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What I Didn't Say

paulgraham.com

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Re: What I Didn't Say

#241

Post by vorg »

> in a conversation you can assume good faith and speak as loosely as you would in everyday life

In some countries it's legal to record any conversation you're a part of without informing the other participants so many people are on their guard. Even in everyday life with people you know well, they or you might be carrying a mobile phone manufactured by certain company or running a certain OS that listens, even when turned off with the battery still in, on behalf of some party who'll never be prosecuted and often never even exposed, and there's a lot of those sorts of people out there. Perhaps even a higher than average percentage of Hacker News visitors are these sorts.

Re: What I Didn't Say

#242

Post by wr1472 »

mjburgess wrote: post #236
grellas wrote: post #229

A word about credibility. It comes from the Latin word credo , meaning "I trust." Its value exceeds that of money because it marks you as a person - as someone who is respected, who is trustworthy, and whom you would want to count as a friend. It marks you not as perfect but as special. It makes others ponder not so much that they did the last deal with you but that they would want to do the next deal too. Just as we…

Fine, he was mischaracterized and he replied. But jesus, > pg's response is actually priceless: it is like a soft-spoken witness upending a bullying lawyer who had just viciously attacked him, leaving the attacker reeling for all to see. What's with the almost cult-like reverence for this largely pseudo-intellectual entrepreneur?

I haven't read the submission yet, neither am I fully up to speed on the topic, but I'm going to go all meta on you and ask what a pseudo-intellectual is?

Re: What I Didn't Say

#243

Post by jsmthrowaway »

aaronem wrote: post #230
jsmthrowaway wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't wait for "[citation needed]" comments with zero content to fall out of favor, along with other low-effort "you're wrong but I don't have the time to prove you wrong" shots. There are many things I don't like about Wikipedia, some fairly, some unfairly, but that contribution to our discourse is one reason in my mind to burn it all down.

Perhaps you would prefer that I say something like this: "You assert that these studies exist, but you don't bother to identify them for those of us who are not au courant with the journals in which they presumably appear. Would you care to link at least a representative example of the studies to which you refer, so that those of us who are unimpressed by argument from authority may examine them for ourselves?" The s…

I'd prefer if you noticed that you pointed your vitriol cannon at a third party to your conversation who was simply remarking upon your comment. Suggest you check usernames before replying.

Re: What I Didn't Say

#244

Post by nostromo »

smirksirlot wrote: post #209
nostromo wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self-selection, as you have done, is a hard problem to solve. Not just in tech, but in our entire culture. As noted elsewhere, Americans are sorting themselves by demographics. It feels awkward to be a woman in a predominantly male organization. It feels awkward to be a republican in San Francisco. It feels awkward to be gay in Mississippi. It feels awkward to be black in Portland. And so we place ourselves in locati…

As you said, victim blaming. It isn't just feeling awkward about things - there are consequences both psychologically, financially, and physically being an outcast. Being uncomfortable with a place isn't something the person can fix themselves - they neither have the power nor the ability to do so. Diversity begets diversity. The only way to do that is to set up systems and infrastructure that supports and enables th…

I'm not saying people should stay in places where they are ostracized. That's not healthy. But I think it's also a mistake to withdraw from places and activities before we've even had a chance to become ostracized.

An example: I'm a gay atheist from Idaho. I have extended family members that look like they belong on Duck Dynasty. Each family event, me and my husband are presented with a choice: we can skip the event and its awkwardness, or we can join the event and face it head on.

Each time we attend these events, we leave with the same impression. "That wasn't so bad," and from my husband, "Your family is actually super nice." And because of this interaction, they become less homophobic, and I grow to understand redneck values a bit better.

Besides, I've learned over time that what I think they're thinking about me is actually much worse than what they're actually thinking about me.

But each time I'm invited to one of these events, my first gut instinct is not to go, because it's work, and it can be awkward, and it's much easier for me to spend time around people who are more like me.

Re: What I Didn't Say

#245

Post by smtddr »

Perihelion wrote: post #234
smtddr wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just an excuse. Why are you more worried that a female coworker will misunderstand you than a male one?

I see a LOT more drama surrounding the things that men have said/done. If I were a man I would absolutely be more concerned about my interactions with female coworkers over male ones. Don't take this to mean that I think I can say/do whatever I want in this industry on account of being female -- no one is bulletproof. It just seems men are vilified more than women when it comes to these sorts of things. Maybe that's…

Hmm, so let's see. If this kind of stuff is going on with gender relations, does it exist with race too? Orientation?

