But then I read this "Ask A Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo" (http://blog.ycombinator.com/ask-a-female-engineer-thoughts-o...) and the one point most of them seems to agree with the memo is that there is this lack of tolerance to conservative thinking.
I still believe there is a lot of good being done by people labeled "social justice warriors" and the so-called "political correctness" is undoubtedly a net good to the world. But I now also think that this lack of tolerance is a real danger that must be fought by the people that are in the same side of the political spectrum that is perpetuating this intolerance (i.e. the more left-wing socially liberal).
As I consider to be part of this group, in this particular dimension, I think we should be listening carefully with open minds and hearts to these accusations from people at the more conservative side.
The proper separation between men and women is a major American conservative need. Can we say this out loud?
Also, when we say liberal views, do we mean secular views? Religiously agnostic views? Views which are based upon religiously agnostic shared facts? Which of these views experience the most tension with conservative views?
Note that I bring specifically Christianity into this, because it's hard to imagine (perhaps even an abstraction terribly departed from reality) what American conservatism means without Christianity. If Christians voted one way or another, the very meaning of American conservatism would change overnight.
However, just as some conservative ideals used to be unquestionable, now some liberal ideas are becoming sacred cows as well. One of these is indeed diversity hiring as mentioned by the parent. I have politely asked numerous people to make the business case to me for explicit diversity hiring. I have yet to hear a very compelling one outside of making sure that your dev demographics at least partially represent your user base demographics which is only really relevant for certain products. I have frequently been met with surprise and scorn for daring to even investigate the usefulness of these programs. I think this is what the parent poster is referring to.
It's way off topic for this thread, but I've never heard a conservative talk about needing to separate men and women.
> But what conservative viewpoints do you think are most under stress?
Well, minority religious viewpoints now that you bring it up. Religious people certainly feel feel like they have to be closeted. They don't use the terms "microaggressions", "soft bigotry", and "privilege", but orthodox religious people (of all stripes) talk about being at a disadvantage in professional settings all the time. Pastors routinely give sermons basically encouraging them (again, using different terms) to "come out of the closet", "celebrate their identity", and "engage in healthy dialogue".
Some think (including in this thread), "Good! It's their turn now anyway! They had their chance, now they can be the minorities!" not realizing that the imagined Mad Men suit is actually unlikely to be religious. Church membership is over-represented by women, the poor, the disabled, and so on. African Americans and Latinos are much more likely to attend church than Caucasians.
Some think, "Hey, they chose to be this way. They can be like the rest of us if they want respect." Again, I find this attitude ironic given the obvious parallels to other social justice issues. The religious do not feel like they have any say in who God is or what he wants. No more than atheists feel like they have a say in whether God exists. And, perhaps more than (most) athiests, a religious faith is a core part of someone's identity.
Basically, I find the fear of religious diversity is a glaring (and intentional) gap in the prevailing postmodern take on diversity. The usual response is usually some form of "they have it coming", which is frankly unrealistic, unhelpful, and combative.
And maybe the comment would have been upvoted on its own. Maybe not. It's hard to draw a conclusion either way after the fact. I just did what seemed to be the right thing at the time. Anonymously upvoting and shaking my head didn't seem enough.
People are no longer as religious as they once were. Gender and race equality are accepted more than dissented. These ideals are the cornerstones of conservative beliefs, as well as the whole Fake News era. It's not surprising to me that people are choosing not to share their space with ideas that are so obviously discriminatory and outdated.
All that said, I'll defend, against the country and every other government apparatus, any conservative's right to say such things. I will not be sad when a company or a person doesn't want those views affiliated with them or their brand though.
You have zero idea what you're talking about. It's as if you derived your concept of conservatism from The Daily Show.
> hate speech as free speech
Speech is speech. It's free (to be spoken) or it's not, regardless of its content. Anything else is a path to censorship.
Free speech is only protected by and from the government. It's not protected by and from any other repercussions. I don't have to like you or accept you because I support or defend your ability to exercise your freedom of speech to the government. I do not have to allow that in my home, my business, or my friendship circles.
The rest of what you said isn't worth a response.
Is it cool if I fire all democrats from my company because I don't like their speech?
Only if they bring it to work or make it affiliated with your company/brand outside of work and then only individually, not as a whole. Ultimately though, you can fire whomever you wish for whatever you wish outside of a narrowly defined set of restrictions in most states.
