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This entire post is incredibly dangerous. > Having good people skills often has little to do with science or even the truth. I can only assume you're liberal

This entire post is incredibly dangerous. > Having good people skills often has little to do with science or even the truth. I can only assume you're liberal based on your stance, but you do an enormous amount of damage to progressive values and true diversity when you state things like this. Establishing harassment as something independent and impervious to truth creates the ultimate echo chamber that enables a post-fact world. So anyone who comes to you with a fact or a quantum of reality you don't like should be considered a harasser? How does this apply when you write your own positions? Truth is what allows us to move forward as a society, and to ignore it is to doom us to follow what makes us feel better, not what's right. There are numerous examples through out history where I'm sure the majority would have liked to ignore facts in order to make themselves feel better and maintain the status quo. Good people skills has everything to do with leading us to better and positive understanding of objective truth. You create a strawman diverting from the document in question by talking about "sweeping generalization about blacks," when the previous poster was clearly addressing the document, not your flimsy hypothetical. And yet, you then proceed to paint tech folks below management as completely lacking in the people skills to understand management and your enlightened position. To be clear, I thought the conclusions of the document were dumb, but your handling of controversial topics strikes me as equally dangerous, if not more so. I think your heart is in the right place, but strive to be like John Milton in how you digest the arguments of others: "I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed..." edit: sp & truth

tchaffee 9y ago
> Establishing harassment as something independent and impervious to truth creates the ultimate echo chamber that enables a post-fact world. Why is harassment determined by humans in a court of law, very often using their gut instincts, if it has some ultimate test tube truth that can be used to decide whether or not it occurred? What's the lab test I'm not aware of? Ok, I'm being a little facetious, but still, can you even guide me to an written objective source of truth that describes exactly what harassment is and isn't? I can provide tons of concrete examples and we all know it when we see it, but I think it's incredibly hard to give an objective description. It's certainly never about words. One person's "nigger" is friendly, the other person's "nigger" is harassment and how it was intended and how it was received both have to do with what each person was feeling. Is there a way to to objectively determine truth about how people felt when they said or heard something? > So anyone who comes to you with a fact or a quantum of reality you don't like should be considered a harasser? I never said that. I did say that harassment is about human relationships and people skills and not in the domain of facts. You can lie to someone and harass them. You can tell them the truth and harass them. You can lie to someone and make their day better. You can tell the truth to someone and make their day better. There is very little relationship between objective truth and people skills. > You create a strawman No, it's an analogy. And a very very close one. The original document made sweeping generalizations about women. I simply replaced "women" with "blacks" so it's easier to see the pattern of how offensive it is to make sweeping generalizations. True generalizations, or false one, folks don't like being put in a bucket of "you tend to act this way because you are an _fill in the blank_". > Truth is what allows us to move forward as a society, Agreed. Scientific truth and emotional truth are two very different things. Relationships don't really have a "what's right" or an objective truth do they? It's always very objective. > Good people skills has everything to do with leading us to better and positive understanding of objective truth. And understanding of the objective truth is a goal for some people. Other people have zero interest in the objective truth and are more interested in their emotional life and relationships with others. Or something else. Maybe art. Or sales. Both of which have little to do with objective truth. Don't assign your personal values to others. > but strive to be like John Milton I don't know Milton. I'll check him out. Thanks for the recommendation.

tchaffee 9y ago

> Establishing harassment as something independent and impervious to truth creates the ultimate echo chamber that enables a post-fact world. Why is harassment determined by humans in a court of law, very often using their gut instincts, if it has some ultimate test tube truth that can be used to decide whether or not it occurred? What's the lab test I'm not aware of? Ok, I'm being a little facetious, but still, can you even guide me to an written objective source of truth that describes exactly what harassment is and isn't? I can provide tons of concrete examples and we all know it when we see it, but I think it's incredibly hard to give an objective description. It's certainly never about words. One person's "nigger" is friendly, the other person's "nigger" is harassment and how it was intended and how it was received both have to do with what each person was feeling. Is there a way to to objectively determine truth about how people felt when they said or heard something? > So anyone who comes to you with a fact or a quantum of reality you don't like should be considered a harasser? I never said that. I did say that harassment is about human relationships and people skills and not in the domain of facts. You can lie to someone and harass them. You can tell them the truth and harass them. You can lie to someone and make their day better. You can tell the truth to someone and make their day better. There is very little relationship between objective truth and people skills. > You create a strawman No, it's an analogy. And a very very close one. The original document made sweeping generalizations about women. I simply replaced "women" with "blacks" so it's easier to see the pattern of how offensive it is to make sweeping generalizations. True generalizations, or false one, folks don't like being put in a bucket of "you tend to act this way because you are an _fill in the blank_". > Truth is what allows us to move forward as a society, Agreed. Scientific truth and emotional truth are two very different things. Relationships don't really have a "what's right" or an objective truth do they? It's always very objective. > Good people skills has everything to do with leading us to better and positive understanding of objective truth. And understanding of the objective truth is a goal for some people. Other people have zero interest in the objective truth and are more interested in their emotional life and relationships with others. Or something else. Maybe art. Or sales. Both of which have little to do with objective truth. Don't assign your personal values to others. > but strive to be like John Milton I don't know Milton. I'll check him out. Thanks for the recommendation.