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Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost

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Re: Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost

#221

Post by nateabele »

georgeorwell wrote: post #180
girvo wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly didn't know Appeal To Hypocrisy was a fallacy! Probably one I'm going to continue to make; hypocrisy is the one thing that drives me insane.

Yeah, it's a kind of ad hominem, because it says, "This person's arguments are not worth listening to because this person's behavior is not in line with what they are arguing for." But if arguments are rational things with inherent truth then it doesn't matter who says them. Her argument about overheard dongle jokes being sexist is weak enough as it is. The added hypocrisy just makes for sadly entertaining drama / go…

> [B]ecause there's the subtle implication that if she weren't a hypocrite then the sexism claim would be valid.

Waaaait a second... isn't that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirming_the_consequent?

Re: Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost

#223

Post by D_Alex »

Or perhaps... in fact...in the end... we all won?!

The situation resolved itself in a way that demonstrated that the community is tolerant of political correctness slip ups, and intolerant of those that blow them up out of proportion. But please, y'all... don't take it as a license to make puerile jokes. A little bit of extra sensitivity may be appropriate for a while.

Re: Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost

#224

Post by lopatin »

escaped_hn wrote: post #113
lignuist wrote: post #69

Two people fired. Wow. what happened to just saying sorry to each other and accepting it?

Nah. That would be to logical a conclusion.

Exactly. If I've learned anything from my time using templating libraries, it's that logic-less is the answer!

Re: Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost

#227

Post by evo_9 »

michaelochurch wrote: post #45

Let's simplify the rules to basic decency. Don't Be a Dick. Oh wait, I guess I can't say that now. Well, fuck me. Whoops, can't say that either. I hope mr-hank gets a huge severance out of PlayHaven. (At-will employment is not as simple as employers like to say it is.) At this point, he has position for something substantial, given that they discussed the termination in the public (disclosing an opinion that he is gu…

I think SendGrid should hire mr-hank to square up the Karma on this situation.

Re: Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost

#228

Post by eurleif »

michaelochurch wrote: post #45

Let's simplify the rules to basic decency. Don't Be a Dick. Oh wait, I guess I can't say that now. Well, fuck me. Whoops, can't say that either. I hope mr-hank gets a huge severance out of PlayHaven. (At-will employment is not as simple as employers like to say it is.) At this point, he has position for something substantial, given that they discussed the termination in the public (disclosing an opinion that he is gu…

>given that they discussed the termination in the public (disclosing an opinion that he is guilty)

The actual wording is: "The result of this investigation led to the unfortunate outcome of having to let this employee go." It's not explicitly stated what (if anything) they determined he did; just that the end result was firing him.

Re: Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost

#229

Post by [deleted] »

georgeorwell wrote: post #162
rdl wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently it's ok to post offensive jokes/sexual innuendo if you're a woman ( http://www.flickr.com/photos/adriarichards/sets/721576169418... ) or ( https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/312265091791847425 ), just like you can only be racist if you're white ( https://twitter.com/adriarichards/statuses/6039856858 )

Tu quoque (appeal to hypocrisy) is a fallacy, but this annoys me too. The pictures she took at PyCon of her playing a game of Cards Against Humanity are perhaps the most galling: https://www.facebook.com/adriarichards e.g. the one on March 14th where she's holding a card that says, "Eating all of the cookies before the AIDS bake-sale."

[deleted]

Re: Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost

#230

Post by georgeorwell »

nateabele wrote: post #221
georgeorwell wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's a kind of ad hominem, because it says, "This person's arguments are not worth listening to because this person's behavior is not in line with what they are arguing for." But if arguments are rational things with inherent truth then it doesn't matter who says them. Her argument about overheard dongle jokes being sexist is weak enough as it is. The added hypocrisy just makes for sadly entertaining drama / go…

> [B]ecause there's the subtle implication that if she weren't a hypocrite then the sexism claim would be valid. Waaaait a second... isn't that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirming_the_consequent ?

Thanks for catching that. It's hard to reason about these things because tu quoque is already false. I mean, if you assume false is true, then you can prove anything. I guess it depends on whether there's an if or an if-and-only-if relationship between being a hypocrite (H) and there not being sexism (S):

(H -> !S) -> (!H -> S) // false (this is what you mean)

(H !S) -> (!H -> S) // true

But besides being wrong, I guess I was also hinting at something else, which is that if you accept this one fallacy (tu quoque), you are probably implicitly accepting this other fallacy (I think it might have a different name than affirming the consequent, but they're related). That wasn't clear with my use of the phrase "subtle implication" and I didn't realize this either.

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