I learned this lesson a long time ago from the role models in my life that ended up getting burned because of having a differing viewpoint from whatever societal winds were blowing. I, and I realize probably cynically, now only elect to share, post, tweet, or whatnot whatever only can positively benefit my "brand". Sometimes I have to act like my own PR person, because if I learned anything, anything you say can and most likely probably will be used against you. Working in foodservice for 8 years before switching to developer taught me if something you say doesn't offend or piss someone off, you just haven't ran into the right person yet.
Even right now, writing on a niche message board using a fake name, I'm hesitant to voice my honest opinions about anything related to race or gender or other topic like that. it's like there's an army of internet people waiting for you to mess up and will punish you with controversy and/or honestly try and get you fired.
"...so I thought the talk was well received.
But then the discussion began, and it was the most unremittingly hostile questioning I’ve ever had. I don’t mind when people ask hard or critical questions, but I was surprised that I had misread the audience so thoroughly. My talk had little to do with gender, but the second question was “So you think rape is OK?” [..]
After the first dozen questions I noticed that not a single questioner was male."
https://heterodoxacademy.org/2015/11/24/the-yale-problem-beg...
I don't feel like I have anything particularly controversial, inflammatory, or offensive to say. But, I so strongly don't want to be perceived that way that I just opt-out most of the time.
There is no serious dialog on complex issues like this, because if something you say gets misunderstood, your career is in jeopardy.
Freedom and rights are wonderful things. But as I see them used to justify censorship, I can't help but think that's exactly what's happening: they're being used.
I don't know about you, but I rather resent being used, and I won't have it.
We need our serious dialogue. We are undertaking a revolutionary project, realigning the way the sexes relate. The changes of the last century have been enormous. It is arrogance and folly to think that the monotone wisdom of one political perspective is all we need to guide us through such a storm. We need diversity and respect for opposing opinions. We need to gather wisdom from all experiences and backgrounds, and build something excellent.
It sounds like you can relate to existing as a person who is different in tech, then.
... with its scope extended to any imaginable opinion without exception.
Free speech is dead.
Ultimately it's an effect of large, diverse communities and deep political divisions.
If you want to have political discussions in such public places without suffering a reputation hit, the only way to do so is under a pseudonym - and you're free to do that on many sites.
In the past, you could just vocalise your opinion, and it would not survive many hops in the real-world social network.
So yeah, you can express your opinion, but your chance of being crucified for it has risen significantly.
From my viewpoint, an issue with a lot of today's social media is it doesn't feel as nakedly public as it really is. Personally, I wouldn't go into a large room of often random people that you don't know well, and loudly break traditional rules of etiquette by broadcasting inflammatory viewpoints on potentially pot-stirring topics like politics, religion, etc. Likewise, I feel the same with Facebook: that is not the place to discuss these sorts of topics due to how very public Facebook is. Yet a lot of people do that on Facebook and Twitter every day.
In the past, "vocalizing your opinion" meant debating friends over drinks, the difference today is that every person with an opinion deliberately leverages modern technology to broadcast that opinion to as many people as possible, and the more that receive it, the better. Naturally, people who disagree will respond... the system is working as intended.
It's not the person who got hurt that "leveraged modern technology to broadcast that opinion to as many people as possible" - it's the other person, the one who overheard stuff and got offended. This is why many start to feel afraid voicing their opinions - because even if you try to keep it to a small group of your friends, there's no telling when someone decides to rebroadcast it publicly on the Internet, and then all hell breaks loose.
Someone with a dozen twitter followers, all friends and family, who has no intent to "broadcast to as many people as possible" but just to comment to acquaintances, can say something juuuust a little bit ignorant and, if they happen to get noticed by an "influencer", suddenly have thousands of angry replies, calls to their employer, death threats, etc. They might not have even been broadcasting on twitter, but might have told a joke to a friend in a public place, perhaps even a joke that was misunderstood or misheard by someone listening in, and then suddenly find themselves in the middle of a storm. And it's not typically a storm of people correcting mistaken ideas or helping them reason through errors, but a storm of people seeking vengeance -- not "hey man, that thing you just said is demeaning and wrong", but "you're a bad person and you should be cast out of society".
That is not "the system working as intended" (well, maybe it is in some peoples' minds, but if so it's a terrible system!) That's not a system that fixes ignorance; that's a system that creates a black market for unpopular opinions and that creates fear and resentment.
Interesting elision. Will you expand upon it?
https://heterodoxacademy.org/2015/11/24/the-yale-problem-beg...
Those who you are appearing to condemn would just as easily use the language of "justifiably afraid to speak" in the context of their own political issues, but I am guessing you would disagree with their particular justifications, yet the implication you seem to be making is that they are "more free" to speak, even though both sides are equally capable.
The particular topic is irrelevant, there is certainly a venue in which any opinion would antagonize a particular crowd of close-minded ideologues, but just because a certain group of people are closed-off to certain types of ideas, doesn't mean you are any less free to speak them.
Imagine Obama giving a speech to a crowd of Trump supporters.
Imagine Trump giving a speech to a crowd of Obama supporters.
Both sides would claim "they screamed our guy down and didn't even give him a chance to speak, the [right/left] are killing free speech"... well, they'd both be wrong because freedom to speak doesn't mean everyone will agree, and if you broadcast an unpopular opinion in the wrong crowd, you get an angry mob; this doesn't mean your freedom is being trampled on, because there are plenty of places you can go to speak your ideas where everyone will clap and cheer and exclaim how enlightened you for sharing the clearly-correct-opinion regarding topic x.
I don't imagine that either side in the current political conflict would in general be any more virtuous than the other, given power. The thing about power is that, having it, one is tempted to use it. But it would be foolish to ignore the fact that, in the current political conflict, one side by and large does have power, and is less shy daily in wielding it.
