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Steelmanning Dale's position here. (https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Steel_man https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Steel_man) It seems like the root questions here

Steelmanning Dale's position here. (https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Steel_man https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Steel_man) It seems like the root questions here are: 1) Does Naomi do all of the work for all of her projects, without external help? 2) If answer to (1) is "No", does she ever represent herself as doing all the work, or claim that she doesn't get external help? 3) If answer to (2) is "Yes", Does this cause harm to people deceived by her public character as a "maker"? The balance of evidence for (1), if you believe Dale's account and some others, is "No". There's piles of internet evidence for this (I don't want to drag them up, but can maybe find links if people are curious). This fact doesn't actually seem to be in active contention, so I'll move on. The balance to evidence for (2) seems to me also like a "No". I don't think Naomi has ever claimed that she does 100% of the work for all her projects herself -- and that's totally fine! She's a figurehead / movement leader, she doesn't need to be a personal expert in every maker field to make a positive impact. If you read some of her FAQs (https://pastebin.com/V3474kYs https://pastebin.com/V3474kYs), it doesn't seem like she's making this claim. (3) is an interesting question that I will leave to the crowd. I'm already tired of writing this comment and realize that I actually don't care. So nevermind about all this.

natural219 9y ago
I'm mostly just upset that this blogpost / comments don't seem to have anything to do with Dale/Naomi's specific case and more to do with people's pre-existing opinions about "women in tech" or whatever. One pernicious thing that happens in these conversations. I've spent about 10 minutes total reading some Discord/DM messages about this controversy, and quickly found the above information. I fear that, if I spent more time "digging up evidence" to make a lengthy/nerdy case about this, I could be accurately accused of "Well why are you spending so much time arguing about prominent female tech leaders? Do you have some sort of ulterior motive?". I recognized this internally, stopped writing my comment, and moved on.
cwkoss 9y ago
I think part of the irony of this situation is that Make Magazine publishes tutorials and features white American childrens' projects who have almost certainly received extreme hand-holding help from parents. If the standard is truly "without external help", are people following tutorials in Make magazine not 'real' makers? If the standard is "represent as doing all the work", to what extent does Make verify that the (often privileged) children it features are doing all of the work themselves? Has the CEO ever called out a child for getting too much help? Children is certainly a bit of a straw man, but I suspect they feature many young-20-something white male Americans whose parents have taught them technical things from young age, can afford maker equipment to experiment with at home, can ask their parents for technical help when they get stuck, have mentors in their family's social network that are experts in the field, etc. I guess my point is EVERYONE in the maker movement needs lots of help if they are not from the highest levels of privilege. There is a ton of info to learn, and nobody has the time to trial-and-error brute force their way to expertise. Implicit standards that everything must be done and figured out yourself creates a bias to only feature people who "need" the exposure least and are most privileged. Anyone working 'alone' has likely received enough help on previous projects that they were able to build off those skills to self-teach the rest of the way. Obviously, Make magazine appreciates the value of help and instruction within the maker community: that is their reason for existence. Thus, I believe Dale is holding Naomi to a higher standard than he does for most male American makers because of his own biases.
- natural219 9y ago
  I agree with all of this! (Normally I'd just upvote, but want to clarify that this is my actual position and that I don't hold some ulterior motive from being frank & critical of the story as presented).
shkkmo 9y ago
That's sure adding a lot of steel... "Naomi is a persona, not a real person." is veeeeery far from "Naomi gets help on project", and event still pretty darn far from "Naomi misrepresents her contribution to the her projects"
- natural219 9y ago
  I agree with this. I don't think steelmans actually represent their subject's positions; that's sort of the definition of "steelmanning" :p

natural219 9y ago

I'm mostly just upset that this blogpost / comments don't seem to have anything to do with Dale/Naomi's specific case and more to do with people's pre-existing opinions about "women in tech" or whatever. One pernicious thing that happens in these conversations. I've spent about 10 minutes total reading some Discord/DM messages about this controversy, and quickly found the above information. I fear that, if I spent more time "digging up evidence" to make a lengthy/nerdy case about this, I could be accurately accused of "Well why are you spending so much time arguing about prominent female tech leaders? Do you have some sort of ulterior motive?". I recognized this internally, stopped writing my comment, and moved on.

cwkoss 9y ago

I think part of the irony of this situation is that Make Magazine publishes tutorials and features white American childrens' projects who have almost certainly received extreme hand-holding help from parents. If the standard is truly "without external help", are people following tutorials in Make magazine not 'real' makers? If the standard is "represent as doing all the work", to what extent does Make verify that the (often privileged) children it features are doing all of the work themselves? Has the CEO ever called out a child for getting too much help? Children is certainly a bit of a straw man, but I suspect they feature many young-20-something white male Americans whose parents have taught them technical things from young age, can afford maker equipment to experiment with at home, can ask their parents for technical help when they get stuck, have mentors in their family's social network that are experts in the field, etc. I guess my point is EVERYONE in the maker movement needs lots of help if they are not from the highest levels of privilege. There is a ton of info to learn, and nobody has the time to trial-and-error brute force their way to expertise. Implicit standards that everything must be done and figured out yourself creates a bias to only feature people who "need" the exposure least and are most privileged. Anyone working 'alone' has likely received enough help on previous projects that they were able to build off those skills to self-teach the rest of the way. Obviously, Make magazine appreciates the value of help and instruction within the maker community: that is their reason for existence. Thus, I believe Dale is holding Naomi to a higher standard than he does for most male American makers because of his own biases.

natural219 9y ago
I agree with all of this! (Normally I'd just upvote, but want to clarify that this is my actual position and that I don't hold some ulterior motive from being frank & critical of the story as presented).

shkkmo 9y ago

That's sure adding a lot of steel... "Naomi is a persona, not a real person." is veeeeery far from "Naomi gets help on project", and event still pretty darn far from "Naomi misrepresents her contribution to the her projects"

natural219 9y ago
I agree with this. I don't think steelmans actually represent their subject's positions; that's sort of the definition of "steelmanning" :p