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Y Combinator and the Negative Externalities of Hackernews

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Re: Y Combinator and the Negative Externalities of Hackernews

#21

Post by vaishaksuresh »

comrh wrote: post #20
vaishaksuresh wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So in the process of making it level, the playing field is being changed to be favorable to certain individuals? If something changes by giving away opportunities to less qualified people, because their predecessors had been systemically repressed, it is probably the ego/guilt of the perpetrators. Provide extra opportunities to the current generation to develop and improve , but don't take it away from qualified peop…

THEY are being repressed, not only their predecessors. And to "hire the most qualified person" "denies the role of personal connections, wealth, background, gender, race, or education in an individual's success"[1]. It is overly simplistic to just say "hire the qualified person" when the person is qualified due to a huge amount of historical advantages. Do you really think there are so few women in tech because all t…

The right thing then would be to enable such individuals with disadvantages to become qualified. We can go on and on about how it is a vicious circle and all that, but IMHO, the remedy is not providing opportunities to less qualified people, but take measures to educate and make them competent. Relavant initiative [1] [2]

[1]. https://developers.google.com/women-techmakers/ [2]. http://www.google.com/diversity/for-the-future.html#research...

Re: Y Combinator and the Negative Externalities of Hackernews

#22

Post by comrh »

vaishaksuresh wrote: post #21
comrh wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

THEY are being repressed, not only their predecessors. And to "hire the most qualified person" "denies the role of personal connections, wealth, background, gender, race, or education in an individual's success"[1]. It is overly simplistic to just say "hire the qualified person" when the person is qualified due to a huge amount of historical advantages. Do you really think there are so few women in tech because all t…

The right thing then would be to enable such individuals with disadvantages to become qualified. We can go on and on about how it is a vicious circle and all that, but IMHO, the remedy is not providing opportunities to less qualified people, but take measures to educate and make them competent. Relavant initiative [1] [2] [1]. https://developers.google.com/women-techmakers/ [2]. http://www.google.com/diversity/for-th…

"the remedy is not providing opportunities to less qualified people"

You keep saying this like it is a fact or that anyone is arguing for this. It is a complete fallacy.

Re: Y Combinator and the Negative Externalities of Hackernews

#23

Post by figglesonrails »

solipsism wrote: post #16
angersock wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are ways of discussing and holding viewpoints that--in the strictest sense of the term--are racist or sexist. Talking about how best to accomodate maternity leave and schedule work is inherently sexist: it is an issue that does not apply to both men and women. Talking about how to handle racial profiling in targeted advertising is inherently racist: it is an issue that is tuned to your views about what messagin…

Do you happen to be a white and/or male? The only reason I ask (rhetorically, obviously -- please don't answer) is that, if you are, you might fail to realize that your position is one of privilege in our society. One of those many privileges shared by you and me is that what society considers common, civil discourse is very rarely offensive to our personhoods. Others don't share that privilege. For others, what you…

I'm not trying to challenge you, just curious: what is an example of discourse that would be interpreted by someone with said privilege to be civil, yet interpreted by someone else without it to be barbaric, small-minded, offensive, etc.

I get that you could have an objective discussion on religion that might be offensive, but does the fact that someone can find it offensive make it "offensive" in general, or does it make the person who isn't offended "privileged"? I'm just not sure exactly how to apply your statement to such scenarios -- could you explain a little more about what you mean?

Would (could?), for example, objective data (e.g. CSV file, scientific study, statistics) have these qualities or just people's opinions on the objective data?

Re: Y Combinator and the Negative Externalities of Hackernews

#24

Post by solipsism »

figglesonrails wrote: post #23
solipsism wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you happen to be a white and/or male? The only reason I ask (rhetorically, obviously -- please don't answer) is that, if you are, you might fail to realize that your position is one of privilege in our society. One of those many privileges shared by you and me is that what society considers common, civil discourse is very rarely offensive to our personhoods. Others don't share that privilege. For others, what you…

I'm not trying to challenge you, just curious: what is an example of discourse that would be interpreted by someone with said privilege to be civil, yet interpreted by someone else without it to be barbaric, small-minded, offensive, etc. I get that you could have an objective discussion on religion that might be offensive, but does the fact that someone can find it offensive make it "offensive" in general, or does it…

You need me to provide examples of sexism or racism in "civil" discourse? Maybe we don't live in the same society. Read the post that these comments are about. Only a minority of them are trolls. Many are otherwise reasonable and intelligent people saying ignorant and shitty things in calm, civil, flag-avoiding ways.

If you don't notice it it's because you're privileged. If you're not, it's like you're swimming in it.

Re: Y Combinator and the Negative Externalities of Hackernews

#25

Post by solipsism »

angersock wrote: post #19
solipsism wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you happen to be a white and/or male? The only reason I ask (rhetorically, obviously -- please don't answer) is that, if you are, you might fail to realize that your position is one of privilege in our society. One of those many privileges shared by you and me is that what society considers common, civil discourse is very rarely offensive to our personhoods. Others don't share that privilege. For others, what you…

This polite yet sexist and racist comment is exactly the sort of civil discourse I'd like to see more of.

