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It truly warms my heart to hear this! I'm so glad people are fighting back against political correctness. We're all just trying to get work done, and we have

by erlich 10y ago

It truly warms my heart to hear this! I'm so glad people are fighting back against political correctness. We're all just trying to get work done, and we have to put up with this constant background noise. Checking in once in a while to see what language is now deemed inappropriate to avoid chastization by some Twitter white knight legion. Its the ultimate bikeshedding.

skywhopper 10y ago
Getting stuff done requires working with people. Working with people requires basic manners including a willingness to be polite. Sure, a lot of requirements of manners are often irrational and make little or no sense to the technically minded. But it's the cost of participating in society. Whining about not being able to say certain words is about the least productive thing you can do, and makes you appear to prioritize your desire to be a jerk over getting things done. So let's get some work done and stop whining about how we might have to think about other people and consider the impact of our words.
- CaptSpify 10y ago
  > Whining about not being able to say certain words is about the least productive thing you can do, and makes you appear to prioritize your desire to be a jerk over getting things done. It's more about not wanting to "walk on eggshells". I don't want a speaker to spend >1/2 of his time prepping for the political side of a presentation. I want a speaker who spends the majority of his time on the technical details. If you want to "get stuff done", sure, sometimes you have to be more polite than you want. But the other side of the coin is that you also have to be thick-skinned. If every little thing "offends" you, then you are not going to get any work done either, and your actively preventing others from doing so.
- ori_b 10y ago
  > Getting stuff done requires working with people. Working with people requires basic manners including a willingness to be polite. Getting stuff done requires working with people. Working with people requires basic tolerance, including a willingness to ignore different political viewpoints, jokes that fall flat, and different cultures and communication styles.
tehwebguy 10y ago
Political correctness isn't bad, overreacting is the problem.
- acjohnson55 10y ago
  ^ Exactly. And the backlash against "PC" is yet another overreaction. We're in a time where voices that didn't command respect in the past now have vastly more access to an audience. On the balance, I think this is a really good thing. However, we haven't yet evolved an ability to reliably sift the real complaints from the unfounded ones. This, of course, is not a black and white distinction. From what little I know, this seems like an incident where a hasty decision was made, without much of a process. Hopefully, as a community we'll learn and improve, but with the maturity to do so without discrediting the very real issues of diversity and inclusion in tech.
  - vertex-four 10y ago
    > From what little I know, this seems like an incident where a hasty decision was made, without much of a process. Interestingly, the vast majority of the time this happens at conferences, it happens "the other way" - some minority member is entirely ignored because people don't really understand that shitty things happen to people and/or don't believe an incident was as bad as it sounds, without having witnessed it. (Mostly because nothing that bad has ever happened to them at a conference, failing to realise that different people have different experiences.) Codes of conduct along with a reasonable review process before doing anything, as have been implemented at various conferences, hacker camps, and other tech-related public spaces, and by large community projects, mostly ensure this sort of issue - lack of review - doesn't happen so often, in both directions.
- xiaoma 10y ago
  Political correctness is actually pretty horrible. Try living in a communist country for a few years and you may start valuing tolerance of "incorrect" views more than you currently do. For the most part, the US isn't too bad as far as political correctness yet. That said, it's been getting worse since the Bush presidency (when it was "unpatriotic" to oppose the Iraq war, etc). Now it's fair to say that areas of scientific research (e.g evolutionary psychology) are rapidly becoming verboten and abandoned by the younger generations of scientists.
wayniac 10y ago
The irony here is people like this HURT their own cause. Rememeber the Adria Richards debacle (aka "Donglegate")? That gal set back females in tech years because who wants to deal with a co-worker that might complain to the boss and get you fired because they overhear something you say and don't like it? Same thing here. These folks aren't fighting FOR equality in work or safe workspaces, they're essentially cutting off their noses to spite their faces because they're going to turn people against them out of the desire to not deal with the drama they bring.
- Frondo 10y ago
  Someone who looks at the Adria Richards story and decides "women are the problem", well, that's the actual problem right there.
  - wayniac 10y ago
    Not "women are the problem" but still, who wants to deal with someone that might overhear a conversation and cause a shistorm because they don't agree with the conversation? That's the issue with these SJW types. They butt into things that don't concern them, get offended, and then expect the world to accommodate them. Things like the Adria Richards story hurt "women in tech" not because "ew girls, gross!" but because it puts that fear into people's minds about someone overreacting and getting people fired because they can't act like an adult but want to be coddled like a toddler.
    - Frondo 10y ago
      I read the Adria Richards story and I felt no fear about someone overreacting to anything I'd say. Why is this? Because I don't think women are irrational or prone to overreacting. I'm not afraid of interacting with women in the workplace because I don't think there is anything to be afraid of.
      - ori_b 10y ago
        > Why is this? Because I don't think women are irrational or prone to overreacting. People are irrational and prone to overreacting, and women are, last I checked, people.

by erlich 10y ago

skywhopper 10y ago

Getting stuff done requires working with people. Working with people requires basic manners including a willingness to be polite. Sure, a lot of requirements of manners are often irrational and make little or no sense to the technically minded. But it's the cost of participating in society. Whining about not being able to say certain words is about the least productive thing you can do, and makes you appear to prioritize your desire to be a jerk over getting things done. So let's get some work done and stop whining about how we might have to think about other people and consider the impact of our words.

