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Absolutely agreed. Regardless of the outcome, I do wish this would have been a turning point, a discussion, a 300 comment long back and forth from both sides l

by axaxs 9y ago

Absolutely agreed. Regardless of the outcome, I do wish this would have been a turning point, a discussion, a 300 comment long back and forth from both sides like we see on lkml at times. Instead, it was a swift firing and attempt to sweep it under the rug. The fact that people actually took off work because they were 'offended' probably paints an even worse picture for reason in the Valley.

SamReidHughes 9y ago
Not like it's exclusive to the valley. Like, you'll find it in NYC. I know a girl who could get arrested and smile about it, but will have a meltdown if you say that men and women aren't identically distributed populations of blank slates. For this reason I don't think all the people who stayed home were fake-offended or scare-quote offended. Some just haven't hit certain developmental milestones, of the sort where you can think about population distributions, probabilities, or think about the universe without an evil genius rewriting everything to fit your fractally wrong worldview.
- siidooloo 9y ago
  So people who disagree with you "haven't hit certain developmental milestones"?
  - axaxs 9y ago
    Because anyone who shuts down and screams in response to a well thought out document, no matter how ridiculous, is not a well formed adult.
    - brailsafe 9y ago
      At the very least it's a childish reaction.
    - SamReidHughes 9y ago
      You know, I really don't think that's fair. You've got [The Document] -> [What people read or misread from the document, what they infer in other's motives, others' mental framework, etc] -> [Reaction]. I know if I thought everybody thought I was stupid because of my race, or gender, or some other crap like that, because "Science," and they were forming expectations by it and were wrong but there was nothing I could do about it... it would really suck, and I might want to stay home. (It would be stupid to stay home, because there's a perfectly good golf course across the street from HQ, but I digress...) The magnitude of their reaction is very understandable.
    - SamReidHughes 9y ago
      Also, while my response focused on one example I personally experienced, to discredit claims about fake-taking-offense, it's not necessarily the case that others are staying home solely because people hold beliefs. There's also, presumably, a general atmosphere of drama to avoid, stress and the like. So it's not merely a document.
  - SamReidHughes 9y ago
    It's not a matter of disagreement. It's the ability to process statements about population distributions, be they true or false, without being insulted by them. If you (a woman, let's say) hear Chris say, "fewer women are able to be good engineers than men," and treat that the same as, "You are not a good engineer," then you're wrong about what was said and what was meant. You'd be lacking the ability to perform a basic act of reading comprehension in certain contexts. Relatedly, many people can't think about population distributions in a sensible way in any context. Another is the inability to handle a statement like "There might be a smaller proportion of men suitable for engineering because of biology." Clearly there's some chance it's true, but plenty of people will say there's no chance that the proportions aren't identical by gender. Which is an absolutely crazy thing to think, because there's like, some chance you're wrong.
    - danso 9y ago
      > If you (a woman, let's say) hear Chris say, "fewer women are able to be good engineers than men," and treat that the same as, "You are not a good engineer," But Damore didn't say either of those things.
      - yorwba 9y ago
        Indeed, and yet I have seen lots of comments on HN that interpreted him as saying something indistinguishable from those things.
        danso 9y ago
        On the other hand, I've seen folks from the pro-Damore crowd who think that when someone accuses Damore of something he didn't literally say, then that person did not read his memo or was being maliciously misleading. That mindset is not particularly more intellectual or rational than not having read the full memo. If a politician says: I'm not a liberal, and all of my best friends are conservatives, but I'm going to vote in support of abortion rights and universal healthcare -- are constituents being obtuse if they perceive that their representative is in fact a liberal?
- danso 9y ago
  > I know a girl who could get arrested and smile about it, but will have a meltdown if you say that men and women aren't identically distributed populations of blank slates. Huh? What was she arrested for? And this girl (high school? junior high?) is representative of NYC? edit: And is she someone who could possibly hired by Google? If not, why would your observed reactions of her be a useful reference in judging whether people at Google were "fake-offended"?
  - SamReidHughes 9y ago
    Protesting. She's around 30. She could totally be hired by Google, not for engineering, but could have been a great engineer too if that's what she was interested in doing, she's got better IQ and math ability than most engineers I've worked with. I'll rate her 100% representative.
    - danso 9y ago
      At the age of 30 she is not literally a girl. So I'm assuming you mean she's as immature and/or intellectually limited as if she were a female child. And that's because she smiles while being arrested for disrupting the peace/resisting arrest+disobeying police (people aren't arrested on allegations of, or arraigned or charges of "protesting")? Does that make this smiling arrested man a "boy"? http://t.co/9QAI4voo1M http://t.co/9QAI4voo1M I don't think everyone would agree that someone's opinion of or behavior towards law enforcement implies something useful about their rationality (or lack of) when it comes to gender issues. But giving you the benefit of the doubt by assuming this person truly is an immature fool, why would you think that someone you know in a personal capacity grants you insight to mindsets the Google Mountain View employees whom you don't know at all, or to their reasoning for hating Damore's memo? Just because I know some Asians who are fucking terrible at PHP doesn't bestow me with special insight about Facebook (powered in part by its high proportion of Asian programmers) service outages and security fuckups.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      - deleted 9y ago

by axaxs 9y ago

SamReidHughes 9y ago

Not like it's exclusive to the valley. Like, you'll find it in NYC. I know a girl who could get arrested and smile about it, but will have a meltdown if you say that men and women aren't identically distributed populations of blank slates. For this reason I don't think all the people who stayed home were fake-offended or scare-quote offended. Some just haven't hit certain developmental milestones, of the sort where you can think about population distributions, probabilities, or think about the universe without an evil genius rewriting everything to fit your fractally wrong worldview.

