georgeorwell
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Film_studies_journals
The problem with Ebert's reviews is that they offer very little in the way of insight, analysis, or depth. Instead, they are generally straightforward expositions of the film crew, setting, characters, and plot. This means that you cannot read them before watching a film, unless you want to be spoiled, and afterwards, if you were paying any kind of attention, you've already grasped everything that he points out. He doesn't usually explain what he thought the central message of a film is, so it can be unclear if he got it or not. He isn't big on interpretation.
He wasn't an idiot, but he didn't do the hard intellectual work of coming up with something new to say about films. Even the most hyper-intelligent person would have a hard time coming up with "intellectual" things to say at the rate he churned through movies. I think he was writing something like one review per day by the end.
Ebert's reviews are to film criticism what Ebert's one-pot cooking is to a full kitchen. He could make something reasonable, and it would appeal to lots of people, but the structural and time constraints meant it would never have the sophistication of an in-depth treatment. Ask someone in film studies, ask someone in culinary school.
The positive side of a lack of depth is breadth, which means we have a massive number of star ratings from a single source, and as such his work is a reasonable encyclopedia of film. Much of what he details in his reviews isn't available in Wikipedia, or appropriate for it.
1) mystical, Christian, exotic, prayer, pitched
2) productive, evaluate, tools, objective, applies
Answer the question (privately if you like) and you just "meditated".
Meditation is self-observation, nothing more, nothing less. If you want to learn more about how the specific "tedks" configuration of neurons works, that's what meditation (a.k.a. self-reflection, self-observation) promises, as opposed to science which by definition cannot do this. I'm pretty sure that many of the things you consider valuable already do count as meditation (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5331514 ), it's just that nobody labelled them as such or built a formal discipline around them. That might be part of why meditation seems like such BS to you.
The stuff about sitting there with your eyes closed and focusing on your breathing isn't really necessary (I don't really do this anymore), all that's meant to do is help you slow your brain down so you can look at it, kind of like using a debugger. You can get kind of high from that and while fun it can be a hindrance in all sorts of other ways.
All the spiritual stuff you see is perhaps best described as a metaphor for the kinds of things people experience, since they don't have better words for it. Ultimately there isn't a particular belief system tied to meditation, kind of like there isn't a particular belief system tied to the act of debugging a program (although people do like to get into holy wars).
Finally, there's this joke that says all Buddhists are either meditating or feeling guilty about not meditating. So if someone is telling you that you "should" meditate they are quite possibly projecting some of their own guilt about their own spiritual practice onto you. Of course had they been practicing meditation by being "mindful" in the conversation with you (this is just code for "paying attention to their own thoughts and feelings while not sitting in silence somewhere"), they would see that this is what their feelings were doing and they'd probably choose not to pressure you like that.
Anyway, hope this helps.
For me sexism implies discrimination, and discrimination implies abuse. But it's kind of a side topic, so I'll try to stick to sexism.
The reason I think nobody benefits from sexism is that I don't look at it as simply man vs. woman. The healthiest situation is where a man and woman have a balanced relationship with each other. If a man takes some of the woman's power (by abusing his own), that relationship is weakened. Thus, although he may have more power, he actually loses overall because the cost of his imbalanced relationship with her more than offsets the gain in power. That's all I mean. Extrapolate from this as much as you like, ultimately I believe that relationships are what matter.
From above:
> Context. You are supposed to comment on HN. You are not supposed to play in the street. If you played in a park, I'd expect you not to get hit by a car. If someone does get hit by a car while playing in a park, you don't suggest to that person they should avoid playing in the park.
What can I say, I just genuinely don't understand why this isn't a straw man. Part of this has to do with me not being the sharpest knife in the block. Of course, if someone just randomly posted a comment here and received one death threat for doing so, I wouldn't say that they shouldn't post anymore. Isn't that the closest interpretation of your analogy? I'm serious.
The reason I think the analogy doesn't fit is due to a few differences. First, the person in question has a history of writing fairly inflammatory comments, based on my personal reaction, based on the comments containing curse words, sarcasm, insults, and all-caps (more recently), and finally based on the comments receiving downvotes. The second difference is that it's not one death threat, but multiple death threats that were alleged. The third difference is that I didn't say don't post at all, I just said don't post in such an inflammatory way. Given these three fairly significant differences, I concluded that your argument was a straw man. I could be wrong about that, but you'll have to convince me.
I now believe she was referring to Adria and not herself, so I'm really just interested in understanding whether or not the claim of it being a straw man is correct. I mean, I don't want to accuse other people of throwing up straw men if I'm just making a fool of myself. And you're right, although I've known about logic for a while, it's only recently that I started taking it more seriously in the context of discussions. I linked to Wikipedia because I thought you didn't know what a straw man was, I apologize for the insult.
