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What I Didn't Say

paulgraham.com

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Re: What I Didn't Say

#331

Post by hythloday »

ars_technician wrote: post #198
calibraxis wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does your company respond to customers like this: start by pointing out your "sterling reputations" and end by claiming "I understand"? The person you responded to offered two doable action points. A litmus test is if YC moves on at least one of them. YC does not have the excuse that it doesn't have the technical know-how. And it would be a laughingstock if they didn't have the hacker spirit to figure out how to impl…

They would be a laughingstock if they did implement a voice adjuster. It makes it appear that rampant sexism is such a problem that they have to implement protection against it.

What kind of hacker refuses to test contentious hypotheses by gathering more data?

Re: What I Didn't Say

#332

Post by aaronem »

semiel wrote: post #289
aaronem wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a programmer, not a psychologist. I have, however, some slight familiarity with IATs as a purported measure of unconscious bias; they have never impressed me as being particularly reliable as such, given what seems to be their questionable repeatability, not to mention the ease with which they are manipulated, and the way most of the results so obtained tend to hover just outside the margin of error. I won't even…

Goal-post movement detected! So even if we arbitrarily exclude a perfectly valid psychological technique because it "doesn't impress you", there's still the matter of my third link. Didja click it? EDIT: The most surprising part of the PNAS study, to me, is that people who agreed with statements like "Discrimination against women is no longer a problem in the United States" were statistically more affected by implici…

I fail to see how questioning the validity of the technique constitutes "goal-post movement". I requested citations and you supplied them, which I appreciate. I fail to see how said exchange requires that I respond "oh, hey, there sure are a lot of papers, you must be right!"

On the other hand, I must concede that I previously failed to look closely enough on first inspection at your third link. In my opinion, it does a great deal more to substantiate your statement than the IAT stuff does. I'd like to see similar studies with much higher n, but it's hard to argue with the analysis.

Re: What I Didn't Say

#333

Post by mjburgess »

mattmanser wrote: post #318
seiji wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not cultish I am disinclined to acquiesce to your assertion. Listing accomplishments is okay. Listing accomplishments paired with fawning and idolatry is cultish.

disinclined to acquiesce Oh dear. But anyway, given that I actually pointed out I disagree with him in some aspects, how is that fawning? The guy's got a history that reads better than any of us here could probably hope for and he writes some amazingly well thought out and well reasoned essays. I'm don't idolize him, I think he's more intelligent than me. Which I say about very, very few people. I think it's absurd t…

> Which I say about very, very few people.

Going by your personality as demonstrated here it seems you idolize intellect so when you "think he's more intelligent than" you you're going to put him on a pedastle. This may seem natural to you, but it comes across as fawning and misplaced.

Re: What I Didn't Say

#334

Post by leoc »

"Milo carefully said nothing when Major —— de Coverley stepped into the mess hall with his fierce and austere dignity the day he returned and found his way blocked by a wall of officers waiting in line to sign loyalty oaths. At the far end of the food counter, a group of men who had arrived earlier were pledging allegiance to the flag, with trays of food balanced in one hand, in order to be allowed to take seats at the table. Already at the tables, a group that had arrived still earlier was singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” in order that they might use the salt and pepper and ketchup there. The hubub began to subside slowly as Major —— de Coverley paused in the doorway with a frown of puzzled disapproval, as though viewing something bizarre."

Re: What I Didn't Say

#335

Post by jsmthrowaway »

gfodor wrote: post #321
jsmthrowaway wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are people who wake up in the morning, just like you or me, and instead of doing something productive with their time begin the day's hunt for a topic to be offended about. These are people that spend every day searching for something that offends them so that they can bitch to their followers about it and feel like they are producing some real change in the world. Think on par with "Fox News commentary," excep…

the SJW thing is in the most classic sense a meme. it's spread into tech and it's really disappointing. i don't really get it. the only explanation I have is that it offers people the feeling that they are somehow smarter than the rest of the sheep for realizing the effects of "the patriarchy" and "privilege". They have a more enlightened perspective and one which has easy to use go-to rhetorical defenses when called…

> sets you up to be labeled at best ignorant and at worst sexist/racist/intolerant/etc.

Indeed. Here's a reply to my comment[1] from yesterday:

https://twitter.com/ashedryden/status/417475900850974720

There is no racism, misogyny, or meritocracy worship anywhere in my comment. To be clear, after that comment, a person who has never met me felt the appropriate conclusion was "that guy hates people who aren't white, hates women, and worships meritocracy." Which, for anybody that knows me, is an asinine thing to say.

