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Jessamyn Smith: Fighting sexist jokes with a Python bot

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Re: Jessamyn Smith: Fighting sexist jokes with a Python bot

#161

Post by hosh »

hythloday wrote: post #16

"It has been fascinating to watch the ongoing reactions. There have been complaints that we have too many bots in the channel now. There have been complaints about it spamming the channel. There were several “Make them shut up!” responses. These are not reactions I have seen the other bots elicit, certainly not with such intensity. One person even complained about the name being too long, though to his credit he real…

"... something is making them uncomfortable, and so they attack it on 'rational' grounds. Most likely, they aren’t even aware of the gut reaction fueling their logic." Twenty years after writing Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson, the Arbiter of Badassness, wrote in Reamde:

"It was then that she cut him off in midsentence and said that it was over. She said it with a certainty and a conviction in her voice and her face that left him fascinated and awed. Because guys, at least of his age, didn't have the confidence to make major decisions from their gut like that. They had to build a superstructure of rational thought on top of it. But not Zula. She didn't have to decide. She just had to pass on the news."

I've noticed this in myself and other guys: even if our guts or our hearts tell us we did wrong, we tend to rationalize and defend our actions instead of simply apologizing.

Re: Jessamyn Smith: Fighting sexist jokes with a Python bot

#162

Post by mseebach »

AkThhhpppt wrote: post #152
mseebach wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"People" are so tired of "i'm being ironic" that they made a tumbler full of "ironic" racism and sexism. Gotcha. I disagree with the assertion in the linked blog post that it's not possible to satirize -isms - in fact, I firmly believe it's necessary to expose the utter ridiculousness of these beliefs. Which, incidentally, is what the OP did with her anti-bot.

Yes, but satire has to be done well to work (see unalone's "We want" comment for an example). Auto-responding "that's what she says" isn't.

Agreed. But the blog post in the tumbler post you linked does not like satire:

As hipster racism has become more widespread, it’s also crept into more general society. Racist content appears in films and television shows, disguised as “satire,” it’s on the cover of major magazines, it’s in the pages of respectable newspapers. While explicit racism is viewed as socially unacceptable, racism disguised as irony or satire is evidently perfectly acceptable, especially if it comes from middle class white people with trust funds.

In fact, it's an awful article. Full of conjecture, strawmen and self-righteousness.

As for the bot, the ironic part is the creation and publication of it, not in the actual functionality. Sexism aside, I can't comprehend why someone would want zero-value-added noise added to a professional communications channel (I don't consider banter and joking zero value in this regard). Especially since this invited further noise, and now they're locked in: it's going to be hard to go and say "enough fun for now" and turn both bots of now without appearing sexist.

Re: Jessamyn Smith: Fighting sexist jokes with a Python bot

#163

Post by tomjen3 »

wpietri wrote: post #148
cantastoria wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dear Sir, We noticed you have made some potentially inflammatory comments directed towards women. We have started to monitor your account and will shut it down if you continue to use this type of language. Please read the following guidelines that explain how to correctly discuss and think about these issues: "What things are most useful for men to keep in mind when discussing theories or topics relating to gender?"…

Yes! Also, what's up with Miss Manners suggesting other ways for people to be polite? Why is she keeping me down with her "chew with your mouth closed" and "use the toilet paper, not the hand towels" bullshit! No one can police me! The constitution say so! I DO WHAT I WANT! Or, and I'm just thinking out loud here, we could recognize that, especially in professional contexts, we actually want to behave towards our col…

There is a difference -- you can ignore miss manners if you want (at your peril) in this case you have the room equivalent of a screaming maniac yell at you (politely) each time you do something wrong.

And yes if you had that in real life, it would be considered rude.

Re: Jessamyn Smith: Fighting sexist jokes with a Python bot

#164

Post by rmc »

ugh wrote: post #129
CompiledCode wrote: post #21

So how can I write a bot to fight the sexism in Microsoft's TV ads? You know the ones... where the husband is the bumbling idiot and the wife is the smart capable one who shuts down his plea to play golf on Sundays. I would love to set that bot loose on all TV shows and ads. So often, a flipped situation would cause outrage of being sexist, whereas if the man is put down, it's "funny." It really bothers me, especiall…

I’m honestly curious, what are your reasons for writing this comment? It seems off-topic.

When a child who has all the toys is told they have to share, some children will throw a hissy fit. This is an apt metaphore for a "men's rights" movement which rares it's head when people talking about giving women as much power as men.

Re: Jessamyn Smith: Fighting sexist jokes with a Python bot

#165

Post by tomjen3 »

zachinglis wrote: post #151

I think this issue is obviously on a per-company basis. We have a light-hearted attitude towards TWSS jokes here in the office because the female members are as just as bad as any one of the males. We also do Thats What He Said. Jessamyn was obviously uncomfortable, and that's when it should have stopped. Without question. I don't think her gender was a deciding factor in that, more so sensibilities. I appreciate her…

She definitely did the right thing by not complaining to management but a startup is not a suit company and therefore there are things that go on there that would not have been accepted in a suit company.

There are plenty of employees who like their company that way and if she didn't she is not really suited for the company culture. She can (and should) seek employment elsewhere. She will be better of there.

Finally she didn't beat them at their own game. Yes she wrote a bot, but it takes a bit more cleverness to match phrases that to simply reply to a string that is going to be the only thing that bot ever quotes.

Too bad too, since she could have made her bot do something that would have been impressive, and perhaps convince others that the bot was sexist by calculating how often the joke was mad at the expense of a male ('it is small and hard to see') versus at the female. That bot would have been impressive and it would have been a much greater hack.