Some believe the proper solution to this is to wrest that power away from those who now hold it, the better to wield it and say, well, they hit us first. I understand the appeal, but disagree with the goal; I would rather see a modus vivendi which enables both sides of the political divide to live more or less in peace with one another, ideally without the sort of constant incitement that goes on today. Such behavior seems probable by trivial extrapolation to take us all to a place where nearly none of us wants to go, and even most of those few who think they think otherwise will drown in horror and regret.
Ignoring reality doesn't seem likely to advance such a goal, but on the other hand, there's little evidence to suggest that is a goal which many are likely to share.
Ultimately sheer quantity of people is the bigger problem than anything else.
And then, someone decides to take a screenshot, out of context, and post it somewhere for the whole world to see.
The social price is extremely high now. It's very nearly as bad as being tossed in jail.
it's not unheard of for this to go much, much further. doxxing, harassing associates, campaigns to fire people, 'de-platforming', stigmatization etc.
such pursuit of wrongthink produces chilling effects and balkanization.
Of course, this is really only a significant issue on a public forum, on which you can post pseudonymously and still gain any benefits of discussion without paying any significant toll. Some people view this as a negative and want to ban this kind of commenting - I love it, it means you can experiment with different views, make arguments you might not want to make in real life and see what sticks with you.
You can say that about almost anything. I'm at liberty to murder my neighbor, I just have to accept the price.
Denying your neighbor the ability to speak out against your opinions violates their right to free speech. If you don't like it, argue back.
the quoted 'at liberty' seems to refer to something like not being restricted by the law of the land.
saying 'at liberty to murder' seems to refer to something like bodily autonomy/physical capability.
Voat for example was set up as a website that's like reddit but free from "censorship". That being its attractive quality, many people who value that quality highly went there, and it quickly turned into a truly vile place. My hypothesis is that this happened because the most of the people who could be described as "censored on Reddit" were actually censored for what I would think is a good reason - for saying vile/Nazi/etc. things. Therefore, even if that group was not entirely made of such people, Voat became a place just for them.
I think that communities which have a major selling point of free speech will tend to attract those who feel censored first, and bound to fall into the sort of site almost nobody wants, driving away "legitimate" censored users and failing to attract more people. Most "good" things aren't censored, remember.
You're taking people who maybe think that say, write shitty things about fat people or want to use that as motivation to lose weight and putting them in a basket with people who were subscribed to /r/niggers.
Pushing people out of major communities over minor offenses only results in the promotion of more offensive views in those people. This kind of exclusion from the mainstream results in extremification of views in those individuals. I've felt it myself, I've found myself agreeing with things that I know mere years ago I would have outright rejected, but now contemplate. People don't back down on views like that, they just clamp down harder. So in my opinion it's a lot better to just argue with them and not to censor them.
On the one hand it is probably good for your "brand" on the other hand, authenticity is a key factor in having a strong brand.
No-win situation...
That's the difference between marketing and advertising. Done well, your audience won't even realize you're marketing to them.
If you do the public face just right, people will think you authentically share those same views in private.
It could be someone who is outraged or someone who actually uses your words to further their ideological agenda against those who are outraged.
In short, the more people see what you say, the more chances that it can run away from under you and distract from your brand and its focus.
That is why Coke executives don't just tweet their personal views on topics, etc. and why politicians stay on message.
Anything you say publicly can and may be used against YOUR GOALS. And maybe against your character.
"Give me six lines written by the most honest man, and I will find something there to hang him. As quoted in Champlain's Dream (2008) by David Hackett Fischer"
And with AI you can probably quote mine anyone like Richelou.
Sometimes, like Trump, the controversy helps attract media attention and you can find a core audience who flocks to you. Then you become a polarizing figure. If that's your way of getting famous, then the price you pay is people quote mining what you say later and you having to filter out people who are constantly lining up to debate you and take you down.
Trump has been able to sidestep the parsing of his words by not standing for anything and being so willing to change with the wind and just say so much random stuff, while at the same time saying what enough people want to hear that he totally polarized the country.
When I posted this, the upvotes went up to +3 points, and then steadily have been declining to -2 points.
No one has commented as to why they are downvoting or whatever. Fine. But I have noticed this on many of my other posts. And I wonder sometimes whether people actually have downvoting rings / clones on HN for topics/people/opinions! It seems to be free to downvote or upvote, so economically it would make sense that there are no repercussions.
Since there is no cost to downvoting, it is cheaper in terms of time and effort to--anonymously!--censor opinions than to express them. It's doubly bad because, in order to acquire downvoting privileges, you must first express enough "correct" opinions, which makes the system self-selecting for certain views. It's a fundamentally broken system, because it incentivizes the wrong things, and it's why I stopped commenting here....oops.
Sometimes it's cheaper in terms of time and effort to downvote rather than engage because the comment or commentator displays obvious* signs that a discussion will be fruitless.
* To me, of course; I only represent myself and my opinions.
I think it's foolish to tie the two together if you ever want to express your personal opinions. Just because they're "popular now" or aren't causing harm in the now doesn't mean that will hold true 10 years from now, keeping in mind that "the internet never forgets".
I have a professional life, using my real name, with virtually no public exposure. I have a personal life as well, using social media, but locked down to close family and friends. And I've had numerous "hobby lives", Mirimir being one of the most recent and active, isolated through VPN services and Tor.
Agreed. No matter how calculated you are chances are someone is going to be angry or atleast peeved by you having an opinion. I believe that everyone has a right to voicing their opinion. By this I mean that people should have a chance to be heard, but I believe the backlash that comes from voicing an opinion is sometimes a necessary evil and it too should not be completely silenced. There's a healthy balance in the war of words.
I personally feel despite the backlash if you feel strongly about something that you feel is right then speak out about it, and have a voice. Some words need to be heard and expressed. People do often have strong biases, but your words can hold power to sway someone to either side.
One important thing to note about truly making a debate a learning experience is just because the person is on the other side of the debate doesn't mean you can't learn some principle or truth from them. You can almost always learn or see some shred of truth from any argument no matter how fallacious, wrong, or stupid it may seem. Our job as conversationalists should be to try to separate the fact from the fiction.
