Paul Graham Isn't Keeping Women out of Tech • Hacker News Board

Re: Paul Graham Isn't Keeping Women out of Tech

#91

Post by Caligula » Sun, Dec 29, 2013, 2:14 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #29

Paul Graham isn't keeping women out of technology. Nor do I believe he wants to. If anything, his interests would be served by there being more women in technology, and thus more candidates for YC. Also, Valleywag is a cesspool. I ponied up for the whole interview at The Information. I'd rather eat a bug than talk about what a Gawker publication has to say. But Paul Graham has said some things on this issue that I th…

"The existence of privilege is not a scarlet letter on young white dudes who code. But the forceful, repeated, insidious denial of the existence of that privilege is a problem: it reinforces the privilege and allows it to feed on itself."

Seriously what the fuck does this mean? These words try so hard to appear to be insightful but are utterly meaningless.

I lack the privilege of understanding this.

Re: Paul Graham Isn't Keeping Women out of Tech

#92

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Dec 29, 2013, 2:15 AM UTC

baddox wrote: post #90

shantanubala wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Privilege exists when the outward characteristics you describe are used as heuristics for filtering good coders from bad coders. Unfortunately, most people are unaware of the heuristics they are using when performing such a task. LessWrong explains some of these errors in reasoning quite well [1][2]. When generalized to an entire population, these heuristics construct a "privilege" because anyone with characteristics…

Okay, so what should I do now that I recognize that I have privilege? Do I quit my job and forfeit my college degree, since I acquired both unfairly (I guess my own perception that I sometimes work hard and plan well is delusional)? Seriously, what is the end game of this concept of "privilege"? All anyone seems to say is to "check your privilege." Great, I accept that I have privilege according to your definition of…

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Re: Paul Graham Isn't Keeping Women out of Tech

#93

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Dec 29, 2013, 2:21 AM UTC

hacker789 wrote: post #63

tptacek wrote: post #29

Paul Graham isn't keeping women out of technology. Nor do I believe he wants to. If anything, his interests would be served by there being more women in technology, and thus more candidates for YC. Also, Valleywag is a cesspool. I ponied up for the whole interview at The Information. I'd rather eat a bug than talk about what a Gawker publication has to say. But Paul Graham has said some things on this issue that I th…

He's concerned about being misconstrued because feminist activists love bullying people with waves of hateful, outrageously uncharitable, deliberately damaging messages at the slightest trigger. For example, here's what PG recently said on Twitter ( https://twitter.com/paulg/status/416994260995416064 ): > Will write about female founders, but traveling all day so it will have to wait. Reserve judgment? Prob too much…

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Re: Paul Graham Isn't Keeping Women out of Tech

#94

Post by Dewie » Sun, Dec 29, 2013, 2:22 AM UTC

jfarmer wrote: post #59

zainny wrote: post #11

We're creating an environment now in which it is practically impossible to discuss this topic in tech. Our general irrationality and desire to completely and utterly jump down the throat of anyone who even remotely touches on this topic means that in the future any gender topics are just going to get "no comment" responses. That's sad and not without a touch of irony precisely because in stifling the discussion we're…

IMO, folks on HN need to do much less discussing on this topic and a lot more listening. For the most part, HN is collectively blind to issues of power and privilege. For those interested in learning more about privilege, read these two essays by John Scalzi, Being Poor ( http://whatever.scalzi.com/2005/09/03/being-poor/ ) and Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is ( http://whatever.scalzi.com/20…

> For those interested in learning more about privilege, read these two essays by John Scalzi, Being Poor (http://whatever.scalzi.com/2005/09/03/being-poor/) and Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is (http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/15/straight-white-male-th...).

I don't know what you want to achieve by posting the first one, since I have never seen anyone with any good arguments who argues that being poor is not a significant disadvantage when it comes to things like social mobility. HN seems to lean more to the idea that structural/systemic issues on a societal scale does matter and hinder individuals, as opposed to the thought that an individual can forge his own way and make himself into whatever she wants to be no matter the circumstances, which is another school of thought.

I was hoping the second one would give some arguments for how being a straight white male (emphasize male since being white is pretty obviously an advantage all things considering) is a ridiculous advantage. But then it turned out to just start with the initial assertion, explain it with an RPG analogy and then ... return to the initial assertion. But it's all so clear to me now that I can relate things like leveling up and playing through a game on maxed attributes to my own sex... not.

By the way, is the difficulty the same for white geeky males?

Re: Paul Graham Isn't Keeping Women out of Tech

#95

Post by jfarmer » Sun, Dec 29, 2013, 2:22 AM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #89

jfarmer wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, I'll say, tptacek, virtually everything you write on HN is spot on, but it's most on when you're talking about issues of sexism, racism, power, and privilege. The tech industry suffers from a collective privilege-blindness and I appreciate anyone who spends any amount of their time and energy talking about it coherently and persuasively. When I was in seventh grade, we were assigned to write a little speech ab…

The last paragraph took some weight from your post, in my opinion. I agree with you in general, but comparing that description of your student with my own experience, I can't help but think that maybe he really doesn't want it enough. Having a computer at home, he's in a much better position than I was, when I learned programming at 13 by going to a public PC for 3h/week. I also didn't know English, nor did I have an…

It does sound like you wanted it more or at least had a way of approaching the problem that made it possible for you to get what you wanted more easily than my student did.

But let's teleport all the people pg or anyone else here would consider "hackers" into your situation at age 13. How many would've kept at it?

I'm also wondering why you left out the most important dimension, IMO, which is social support. Did your friends antagonize you for pursuing this as a child? Were there any other people in your life who understood even the faintest bit of what you were doing?

