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Okay, Feminism, It’s Time We Had a Talk About Empathy (2013)

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Re: Okay, Feminism, It’s Time We Had a Talk About Empathy (2013)

#131

Post by rayiner »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #99
rayiner wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "shut up and build things" position embodies the tacit assumption that the world naturally pushes itself to an equillibrium that is fair and just. The assumption that racism and sexism result in elastic deformation of society that will go away as soon as you remove whatever force is warping it. I don't think history bears that out. Society is a soft ductile metal. If you bend it, it'll stay bent. You have to hamm…

The assumption that racism and sexism result in elastic deformation of society that will go away as soon as you remove whatever force is warping it. Yes, this is the economic assumption - folks are greedy and will exploit undervalued resources. I don't think history bears that out. Society is a soft ductile metal. If you bend it, it'll stay bent. This ignores the history of various oppressed groups who unbent themsel…

> Yes, this is the economic assumption - folks are greedy and will exploit undervalued resources.

Except that's not what history shows us. Economics didn't free the slaves. Guns did. Economics didn't end segregation in housing and education. Bitter, expensive litigation did.[1] Economics didn't make gay marriage legal. Waging a cultural war on homophobes until it became social suicide in most circles to be one did that.

[1] And guns when people defied the court judgments: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkansas_National_Guard_and_th....

Re: Okay, Feminism, It’s Time We Had a Talk About Empathy (2013)

#132

Post by mrits »

Puts wrote: post #60
kohanz wrote: post #6

> There had been interest, but one of the committers had dismissed the idea out of hand because a woman had proposed it. It blows my mind that this stuff still happens. In the OSS world of all places. I can't even compute how someone can apply such "logic".

I think we need to start recognizing that this is just the sign of low intelligence. You can not argue with people who are judgmental. It's just like arguing with a drunk. Whatever you say is just waste of time and energy and by even going in to the discussion you let them drag you down to their level.

It is not a sign of low intelligence. Just like being religious is not a sign of low intelligence. What we need to realize is extremely bright people choose to identify with ideas that are not true. Personally I think it comes social evolution and the need to belong to a group. It would be impossible to get along with everyone unless we were willing to compromise our personal beliefs and values to some extent.

Re: Okay, Feminism, It’s Time We Had a Talk About Empathy (2013)

#133

Post by phinkle »

I agree that overwhelmingly the experience for most "women in tech" is positive because we also love technology and building things, but its the small things that really make a difference. I think (although I can't speak for her) the author also experiences these small differences, like when her idea wasn't taken seriously because of her gender. Sometimes these things are easy to miss, but once you are on the lookout its a slippery slope to thinking that almost everything happening to you is because of your gender and its good to call people out on that. I have certainly misjudged actions, but there have also been times when people were discriminating against me because of my gender and those are the thing that we really need to have a conversation about. Sometimes these ideas or comments are minor and we can get past them like the in the author's case, but sometimes they have an impact. For example when I was taking APCS in high school, my programming partner (Asian male) was asked to join the UIL team and I was not, even though we were at the same skill level. There could have been other reasons that I wasn't asked, but since we both turned in the same assignments and had similar interactions with our old, southern teacher, I doubt it.

Re: Okay, Feminism, It’s Time We Had a Talk About Empathy (2013)

#134

Post by saiya-jin »

astazangasta wrote: post #56
vonklaus wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they just want both sides to shut up > Why should women Sorry, not keen to argue here. Quite a good post in the original article, thought it was an interesting take. italics added for emphasis.

This assumes an equivalence between men and women that doesn't exist here. If both sides were equally put-upon, it'd be neutral to call for both sides to shut up. When one side has a clear advantage, it is not.

as a non-US, these topics are beyond ridiculous to me. some initial disclaimer - i am not very fond of usual loud-screaming-around feminists... nobody is for that matter, not even my fiancee.

if I ever witnessed any kind of discrimination in my 11 year long career, in 3 different countries, working for... 7 employers? but many more customers, if was POSITIVE discrimination against women. they were strongly welcomed into teams, cherished (in a positive way), their opinions mattered (if expressed, of course), they worked hard as hell, kudos to all of them. no idea how things work outside IT, but that's not the topic here.

equivalence between men and women in WHAT? I am not same as my male colleague next to me, we're far from equivalent, and anybody with at least a hint in team management knows that damn well. equivalence in thinking? no way, and I would call it a benefit. But only thing that matter job-wise is performance for tasks given, and in that, there should be rough equivalence. if not, somebody, doesn't matter who and what gender, is incorrectly hired.

pfff, US and your funky over-correction issues...

