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The Rise of the College Crybullies

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Re: The Rise of the College Crybullies

#31
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In many cases, sure, they do. It's pretty much the textbook definition of intolerance. But this is not the issue before us. Here, the students were admitted, presumably with knowledge of these facts, and don't yet have a credible claim to any effect other than hurt feelings.

The argument in the top of this thread was that people who are sensitive to certain things should be filtered out of the admissions process based on that. I don't see how that isn't institutional discrimination. What if it included writing an essay on "why bullying nerds are good for them" and people who've been bullied couldn't do very well on that assignment, because they obviously took offence, is that not discrim…

Then they're not very good learners. Learning to see both sides of an argument is part of what education is about.

The debate team doesn't get to choose which side they argue. It's assigned randomly. More people should do that because it actually increases empathy.

Re: The Rise of the College Crybullies

#32
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How is calling people "crybullies" and implicitly "indoctrinated" instead of reviewing and arguing against their arguments being tolerant? By "intolerance" I mean "having consequences beyond having people disagree with you," for example, making you lose your job. > I think everyone has the right to campaign for their cause regardless if that cause is to stop someone else from doing something. I think it's up to the…

> The issue is that speech is now being suppressed in higher education settings -- a place where (otherwise lawful) offense is expected to be tolerated -- by students who don't respond to offense with the sort of counterargument you're proposing. Instead, they are making demands for resignation or other forms of retribution, and these are starting to bear fruit. Yeah, there's not much point in continuing this discuss…

Let's stop speaking in abstractions. Look at the Silliman situation. Erika Christakis was persecuted not for anything she said, but for merely suggesting that the best way for students to deal with insensitive actions is to confront them directly instead of expecting the administration to do it for them.

If only more people behaved is way in the workplace.

Re: The Rise of the College Crybullies

#33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed but the SJWs will always make an issue with a project on a political thing and ask for a code of conduct. It seems to be an annoying pattern of behavior. You have to remember that SJWs have declared a war on hackers and people in STEM. Trying to find something wrong with them to make them lose their jobs or be kicked out of open source projects. http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=6918 ESR has an opinion on it that SJWs…

Nowhere in that post did I see the opinion that good patches be rejected on the grounds that the author is an SJW — ESR appears to say he's quite happy to accept good contributions from anyone. What am I missing?

Good patches should not be rejected by the ground that anyone is anything. What matters is code quality.

ESR was talking about the issues the SJWs make wanting a code of conduct and other political things. That they should be kicked out of projects when they do that sort of thing.

If they submit good patches, it should be accepted. If they cause a political issue instead of a coding or debugging one then they are just stirring up trouble.

In the example the POC (People of Color) submitted several patches but only one or two got accepted because they were good enough. The SJW got upset over the fact that not all of them got accepted. Called the project leader a white straight male, and project leader replied back he was a Latino and accepted a few patches from POC and goes by quality not race to accept or reject a patch.

Really hard to tell a SJW from a troll pretending to be a SJW, Poe's law and all of that.

Re: The Rise of the College Crybullies

#34

Just the same social justice warriors who attack tech companies and want more females and minorities in STEM, but they don't take STEM classes they take classes in the liberal arts instead. I encourage females and minorities to take STEM classes for STEM jobs and challenge themselves. Calling racism or sexism esp when almost none exists, there has been no evidence of racism on MU campus for six months. http://www.the…

> there has been no evidence of racism on MU campus for six months Your own citation: > The Student’s Association President Payton Head said he was called the n-word. > A group of black students said they were called the n-word by some guy in a car. In what context is someone saying "a thing happened to me" not considered evidence that the thing happened?

[deleted]

Re: The Rise of the College Crybullies

#35
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In many cases, sure, they do. It's pretty much the textbook definition of intolerance. But this is not the issue before us. Here, the students were admitted, presumably with knowledge of these facts, and don't yet have a credible claim to any effect other than hurt feelings.

> and don't yet have a credible claim to any effect other than hurt feelings. You appear to be saying that it's okay for people to call black colleagues niggers, and for the college to do nothing to support that black student because fuck them, hurt feelings, and that the long history of brutal racist treatment of black people in America should be ignored by any black people when someone calls them nigger. Is that wh…

Of course not.

First, none of the situations discussed involve the N-word, so what you're describing is a hypothetical example, and a very special one at that. I think it's expected that a professor or staff member would be fired for hurling racial epithets.

Students, on the other hand, are a different case. For them, it's the institution's duty to intervene and help resolve the conflict, educate the speaker about the historical background, help instill empathy, and counsel the victim. Academic probation is often a tool that can be used if the problem cannot be resolved, but expulsion is typically the second or third step, not the first.