As words are expressed and understood people come to know where their misconceptions lie. They start aligning their perceptions with what they truly feel is right.
I love hacker news the community often does not take a single side, and the views on both sides are heard. This helps me decide where I should stand on the issue. So I just have to say thank you to those who give constructive thoughts that help guide the conversation.
Can I quote you on that?
I empathize with those who've also turned to self-censorship for fear of being branded as part of a the problem. I want to have the tough conversations, but not at the expense of being made a public example for holding opinions that are neither hateful nor malicious, just colored by my origins and journey through life: the exact same factors that others advocate taking into account.
The whole thing is really unfortunate: people holding moderate (and in many ways, mainstream) opinions are withdrawing from the public discourse, which I don't believe is conducive to satisfactory progress.
I would very much fear for the economic consequences of voicing various opinions. Even if they didn't lead to my termination at work, I'm certain they would prevent any kind of career advancement.
I'm reasonably sure I can survive in the world without my opinions being known, or the changes I presumably would like to see not being made. In short, they win, I'll survive somehow, and my kids will eat. They'll also maybe learn that some things I might believe are not acceptable, and will have to think about that when choosing to believe them themselves.
Certain ideas and people have definitively won the day, and it's now just survival mode for many.
These free speech rights we technically have were not acquired without cost--on the contrary, they came at enormous cost in blood. Now we refrain from defending them because doing so might inconvenience us.
Of course, it's easy for me to say this, sitting in front of a computer writing vague comments. Food for thought, especially for Americans the day after Independence Day.
i'm still bothered by the active censorship of comments and discussion that occurred earlier in the week, and i hope this discussion is informative for the moderators, who are hopefully having discussions about how best to handle similar situations in the future.
Mods are not trying to optimize HN for opinion but for intellectual curiosity, and that requires substantive discussion. That's pretty much the whole story, though of course there are a thousand details.
This thread is different from the other ones because the OP is different. Mods are doing the same thing here as in any other. That's devilishly hard for people to see because everyone interprets moderation through the filter of their own pre-existing opinions and there's little we can do about it. I wrote about this here if anyone wants more: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14693348.
I almost feel sorry for anyone who is to deal with either side. Harassment is one thing, but if that industry is the only help you can turn too- that is worser. Cause this side has no interest in resolving the core Issue (it literaly lives from it) and doesn't have a interest in a good outcome for the harassed either.
Still, if i think back on the woman i tutored in the freshman C-class - and later in there careers - any creep in power molesting those: Its good that this industry exists, to apply pressure too keep standards. For every woman in tech, should be able to walk, live and write like maria.
Some simple things I do to try to make things better in my workplace:
With others:
* actually listen
* never interrupt
* make sure criticism is constructive
* in a shared codebase, use the lightest possible touch (avoid aesthetic refactoring)
* acknowledge my own privileges/biases, and be aware of the fact that simply what I look like/how I speak etc. can affect other people
* be open to the possibility that my own opinions may not be immutable objective truths (this is hard)My new motto (if I can pull it off), is to never criticize, ever. If I see a project on an obvious downward trajectory, rather than pointing out the blatantly obvious things that could turn it around, I am going to smile and repeat the same nonsense feel good crap my coworkers do as if everything is just fine, and watch it crash and burn. And then in my next interview, I will declare it a smashing success! In my experience, this is literally the recipe for success in modern times.
I should note, these observations are based on working in large enterprises where failure of an individual project can be absorbed, as opposed to a smaller shop where success actually matters.
I'm fine with acknowledging my shortcomings. I think it shows a healthy humility and a kind of leadership that is really lacking these days.
But I find the language of privilege to be a certain kind of virtue signalling. I don't ascribe to the underlying philosophy, so I would be misleading my audience to talk about my "privileges".
> the fact that simply what I look like/how I speak etc. can affect other people
That can describe really bad, really racist outcomes. It's not fair, at least in the Rawlsian sense, to make people responsible for how others react to who they are.
We're talking about the behavior of others; who cares if Sally wants to order chicken or Fred wants a blue car or Mark and Sarah want to form a club for Pittsburgh-expats? If someone wants to create an award for women/minorities/lefties/gingers/etc, it seems perfectly reasonable to feel neither positively or negatively about it. This isn't a test, you don't get marked down for "no answer".
That said, I admit that a men only event is reasonable in certain circumstances.
The post and the parent comment show that this is not a matter of opinion, not a matter to be confused of; we're all human, nothing more, nothing less. Keeping this in mind will clear things up for everyone eventually.
Better to ask questions, share links, and tell stories based on personal experience if you have any.
I already treat women as equal (actually more), same goes to my LBGT friends and colleagues, and same for all non-white people. But constant presence in media is making these topics so annoying to me, I wish more focus was dedicated to healthy lifestyle for example (probably being selfish here but that's my view, and view of people close to me too).
Things like company-wide emails encouraging us to go to gay prides over weekend "where you can finally participate and show your hetero support" - god damn I work for banking corp with 130k employees. If I wanted to go there, I would be already going for last 10+ years. I show support to the cause by treating them as equal, because THEY ARE EQUAL, not treating them like disabled kids. Keep work emails about work, and let me do my own stuff in my own time.
Your point is "I don't do racist things, therefore there isn't a problem", which is just not true - there are still huge problems for tons of people with racism, sexism and other bigotry, and just because you don't see it or notice it doesn't make it not a problem. You got annoyed? I'm sure some non-racists were annoyed when all anyone could talk about was how bad slavery was. If you don't care about the issue, feel free to ignore it - but saying that people are imposing on you by caring is just unreasonable.
Being an island, Ireland was quite cut off genetically from the world for quite a long time, allowing a distinct ethnicity to develop. And as you may be aware, "race" isn't a real scientifically valid concept, but the word is used colloquially to refer to ethnicity, which is a scientifically valid concept that can be measured using genetics.
I don't think that word means what you think.