CaptSpify 10y ago
> Whining about not being able to say certain words is about the least productive thing you can do, and makes you appear to prioritize your desire to be a jerk over getting things done. It's more about not wanting to "walk on eggshells". I don't want a speaker to spend >1/2 of his time prepping for the political side of a presentation. I want a speaker who spends the majority of his time on the technical details. If you want to "get stuff done", sure, sometimes you have to be more polite than you want. But the other side of the coin is that you also have to be thick-skinned. If every little thing "offends" you, then you are not going to get any work done either, and your actively preventing others from doing so.
ori_b 10y ago
> Getting stuff done requires working with people. Working with people requires basic manners including a willingness to be polite. Getting stuff done requires working with people. Working with people requires basic tolerance, including a willingness to ignore different political viewpoints, jokes that fall flat, and different cultures and communication styles.

tehwebguy 10y ago

Political correctness isn't bad, overreacting is the problem.

acjohnson55 10y ago
^ Exactly. And the backlash against "PC" is yet another overreaction. We're in a time where voices that didn't command respect in the past now have vastly more access to an audience. On the balance, I think this is a really good thing. However, we haven't yet evolved an ability to reliably sift the real complaints from the unfounded ones. This, of course, is not a black and white distinction. From what little I know, this seems like an incident where a hasty decision was made, without much of a process. Hopefully, as a community we'll learn and improve, but with the maturity to do so without discrediting the very real issues of diversity and inclusion in tech.
- vertex-four 10y ago
  > From what little I know, this seems like an incident where a hasty decision was made, without much of a process. Interestingly, the vast majority of the time this happens at conferences, it happens "the other way" - some minority member is entirely ignored because people don't really understand that shitty things happen to people and/or don't believe an incident was as bad as it sounds, without having witnessed it. (Mostly because nothing that bad has ever happened to them at a conference, failing to realise that different people have different experiences.) Codes of conduct along with a reasonable review process before doing anything, as have been implemented at various conferences, hacker camps, and other tech-related public spaces, and by large community projects, mostly ensure this sort of issue - lack of review - doesn't happen so often, in both directions.
xiaoma 10y ago
Political correctness is actually pretty horrible. Try living in a communist country for a few years and you may start valuing tolerance of "incorrect" views more than you currently do. For the most part, the US isn't too bad as far as political correctness yet. That said, it's been getting worse since the Bush presidency (when it was "unpatriotic" to oppose the Iraq war, etc). Now it's fair to say that areas of scientific research (e.g evolutionary psychology) are rapidly becoming verboten and abandoned by the younger generations of scientists.

wayniac 10y ago

The irony here is people like this HURT their own cause. Rememeber the Adria Richards debacle (aka "Donglegate")? That gal set back females in tech years because who wants to deal with a co-worker that might complain to the boss and get you fired because they overhear something you say and don't like it? Same thing here. These folks aren't fighting FOR equality in work or safe workspaces, they're essentially cutting off their noses to spite their faces because they're going to turn people against them out of the desire to not deal with the drama they bring.

Frondo 10y ago
Someone who looks at the Adria Richards story and decides "women are the problem", well, that's the actual problem right there.
- wayniac 10y ago
  Not "women are the problem" but still, who wants to deal with someone that might overhear a conversation and cause a shistorm because they don't agree with the conversation? That's the issue with these SJW types. They butt into things that don't concern them, get offended, and then expect the world to accommodate them. Things like the Adria Richards story hurt "women in tech" not because "ew girls, gross!" but because it puts that fear into people's minds about someone overreacting and getting people fired because they can't act like an adult but want to be coddled like a toddler.
  - Frondo 10y ago
    I read the Adria Richards story and I felt no fear about someone overreacting to anything I'd say. Why is this? Because I don't think women are irrational or prone to overreacting. I'm not afraid of interacting with women in the workplace because I don't think there is anything to be afraid of.
    - ori_b 10y ago
      > Why is this? Because I don't think women are irrational or prone to overreacting. People are irrational and prone to overreacting, and women are, last I checked, people.