211–218 of 218 posts
Could someone convince me why I should care about the gonads and skin color of the people writing code for me? Does anybody really think YC's performance would be better if their founder classes looked like a diversity picture from a college recruiting brochure?
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> but apparently it's politically inconvenient. This is merely a theory to explain your observations. I think a more plausible alternative explanation is that the moderators' beliefs about what makes up worthwhile discussion is different from yours.
> I think a more plausible alternative explanation is that the moderators' beliefs about what makes up worthwhile discussion is different from yours. I generally think it's worthwhile to let the community decide what's "worthwhile" and what isn't. Interfering to suppress spam or a flamewar is reasonable but interfering to suppress things which contain ideas you personally disagree with is not. Similarly I don't have…
> I generally think it's worthwhile to let the community decide what's "worthwhile" and what isn't.
If HN were decided purely by votes, the front page would consist of outrage, gossip, and fashion, and the site would be unrecognizable. HN has never been decided purely by votes. It has always been a blend of community and moderation—and I do mean always, from day one. If you believed otherwise, you were mistaken; if you thought HN was good, consider why. All that has changed in this area is that we're being more transparent.
You've repeated several times the false claim that we buried that article because we "personally disagree" with it. Obviously, we don't "personally disagree" with a factual article. That would make zero sense unless the facts reported are wrong, and I have no idea whether they were in that case.
The article was two years old. It was posted by a serial political troll whose sole interest (to judge by the account history) is in using HN for ideological provocation. Predictably, that worked. The thread brought us such jewels as "Oh, do fuck off and take your strawman with you". Is that the civil, substantive discussion that HN calls for?
Weighting that thread off the front page was an obvious call. What we did not do was kill the story—the discussion could and did continue [1]. Such is the balance we try to strike. This has exactly nothing to do with our personal politics, though that of course is the first thing, and the cheapest, that we're accused of. Not to penalize such stories would put HN at the mercy of arsonists. You seem to imply that online communities, or at least this one, are robust enough not to be damaged by such provocation. That, sadly, is wrong.
The user in question has a bunch of accounts. One they are careful to use for legitimate purposes; the others just push an agenda. Many have been banned. Of course, when we ban them, they make new ones and accuse us of censorship [2].
Many if not most of the ideological throwaway accounts you see on HN are the work of the same few users. I don't think it's unfair to call them trolls. They've shown up in this thread, too, of course, even posting the same link. I wonder why it's necessary to repeatedly push a two-year-old article. It must be quite a classic.
1. But that didn't stop a second serial political troll from accusing us of doing exactly that, presumably because what we actually did wasn't spicy enough to justify cries of repression.
2. The irony is left as an exercise to the reader.
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> I think a more plausible alternative explanation is that the moderators' beliefs about what makes up worthwhile discussion is different from yours. I generally think it's worthwhile to let the community decide what's "worthwhile" and what isn't. Interfering to suppress spam or a flamewar is reasonable but interfering to suppress things which contain ideas you personally disagree with is not. Similarly I don't have…
This is the crux of the problem: > I generally think it's worthwhile to let the community decide what's "worthwhile" and what isn't. If HN were decided purely by votes, the front page would consist of outrage, gossip, and fashion, and the site would be unrecognizable. HN has never been decided purely by votes. It has always been a blend of community and moderation—and I do mean always, from day one. If you believed o…
I really appreciate the amount of detail in your reply. In all honesty, I severely underestimated the level of top-down editorial control on HN from the early days. I had thought that it was basically just PG, that he was too busy to deal with this kind of thing and that the type of discussion was due to the user base having come mostly from his essays. I have been lucky with the much smaller communities on my own websites over the years in that there were relatively few bad apples and only one sock puppet that I knew of.
I must admit, it is very difficult for me not to dislike "softer" forms of suppression even more so than outright removal of posts. This may be due to how I have seen media manipulation manifested living abroad for most my adult life. I sincerely apologize if I've mistaken comments by the OP to mean something other than they did. Once again thanks for the transparency.
