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Lynn Conway has died

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Re: Lynn Conway has died

#191

Post by divbzero »

dekhn wrote: post #20

I met her totally at random at a bio conference in hawaii- I sat down next to her at a bar and we started chatting. I asked what she did and she said VLSI- something I knew nothing about (I was a biologist). She was curious about biology and wanted to learn about how she could help. I looked her name up later and learned she really did work in VLSI :)

When did you meet her at this bio conference? I’m curious what aspect of biology she was interested in and whether she dove into the subject further.

Re: Lynn Conway has died

#194

Post by poszlem »

polairscience wrote: post #97

For those of you who are inclined to say "HackerNews doesn't deal with politics", I hope that Lynn's story reminds you that any work you do is intertwined with politics. While I appreciate that it's a difficult line to walk, to have productive and relevant political discussion in a forum like this, politics and social acceptance are a part of every aspect of our lives. Brilliant, kind, impactful people are kept from…

"Any work you do is intertwined with politics."

This thought-terminating cliché is bafflingly popular on HN. It's a classic example of the motte-and-bailey fallacy, where the strong claim (the motte) is "everything is political," and the strong claim is "therefore, it's okay to bring politics into everything." (the bailey).

Sure, you can MAKE anything appear political, but not everything is intertwined with politics. Many activities are driven purely by personal interest, scientific curiosity, or artistic expression, without any direct political implications.

Re: Lynn Conway has died

#197

Post by throwaway984393 »

IntelMiner wrote: post #102
polairscience wrote: post #97

For those of you who are inclined to say "HackerNews doesn't deal with politics", I hope that Lynn's story reminds you that any work you do is intertwined with politics. While I appreciate that it's a difficult line to walk, to have productive and relevant political discussion in a forum like this, politics and social acceptance are a part of every aspect of our lives. Brilliant, kind, impactful people are kept from…

Anybody who conflates human rights as "politics" are someone I simply cannot respect A persons right to exist is not political (This isn't a dig at OP but it's worth restating)

[dead]

Re: Lynn Conway has died

#198

Post by arjie »

sltkr wrote: post #174
arjie wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to hear about that. I am not an admin so I can only do exact searches in the Deletion Log https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Log?type=delete&user=&... and so I was unable to find the original article. Do you happen to have the contents of the page somewhere (I understand if you don't)? I will try to create the stub article with sources somewhere and see if I can defend it sufficiently this evening. EDIT: I w…

Thanks, but my point was less about this one article, and more about the general experience of a well-intentioned but novice contributor: no matter how much you try to do the right thing, there's a good chance your work is for nothing because someone more established than you doesn't see the value in it. And maybe they are right: I understand that not all new contributions are valuable to the project (though you coul…

I understand completely. I wasn't attempting to rebut or argue the point, but to rescue the human effort that went into the specific article. Wikipedia is less run-from-the-top and more just a community with factions. So I'd say some people lean towards deletion and some people lean towards inclusion. The dissonance you are experiencing is from traversing the territory of control of this factional cold war. There is no central authority to say "we are taking the coherent position of 'ensuring no unapproved contributions' to this site".

For my part, I am an occasional contributor with just a little more patience than most, some grandfathered rights, and a philosophical opposition to the erasure of creative effort. And about as much as I care about doing is repairing lost work so I'll try to get your article back because I think it should be there. I have no position of influence in this organization and have no desire to put in the effort to gain it to change it. But it's a commons. And I intend to modify the commons within my existing power.

I think if I had experienced what you had my position would not be different from yours.

Re: Lynn Conway has died

#200

Post by robjwells »

cocking wrote: post #196

[flagged]

For those skimming, this is the controversy over J Michael Bailey's book The Man Who Would Be Queen. I highly recommend reading Dreger's article.

Conway (and others, particularly Andrea James) conducted a years-long campaign of harassment against Bailey. This included (among many other things) repeated attempts to get Bailey fired from his job at Northwestern, a series of vexatious complaints to an Illinois licensing board, and infamously posting photos online of Bailey's children suggesting that Bailey had raped them and asking whether his young daughter was "a cock-starved exhibitionist".

Much of this material is still on Conway's University of Michigan-hosted webpage.

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