Re: The Rise of the College Crybullies

#36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the litmus test that only someone with a github profile with projects of their own and commits to any projects in broad use are privvy to an opinion about tech culture. When I see an SJC opinion on identity politics and tech, my first instinct is to check github to see if the author has ever contributed to open source or has any sizable projects of their own published. I'd guess that 99 times out of 100 they d…

This is a bit divergent but GitHub alone is a bad litmus test to determine if someone as accomplished anything as a software engineer. Many talented engineers are precluded by their contracts from contributing, use other channels to do so, or simply don't work on open source projects. Dismissing someone because of an empty github profile seems like a bit of a hair trigger reaction.

It's a bad litmus test if there is no github account or the github account is completely empty, but you know for certain someone is actually in a position doing real engineering. Every example where I've looked up an SJW's github account, they have had some content on it and it's been very little of very poor quality (typically some HTML and CSS and poor quality jQuery JavaScript or a remarkably trivial Ruby on Rails project). The only example I recall ever encountering where there was an SJW article where the person was quite accomplished was from an MtF trans engineer. That was also the only SJW article that I remember being pretty solid and found myself agreeing with a lot of it. That article was the only decent one I've read on Model-View-Culture.

The two most prominent examples where the SJW had a remarkably unremarkable github account both worked at companies with a very very strong open-source contribution culture because they quit or were let go.

Re: The Rise of the College Crybullies

#37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the litmus test that only someone with a github profile with projects of their own and commits to any projects in broad use are privvy to an opinion about tech culture. When I see an SJC opinion on identity politics and tech, my first instinct is to check github to see if the author has ever contributed to open source or has any sizable projects of their own published. I'd guess that 99 times out of 100 they d…

By "an SJC opinion" do you mean "[wanting] more females and minorities in STEM"? How about these loudmouths, who include the creators of Django and NPM? http://osfeels.com/speakers Feel free to do your reflexive dick-measuring against my GitHub profile, too. (I checked out yours. Are you a serious contributor to anything with >50 stars?)

Personal attacks are not allowed on Hacker News. Please don't comment like this here.

Re: The Rise of the College Crybullies

#38
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By "an SJC opinion" do you mean "[wanting] more females and minorities in STEM"? How about these loudmouths, who include the creators of Django and NPM? http://osfeels.com/speakers Feel free to do your reflexive dick-measuring against my GitHub profile, too. (I checked out yours. Are you a serious contributor to anything with >50 stars?)

Personal attacks are not allowed on Hacker News. Please don't comment like this here.

I apologize, in retrospect my comment was definitely inappropriate.

I'm actually not sure which part of my comment was a personal attack, though. I think my first paragraph was a factual refutation of the parent's main point, I assume you're talking about the second paragraph?

Was it "dick-measuring contest"? Though vulgar, I don't think anyone would call it a personal attack, I think it's understood [1] as the valid critique that the parent is judging people and arguments based on meaningless superficial criteria.

[1]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dick-measuring_contest

Was it "Are you a serious contributor to anything with >50 stars?", which could be interpreted out-of-context as implying they're unaccomplished? I think it's clear from context that I don't believe in judging people by their GitHub, in fact it's one of the main ways my comment was disagreeing with its parent. Unless pointing out hypocrisy is a personal attack?

Re: The Rise of the College Crybullies

#39
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personal attacks are not allowed on Hacker News. Please don't comment like this here.

I apologize, in retrospect my comment was definitely inappropriate. I'm actually not sure which part of my comment was a personal attack, though. I think my first paragraph was a factual refutation of the parent's main point, I assume you're talking about the second paragraph? Was it "dick-measuring contest"? Though vulgar, I don't think anyone would call it a personal attack, I think it's understood [1] as the valid…

Thanks for being open about this. What made me think the comment was a personal attack was the combination of hostile sarcasm (not just "reflexive dick-measuring", but also "feel free") with introducing personal details.

It's always risky to bring in new personal details about someone into a thread, but if the context makes it clear that it's being done with good will, it can be ok. If the context is hostile, though, that's basically never good.

We're all hypocrites. The points one scores by digging up dirt to rub someone's nose in aren't worth the damage it does to the social fabric—at least in a place like HN where we care a lot about cohesion and it is always fragile.

Re: The Rise of the College Crybullies

#40
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I apologize, in retrospect my comment was definitely inappropriate. I'm actually not sure which part of my comment was a personal attack, though. I think my first paragraph was a factual refutation of the parent's main point, I assume you're talking about the second paragraph? Was it "dick-measuring contest"? Though vulgar, I don't think anyone would call it a personal attack, I think it's understood [1] as the valid…

Thanks for being open about this. What made me think the comment was a personal attack was the combination of hostile sarcasm (not just "reflexive dick-measuring", but also "feel free") with introducing personal details. It's always risky to bring in new personal details about someone into a thread, but if the context makes it clear that it's being done with good will, it can be ok. If the context is hostile, though,…

You're right, of course. Thanks for calling me out.
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