For the tech-world, I guess a black lesbian would be a triple-concern? I would say that is a problem. Not sure how to fix it, but that's a problem. I personally don't have to change my behavior or speech when a lady is in the room. But then again, I'm probably unique in that... I never, ever use profanity and never make jokes that wouldn't be safe on the Disney channel. I don't know anyone who can claim that besides me. But, I will say compared to my time at at&t... the men there seemed to be less frat-housey than the SV-startup-culture. The men at at&t seemed to be more "gentlemanly", more socially acceptable. SV-startup-culture I think allows the frat-house/bro-grammer attitude to grow thus making it more difficult to the men who are use to that to clean up when a lady is around. At least, that's what I've seen.

Re: What I Didn't Say

#246

Post by jordo37 »

Perceval wrote: post #231
smirksirlot wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As you said, victim blaming. It isn't just feeling awkward about things - there are consequences both psychologically, financially, and physically being an outcast. Being uncomfortable with a place isn't something the person can fix themselves - they neither have the power nor the ability to do so. Diversity begets diversity. The only way to do that is to set up systems and infrastructure that supports and enables th…

> there are consequences both psychologically, financially, and physically being an outcast I think nerds and geeks are acutely aware of the costs of being outcasts. The period of their life when they typically turn to computers and programming is the same as the period in which they are socially marginalized (middle school / high school).

Yes, but how any individual responds to a treatment like that is not obvious. Some people respond with understanding and compassion, actively avoiding similar behavior. Others learn marginalization as the standard forms of group interaction and propagate the same behavior towards other groups - see the way women are treated in the video-gaming community as a good example, or as a less direct parallel how violence in a home usually leads to children either desperately avoiding or repeating the same mistakes in adulthood.

Re: What I Didn't Say

#247

Post by GnarfGnarf »

mjburgess wrote: post #236
grellas wrote: post #229

A word about credibility. It comes from the Latin word credo , meaning "I trust." Its value exceeds that of money because it marks you as a person - as someone who is respected, who is trustworthy, and whom you would want to count as a friend. It marks you not as perfect but as special. It makes others ponder not so much that they did the last deal with you but that they would want to do the next deal too. Just as we…

Fine, he was mischaracterized and he replied. But jesus, > pg's response is actually priceless: it is like a soft-spoken witness upending a bullying lawyer who had just viciously attacked him, leaving the attacker reeling for all to see. What's with the almost cult-like reverence for this largely pseudo-intellectual entrepreneur?

reverence

Re: What I Didn't Say

#248

Post by skybrian »

ChrisNorstrom wrote: post #145
rcfox wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as if PG can't be trusted Just because we're in pg's house, it doesn't mean we have to treat him like a god. He's a fallible human being, just like the rest of us. The whole point of a blind interview is to prevent implicit bias that the bearer might not even be aware of.

Paul Graham is assumed guilty of being sexist and he's probably unaware of it. Got it.

There are many studies showing that nearly everyone has unconscious biases including minorities. This is normal. I assume it's true of you and I assume it's true of me. It's a sensible prior, not an insult.

[1] http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/between-the-lines/201204...

Re: What I Didn't Say

#249

Post by semiel »

aaronem wrote: post #181
semiel wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that PG is a human living in America, psychological studies suggest that is statistically very likely.

[citation needed]

I was under the impression that this was pretty much common knowledge, but sure, I can point you in the right direction.

One interesting place to start is Harvard's "Project Implicit". They have a massive publication list[1] and you can even test your own implicit reactions[2].

There are plenty of other scientists testing things like whether people judge women as less competent. A quick google search pulled up a PNAS paper where they did an experiment on women in science, for example.[3]

This is just the tip of the iceberg, of course. There is a whole host of related work, testing other sorts of biases and using other methodologies. I'd suggest a search on your favorite academic search engine for "implicit bias".

[1] https://www.projectimplicit.net/papers.html [2] https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/ [3] http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/09/14/1211286109#aff-...

Re: What I Didn't Say

#250

Post by [deleted] »

__pThrow wrote: post #67

What Paul didn't say. Anything about DongleGate Anything about PronounGate Anything about CPlusEqualityGate But when They Came for Paul, then he wanted us to know what he said. Sadly, I was already gone. In fact what he did apparently was to take these sorts of threads down and encourage moderators to kill them. Now of course, he abuses his power as publisher to host this thread where we can deify him, thank him, and…

[deleted]
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