Ah yes, ye old "reverse Xism". Going for the oldies but goodies.

Re: Y Combinator and the Negative Externalities of Hackernews

#28

Post by BrandonM »

I'm surprised that the author could write such a cherry-picked article with a straight face. I clicked through to the six links in the twitter comments. Here's a summary of who made them:

    1. bobcostas55: member for 146 days, 42 karma
    2. gph: member for 997 days, 634 karma
    3. lulzwat1111: member for 32 days, -8 karma, comment downvoted into oblivion
    4. aianus: member for 588 days, 369 karma
    5. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8372411 I honestly don't see the problem here?
    6. nickthemagicman: member for 690 days, 241 karma, comment downvoted into oblivion
For context, I have over 4500 karma (I only comment a few times a month and don't submit much), and the HN user with the 100th highest karma has over 16,000. In other words, these comments are not representative of the entire community, or of even a single medium-profile user.

The vast majority of the time, ignorant comments are met with multiple replies setting the person straight, or with downvotes (as I do, for anything that is insulting or offensive).

Hacker News intends to attract a technical audience. The community includes a wide variety of people, some of which are 16-to-25-year-old men who have poor socialization skills. Some of them (and some others, certainly) have naive, twisted beliefs, or they are just unaware of their privileged position in society. Others are from different countries that have old-fashioned gender norms.

I don't think this is a problem unique to HN or even to tech. I claim that you could just as easily write an article like this about fraternity or country club communities, if their communications were indexed for the entire world to see. At least in the case of HN, you have a large number of dissenting viewpoints.

I actually think it's good that short-sighted individuals express their bigoted views. It gives others a chance to provide them with some perspective. Even more, though, prudent individuals who think the same thing have the opportunity to have their viewpoints changed as well. Also, seeing the extreme version of one of your views can cause you to pause and reconsider it.

Personally, I was quite libertarian and lacking in perspective on several issues (e.g., end user empathy, social welfare, the importance of tact) when I joined Hacker News 7-1/2 years ago. Of course I can't give all the credit to HN, but it has definitely had some positive effect in improving my personality and broadening my perspective.

Re: Y Combinator and the Negative Externalities of Hackernews

#29

Post by krapp »

uncoder0 wrote: post #15
sequoia wrote: post #2

the tl;dr is 1. HN culture is (generally) sexist & racist, a "bro-fest" if you will. 2. ycomb profits from HN 3. ycomb says they're against sexism etc.: “We—the tech industry as a whole—need to fix this. Most importantly, it’s an ethical issue.” ... 4. ...but there seems to be no legitimate effort by YC to alter the culture & signal what's acceptable behavior (i.e. don't be racist) on hackernews.

I think expanding the ability to down-vote to more people would help show the true attitude on HN. Right now I can only push things up or flag them and often times don't have the time or fortitude to start a comment thread arguing with an ignorant racist. Currently at 419 karma I don't have the ability to simply press a downvote and get that trash grayed out or pushed to the bottom of the page. A technical solution t…

To me, the problem is that downvoting is contextually vague, while the effect on HN is visually explicit. It would be one thing entirely if downvoting just affected the page ranking, but having it also act as a visual cue that "this person's opinion is not worth your time, so don't worry - we've made it difficult for you to read it" only serves to exacerbate a groupthink mentality. I don't think more downvoting would solve the problem, it would only make more comments illegible.

I've seen more than a couple of threads where an entire side of what I find to be an interesting (or at least worthwile) discussion is blotted out. It's annoying if you actually want to consider an entire thread and not just get spoon-fed the parts which correlate to consensus opinion. This is supposed to be a forum for intellectually thought-provoking or at least civil discussion, but the implementation of downvoting amounts to sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting down someone you don't agree with.

Re: Y Combinator and the Negative Externalities of Hackernews

#30

Post by metavida »

BrandonM wrote: post #28

I'm surprised that the author could write such a cherry-picked article with a straight face. I clicked through to the six links in the twitter comments. Here's a summary of who made them: 1. bobcostas55: member for 146 days, 42 karma 2. gph: member for 997 days, 634 karma 3. lulzwat1111: member for 32 days, -8 karma, comment downvoted into oblivion 4. aianus: member for 588 days, 369 karma 5. https://news.ycombinator…

Agreed that HN is not facing a unique problem of *ist comments/members. However, as the OP points out, given that the leadership of Y Combinator say that "Sexism in tech is real. ... We—the tech industry as a whole—need to fix this. ... And speaking for YC, it’s also in our best interest."[1] it makes sense that HN should be taking concrete steps to make the community a safe place for diversity. It doesn't really matter whether or not a representative portion of the community is behaving poorly. If a subset of the HN community is making HN inhospitable to the diverse members HN seeks to support, that is the problem that the leadership & the community should be trying to solve.

[1] http://blog.ycombinator.com/diversity-and-startups

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