Whether or not I'm trolling, I don't know what to say. It strikes me that a lot of people who troll don't even realize that this is what they're doing, so maybe I am, I don't know. It's not conscious, if so. Apologies in advance?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5398681
http://butyoureagirl.com/14015/forking-and-dongle-jokes-dont...
However, if that description isn't enough (it is for me), I'd much rather accept Adria's oversensitivity and injustice-seeking behavior as applicable character flaws. As opposed to her hypocrisy, those things really do make her a bad judge of what is and isn't sexist, because they generate false positives.
Her hypocrisy is also galling because of her response to the events, but that still doesn't affect her claim that she took appropriate action, because it's a generic claim about any woman in that situation, and doesn't rely on any of her character flaws.
Okay, that is as refined as it gets for me, I think. I did come to see how I was implicitly accepting an ad hominem argument without realizing it (the one about oversensitivity), so thanks again.
It does seem to me that when you say A is evidence for S, even though your diagram only has S -> A, that you're just affirming the consequent. That is, given P -> Q and Q, claiming P is true.
So, my position is, she's a hypocrite, she got offended, obvious character flaws, etc. But whether or not there was sexism can only be determined by looking at both sides of the description of events that we have. For the most part, it seems people are saying that it isn't sexism, and that it would have to be specifically degrading to women.
I don't think the flying saucer analogy applies, because nobody is disputing the events that took place, people are only disputing whether there was sexism, i.e. what the meaning of the events was. To me it's more like, crazy person sees something fly overhead, claims it was a flying saucer and the beginning of an alien invasion, and proceeds to escalate the situation, when everyone else who looks at the data after the fact says it was just a plane.
At any rate, barring a conversion one way or the other to the truth of A -> S and !A -> !S, I think this is at a standstill, but it was an interesting discussion, so thanks.
Plenty of people are claiming it wasn't sexism, but it seems like it's not a large enough number of people for you to dismiss her hypocrisy as irrelevant.
Remember when we meet the Lion in the Wizard of Oz? Hyper-aggression and hyper-sensitivity go hand in hand. It doesn't make the hyper-sensitivity untrue in some way, but it also doesn't positively or negatively affect any arguments the Lion might have about the existence of abuse - they'll hold water on their own if they can.
I mean, the whole purpose of argument is objective reasoning, right? I thought this was primarily a discussion about whether or not there was sexism involved. All we can really say subjectively is that she got offended and apparently overreacted. Whatever she claims her emotions to be, they are valid claims.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man
All I did was attempt to make your analogy match reality more closely, to make it less of a straw man. It is a less flawed analogy now. The reality we are discussing is the situation of the person receiving death threats, not any of this other analogous stuff.
But, you know, if you just generally want to have discussions about what to do in different situations where one might or might not need to exercise caution, that can be okay. Of course if someone got hit by accident in a park I wouldn't say that other kids shouldn't play in it.
And I'm sorry, but if you know that a park is dangerous because a bunch of drunken teenagers are driving around doing donuts in it, you absolutely don't send your kid to play in it, no matter how safe it's supposed to be. And in particular, if they are, you tell your kid to stop yelling at the kids in the cars. (I realize this isn't what you suggested, but it makes your analogy less of a straw man.)
So, this isn't "don't play in traffic", this is "don't actively provoke known-to-be-crazy drivers while running around in oncoming traffic". It's just a bad idea. Especially if you're complaining about getting hurt.
Yes, all of these examples are hyperbole, but then again we have no idea about the seriousness of the threats.
I don't find the dongle jokes offensive, but obviously Adria did. My advice to guys at conferences would probably be, don't make dick jokes in public, because it seems somebody might overreact and you might get hurt. That has nothing to do with whether or not I think the dongle jokes are appropriate or inherently offensive. Similarly, I don't find rmrfrmrf's comments to be super inflammatory, probably because I don't feel like my position, if any, is being attacked, but if I was way polarized on the antagonist's side of things I almost certainly would.
Do we want to encourage crazy volatile feminism at conferences? Obviously no. Do we want to encourage even crazier volatile misogyny on the internet? Obviously no. Is it unreasonable, or unkind even, to encourage someone who is complaining about the negative attention they are receiving, who I perceive to be actively encouraging that negative attention without realizing it, to tone it down a little? Personally, I don't believe so, but if it falls on deaf ears, it falls on deaf ears. I just don't think that the anxiety of receiving death threats is good for anyone, and that level of anxiety can cause people to make choices that have big long term consequences. Adria has already demonstrated a predisposition to overreaction that has already led to long term consequences, and death threats are significantly more serious than whatever happened at the conference. It is not unreasonable to assume that someone actively defending her position might also overreact.