Re: Okay, Feminism, It’s Time We Had a Talk About Empathy (2013)

#135

Post by msandford »

mike_hearn wrote: post #82
lectrick wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once got into a twitter fight with Shanley. She's a bit... un-nuanced. I'd say "immature" but that's ageism, I'm surely double her age. ;)

And hilariously/ironically/awesomely, it turns out that Meredith is according to her Facebook page: "Principle NLP engineer at Nuance Communications" So although she says she struggled with fast communication and language and talking to people directly, she now works on speech processing software :)

Honestly, who better to? I saw a talk by an IBM guy about competence that seems to have been based off of this idea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_stages_of_competence

If you need to encode everything that a person does to properly parse sentences and sentiment and intent and whatever, do you want someone whose in the "unconscious competence" category, where it's effortless and they barely know what they're doing? Or might you prefer someone who really has to work at it, who still has to reason through things in their own mind? The person who is only "consciously competent" probably still has hooks into their own mental processes and can explain them to themselves, to others, and to the computer.

A person who is unconsciously competent just reacts a certain way and can't tell you why.

Re: Okay, Feminism, It’s Time We Had a Talk About Empathy (2013)

#136

Post by theorique »

jarcane wrote: post #117
yummyfajitas wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The assumption that racism and sexism result in elastic deformation of society that will go away as soon as you remove whatever force is warping it. Yes, this is the economic assumption - folks are greedy and will exploit undervalued resources. I don't think history bears that out. Society is a soft ductile metal. If you bend it, it'll stay bent. This ignores the history of various oppressed groups who unbent themsel…

Those oppressed groups mostly came "unbent" because they stopped putting up with their oppressors and started killing them. Are you even at all aware of the history of any of the examples you just cited?

Asians started killing white Americans to get into the Ivy League? I think I missed that one.

Re: Okay, Feminism, It’s Time We Had a Talk About Empathy (2013)

#137

Post by FredNatural »

stcredzero wrote: post #88

The author is a friend of mine. What I say below is something I've discussed with her. I think the last great frontier for humanity's "waking up from history" is awareness of group psychology, particularly the psychology of the "other." Ironically, as noted by GCP Grey, widespread access to the Internet has actually made such group psychology worse . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc One of the big problems…

Mindfulness is on The Path. The Middle Way seems to support the most rapid passage on this path. At the extremes of this path friction slows everything down to a crawl. At the extremes hate becomes recursive. -YMMV

Re: Okay, Feminism, It’s Time We Had a Talk About Empathy (2013)

#138

Post by tome »

savanaly wrote: post #102
kohanz wrote: post #6

> There had been interest, but one of the committers had dismissed the idea out of hand because a woman had proposed it. It blows my mind that this stuff still happens. In the OSS world of all places. I can't even compute how someone can apply such "logic".

> There had been interest, but one of the committers had dismissed the idea out of hand because a woman had proposed it. This also blows my mind. 100% of my colleagues and friends who work in programming would suffer severe whiplash from the double take they would take after reading a statement like that from someone we were working with. How would someone who says something like that in a non-joking way not be immed…

How would someone who says something like that in a joking way not be immediately ostracized?

Re: Okay, Feminism, It’s Time We Had a Talk About Empathy (2013)

#139

Post by jimbokun »

rayiner wrote: post #90
vonklaus wrote: post #21

This was awesome. Not because it dispels a meme that is negative in the industry, not because it is some sort of proof a woman can succeed in tech, or any other of this tropic nonsense. It was such an amazing message that was totally gender neutral: "I like building things because I am curious and I pursue knowledge for its own sake" With all the confirmation bias and name calling (which I am certainly guilty of from…

The "shut up and build things" position embodies the tacit assumption that the world naturally pushes itself to an equillibrium that is fair and just. The assumption that racism and sexism result in elastic deformation of society that will go away as soon as you remove whatever force is warping it. I don't think history bears that out. Society is a soft ductile metal. If you bend it, it'll stay bent. You have to hamm…

"The "shut up and build things" position embodies the tacit assumption that the world naturally pushes itself to an equillibrium that is fair and just."

It does not. It embodies the tacit assumption that some people prefer to spend their time building something tangible rather than devoting their lives tilting at the windmills of eradicating racism, sexism, and all the other bigotries endemic to our society.

Tilting at those windmills is important, and might be a cause worthy of devoting your life to it, but it's not everyone's calling.

Lastly, the author of the original article is arguably doing more to advance the cause of women in technology by participating in and engaging with the community, than many of the people writing articles and complaining about the problems.

Re: Okay, Feminism, It’s Time We Had a Talk About Empathy (2013)

#140

Post by cousin_it »

rayiner wrote: post #131
yummyfajitas wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The assumption that racism and sexism result in elastic deformation of society that will go away as soon as you remove whatever force is warping it. Yes, this is the economic assumption - folks are greedy and will exploit undervalued resources. I don't think history bears that out. Society is a soft ductile metal. If you bend it, it'll stay bent. This ignores the history of various oppressed groups who unbent themsel…

> Yes, this is the economic assumption - folks are greedy and will exploit undervalued resources. Except that's not what history shows us. Economics didn't free the slaves. Guns did. Economics didn't end segregation in housing and education. Bitter, expensive litigation did.[1] Economics didn't make gay marriage legal. Waging a cultural war on homophobes until it became social suicide in most circles to be one did th…

Most countries around the world abolished slavery peacefully.
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