Once the goal of the movement is achieved, that part of their identity necessarily needs to disappear and because this is such a difficult thing to do they simply shift the movement's goalposts to keep their internal purpose alive (usually toward a regressive point).
It's not a profound or difficult concept, but interesting to have articulated.
It seems these movements don't have a defined point where they can say the goal has been achieved and everybody can go home. Instead I think it's the opposite and the movement wins in strength. The more traction the movement gets the more power and influence it gets and the bigger its goals will get.
His example about child protection is great. There is no cutoff point.
I would also argue that shareholder capitalism has reached the same state. In a lot of circles it's not even OK to question the current trend of inequality and it's not OK to think about ways to raise standards for everyone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K92rOsjyLBs (Safe Spaces — Sam Harris and Jonathan Haidt on the Disturbing Trend of Vindictive Protectiveness )
Yes, of course in an ideal world these things would be non-issues, but they aren't. People are discriminated against, and there are barriers from culture that won't change without intentional scruity.
Of course, everyone should be able to just do their job and no more. If you aren't interested in being a role model or trying to push for that equality, that's absolutely fine, no one is obligated to do so. Some people do, however, and they will be trying to find others that do, I don't think that's unreasonable.
If, for example, women are routinely excluded from male-dominated clubs, for example, maybe they never get an interest in programming. While in an ideal world everyone can attend those clubs and it doesn't matter, if that's not the reality because of societal expectation, until that expectation has changed, maybe girl's clubs allow girls to get involved without fear of the societal stigma of doing "boys things" (if they don't happen to be one of the IDGAF people who do it anyway), resulting in more women in tech, which normalises it, eventually removing the need for girl's specific clubs.
This isn't exactly a new idea. It's the same idea behind things like women's-only chess - if the culture has excluded a group for a long time, it can be hard for talented individuals to get started because they get excluded inherently. If you can create a separate culture to get them interested, then merge the cultures over time, you can fix that.
To me, saying "we should just have everyone together" is like proclaiming racism was done the day slavery was abolished. Things don't magically get fixed culturally and socially - that takes an integration.
There is no quantification (or even validation really) of the supposed discrimination. People don't look bother trying to figure out what actions would make the scale equal. They are completely concentrated on moving the scale in one direction only and never check the balancing.
People must believe that there is discrimination is always so severe that any necessary evil used to balance it out is justified.
Not necessarily, I see 2 opinions on how to fix this :
- An "active integration" like you explain, where the differences are highlighted (what we mostly see in the US). The idea is that by forcing the change we'll get used to it.
- A post-racial/genre approach, where the differences are made as irrelevant as any physical trait, so the change comes naturally but it's a long process (what I've mostly seen in France)
IMHO the first approach may yield faster results, but only the second can solve cultural issues (in part by blurring and mixing the cultures, instead of crystallizing them)
I also think it's morally reprehensible to just sit back and accept generations of people who don't have the chances others do.
I grew up (in the US) thinking that my generation (I'm a very early "millennial", apparently—the kind that well remembers a pre-Web world and grew up with a lot of Gen X media) pretty much had this down, and that especially the tech people did. The Internet of the hacker world wasn't supposed to care about this stuff, just results and ability.
Now everyone seems more divided over sex than it did then. Hell, sexual orientations of all sorts and interracial relationships (anyone else remember those "look who's coming to dinner" episodes of daytime talk shows in the 90s?) and such, which were all still very much issues to the adult public when I was growing up, really do seem to be disappearing as Things To Be Upset About (I know, bathroom bills and not counting your chickens and so on, but the progress there seems huge and very real), but the regular ol' divide between men and women? It seems to be way worse than it was.
I'm not sure what happened, but this certainly wasn't something I expected to be a major problem for adults of Gen X/Millennial generations. And I was raised in the Midwest and surrounded by Republicans (including my parents), so it's not like I grew up in a liberal bubble or something. The last decade or so's "culture war"-type battles in online communities, all the reports of significant difficulties for women in technology, and so on, have caught me very much by surprise.
Also, you editorialized a lot in your description of "active integration".
Sorry for the edits, I'm not a good english speaker and the tone wasn't right.
The reality is that integration follows a similar pattern - bigger cities mean better integration. Find a vote map and you've basically got a map of how good integration is.
It feels like all these 'minority only' events and clubs and what not are going straight back to the bad old days. Just from the opposite 'side' of the political spectrum.
If you're not white, things are different.
Can you think of some examples of when you were unexpectedly forbidden from participating in an event/group/etc? Did you have access to alternatives?
2. There are lots of people who lived through the Civil Rights movement alive today, and segregation and the associated attitudes didn't disappear overnight. Do you think 70 year old politicians carry no baggage from their upbringing and early adulthood?
I suspect men-only clubs for traditionally female dominated fields, something like an all male kindergarten teacher group, would be broadly accepted as reasonable.
Nursing, home healthcare, child care, veterinary services, social services, and libraries are the other canonical examples besides education of highly women-dominated fields where having male-only employee resource groups might make logical sense.
I'm not sure I agree with you that it would be broadly accepted as reasonable, however, even though I personally would find it reasonable.
You know what, I think people, in general, should be allowed to discriminate. The whole "right to refuse service" shtick - people shouldn't be forced to do things they don't want to do, even if they are following stupid beliefs.
That said, I recognise there are things that have to beat that. Just like free speech doesn't include shouting "fire" in a crowded theatre, we have to curtail people's right to discriminate where other people's lives are made unlivable because of it.
If someone refuses me, the white straight male, the chance to buy something, I go somewhere else. That's not the case for some minorities however. If everyone won't provide wedding services for you, or everyone won't let you attend a class, or everyone won't sell you food, you can't live your life. Commonly discriminated minorities have to be protected because they have a right to do what they want as well. Just as you are free to do what you want, but that doesn't include murdering people. You are free to refuse service, but not based on things that mean that person can't get service anywhere.
It's not perfect, but it's a solution.
Now, of course, that doesn't address another salient question - even if it's legal, why would minorities want restricted events?