People from that group like to trot out horrible things (like "this guy came up to me at a conference and asked to fuck me," which is fucking awful, and I hope it was dealt with appropriately), then condemn a huge swath of people with that experience, then put people that disagree with them in the same bucket and accuse them of supporting horrible behavior. Because disagreeing with a method of discourse is literally the same as sexual assault, right?

I'm past being afraid of these people. The last 24 hours have helped a great deal. I e-mailed several people who said awful things and they all clammed up real fast (or asked me to take the conversation back to public forums, so that they'd have help), including one person who asked me to e-mail her.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6981307

Re: What I Didn't Say

#336

Post by josephagoss »

MartinCron wrote: post #184
crassus wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel bad for the female children of HN. I imagine them thinking, "Why do all the adults in my life want me to be a computer programmer? I want to be a veterinarian or teacher, but daddy says that's a patriarchal stereotype." There's nothing wrong with offering people an easier onramp to hackerdom, of course. But there is a subtext of devaluing all female-dominated lines of work.

You should feel bad for anyone who gets pushed into any career they don't really love. I strongly doubt it's at epidemic levels for the daughters of HN. I'm not applying any pressure at all to my daughter, I'm telling her she can practice any kind of medicine she wants.

> I'm telling her she can practice any kind of medicine she wants.

This gave me a much needed laugh.

Re: What I Didn't Say

#337

Post by baddox »

ericabiz wrote: post #32

As a female founder, I think this is a well-thought-out, articulate response, and I appreciate pg stepping up to say something about women in tech. In a similar vein, I'd love to see YC take on one or both of the following: 1) Do at least one application cycle completely blind. How could you accomplish this? Much like in the concert auditions where this was first tried, put people behind a curtain--and then use techn…

Out of curiosity, I wonder what people would conclude if YC was able to perform blind applications, and ten years later that class performed significantly worse than classes from the traditional application process.

Re: What I Didn't Say

#338

Post by tvladeck »

mjburgess wrote: post #324
mattmanser wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

pg, a pseudo-intellectual? I'm frankly surprised you've been here for 2 years and never realised. You see the ycombinator in news.ycombinator.com? In this website? That's pg's company. Do you know what ycombinator is? That he started the seed funding movement? That he was blogging about hacking startups before people even really realised you could hack startups? Before lean startup existed? That he's written his own…

None of his achievements as an entrepreneur give him insights into philosophy, political economy or anything else he writes on. I granted him "entrepreneur" status. He can have "compu-sci" intellectual too. You can see my comment here on his pseud-osity: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6988150 to save repeating myself.

I read the linked comment, and some of your other comments on the topic on this thread. You took this into meta meta (yea, 2x) territory. Not the actual issues, not the person who wrote the linked essay (pg), but the people discussing the person discussing the issues.

Why would you do that?

And furthermore, how can you possibly feel you survive your own critique of "pseudo-intellectuals"? This is you [0] spouting amateur social science:

> Umm... how about in a capitalist society money is the vehicle of positive freedom... to increase ones ability to do something on has to have more money. Therefore under capitalism there is always a fundamental tie between money and power.

Which, by the way, I have no problem with. A well-regarded logical fallacy is "appeal to authority", the contrapositive of which implies that we should judge arguments on their merit regardless of where they come from. So if people find some writing illuminating, attack the logic, not the writer, and not the readers.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6988150

Re: What I Didn't Say

#339

Post by paul_f »

marquis wrote: post #123
sp332 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

blind applications would make me more comfortable to consider applying What kind of pressure are you feeling about applying to funds now?

The pressure of not being a 25 year old guy, basically. Or 25 for that matter.

When you don't want to do something, any excuse will do.

You chose not to apply. No one else forced you to walk away from the opportunity.

Re: What I Didn't Say

#340

Post by freyrs3 »

jsmthrowaway wrote: post #59
freyrs3 wrote: post #36

I'm not sure I want to work in an industry where some offhanded quip can lead to the kind witchhunt and character assassination like we saw over the last few days. Paul Graham may have some views that seem controversial to some people, but don't we all? I really blame the tabloidization of the tech press and the "twitter controversy of the day" bandwagon effect for these kind of incidents.

There are people who wake up in the morning, just like you or me, and instead of doing something productive with their time begin the day's hunt for a topic to be offended about. These are people that spend every day searching for something that offends them so that they can bitch to their followers about it and feel like they are producing some real change in the world. Think on par with "Fox News commentary," excep…

I find the twitter comment you linked to very insightful, it's just a thinly veiled statement of "even if the facts don't support the claims I made about your actions, you're still to blame for your inaction". This kind of "You're either with us, or against us" mentality is rather alarming...
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