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Hopefully this will be constructive. It's a tough pill to swallow but it's needed: This is only a problem because of a) the immaturity of the average tech guy,

Hopefully this will be constructive. It's a tough pill to swallow but it's needed: This is only a problem because of a) the immaturity of the average tech guy, relative to other professions and b) the lack of success with women of the average tech guy, again relative to the overall population. Tech professions attract mostly left-brained people, and attract some personality types much more than other types. A tech guy is more likely to be an introvert. He's also more likely to have poor social skills, which relates to both A and B. It would be interesting to know if insecure attachment styles are more prevalent in the tech industry (likely), if anxiety disorders are more prevalent (likely; and someone with anxiety might be more likely to spend their free time indoors harassing people than playing football outside) and if low self-esteem is more prevalent (sadly, in my experience, likely; obviously 'harassment behavior' isn't something to be proud of, so doing it, while apparently desirable for some, would just result in lowered self-respect for them). This is more prevalent in the open-source community, since there are no selection standards. You need neither a degree from MIT or Stanford, or to go through the tough Google interview standards, so you'll end up with the crap that's left on top of the sieve. This problem will not get fixed anytime soon, and certainly can't get fixed through politics of any kind, since it's founded in personality and psychology. Mandatory pre-school with screening of all children for attachment disorders would help a lot, and hopefully someone reading this will be convinced to promote that as a solution. To those who would say this is just speculation and ad hominem: it's conjecture, not speculation, and can be debated. It isn't ad hominem: to find a solution, asking "why" is necessary. There's no contempt here, though some of what I said may not be nice, I'm not assigning lower worth to anyone.

RantyDave 10y ago
I really don't care what the cause is, they can go. Why have them?
- FeepingCreature 10y ago
  Because we're liberals, and liberals are inclusive by default? Having them is the default case. To exclude them, you have to make a specific argument to that extent. That's the only way civil society can exist without falling into constant tribal battles.
- concinds 10y ago
  Go where? How do you get rid of them? The problem is exactly the same as the following: In an organization, you'll have some employees that are more psychologically healthy, and some less. Some will have substance abuse problems. The employees with substance abuse problems will be less productive, on average. In other words, they're dragging the organization down. There's no "getting rid of them". They'll just burden another company. Same as here, in open-source, you can't "get rid of them", it's logistically impossible. This problem logistically can't get fixed through exclusion. It can only get fixed by "raising the floor" (in other words, making sure that the most troubled men become less troubled). Raising the median/average won't help. Same as raising the median income won't help the people in poverty, raising the minimum wage will. In the original metaphor, since substance abuse and attachment disorders are correlated, again the best solution is early detection of attachment disorders in young children, and improving their situation. Why not help the least fortunate? I can guarantee you, the kinds of guys sending Photoshopped pics of bloody cadavers are not happy people. There's psychological inequality just as much as economic inequality, though for psychology, most people find it harder to be compassionate.

RantyDave 10y ago

I really don't care what the cause is, they can go. Why have them?

FeepingCreature 10y ago
Because we're liberals, and liberals are inclusive by default? Having them is the default case. To exclude them, you have to make a specific argument to that extent. That's the only way civil society can exist without falling into constant tribal battles.
concinds 10y ago
Go where? How do you get rid of them? The problem is exactly the same as the following: In an organization, you'll have some employees that are more psychologically healthy, and some less. Some will have substance abuse problems. The employees with substance abuse problems will be less productive, on average. In other words, they're dragging the organization down. There's no "getting rid of them". They'll just burden another company. Same as here, in open-source, you can't "get rid of them", it's logistically impossible. This problem logistically can't get fixed through exclusion. It can only get fixed by "raising the floor" (in other words, making sure that the most troubled men become less troubled). Raising the median/average won't help. Same as raising the median income won't help the people in poverty, raising the minimum wage will. In the original metaphor, since substance abuse and attachment disorders are correlated, again the best solution is early detection of attachment disorders in young children, and improving their situation. Why not help the least fortunate? I can guarantee you, the kinds of guys sending Photoshopped pics of bloody cadavers are not happy people. There's psychological inequality just as much as economic inequality, though for psychology, most people find it harder to be compassionate.