10 ms·

I'm extremely aware of this as someone who is socially conservative in terms of abortion, gay marriage, trans issues, etc (seriously not trying to start a flame

I'm extremely aware of this as someone who is socially conservative in terms of abortion, gay marriage, trans issues, etc (seriously not trying to start a flame war). It's weird knowing that a large portion of the country has similar values to me, but in a major city I can never mention these things or I'll immediately become unemployable. It doesn't matter that these things have zero impact on my behavior at work; you just can't say that you believe certain things are right/wrong if it goes against norms.

CharlesMerriam2 9y ago
One of things no one talks about: correlations. I have seen several of people lose their careers after become right wing spokespeople. These people work in difficult, ambiguous fields including patent prosecution (IP Law) and network security analysis. The fields are all about considering probable outcomes from ambiguous or untrustworthy data. They weren't pushed from their jobs; they stopped being able to juggle the ideas. Both employer and employee wanted them to leave by the time the left. They never succeeded again. This terrifies me.
- amsheehan 9y ago
  Can you elaborate? I don't think I understand what you mean.
  - observation 9y ago
    He is claiming becoming more right wing makes somebody less likely to understand statistics. Personally I think leftists, rightists and centrists are terrible at grokking stats because the human brain can't handle multifaceted realities very well. It is possible for instance that all political positions are correct, even the apparently contradictory ones because they are part of the Elephant (the one with the blind men).
ak_yo 9y ago
From my perspective, I don't want to work in an environment where people are voicing their opinion that (e.g.) gay marriage is illegitimate or wrong. How am I supposed to work with someone who thinks a huge part of my life is immoral? I would have an incredibly hard time believing that that person was taking me seriously, really wanted to work with me, wasn't going to undercut me, or trusted me. It's not that you can't have these opinions or voice them -- but it's also not the case that the people who are most affected by those opinions are going to feel OK about it.
- alien_at_work 9y ago
  >How am I supposed to work with someone who thinks a huge part of my life is immoral? So everyone needs to ensure they hold no oppinions you might find offensive or be homeless? It goes both ways: how am I supposed to work with someone who thinks it's ok to ostracize people for personal beliefs?
  - ak_yo 9y ago
    I agree, we're making the same general point -- it does seem crazy to ask someone to "ensure they hold no offensive opinions". So why, for example, should the opinions of the person who wants to speak their mind about the immorality of gay marriage get precedence over the opinions of the person who thinks they should be allowed to get married?
    - alien_at_work 9y ago
      I agree with that. "Don't go around pissing off co-workers" is a sensible rule. But it's also our responsibility to not look for reasons to be offended. If you ask me about something I'm not going to lie. But I'm not going to shove it in your face either, if I think it might offend.
  - longerthoughts 9y ago
    And it is your right not to work with that person, whether that means you choosing to leave or take internal action depending on circumstances (e.g. threats). However, who is entirely exempt from ostracizing others for their beliefs? For every person there is some universe of beliefs that are seen as such a threat to their reality, principles, or well-being that they will fight those beliefs and their representatives. That universe of beliefs may differ in size or relative merit on the basis of evidence for each person, but it exists.
amsheehan 9y ago
What I would take away from that notion is that large is relative. A large portion of the country still has fewer people than New York City. I am of course, not trying to start a flame war either, but my take on it is that those sorts of issues would be inappropriate to bring up at work or in a job interview in the first place, regardless of your position. Based on your description, I believe I probably espouse the opposite position on those issues, and even though I work at a large tech company in NYC I still don't bring them up at work. That said, I can totally see where you're coming from. I have a friend who ended up being a pretty staunch Donald Trump supporter, and I watched as a lot of colleagues ostracized him (even though he never really brought it up at work). It takes hard work to see past issues that divide us. In the case of my friend, I always just try to focus on our shared interests. It's what has kept us friends. In closing...there are of course different degrees of ideas that people will tolerate, and it may just be that large cities have spoken, and they don't want intolerant people in their ranks. shrugs, walks away
- throwaway8766 9y ago
  That's a great point and worth clarifying. I agree that neither side is super appropriate to bring up at work. I'm referring more so to circumstances like your friend who is a Trump supporter. It also gets murkier nowadays because companies are expected to take stances on social issues, and with certain ones are criticized when they don't.
  - mikeash 9y ago
    Companies have always been expected to take stances on social issues. Within living memory, companies in many parts of the country were required by law to segregate their customers by race. In other parts of the country, many companies were expected to do this as well, although it wasn't a legal requirement. Similar things were true for companies' treatment of same-sex couples, unmarried heterosexual couples, single women, and non-Christians. The main difference I see is that the expected stances are more liberal than they used to be, and the penalties for failing to conform tend to be much less severe.
- elsif1 9y ago
longerthoughts 9y ago
I've lived in cities on both sides of the political coin and can comfortably say that this is consistent for both liberal-dominant and conservative-dominant cities. I think part of the problem is that a lot of the issues you mention are seen as moral rather than ideological because peoples' values become so deeply rooted once they've spent enough time in like-minded communities (and perhaps some of the issues were really a question of morality to begin with). Beyond that, there's a heightened degree of generalization of "the other" when you're in a homogeneous community - if you support anything that aligns with an opposing political party, people will tend to project other values onto you that are generally associated with that party, regardless of whether or not you've expressed them.
bradleyjg 9y ago
> but in a major city I can never mention these things or I'll immediately become unemployable. The situation isn't great right now, I agree. But wild exaggeration doesn't help. It just makes people that you might be able to convince that the situation isn't great dismiss everything you are saying because of that wild exaggeration. Or at least some of those people, there may be an age divide here. But the point is if you want to be maximally persuasive you should avoid wild exaggeration. I live in a major city in the US. I know two or three quite vocal Trump supporters. Yes, they face social sanctions. Yes, it might affect their career on the margin when it comes time to look at e.g. who to promote or who to lay off. No they aren't unemployed, much less unemployable.
- throwaway8766 9y ago
  I appreciate the feedback. That wasn't intended to be an exaggeration, that is often how I perceive the situation (look at Brendan Eich), but it is certainly fair to consider whether that perception truly reflects reality.
lutorm 9y ago
I don't mind people being socially conservative, you can have whatever opinions you want about how you think people should live their lives or whatnot, and I'm perfectly willing to discuss them with you. I may not understand how you came to hold those views, but that likely goes both ways. What I'm not OK with, however, is people not respecting other people's rights to have their own views. And that goes from calling them names to refusing to serve them in their business to refusing to offer them the health insurance they want. Edit: Just to be clear, I agree that merely expressing views should not result in an online inquisition. That people whose views I generally agree with do makes me very uncomfortable, and I agree with Sam Altman that this makes it difficult to have serious discussions.
rgossiaux 9y ago
I think you're missing a key distinction. The problem is not that merely that you hold a political belief-- as you say, this by itself is over-the-top and unreasonable. The problem rather is that your particular political belief is viewed as being actively hostile towards people themselves or towards their friends or family or others. Voicing opposition towards gay marriage comes across as an attack on all gay people. That's where the reaction comes from. A political belief that's not treated as openly hostile towards others (for example, supporting charter schools or something) doesn't get this reaction, of course. It's not merely that "you just can't say that you believe certain things are right/wrong if it goes against norms"; you're missing the nuance here.
- cookiecaper 9y ago
  The issue is that with just a little bit of lather, it's possible to construe virtually any controversial opinion as "an attack" on the people that may be affected by it, however tangentially. Nothing in life is free and it is rare that there is a clean "perfect compromise" waiting to be discovered, which means that most trade-offs will have groups that can interpret the activity as hostile, even if their group is totally unaddressed ("Why does group Z get that thing and group Y only gets this thing?"). If we accept this argument that some opinions or positions are unconscionable because they are fundamentally "against" other people, we end up on a slippery slope, and the situation in SF is somewhere on that slope (in my opinion, nowhere near the bottom). Everyone wants in on the sympathy train and everyone loves shaming and silencing their opponents. We have to be careful to actively protect civil dialogue from such encroachments, because while they may feel sympathetic and nice at the time, that self-righteous reward system gets put on a feedback loop and drowns out everything else. If we've already seen people getting agitated into conflating arguments over the semantics and technicalities of a dry legal instrument like marriage with their individual right to self-existence and safety, that's proof of this phenomenon in itself.