Well, culture. Obviously in an ideal world events would be open to all and it'd all just work. The reality is, however, that culture can be a barrier. Let's take chess as an example.
Chess was male-dominated in part due to lack of education for women and it being seen as a male game. Obviously tournaments today are not restricted to men, but we still see less women.
That is, at least in part, because women never get exposed to chess because there is still cultural pressure that it's a "men's game". Women are excluded when they are young and never get a start. The intent of girl's only clubs and tournaments is to encourage women to get into chess, then they integrate into the larger chess scene. As time goes on, the societal stigma lessens and hopefully we end up in that ideal situation.
True, but socially, we've moved past that. There might be the rare individual baker who would not want to bake a cake for a gay wedding, because he's a devout Christian or Muslim or whatever and thinks homosexuality is a sin. But 98% of businesses won't care, as long as you can pay the bill.
We'll never be rid of all discrimination. It's just a flaw in human nature. We should keep educating and working against it. But I think we're largely past the institutionalized (to say nothing of codified) discrimination of the past centuries.
Untrue. There are still many communities where you can be totally ostracized for those things. Just because you don't notice it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Furthermore, this misses the point - even if there wasn't active discrimination in that way, it doesn't mean there isn't societal pressure or a need for minority groups to get minorities into a community in order to integrate that culture.
> We'll never be rid of all discrimination. It's just a flaw in human nature. We should keep educating and working against it. But I think we're largely past the institutionalized (to say nothing of codified) discrimination of the past centuries.
I mean, sure, but I'm sure people said the same thing about murder, then rape, etc..., etc... - we should always be working to reduce these things.
We are not at the point where discrimination is some crazily rare thing like murder is in modern societies.
Could you name a two or three so we have some idea what you're talking about?
If you had a Kerry sticker on your car in the high school parking lot, there was a squad of kids that would break your windows, slash your tires, and key your car. The school had cameras, but refused to investigate the matter.
I had friend who was gay, and after he got off the bus one day, all of the kids on that side of the bus threw rocks at him. He was in a coma for a few days.
Well, was this an isolated incident or not?
Better yet, let's use your prior definition:
> If someone refuses me, the white straight male, the chance to buy something, I go somewhere else. That's not the case for some minorities however. If everyone won't provide wedding services for you, or everyone won't let you attend a class, or everyone won't sell you food, you can't live your life. Commonly discriminated minorities have to be protected because they have a right to do what they want as well. Just as you are free to do what you want, but that doesn't include murdering people. You are free to refuse service, but not based on things that mean that person can't get service anywhere.
An event that had the implicit backing of the school administration sent a widespread message.
Lynching in the wasn't 'widespread', but it's message was. According to this: http://time.com/3703386/jim-crow-lynchings Georgia had 586 total lynchings from 1877 until 1950. That's about 1 per county per generation.
> your prior definition:
Check usernames.
If you check the thread you'll clearly see my interest wasn't whether discrimination happens at all, it's whether it is to the point of being literally ostracized, as was stated.
>> Could you name a two or three so we have some idea what you're talking about?
> sure..
Perhaps don't impersonate other people if you don't want to be mistaken for someone else.
Then again, I suppose by now I should know better than to expect reasonable discussion in threads such as these.
You don't think putting the kid who was being 'uppity' in a coma doesn't cause imply ostracization for the others like him? Particularly when there was no repercussions from perceived authority figures?
> Perhaps don't impersonate other people if you don't want to be mistaken for someone else.
It's hard to 'impersonate' on a forum where every post has my username on it. Are you new to the internet or something?
> It's hard to 'impersonate' on a forum where every post has my username on it. Are you new to the internet or something?
I might ask you the same, answering a question that was asked specifically to another person isn't how you "internet".
I'll back his experience up with another source: https://thegavoice.com/atlanta-police-release-details-12-rec...
The point you were trying to make was that these were isolated incidents, that these people could live their lives around them. Reading that list, it's clear that isn't true - people threatening to kill you, beating you up, these aren't signs that you can live you life normally.
Clearly, we aren't in the same place we were when we had state-supported segregation, but there is a reason these minorities are still protected, and there is still significant discrimination.
This all means that there is a big difference between a community coming together in a space exclusively for them to try and push for inclusion, and discrimination.
Pardon me for nitpicking, but I can't help it. :)
Here is the original post to which I replied: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14704091
>> True, but socially, we've moved past that. There might be the rare individual baker who would not want to bake a cake for a gay wedding, because he's a devout Christian or Muslim or whatever and thinks homosexuality is a sin. But 98% of businesses won't care, as long as you can pay the bill.
> Untrue. There are still many communities where you can be totally ostracized for those things.
The point of contention is not whether some (and sometimes very severe) discrimination exists, it is whether as he claims that there are places where it is so common/frequent that you could be considered ostracized. I was looking for proof of the latter (his original assertion), not proof of the former (that which was provided, and now provided by you).
> The point you were trying to make was that these were isolated incidents
I'm not asserting anything, I am simply being skeptical and asking for proof of an extraordinary claim.
If my "stance" pisses you off, I beg that you reconsider. To win over those who are still not "on your side" (and I'm not one of them, by the way), using exaggerations and half-truths is most definitely not the way to go about it, especially in this modern day "everyone's-a-victim" culture we live in. I am not your enemy, I'm just offering some well-intentioned advice on how to talk to your enemies in order to persuade them.
I just don't understand how "some severe discrimination exists" but that doesn't ostracise people? You don't need everyone to hate you to be ostracised - just enough people to stop you living your life. If there are three local venues suitable for a wedding and those three people are anti-gay, good luck getting married locally.
It's not exaggerations or half-truths - being gay, black or of a given religion (or lack thereof) can mean your life is basically unlivable in some communities. If you need more concrete examples, go read the ex-mormon subreddit, for example. People who, because they are atheists, are disowned by their family and lose every friend they ever had, and have to leave the only place they ever lived.