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This is the crux of the problem: > I generally think it's worthwhile to let the community decide what's "worthwhile" and what isn't. If HN were decided purely by votes, the front page would consist of outrage, gossip, and fashion, and the site would be unrecognizable. HN has never been decided purely by votes. It has always been a blend of community and moderation—and I do mean always, from day one. If you believed o…
Thanks. I had no idea the other poster was a troll with multiple sock-puppet accounts. I really appreciate the amount of detail in your reply. In all honesty, I severely underestimated the level of top-down editorial control on HN from the early days. I had thought that it was basically just PG, that he was too busy to deal with this kind of thing and that the type of discussion was due to the user base having come m…
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You realize that you don't get to determine what feels disrespectful and diminutive to other people? That is sort of what it means for them to be other people.
If using the term "girl" is genuinely offensive, I'll happily stop. You're right, it isn't my place to hurt people who I think are misinterpreting a word. However, I suspect that most people wouldn't be offended. If I used "women", I think the implication is "age > twenty something". I think the context makes it clear that I'm just using "girl" to be all encompassing, and thus, most people wouldn't be offended.
That said, if you want another reason, how about that it's quite all right to use the term woman to refer to a woman who is participating in a startup even if she has not reached legal majority. It is preferable to call a girl a woman than the other way around.
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it's really hard to address everything in one post, and i think the issues around gender and race in tech are pretty different. (we did include a stat on international founders, many of which are not white.) i don't think we're playing this on "easy mode", but i'm sorry you feel that way.
Let me first say, as someone with two children, both girls, I really appreciate the efforts that are going into making CS careers an accessible option for them, and that includes your post and the sentiment behind it. Kudos to you! What continues to irk me is the almost a disregard for black males when discussing diversity. There isn't a single group less represented in CS than AA males and there isn't a single group…
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There's no question that women and men face different barriers in startups and tech. The null hypothesis is thus (a) differences in reactions to a competitive environment are partially due to differences in how women and men are treated. There's also no question that women and men differ biologically. The null hypothesis is thus (b) differences in reactions to a competitive environment are partially biological in ori…
It's interesting that it's only during discussions of race and gender that male nerds suddenly become receptive to social science. But in any other discussion, it's their rhetorical whipping boy. How convenient for them.
In the case of sex differences, we need only one empirical result to determine the null hypothesis: male and female members of H. sapiens have different reproductive incentives. The null hypothesis then follows from an application of simple logic. That I do find convenient.
This doesn't mean the null hypothesis is always correct, of course. For example, there is strong evidence that mean IQ for men and women is virtually the same, which suggests the null hypothesis in this case is wrong. Neither need the null hypothesis conform to a "sexist" narrative; e.g., credible studies in cognitive neuroscience show that women are better on average at multitasking and verbal fluency. But the entire mainstream is committed to marginalizing the null hypothesis whenever it contradicts the politically correct narrative, logic be damned.
You are evidently a supporter of the mainstream, which is why you deride my [use of mathematical notation](https://twitter.com/tqbf/status/493116213803757568) instead of addressing the content of my comment. My respect for your technical work is high, though, and I know you're smart and thoughtful. I suggest grappling with the strongest arguments of those you disagree with rather than resorting to such puerile snark.
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Broadly speaking, competition definitely creates sex-based selection-bias. Men self-select into competitions more than women, and are more motivated by them. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/brain-wise/201210/when-c... https://www3.nd.edu/~wevans1/fresh_honor_seminar/vesterland.... I am not saying men are more capable, just more likely to self-select into the competition. Read up on what professional coaches of wo…
We work in a deeply, irretrievably competitive industry. The ability to thrive in a competitive environment is a requirement at many, perhaps most, startups. Women perform in the industry just fine, but are victimized by the perception that their gender prevents them from being competitive.