siidooloo 9y ago
So people who disagree with you "haven't hit certain developmental milestones"?
- axaxs 9y ago
  Because anyone who shuts down and screams in response to a well thought out document, no matter how ridiculous, is not a well formed adult.
  - brailsafe 9y ago
    At the very least it's a childish reaction.
  - SamReidHughes 9y ago
    You know, I really don't think that's fair. You've got [The Document] -> [What people read or misread from the document, what they infer in other's motives, others' mental framework, etc] -> [Reaction]. I know if I thought everybody thought I was stupid because of my race, or gender, or some other crap like that, because "Science," and they were forming expectations by it and were wrong but there was nothing I could do about it... it would really suck, and I might want to stay home. (It would be stupid to stay home, because there's a perfectly good golf course across the street from HQ, but I digress...) The magnitude of their reaction is very understandable.
  - SamReidHughes 9y ago
    Also, while my response focused on one example I personally experienced, to discredit claims about fake-taking-offense, it's not necessarily the case that others are staying home solely because people hold beliefs. There's also, presumably, a general atmosphere of drama to avoid, stress and the like. So it's not merely a document.
- SamReidHughes 9y ago
  It's not a matter of disagreement. It's the ability to process statements about population distributions, be they true or false, without being insulted by them. If you (a woman, let's say) hear Chris say, "fewer women are able to be good engineers than men," and treat that the same as, "You are not a good engineer," then you're wrong about what was said and what was meant. You'd be lacking the ability to perform a basic act of reading comprehension in certain contexts. Relatedly, many people can't think about population distributions in a sensible way in any context. Another is the inability to handle a statement like "There might be a smaller proportion of men suitable for engineering because of biology." Clearly there's some chance it's true, but plenty of people will say there's no chance that the proportions aren't identical by gender. Which is an absolutely crazy thing to think, because there's like, some chance you're wrong.
  - danso 9y ago
    > If you (a woman, let's say) hear Chris say, "fewer women are able to be good engineers than men," and treat that the same as, "You are not a good engineer," But Damore didn't say either of those things.
    - yorwba 9y ago
      Indeed, and yet I have seen lots of comments on HN that interpreted him as saying something indistinguishable from those things.
      - danso 9y ago
        On the other hand, I've seen folks from the pro-Damore crowd who think that when someone accuses Damore of something he didn't literally say, then that person did not read his memo or was being maliciously misleading. That mindset is not particularly more intellectual or rational than not having read the full memo. If a politician says: I'm not a liberal, and all of my best friends are conservatives, but I'm going to vote in support of abortion rights and universal healthcare -- are constituents being obtuse if they perceive that their representative is in fact a liberal?
danso 9y ago
> I know a girl who could get arrested and smile about it, but will have a meltdown if you say that men and women aren't identically distributed populations of blank slates. Huh? What was she arrested for? And this girl (high school? junior high?) is representative of NYC? edit: And is she someone who could possibly hired by Google? If not, why would your observed reactions of her be a useful reference in judging whether people at Google were "fake-offended"?
- SamReidHughes 9y ago
  Protesting. She's around 30. She could totally be hired by Google, not for engineering, but could have been a great engineer too if that's what she was interested in doing, she's got better IQ and math ability than most engineers I've worked with. I'll rate her 100% representative.
  - danso 9y ago
    At the age of 30 she is not literally a girl. So I'm assuming you mean she's as immature and/or intellectually limited as if she were a female child. And that's because she smiles while being arrested for disrupting the peace/resisting arrest+disobeying police (people aren't arrested on allegations of, or arraigned or charges of "protesting")? Does that make this smiling arrested man a "boy"? http://t.co/9QAI4voo1M http://t.co/9QAI4voo1M I don't think everyone would agree that someone's opinion of or behavior towards law enforcement implies something useful about their rationality (or lack of) when it comes to gender issues. But giving you the benefit of the doubt by assuming this person truly is an immature fool, why would you think that someone you know in a personal capacity grants you insight to mindsets the Google Mountain View employees whom you don't know at all, or to their reasoning for hating Damore's memo? Just because I know some Asians who are fucking terrible at PHP doesn't bestow me with special insight about Facebook (powered in part by its high proportion of Asian programmers) service outages and security fuckups.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 9y ago