It's easy to not see it outselves and say "it's all stuff of the past", but it isn't. Even if your life isn't completely unlivable, quality of life can be severly reduced. I was talking about the extremes that triggered the laws, not trying to say that's the only thing that's an issue.
More importantly, the point of my first post (the root of the chain) was that minority groups that are designed to provide a path into a field aren't the same as segregation.
verb (used with object), ostracized, ostracizing. 1. to exclude, by general consent, from society, friendship, conversation, privileges, etc.: His friends ostracized him after his father's arrest. 2. to banish (a person) from his or her native country; expatriate. 3. (in ancient Greece) to banish (a citizen) temporarily by popular vote.
> If there are three local venues suitable for a wedding and those three people are anti-gay, good luck getting married locally.
Ok, now we're getting somewhere. Are there a significant number of such places? (There very well may be, if there is it causes me no mental anguish whatsoever to acknowledge this, it was merely a simple honest question from the very start of this absurd thread.)
> Even if your life isn't completely unlivable, quality of life can be severly reduced.
Now this sounds like a more honest description of objective reality.
Liberals often accuse those who are opposed to their ideas that they are small minded. Well, is it completely false that there is a relatively new movement that has taken hold on college campuses, where a significant number of students suddenly (as in, there was almost no incidences of this 2 to 5 years ago) need "safe spaces", and simply hearing ideas that they philosophically disagree with causes them to "literally shake", and people of color are now self-segregating themselves into their own events because suddenly mainstream society is so racist it is literally unbearable (despite the reality being continued improvement, if anything, in mainstream "acceptance" of people of color)?
It is my belief that the well-intentioned (actually, I'm not even sure) actions of some people on the left is significantly setting back the true progress of their stated intentions, and in many cases are causing genuinely serious mental illness in impressionable teens. I am not joking in the slightest when I say that these people (not you necessarily, but based on your faux incredulity I'm suspicious) are FAR more damaging to society than the "evils" they claim to be fighting.
And if your response to this is the typical smug liberal, deliberate misinterpretation of what I've said, that will be just yet another confirmation that your "movement" is insincere, whose goal is not to genuinely move society to a more accepting-of-diversity place as you claim, but instead that you are in fact an architect of hate, but just with a different target in mind. Some people are indeed just like that, some of my very best friends in fact.
Yes, I'll make the same reference - the ex-mormon subreddit is an example where you will find a ton of stories of people being completely ostracised for their (lack of) belief. It's not just mormon's obviously, that's just a good example. It's really not hard to find that racism, sexism and other bigotry are alive and well today - people talk about it, precisely because it has such a large effect on their lives.
> Well, is it completely false that there is a relatively new movement...
I mean, I'm sure those people exist - I've seen no evidence of it being more than extremely isolated cases though, definitely not "a significant number" - as with any cause, there are people who go to extremes, but they don't reflect on "the left" any more than neo-nazis reflect on "the right" - they are a subsection.
You appear to be implying that this is somehow commonplace, but it's not.
Now, are you equating "girls only computing clubs" and examples like that I've given to "safe spaces" or "self-segregation"? Because they aren't. Again, as I've been making the point - we know it is hard to give opportunities to minorities when there is cultural expectation and barriers to entry. E.g: computing is a "boy" thing. Those kind of targeted groups are used as a force to push back on those barriers and societal expectations, allowing minorities opportunities they might otherwise not get.
I'll be absolute: I am a firm believer in free speech and debate, and universities are places to learn, and you need active debate for that. While people have a right to not be harassed (I've seen the claim that it's free speech to follow someone around a university campus or invade their living space, which is clearly just as dumb), that doesn't require infringing on debate to achieve.
The self-segregation thing I've literally never even heard of. The only examples I've seen were as protests, which is entirely valid.
I hear a lot of claims that there is some plague of "SJW"s destroying freedoms in a quest for safety - I've seen no evidence of this being anything other than a vanishingly small minority. People tend to claim this plague exists, cite one example of someone saying something obviously crazy, and then claim anyone arguing for social change is an crazy SJW who can be ignored. It's roughly equivalent to just claiming that everyone on the right is a nazi. Yes, there are some nutjobs out there, but clearly that isn't a representation of "the right" as it stands. The vast majority of "the left" is strongly in favour of protection of free speech.
Again, you were the one that was arguing my point - so your tone and direction seem off to me - are you really equating minorities working together to try and find routes around obstacles in place because of discrimination against them to segregation, and implying it is bad in the same way? That's the point I was originally making, and I honestly can't tell if you just cherry-picked a part of my point to try and nitpick and then go off on a tangent about how "the others" are worse, or if you believe that my point was invalid.
Actually, I think this is a valid case. But, let's be honest here, the only place you'd possibly be prevented from living your life is in some highly concentrated area like Salt Lake City. Sure, you'd definitely lose all your Mormon friends, but you are being rejected from what many people consider to be nothing short of a cult, comparing this to not being able to exist in society at all, or that it is geographically widespread, is a bit of a stretch.
So yes, this is most definitely wrong, and it is a "biggish" problem, but it is also very specialized and I would expect one of the very last "prejudices" (if you can even call it that) that will ever be solved.
> I mean, I'm sure those people exist - I've seen no evidence of it being more than extremely isolated cases though, definitely not "a significant number" - as with any cause, there are people who go to extremes, but they don't reflect on "the left" any more than neo-nazis reflect on "the right" - they are a subsection. You appear to be implying that this is somehow commonplace, but it's not.
Actually, I don't think it is an exaggeration to say that there are universities in the US where you can not host right wing speakers, the students will literally riot and attack people. Will they do this always, I do not know, but I think you'd be very hard pressed to find genuine modern day video of neo-nazis being physically violent, whereas there is plentiful evidence of leftists attacking people and rioting.
> Now, are you equating "girls only computing clubs" and examples like that I've given to "safe spaces" or "self-segregation"? Because they aren't.
Actually, this is a far better point. Yes, here society definitely still has a problem. But exactly what the problem is I don't think anyone knows. Part of the problem is that many/some of society/individuals see females as simultaneously the same and different. I think it is going to take some quite a bit more time for society to reach the point of emotional maturity where we can even have a reasonable conversation about this.
