really don’t talk much about anything and certainly don’t endorse white supremacy and I actively live my life fighting inequity. Someone saying that I endorse something because I don’t speak about it is incorrect as I know myself better than others do.

Following this logic leads to absurdity. Should people spend their days speaking for or against everything? What about people’s right to privacy?

I mean there’s so many example of how silence=support is illogical, I’m not sure how people can hold this opinion. This assumes that there’s a single set of priorities and white supremacy is near the top for everyone.

It’s also fairly odd in that it assumes that the whole world is in America so that even people in remote countries must make statements against white supremacy lest they endorse it. That’s just silly.

On any topic, only a few thousand or perhaps millions express a position. Does that mean everyone else is against or for? Does silence always equal endorsement? Does it mean opposition?

You haven’t stopped this conversation to call out how you recognize murder is evil and are against it. Does that mean you endorse murder? Isn’t murder important enough to speak out against? I certainly think murder is terrible and am shocked that someone would endorse murder through their silence.

Etc etc etc, there’s a million of these. Not everything has to be a conflict and not everyone owes me an answer. Sometimes I just don’t know and don’t get to know. I should only assume when necessary and using some evidence to support my assumption