>Employees, as well as many employers, commonly but mistakenly believe that the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees "freedom of speech" at work. In fact, the First Amendment applies only to government action and neither limits the rights of private employers to regulate employees' communications nor provides any constitutional right for those workers to express thoughts or opinions at work. As a result, there is no constitutionally protected right of "free speech" in the offices and factories of private employers. Although employees may be entitled to express their views freely on their own time or on a soapbox in the park, they have no such wide-ranging constitutional rights at work. Absent rights provided by one of the limited exceptions discussed below, there are no legal protections for political activities in the workplace, so private employers generally may refuse to hire, adjust pay/benefits and even discharge "at will" employees because of their political views.2 In short, "political discrimination" often is not unlawful discrimination.
https://www.hklaw.com/publications/politics-in-the-workplace...
You say that religion and (it seems) discrimination are cornerstones of conservativism but I would categorically disagree with that notion. I hold many of the classical conservative values (limited gov, thoughtful regulations, primacy of the constitution, belief in public investment in education, health care, defense, and research to support the public good etc) and would consider myself to be at least an economic conservative in the classical sense, yet I am an atheist, am socially liberal, and do not support racism, sexism, or xenophobia in any way. I would say some of these negative ideas are represented by the Republican party in its current incantation, but the ideals of the Republican party and conservative ideals are not necessarily one in the same, in the same way that the ideals of the Democratic party are not equivalent to classical liberalism.
That's largely fair, but I'll point out that Trump didn't get a majority of the Republican primary vote. I think it's largely because there are plenty of Republicans who dislike Trump and weren't looking forward to all the blowback we're discussing in this thread even though Trump was in their bottom two choices for who would make a good President.
Painting entire people groups as bigoted due to election results they didn't necessarily even want is... well it's a conclusion based on an incomplete view of reality. With some charity, I can say there's an opportunity to share and learn what people actually think, but at some point the ignorance seems more willful than accidental.
Frankly, with the proclivity of all sites to either push these conversations into bubbles (Twitter, Facebook) or suppress them (professional settings, Hacker News), I'm not sure there's any suitable public space for actual understanding to happen. The problem is that all the spaces I listed seem (to me) to be controlled by the same social forces that conservatives are concerned about with respect to free speech and actual dialogue.
Whenever I hear conservatives talk about free speech and dialog I think about Fox News and Breibart and think that I'll pass on whatever amounts to the conservative version of free speech and dialogue.
>That's largely fair, but I'll point out that Trump didn't get a majority of the Republican primary vote.
True, but he got enough to get the nomination. It also shows a lot about conservatives that more than not thought he was the best option and also how bad the other options had to be to get to this point.
> I'll pass on whatever amounts to the conservative version of free speech and dialogue...
Conservatives love Lincoln-Douglas, Adams-Jefferson, the Federalist Papers, the Declaration of Independence, etc. Asking people to reach for (philosophically) liberal ideals from the enlightenment about civic mindedness and rational debate are a conservative version of free speech and dialogue.
> It also shows a lot about conservatives...
"GOP voter" and "conservative" aren't synonymous. Conservatives generally dislike pettiness, identity politics, and strong-man tactics and those qualities defined Trump's candidacy more than any given policy issue.
Actual conservatives mostly split their vote between Rubio and Cruz at the end, though, it might have been too late. Trump doesn't have to be the "best" option to get a plurality and win out based on first-past-the-post rules.
They're annoying.
On the other hand, that's the dominant mode for the entire right half of the spectrum so take their complaints with a grain of salt. And who gives the above-mentioned annoying liberals their biggest platform? Right wing media. Gotta feed the wurlitzer.
It's not a "differing and diverse political opinion" to think people of color and women are inherently less worthy, it's just racist/sexist.
It actually is both, which neatly answers the "why are you against diverse political opinions": Saying something is 'just' an 'opinion' doesn't absolve it from being racist/sexist.
The cure is measuring impact and the results of interventions accurately.
One more thing to note: you've called the guy "pro-authoritarian/pseudo-monarchist". Is this how he describes himself ( I guess no )? I grew up in a country with strong far-right culture. Nazis are calling themselves nazis.
Yarvin told Yiannopoulos that he had been “coaching Thiel.”
“Peter needs guidance on politics for sure,” Yiannopoulos responded.
“Less than you might think!” Yarvin wrote back. “I watched the election at his house, I think my hangover lasted into Tuesday. He’s fully enlightened, just plays it very carefully.”
and then combine that with the fact that Yarvin calls himself a Jacobite and you've got the monarchy/authoritarian connection.
The Thiel thing goes a whole lot deeper than Damore or some of the other common examples of "SJW" pushback.
As long as you are not yelling at your Hispanic co-workers about building a wall, you'll be fine.
Again, this seems to be a made-up narrative.
I'm pretty sure I have seen comments on HN which pretty strongly hint that the commenters feel Trump supporters should have no place in SV tech companies, because they are, by virtue of supporting him, bigots. These were not greyed out comments, either.