In the meantime, "Those kind of targeted groups are used as a force to push back on those barriers and societal expectations, allowing minorities opportunities they might otherwise not get" is an excellent way to go about it, and if everyone could just chill out and get rid of the chips on their shoulders I think we'd be about 80% of the way there.
> I'll be absolute: I am a firm believer in free speech and debate, and universities are places to learn, and you need active debate for that. While people have a right to not be harassed (I've seen the claim that it's free speech to follow someone around a university campus or invade their living space, which is clearly just as dumb), that doesn't require infringing on debate to achieve.
Thank you, because boy it's not very hard to find people that absolutely outright reject this idea nowadays. Hardly surprising as some of them host extremely popular news/comedy shows.
> The self-segregation thing I've literally never even heard of.
Graduation ceremonies for blacks only would be one example. In Canada of all places, not exactly a hotbed of racism.
> I hear a lot of claims that there is some plague of "SJW"s destroying freedoms in a quest for safety - I've seen no evidence of this being anything other than a vanishingly small minority.
No one claims it's a plague, but it seems to be growing (it is well beyond a few isolated cases) and it is genuinely a quite serious problem. I make no claim that this is absolutely proof in any way, but it is thought provoking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K92rOsjyLBs
> The vast majority of "the left" is strongly in favour of protection of free speech.
The vast majority? I guess it depends on the specifics of the definitions, but that the left, especially younger people, are increasingly unwilling to participate in genuine dialogue (because "the debate is over"), is unfortunate. And I think in time we will see that it will hurt your cause more than your opponents (see: the last US election).
> Again, you were the.....
Generally, I think mine was a general protest against a (perceived) instance of exaggerated victimhood, for lack of a better term. I hope you can see from what I say that my root concern is the lack of genuine dialogue in resolving the differences that still remain in society. The number of injustices for this stage of the game are absolutely disgusting, but as long as our two sides continue to fight about stupid things, the people who are served from us being split down the middle will continue to pick our pockets. I am of the belief that much of the remaining disagreement in society is engineered, as opposed to grassroots ignorance.
Is this really a problem?
I think that some of these lines of thought, while are valid points to justify and individual problem, tend to fall into a slippery slop that tends to beleving that a true (ideal) society is all greyed out with everyone in the same mold: genderless, opinionless, etc...
You have completely missed my point. The point is that everyone should have opportunity if they want to do something and are capable of it, not some kind of homogenization. Women are currently actively pushed away from the industry. If women don't want to be in tech, that's fine, the issue is that women that do get pushed away, discriminated against, or never get the opportunity to learn they are interested in it.
There is no attempt to make everyone the same - the attempt is to try and allow everyone to embrace their own differences - to give everyone the same opportunities.
The obvious counterpoint is that, by working together as an identified sub-group, you have greater power than you would otherwise. Dedicated venues for those sub-groups offer a place to organize, provide communal support, etc.
Frankly, I think it's sadly naive to believe that we can simply "Lose all the labels" and that'll magically fix things.
"Identity politics" is what led to women's suffrage, the civil rights movement, the gay rights movement, etc. And while I'm not one to claim that "women in tech" is of the same significance as those movements, I think history teaches us that sub-groups, bound together with a common goal, are infinitely more effective at instituting change than a bunch of individuals who choose not to organize.
We were still in Web 1.0 , with email, usenet, IRC, and other then-essential services. Dial-up was the way online. And when people talked with each other, we were told to not release who we are. Be guarded in your real-identity.
And that lead to user1 talks with user2. I didn't know if user2 was white, black, asian, hispanic, native, male, female, transgender, gay, asexual, or what. I only knew from the content of the text we traded in communication. There was enough bandwidth for pictures, but didnt. Webcams were bad and expensive. Scanners were hard to come by. And there was no impetus to link a pic to a person's text.
Now, it's "Real Name Policy". Facebook will encourage friends to rat your lying profile to catch you. Google will do similar, or datamine your real content. Everyone wants a picture for your profile.
What used to be "person talks to person", is now "Person with forced specific identity talks to person with forced specific identity". And it certainly doesn't feel better than before. It feels strictly worse, bringing identity politics in with it.
I want the old days back.
Were you black? It didn't matter. White? So what. Male? Female? It didn't matter.
The words on the screen, and the thoughts behind the superficial bodily stuff was what mattered. How did they think? How did they communicate their ideas? How did they collaborate? What were their ethics and values? -- Those were what mattered, not that someone had a blue mohawk and were bisexual. Those things didn't matter.
Better yet, this method also transcended poor and rich... Yes, you had to have a certain amount to access a computer and the internet. Or you hacked the local university's access. Or used it at the library. Or had a cool friend. Except, now it's what you think, not what stylish clothes you wore, or the jewelry you had.
And this blurring of gender, sexual preference, race, weight, height,.. you name it was distilled down to "what's in that skull". And someone whom you might never walk up to and talk with, you could strike conversations with them, and they you. It also was the first steps of breaking down national borders - I could talk with people who say they live in Europe, or Asia, or Africa, or wherever...
At that time, for a small window, "We" were one peoples of this world. As the Hacker's Manifesto put it;
"We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias... and you call us criminals."
I await this day to come again. Hopefully the next time, we can meet face to face, and celebrate our differences and come together as one peoples of this world.. But a few of us saw it the first time, for a bit.
If you want to overcome the stereotype, work with other people. Get to know them. Learn the rules of the game and play by the same rules as everyone in society does.
If you want to identify as that subgroup based on (gender/race/etc) for social and communal support. No one will fault you on that. (That's culture) However, you will be judged on being hostile/exclusive if non-members of that group are harshly penalized for attempting to integrate with the culture.
The rest... it strikes me as incredibly hypocritical - you blame these people for creating groups for support and social which you think stop integration of culture, but these groups are created precisely because that integration isn't happening. If you are a young girl who has an interest in computing, but is dissuaded from joining the computing club at school because "only boys like computers" and the club members make fun of her, how are you meant to get into that general community?
