Come on ladies! get out and vote!
Poll: Male or female?
71–80 of 106 posts
Re: Poll: Male or female?
#72Female here, just voted. I just wanted to say I love Hacker News. I'm an introvert and a nerd before I am a female, so I am of course drawn to Hacker News because it's a great place to find other over-sensitive folks who take themselves, their questions, and other peoples' questions very seriously. As others point out again and again, the quality of discourse here is just really high. Secondarily, but still present,…
"I do wince and get bummed out whenever I read certain comments here..." I used to. I don't anymore. My (totally illogical) belief system regarding hn comments: If we agree, then I think, "Great! I'm on the right track." If not, then I think, "They just don't understand (yet)." May not really make sense, but I always leave hn feeling better, never worse.
Heh. No, your description does make sense, and made me laugh. Never do I feel more validated than when reading a Paul Graham essay, ("Guess who's not crazy?? Me!").
As I said above, I freely admit I'm oversensitive, something I probably share with many HN users. Maybe one reason I wince here at HN more than elsewhere is because I'd otherwise consider HN somewhat of an intellectual refuge, with peers. So when you read/hear something about you described as an Other, or somebody who should/does have traits different than you do (example: I don't like fashion.), you feel out of place, something I'd otherwise never feel at HN, a place I usually feel right at home at.
Anyway, I like your description of how it feels to read HN, pretty right on :D
Re: Poll: Male or female?
#73Female here, just voted. I just wanted to say I love Hacker News. I'm an introvert and a nerd before I am a female, so I am of course drawn to Hacker News because it's a great place to find other over-sensitive folks who take themselves, their questions, and other peoples' questions very seriously. As others point out again and again, the quality of discourse here is just really high. Secondarily, but still present,…
"I do wince and get bummed out whenever I read certain comments here, [...] but even when things make me sad..." Does reading comments you think are misguided make you sad? I feel like there's an interesting academic study in here somewhere. edit: If the parent comment was made by a guy, would I still be getting downmodded?
(Just upmodded your question, a decent one.)
"Does reading comments you think are misguided make you sad?..."
Yeah, kind of. I mean, it's pretty context dependent. First of all, outside of HN, I'd be much less sensitive to stuff I feel is off-base, after all, that's why I'm at HN, it's different, a refuge from a world I'm used to feeling out of place in. (Don't mean to make that sound so dramatic/emo. I like plenty of things outside of HN, but in terms of general-subject tech news, it's pretty unique.)
I guess it stings more at HN because there are many people here I highly, highly respect and am inspired by, and a few posters here who I try to follow very closely, as if their HN posts were a feed I subscribed to. When these folks say certain things, it makes my heart sink a little, because in my fantasy, I want to imagine there's room for somebody like me in their view of the world.
I wrote something related above,
" when you read/hear something about you described as an Other, or somebody who should/does have traits different than you do (example: I don't like fashion.), you feel out of place, something I'd otherwise never feel at HN, a place I usually feel right at home at."
I don't want to change the tone about my overall feeling about HN. I think it's great. It's my extremely high opinion of it that gives it the power to make me feel sad sometimes.
Re: Poll: Male or female?
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
While that obviously happens, I personally very much doubt that explains the difference. Evolutionary rationales are far more compelling to me. Even childhood conditioning/environment is more compelling. To the extent it is true, or at least that the behavior exaggerated in that comic is true, I'm always curious what we're supposed to take from it. Being a guy, I don't have a knee-jerk hatred of myself just because I…
Sure, ellyagg, there are other reasons. And to be honest any female with half a brain doesn't go into a tech community proclaiming her gender. But there are definitely attitudes and comments that you get when people know you're female that don't really encourage you to stick around and become a member of the community. Assuming a woman overcomes whatever other social/educational/evolutionary factors enough to start p…
Agreed.
However, I'm not sure if keeping the 'gender thing under wraps' is the best approach. It yields this mentality of 'well, I never see women on the internet being intelligent and competent, therefore, there must not be intelligent and competent women on the internet.'
Re: Poll: Male or female?
#75auch, the current numbers (764 male/37 female) is worse then my school's comp.sci enrollment numbers!
Re: Poll: Male or female?