Re: Jessamyn Smith: Fighting sexist jokes with a Python bot

#166

Post by ElliotMingee »

AkThhhpppt wrote: post #147
ElliotMingee wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how logic works... I don't mean to be condescending but, when a word has a specific definition, it's pretty straightforward to determine whether or not it accurately describes a situation. Consider it like a mathematical proof: credentials, judges, and everything else are irrelevant if you've shown the word doesn't apply.

Whose definition, though? "It is argued that sexual objectification is a form of sexism" - http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Sexism

Fair enough, I was assuming the definition provided in the comment earlier but I think the psychology one may be equally fitting.

Re: Jessamyn Smith: Fighting sexist jokes with a Python bot

#167

Post by politician »

The TWSS bot is an interesting application of machine learning. However, it was a mistake to install it on the company's IRC channel, and the Smith was justified in asking for an irrelevant bot which she found offensive to be removed.

On the other hand, writing a bot which responds with feminist quotes is just as ridiculous and passive aggressive.

The real answer here is for management to step in, exercise some authority, and remove both bots.

Re: Jessamyn Smith: Fighting sexist jokes with a Python bot

#168

Post by wpietri »

tomjen3 wrote: post #163
wpietri wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes! Also, what's up with Miss Manners suggesting other ways for people to be polite? Why is she keeping me down with her "chew with your mouth closed" and "use the toilet paper, not the hand towels" bullshit! No one can police me! The constitution say so! I DO WHAT I WANT! Or, and I'm just thinking out loud here, we could recognize that, especially in professional contexts, we actually want to behave towards our col…

There is a difference -- you can ignore miss manners if you want (at your peril) in this case you have the room equivalent of a screaming maniac yell at you (politely) each time you do something wrong. And yes if you had that in real life, it would be considered rude.

Not quite getting your point. As you acknowledge, there's peril in being impolite. It's the peril of getting called out or shunned. The only thing that's different now from 30 years ago is that things have shifted enough that saying something sexist is rude.

Also, we may disagree on what's rude. If I throw a party and somebody is sufficiently offensive, I'll show them the door. If they see that as rude, then it's only for the same reason they were acting offensively: they were too clueless to understand the harm they were causing.

I agree that some people take it too far and are rude in return. But given that they were provoked, I'm more inclined to forgive that. And given that those links are perfectly useful guides to discussing these topics, I don't think bringing them up is rude.

Re: Jessamyn Smith: Fighting sexist jokes with a Python bot

#169

Post by raganwald »

CompiledCode wrote: post #125
raganwald wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument says "since (unfair child support laws) then (men treated unfairly) thus not(sexist anti-women culture)" The problem with your argument is that you are not espousing a widely held belief about child support laws being "unfair to men." Thus, a discussion about your argument is likely to devolve into long exchanges about children's rights and anecdotes about ridiculous edge case judgments on both sides. W…

I actually think that "A" is beyond dispute. Your married partner cheats on you, divorces you, marries the biological father of the child, and you are still on the hook for child support? I can't imagine someone NOT thinking with every moral fiber of their being that this is wrong. Regardless, I think my point is already self-evident in the answers. Which is: we accept without second thought that (A) our society is s…

You wrote:

I actually think that "A" is beyond dispute.

But you forget that I said:

you are not espousing a widely held belief about child support laws being "unfair to men." Thus, a discussion about your argument is likely to devolve into long exchanges about children's rights and anecdotes about ridiculous edge case judgments on both sides.

I was careful not to discuss the validity of your belief, but merely to point out that your belief—whether true or false—is not WIDELY HELD. And as you can see, at least one other person disagrees with you, and the resulting exchange is getting further and further away from discussing the original point.

When I use the words “beyond dispute,” I mean that people accept it as true, or a at least such a sufficiently large proportion of people that anyone disputing it is immediately understood to be ignorant or a crank. The Earth revolving around the Sun is beyond dispute. Although I personally believe that the evidence shows that punitive laws around marijuana possession are unhelpful, it isn’t “beyond dispute,” lots of people dispute that opinion every day.

I stand by my assertion that if you say A -> B -> C and you choose an A that is not widely held to be true, you are going to spend a lot of time arguing about A even though your original intention was to try to convince other people of C. It doesn’t matter how certain you are of the truth of A, what matters when trying to convince people is whether they believe it to be true.

If they don’t, you either have to find a forum where people are discussing “A,” and talk about that, or pick another argument that is going to have a high signal-to-noise ration when discussing “C."

Re: Jessamyn Smith: Fighting sexist jokes with a Python bot

#170

Post by eaten_by_a_grue »

AkThhhpppt wrote: post #39
eaten_by_a_grue wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. And if that was the first bot to respond to a bot, I think it is irritating that men hate equality was the first conclusion. Maybe those guys do hate equality, but from my perspective I would have been irritated by TWSS and then more irritated by the responder, I might then decide to complain before anyone else gets the bright idea to make another bot talking to a bot.

And if that complaint results in the rule "no bots on IRC," she wins. She has co-workers who are ignoring how their thoughtless behaviour is impacting her, even after she's told them. She'd be entirely justified taking it to HR, but instead she's social engineering a more subtle solution. Nice work!

> And if that complaint results in the rule "no bots on IRC," she wins.

No, maturity and people with refined senses of humor win :)

I think having that phrase repeated to the extent of making a bot is idiotic, I think her solution is far more entertaining to read, and I am irritated by unalone's suggestion that "that's what she said" unequivocally objectifies women.

That's all of my feelings for this thread.

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