There are lots of things that I do everyday that I wouldn't do in an ideal world, but that nevertheless make existence tolerable, good even. I was simply trying to share that experience.
My standard for cowardly posting is verbal abuse and death threats, but YMMV.
To be precise, these are the comments that I find inflammatory:
> Because anti-woman and anti-black hate groups are trying to game HN with mass account creation and upvote spam.
> SendGrid would have come out stronger from weathering the storm as a defender and promoter of women in tech. Instead, they're giving in to terrorism. Anyone feeling a sense of relief out of this situation is out of their mind.
> I hope she sues the shit out of them and gets enough money to spend the rest of her life advocating for women in tech without fear of retaliation.
> No, this situation is the worst thing for women in tech. I can't begin to imagine the waves of misogyny that're about to run rampant through the tech community knowing that any woman who speaks out will be fired.
> Please take your special snowflakery elsewhere.
> No. (without explanation)
> In other words, it's OK if men do it, but not if a woman does it. (which was a complete non sequitur)
> I can't even begin to explain how fallacious this argument is. (without explanation, and it wasn't fallacious)
> Is it really that hard to act like a professional adult while you're at work? The simplest solution is to simply stop telling penis jokes at work.
> Still unfunny and tasteless. Imagine that.
> Really? All it says to me is that people in the tech field are so against a woman standing up for herself that they're actually willing to bring down the company she works for. It's disgusting.
> (cont.) Will you also feel schadenfreude when they hack her bank account?
> I bet he won't make the same mistake again. Perhaps we're all so used to going through the 6 month HR-slap-on-the-wrist process that we have lost touch of what it actually takes to change a person's behavior. (supporting mr-hank getting fired)
> Thank you -- all of these hate-laden comments are making me lose my mind.
> Since when is Twitter the same thing as a professional conference? Why are the majority of the commenters on HN completely missing the point?
> She @-replied pycon staff. Compare that to the HN and Reddit communities out for Adria's head.
> "We're not choosing your company because we believe in the right for men to tell dick jokes."
> (cont.) I'd quickly e-mail back: "don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out."
> Thank you, Adria, for fighting the good fight. I hope that the voices of support for you drown out the rampant hate that you're receiving. Seems like HN turns into a complete shithole the second a woman "has the nerve to choose to be offended" or whatever bullshit these misogynist assholes peddle.
> (cont.) The benefit that I always see from situations like this is that it empowers the women who, in the past, have been too nervous to call people out on their shit. Just know that you're doing amazing work and are paving the way to creating an environment of gender equality.
Even though I think she messed up in a big way, that there wasn't sexism, that she is a hypocrite, and that she really kept asking for it, much of the aggressive abuse directed at Adria Richards since the initial event has been totally out of control, and would count as criminal hate in some countries.
For starters, look at the comments on her Facebook page:
Nobody dragged Adria anywhere and forced her to listen to the penis jokes. She just overheard them behind her. The chances of me overhearing that group of people on my way to the bathroom are comparable to the chances of me overhearing the penis jokes. It might be even more likely that I'd overhear the Cards Against Humanity game.
Although her hypocrisy has no bearing on the sexism question, it doesn't stop it from being hypocrisy. Granted, her name probably doesn't need any more smearing, but boy did she keep asking for it - ass clowns? Really?
(H -> !S) -> (!H -> S) // false (this is what you mean)
(H <-> !S) -> (!H -> S) // true
But besides being wrong, I guess I was also hinting at something else, which is that if you accept this one fallacy (tu quoque), you are probably implicitly accepting this other fallacy (I think it might have a different name than affirming the consequent, but they're related). That wasn't clear with my use of the phrase "subtle implication" and I didn't realize this either.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man
People are saying that what the two guys did was not sexist and that Adria's response was inappropriate. So, debate that, rather than introduce other examples. Whether or not your other examples are sexist has nothing to do with whether or not the dongle jokes were sexist, but they were straw men in the context of your original comment. In particular, Adria's response does not somehow become appropriate because you experienced or heard about some other bad things, or because people were vicious to her in the aftermath (they were). All that this does is muddy the water and polarize people.
If you want to have a general wide-open debate on sexism at technology conferences, I guess that's what you'll have, but it will never be as effective as addressing specific issues.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque
Ad hominem does not require the accusations to be baseless; it's usually more effective if they aren't. It's true that she appears to have character flaws and is apparently hypocritical. I personally don't respond well to blatant hypocrisy either. However, the fallacy is to connect the hypocrisy to the question of whether or not the guys were being sexist and whether her outburst was appropriate. That question can be answered on its own. I'm not standing up for what she did here, but it's more like, if I did the same thing as her but wasn't a hypocrite, would that be okay? I hope not.