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
"I do wince and get bummed out whenever I read certain comments here, [...] but even when things make me sad..." Does reading comments you think are misguided make you sad? I feel like there's an interesting academic study in here somewhere. edit: If the parent comment was made by a guy, would I still be getting downmodded?
(Just upmodded your question, a decent one.) "Does reading comments you think are misguided make you sad?..." Yeah, kind of. I mean, it's pretty context dependent. First of all, outside of HN, I'd be much less sensitive to stuff I feel is off-base, after all, that's why I'm at HN, it's different, a refuge from a world I'm used to feeling out of place in. (Don't mean to make that sound so dramatic/emo. I like plenty o…
"When these folks say certain things, it makes my heart sink a little, because in my fantasy, I want to imagine there's room for somebody like me in their view of the world."
Interesting. So let's invent a measure called "distance from text", if such a thing does not already exist.
Let's say a five on the scale equates to, "I view comments as documents handed down from on high from people who cannot change or who I cannot change."
And let's say a one on the scale equates to, "I view comments as an invitation to improve someone else's schemas."
I'm guessing you would be closer to a five on this scale, whereas I would be closer to a one. Of course this scale is just made up off the top of my head, but it would be interesting to find a similar concept with some validity and then go out and measure people.
Re: Poll: Male or female?
#77HN is officially a sausagefest.
Re: Poll: Male or female?
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
"I do wince and get bummed out whenever I read certain comments here, [...] but even when things make me sad..." Does reading comments you think are misguided make you sad? I feel like there's an interesting academic study in here somewhere. edit: If the parent comment was made by a guy, would I still be getting downmodded?
(Just upmodded your question, a decent one.) "Does reading comments you think are misguided make you sad?..." Yeah, kind of. I mean, it's pretty context dependent. First of all, outside of HN, I'd be much less sensitive to stuff I feel is off-base, after all, that's why I'm at HN, it's different, a refuge from a world I'm used to feeling out of place in. (Don't mean to make that sound so dramatic/emo. I like plenty o…
I guess it stings more at HN because there are many people here I highly, highly respect and am inspired by, and a few posters here who I try to follow very closely, as if their HN posts were a feed I subscribed to.
Why would you think they are talking about you in particular? People who excel will always stand out no matter what group they come from. So why do you care about what people say about other members of your group?
Re: Poll: Male or female?
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
Simultaneous optimization of multiple functions is impossible in the general case. But if there is one function being optimized, then there is some trade-off being made, so that--to some extent--one parameter is being selected for instead of another.
pg has said they fund as many great groups as they can find. So, if that's correct, then giving an additional point or two for being female founded, while assuming some base level of competence and dedication, is not "instead of" it is "in addition to". Note that we're all speculating here. We don't actually really know anything about YC and female founded companies (except that the number of female founders amongst…
Because PG has finite time, there are two fundamental possibilities at work here:
(1) PG can find more "great groups" that he would want to fund than he has the time to work with. This, I expect, is almost certainly the case; PG then has to determine which amongst these groups of founders with whom to work. The question becomes, what function of the group of founders selected should be maximized. If you "give an additional point or two for being female founded" then the function you are optimizing is not just a matter of competence and dedication--either you aren't actually altering your behavior towards female founded groups, or there is some sufficiently pathological example of groups being very similar in which there is a female founded group that is slightly less competent/dedicated than a male only group competing over one remaining slot, and the slot is given to the female group. If no such example ever occurs in practice, then there is no point in giving female founded groups "an additional point or two" since it never altered the decision.
(2) PG has more time available than "great groups" with whom to work. In this case, taking on additional groups simply because they are female-founded, in addition to being discriminatory, seems likely to be a net negative, assuming the original meaning to the term "great groups" was set to be at whatever level is necessary to have positive expected outcome.
Looking at this dichotomy another way, we can think of PG's time as a market resource. In the first case, it is scarce, and should sell to the highest bidders (those with highest expected value, measured as utility for PG). In the second case, it is abundant, and every consumer gets what they need/want. In reality, it is probably either directly scarce (falling into the first category), or made scarce by the presence of other high utility alternatives (e.g., spending time with his family).
In summary, there is no "in addition to" as far as criteria with respect to which you want to maximize. There can only be "instead of", or a (possibly zero) conversion factor.
As a side note, in another comment on this page (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=591537) PG noted that they don't ask the gender of founders when considering funding.