Anyhow, this isn't battle of the anecdotes, as if one has to win. It's easy to see the way out from the outside; it's another question when you're on the inside. It sounds like you were a precocious and intimidatingly determined child. I'm sure that's served you well in many things! :)

Re: Paul Graham Isn't Keeping Women out of Tech

#96

Post by jfarmer » Sun, Dec 29, 2013, 2:25 AM UTC

Dewie wrote: post #94

jfarmer wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO, folks on HN need to do much less discussing on this topic and a lot more listening. For the most part, HN is collectively blind to issues of power and privilege. For those interested in learning more about privilege, read these two essays by John Scalzi, Being Poor ( http://whatever.scalzi.com/2005/09/03/being-poor/ ) and Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is ( http://whatever.scalzi.com/20…

> For those interested in learning more about privilege, read these two essays by John Scalzi, Being Poor ( http://whatever.scalzi.com/2005/09/03/being-poor/ ) and Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is ( http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/15/straight-white-male-th... ). I don't know what you want to achieve by posting the first one, since I have never seen anyone with any good arguments who argu…

> Try to read them without being reflexive or poking holes in them. If you find yourself getting riled up or defensive stop and ask yourself why you're feeling the need to respond that way.

So, why did you feel the need to respond as you did? If that's your response, it seems to me like you should really grapple with the challenges they present before jumping in here to comment. As someone who grew up very poor, it makes me chuckle that you can't see the connection. They're deeply, profoundly related. Some of my other comments on this thread might make it more clear how — I don't want to retype them here.

If you find this comment grating, well, let me translate it into geek-speak: before jumping in to comment, please Read The Fine Manual. :)

Re: Paul Graham Isn't Keeping Women out of Tech

#97

Post by baddox » Sun, Dec 29, 2013, 2:28 AM UTC

jfarmer wrote: post #80

baddox wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The coin has another side: privilege. Privilege is a simple concept. Privilege is a bogus concept, at least in every manner it has been explained to me. Examine the example you provided. If most elite startup hackers are male, English speaking, 20-40, and white or Asian, then a person giving that characterization would be giving a reasonable one based on observation. What does this have to do with "privilege" or "f…

First, privilege is not a bogus concept. If you really believe that — about anything, not just privilege — you'll have a hard time learning it or amending your understanding of it because of things like confirmation bias. Second, your probability is bad. You're confusing P(A|B) and P(B|A). This is understandable — lots of people do this all the time without realizing it, myself included. Third, your understanding of…

I still don't understand what to do with the concept. Anyone would be a fool to think that you can group people by some attribute (like ethnicity) and show correlations with other attributes (like income). (Granted, we might want to do a bit of work to see if the correlations are stronger than would be expected in a purely random distribution of attributes, but we can assume this is the case.) And, given those correlations, anyone can recognize that they are statistically likely to follow those same correlations based on their own group memberships. If that's what privilege means, then so be it, but it's not much more meaningful than saying "I'm thankful that I'm statistically more likely to be successful than people who die as children. John Scalzi could just as easily write an article about how not being born with a terrible disease or deformity is the lowest difficulty setting there is.

Re: Paul Graham Isn't Keeping Women out of Tech

#98

Post by yetanotherphd » Sun, Dec 29, 2013, 2:29 AM UTC

spindritf wrote: post #25

So another way to figure out which of our taboos future generations will laugh at is to start with the labels. Take a label-- "sexist", for example-- and try to think of some ideas that would be called that. Then for each ask, might this be true? One of my favourite essays. http://paulgraham.com/say.html

Beautiful essay, and a beautiful idea that you quoted. I will have to read more of PG.

Re: Paul Graham Isn't Keeping Women out of Tech

#99

Post by jfarmer » Sun, Dec 29, 2013, 2:34 AM UTC

baddox wrote: post #97

jfarmer wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, privilege is not a bogus concept. If you really believe that — about anything, not just privilege — you'll have a hard time learning it or amending your understanding of it because of things like confirmation bias. Second, your probability is bad. You're confusing P(A|B) and P(B|A). This is understandable — lots of people do this all the time without realizing it, myself included. Third, your understanding of…

I still don't understand what to do with the concept. Anyone would be a fool to think that you can group people by some attribute (like ethnicity) and show correlations with other attributes (like income). (Granted, we might want to do a bit of work to see if the correlations are stronger than would be expected in a purely random distribution of attributes, but we can assume this is the case.) And, given those correl…

I have a hard time believing you're genuinely interested in understanding the concept since you're putting up resistance at every step. I'm not here to make you want to learn — I was presuming you already did.

If not, my mistake for engaging.

Re: Paul Graham Isn't Keeping Women out of Tech

#100

Post by MorningInfidel » Sun, Dec 29, 2013, 2:36 AM UTC

baddox wrote: post #27

Unfortunately for this all female team, feminists will accuse them of working to support the patriarchy just as much as the evil men. Sadly, this is actually what prominent feminists in technology believe: https://medium.com/about-work/e82b7ca7de03 (Ctrl-F "support the patriarchy"). For these feminists, women who fail are obvious evidence of patriarchy, and women who succeed are obviously just working alongside the p…

I was all interested to read the article you linked until I saw the by-line. Read some of Shanley's posts on Medium - her opinion can be safely discounted. Not because she's a woman, but because she's a wacko.

Thankyou for putting into coherent thought what I was never able to - a lot of these arguments you hear from the 'leg up for women in tech' crowd are just that - unfalsifiable. They can never be wrong.