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Even if all you say is true and the guy is an odious anti-feminist, the points he made should be debated and refuted, not silenced. Even if most people that ma

Even if all you say is true and the guy is an odious anti-feminist, the points he made should be debated and refuted, not silenced. Even if most people that make similar points are just "weaseling around" and justifying their racism/sexism, this is not reason enough to assume the worst. That's how you get thoughtcrime, were the faintest association with unorthodox thought self-evidently makes you a despicable person who should be punished and whose ideas should be ignored. Many tech guys are waking up to the farcical, oppressive way in which some leftists spread their ideas and silence their opponents, and won't stand for it any longer.

virtuabhi 9y ago
> Even if all you say is true and the guy is an odious anti-feminist, the points he made should be debated and refuted, not silenced. Why? Why should everyone debate ideas which are made up by biased sources[1]? Should we also discuss why people from country X are more intelligent than people of race Y who immigrated from continent Z? Sorry, but not all ideas are gold. > Many tech guys are waking up to the farcical, oppressive way in which some leftists spread their ideas and silence their opponents, and won't stand for it any longer. At least it is fine till "leftists" are spreading ideas for peace, tolerance, and harmony, right? They are not calling for people of race/religion/country/sex X to leave country Y, right? [1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/aug/13/james-damore-google-memo-youtube-white-men-radicalization https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/aug/13/james-dam...
- alphapapa 9y ago
  Are you saying that there exist unbiased sources? Who has the authority to determine which ideas are worth discussing? Are the rest of us obligated to comply with their judgments?
jellicle 9y ago
> should be debated and refuted If you have even a passing acquaintance with the subject, this has been "debated and refuted" for hundreds of years. Should "did NASA land on the Moon?" also be debated and refuted? Why or why not? If major TV networks ran hour-long specials, where each side gets to present their case for/against moon landings for 30 minutes, would this be beneficial to the world?
- alphapapa 9y ago
  Are you saying that the question, "Did NASA land on the moon?" is equivalent to the question, "Is the main reason, that fewer women work at Google, that men are sexist?"
throwawayjava 9y ago
> Even if all you say is true and the guy is an odious anti-feminist, the points he made should be debated and refuted, not silenced. I strongly disagree with your "even if" hypothetical. Dialectics are a process for arriving at truth, not the source of truth itself. I think this is something hard-core rationalists often seem to forget. In terms of time, emotional energy, and so on, evaluating arguments is very expensive. Ignoring an argument because its source is "odious"ly biased is the political equivalent of using heuristics to prune a huge search space. It may not always give you an optimal answer. But then, climbing every ant hill to the bitter end may not get you to an answer in your lifetime anyways. And remember, in an argumentative setting, the search space is adversarially constructed. So you can actually be pretty damn certain that without heuristics, you'll never find the truth. > this is not reason enough to assume the worst The degree to which people are "assuming the worst" seems to be one of the major sources of disagreement. FWIW I don't think many of Damore's detractors are "assuming the worst" from the outset. Complaints about the essay tend to identify specific claims, specific phrases, specific arguments that serve as heuristics for choosing not to continue evaluating the argument in good faith. You can argue against those heuristics all you want, but I don't think that this argument is even possible to have without some heuristics. Case in point: Damore uses his own set of totally unsound heuristics (see e.g., the complaining about "political correctness", the graphs that are actually just pictorial representations of prior assumptions, and so on).
- alphapapa 9y ago
  > Ignoring an argument because its source is "odious"ly biased is the political equivalent of using heuristics to prune a huge search space. You're proving Damore's point. You refuse to consider his arguments because of your prejudiced, emotional reaction. This is patently irrational. > It may not always give you an optimal answer. But then, climbing every ant hill to the bitter end may not get you to an answer in your lifetime anyways. This is a strawman and an argument to absurdity, i.e. also irrational. > So you can actually be pretty damn certain that without heuristics, you'll never find the truth. You'll never find the truth if you irrationally dismiss arguments that oppose your prejudiced opinions--unless, of course, you've already arrived at the truth. But believing you've already arrived at the truth would be arrogant and closed-minded, right?

virtuabhi 9y ago

> Even if all you say is true and the guy is an odious anti-feminist, the points he made should be debated and refuted, not silenced. Why? Why should everyone debate ideas which are made up by biased sources[1]? Should we also discuss why people from country X are more intelligent than people of race Y who immigrated from continent Z? Sorry, but not all ideas are gold. > Many tech guys are waking up to the farcical, oppressive way in which some leftists spread their ideas and silence their opponents, and won't stand for it any longer. At least it is fine till "leftists" are spreading ideas for peace, tolerance, and harmony, right? They are not calling for people of race/religion/country/sex X to leave country Y, right? [1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/aug/13/james-damore-google-memo-youtube-white-men-radicalization https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/aug/13/james-dam...

alphapapa 9y ago
Are you saying that there exist unbiased sources? Who has the authority to determine which ideas are worth discussing? Are the rest of us obligated to comply with their judgments?

jellicle 9y ago

> should be debated and refuted If you have even a passing acquaintance with the subject, this has been "debated and refuted" for hundreds of years. Should "did NASA land on the Moon?" also be debated and refuted? Why or why not? If major TV networks ran hour-long specials, where each side gets to present their case for/against moon landings for 30 minutes, would this be beneficial to the world?

alphapapa 9y ago
Are you saying that the question, "Did NASA land on the moon?" is equivalent to the question, "Is the main reason, that fewer women work at Google, that men are sexist?"

throwawayjava 9y ago

> Even if all you say is true and the guy is an odious anti-feminist, the points he made should be debated and refuted, not silenced. I strongly disagree with your "even if" hypothetical. Dialectics are a process for arriving at truth, not the source of truth itself. I think this is something hard-core rationalists often seem to forget. In terms of time, emotional energy, and so on, evaluating arguments is very expensive. Ignoring an argument because its source is "odious"ly biased is the political equivalent of using heuristics to prune a huge search space. It may not always give you an optimal answer. But then, climbing every ant hill to the bitter end may not get you to an answer in your lifetime anyways. And remember, in an argumentative setting, the search space is adversarially constructed. So you can actually be pretty damn certain that without heuristics, you'll never find the truth. > this is not reason enough to assume the worst The degree to which people are "assuming the worst" seems to be one of the major sources of disagreement. FWIW I don't think many of Damore's detractors are "assuming the worst" from the outset. Complaints about the essay tend to identify specific claims, specific phrases, specific arguments that serve as heuristics for choosing not to continue evaluating the argument in good faith. You can argue against those heuristics all you want, but I don't think that this argument is even possible to have without some heuristics. Case in point: Damore uses his own set of totally unsound heuristics (see e.g., the complaining about "political correctness", the graphs that are actually just pictorial representations of prior assumptions, and so on).

alphapapa 9y ago
> Ignoring an argument because its source is "odious"ly biased is the political equivalent of using heuristics to prune a huge search space. You're proving Damore's point. You refuse to consider his arguments because of your prejudiced, emotional reaction. This is patently irrational. > It may not always give you an optimal answer. But then, climbing every ant hill to the bitter end may not get you to an answer in your lifetime anyways. This is a strawman and an argument to absurdity, i.e. also irrational. > So you can actually be pretty damn certain that without heuristics, you'll never find the truth. You'll never find the truth if you irrationally dismiss arguments that oppose your prejudiced opinions--unless, of course, you've already arrived at the truth. But believing you've already arrived at the truth would be arrogant and closed-minded, right?