Oh, and comments like these:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16384641
(Really hard to tell if it is just bait, though).
Liberals will not even allow the word "illegal" in discourse and any solution short of total unconditional amnesty will earn you the label of "bigot".
If my boss says, "Hey deong, what do you think about black people?", that's not a get-out-of-jail-free card for me to start dropping n-bombs. There's one answer you're allowed to give to that question, and it's not because there's some conspiracy to oppress dissenting opinions. It's because there are extremely reasonable standards for employment that include not shouting racial epithets and white supremacist propaganda. Being asked your opinion doesn't change the rules.
Damore was certainly less inflammatory than that, but the point remains. You can argue that his opinions didn't warrant firing, but there's no reasonable way to argue that because he was responding to requests for comment, it's unethical or otherwise shady to hold him accountable for those comments.
You use racism as an example but what Damore said was not racist, he didn't use any epithets, he isn't a white supremacist. It's really odd that you try to lump him in with them.
Since you missed it, the point was this: it's irrelevant that he posted it on a company board that was asking for opinions, so stop trying to use that as a defense. If you want to defend what he said, go nuts. We can argue the merits and whether Google overreacted. Just don't whine, "but they asked his opinions!" as though that's some sort of shield.
The actual problem, as I stated, is that Google accepts extremely vitriolic commentary from the left (at work!) but even Damore's relatively tame memo caused him to be fired.
Refer to Damore's lawsuit for many examples of the the extreme rhetoric that is allowed within Google corporate.
Conservatives at Google know this all too well. They've seen eng-misc and memegen and know that there is a very limited spectrum of "acceptable" opinion. The problem wasn't that political content was posted, as that happens all the time, it was that it was political content that was deemed to be "wrong."
Ask conservatives/GOP supporters how they felt after Trump was elected and the TGIF presenter tried to comfort the audience, which they assumed all voted for Clinton...talk about ostracizing your workforce that may hold a different private opinion
A lot of right wing political opinion would probably be in the same boat. Being pro life or against gay marriage both come to mind as opinions one may have that would immediately change others opinions about them.
I'm not defending these opinions rather the belief that just because someone believes something different than me doesn't mean we are destined to vilify each other.
With all the wealth going around many people feel ashamed of the obvious disparity of their success and the truly destitute. This could lead to a competition of virtue signaling among the SF wealthy to "give back" to the poor. Kind of like how you see the rich always donating to needy charities or celebrities at canned food drives.
Of course, helping the poor will just be social lip service but it will lead to tangible resources for the destitute.
Did you mean to say "Being poor is now almost assured due to astronomic rent"?
That should be your response versus asking questions and engaging in actual thoughtful discussion?
Does that promote tolerance and diversity of thought? Or does it reinforce the notion that we should stick our fingers in our ears and balkanize ourselves in the face of ideas we don't like? And, worse actively work to prevent others from seeing those ideas?
Imagine working your way up from the middle class to fabulous riches. Cars, houses, 5 star travel. You have the american dream, things are good. Now people are coming in and challenging you. The culture of "challenge everything" is a huge risk to your empire, your comfortable life is at risk. Quick! Consume the challengers or burn them at the stake!
That's why DC is like this; they have power over an entire country (arguably the world, too). Everyone there needs to be incredibly careful, there's 1000 people waiting to eat them alive and take their job/power.
If you want an environment where people challenge things, go where nobody is looking. Go somewhere that the MBAs and C-levels have given up. Those are the places where nothing matters, so you are free to make mistakes and break as much as possible; you can't do any worse than what's already there.
> Silicon Valley also has an insidious infection that is spreading -- a peculiar form of McCarthyism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism) masquerading as liberal open-mindedness. I'm as socially liberal as you get, and I find it nauseating how many topics or dissenting opinions are simply out-of-bounds in Silicon Valley. These days, people with real jobs (unlike me) are risking their careers to even challenge collective delusions in SF. Isn't this supposed to be where people change the world by challenging the consensus reality? By seeing the hidden realities behind the facades? That's the whole reason I traveled west and started over in the Bay Area. Now, more and more, I feel like it's a Russian nesting doll of facades -- Washington DC with fewer neck ties, where people openly lie to one another out of fear of losing their jobs or being publicly crucified. It's weird, unsettling, and, frankly, really dangerous. There's way too much power here for politeness to be sustainable. If no one feels they can say "Hey, I know it makes everyone uncomfortable, but I think there's a leak in the fuel rods in this nuclear submarine..." we're headed for big trouble.
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/7erct8/i_am_tim_ferri...
I've witnessed this first hand, and alongside the congestion and housing problems that no one wants to handle, it was a big reason I decided to leave the Bay Area for good.