Now, if there is a girl's computing club and she can join that with no stigma, learn about the hobby and then integrate with that interest already there, it helps make that happen. You can't integrate if you never gain that interest or skill because you are rejected at the beginning.
It's like expecting slavery to end by saying black people can be slave owners or own themselves. If you don't recongnise the barrier to entry and integration, then sure, you can paint these groups as negative, but that's just missing the point.
When they're self-isolating groups, they stop integration.
> "only boys like computers"
That's a self-limiting belief that can only be fixed by the person who believes it. Telling the person who believes it is not going to work. They'll always have doubt.
If it's done by members of that group then the leadership should be made aware of that and fix it.
Not sure how you jumped to this extreme:
> It's like expecting slavery to end by saying black people can be slave owners or own themselves. If you don't recongnise the barrier to entry and integration, then sure, you can paint these groups as negative, but that's just missing the point.
My point was, the individual has to address their own beliefs and figure out how to achieve the goal they want. Do it in a dishonest way, society won't stand for that (In the long term, it's effective in the short term) Do it in an honest way, people will reward you for that. (Eventually)
100% agree. The reality is that person's belief (and in general, the cultural expectation) won't change until that behavior is normalised. People stop being racist when they interact with people of other races and get used to it. The same is true of everything else. If more women are programmers, people stop thinking of it as a male-only thing.
It's a chicken and egg problem - the girl's computing groups are a man-made egg to kick-start that cycle. Those girls will grow up an integrate, and that creates a normality of it which will eventually make those groups redundant.
There are existing barriers to entry from cultural expectation and pressure from peers. If you create an artificially isolated environment so these minorities can pursue their interests without that pressure, it bypasses those barriers, and those people will, in future, tear them down just because they exist.
my family and i usually get along pretty well, but we have very different ideas about things like money or family "closeness" that were only made evident to me from my white fiancee watching "from the sidelines," as someone else above me put it. It also happens that much of the way my family goes about things is very typical for Latino families.
She's asked some really really good questions that made me think hard about why my family does things the way they have. As you can imagine, this puts me between a rock and a hard place, as I don't want my family to think that I "forgot where I came from," but I also don't want to participate in things that can really set my future self back a number of years for the sake of the family.
Very few of my acquaintances and none of my close friends (i only have a handful) are Black or Latino, so I don't really have anyone that isn't family that I can talk about this stuff with. I also spend almost zero time with other people that "look like me" at work; I've run into very few Black or Latino engineers in my nine year career, though I know that there are plenty out there. I was almost always the only black/latino person on the teams i've been on.
I've tried the minority only clubs, both in college and after I started working, and found that I don't like being fit into homogenous boxes or participating in echo chambers. So I've stopped joining them.
My observation on this is that some people in these demographics don't feel comfortable when they are vastly outnumbered at events and that "minority only" events and clubs exist to provide them with the opportunities provided by such events, but without the dangers or discomforts that may be perceived or existing at more inclusive events. I can certainly respect that viewpoint, but I, too, hope for a time when this is unnecessary and that all events are inclusive and all people treated equal.
(I am a white male)
Yes, I'd like stuff not to matter - but unfortunately, right now it does, and pretending it doesn't doesn't help me.
One of my experiences in this was a talk about imposture syndrome. They made the claim that "Women suffer syndrome the most". Also IIRC I couldn't attend because I didn't identify in their target audience and would have to "have a sponsor to attend."
I'm glad I'm not the only one who wanted to highlight that one. And despite what has been said downthread, I am going to state what I honestly believe.
TL;DR: any company who isn't trying to attract female engineers is actively shooting themselves in the foot. Before you jump to any conclusions about my statement, please read on because the issue is both subtle and complex. It doesn't fit into a soundbite.
From my experience, after nearly 20 years in the industry and a few more in the university before that, the women who stay in technology field tend to be pretty damn good. As far as I am concerned, the very concept of "Women in Tech" being a thing is, in itself, frustrating.
And now comes the subtle part. I don't believe that gender has anything to do with skills or abilities. The statements so far are not contradictory; my experience simply highlights a deep-rooted problem. The question is not "why are the women in our field better?"; it should be "what are we as an industry doing to all the rest? Why are we discouraging and scaring away the non-stellar ones?"
Now... my observations are not isolated. I have heard and read from several other sources that this is a not an uncommon situation. There is clearly a bias in play.
Either it's selection and observation bias, with only the positive samples showing up ... or it's survivor bias. The latter is a scary thought.
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From the research I've read, in the UK the average retention time for female engineers in tech companies is about 1 year. Judging purely by that metric, at Smarkets we are probably doing something right - or at least we are not doing notably worse than the industry overall. Of all our female engineering hires, no-one has left.
I cannot know, but I think that a good part is that we don't treat our female engineers in any special way. They are engineers. Simple as that.
I think it is clear her gender has worked against her several times in the past. When she was running her startup, some suppliers would tell her to put them in touch with a decision maker, despite her clearly being one of two founders/execs.
The counter argument I have heard was: "this doesn't help create change in the industry".
Heck, I know people who just want acknowledgement of their existence. The "other" category is not a great place to be. That also ignores when institutions divert resources away that were given to the institution to help the forgotten.
They are devs but talk like their job is diversity managers...
Yet - how to we get to inclusion and equality? The path of simply being fair and color/gender blind - which is how I was taught to manage & behave in a work environment - doesn't seem to be working.
It doesn't mean, though, that we can deal with toxic masculinity without men being involved. I do remember seeing some serious effort within Thoughtworks (and I haven't even worked there) to discuss gender issues without excluding men, so it's not a impossible thing.
Thank you. I find myself feeling the exact same way as a black man in this industry, and cringe at "minority only" events and clubs. We don't need token inclusion and separate praise for being "brave" and "fighting against the odds". We need a world where those things are irrelevant.