CharlesMerriam2 9y ago

One of things no one talks about: correlations. I have seen several of people lose their careers after become right wing spokespeople. These people work in difficult, ambiguous fields including patent prosecution (IP Law) and network security analysis. The fields are all about considering probable outcomes from ambiguous or untrustworthy data. They weren't pushed from their jobs; they stopped being able to juggle the ideas. Both employer and employee wanted them to leave by the time the left. They never succeeded again. This terrifies me.

amsheehan 9y ago
Can you elaborate? I don't think I understand what you mean.
- observation 9y ago
  He is claiming becoming more right wing makes somebody less likely to understand statistics. Personally I think leftists, rightists and centrists are terrible at grokking stats because the human brain can't handle multifaceted realities very well. It is possible for instance that all political positions are correct, even the apparently contradictory ones because they are part of the Elephant (the one with the blind men).

ak_yo 9y ago

From my perspective, I don't want to work in an environment where people are voicing their opinion that (e.g.) gay marriage is illegitimate or wrong. How am I supposed to work with someone who thinks a huge part of my life is immoral? I would have an incredibly hard time believing that that person was taking me seriously, really wanted to work with me, wasn't going to undercut me, or trusted me. It's not that you can't have these opinions or voice them -- but it's also not the case that the people who are most affected by those opinions are going to feel OK about it.

alien_at_work 9y ago
>How am I supposed to work with someone who thinks a huge part of my life is immoral? So everyone needs to ensure they hold no oppinions you might find offensive or be homeless? It goes both ways: how am I supposed to work with someone who thinks it's ok to ostracize people for personal beliefs?
- ak_yo 9y ago
  I agree, we're making the same general point -- it does seem crazy to ask someone to "ensure they hold no offensive opinions". So why, for example, should the opinions of the person who wants to speak their mind about the immorality of gay marriage get precedence over the opinions of the person who thinks they should be allowed to get married?
  - alien_at_work 9y ago
    I agree with that. "Don't go around pissing off co-workers" is a sensible rule. But it's also our responsibility to not look for reasons to be offended. If you ask me about something I'm not going to lie. But I'm not going to shove it in your face either, if I think it might offend.
- longerthoughts 9y ago
  And it is your right not to work with that person, whether that means you choosing to leave or take internal action depending on circumstances (e.g. threats). However, who is entirely exempt from ostracizing others for their beliefs? For every person there is some universe of beliefs that are seen as such a threat to their reality, principles, or well-being that they will fight those beliefs and their representatives. That universe of beliefs may differ in size or relative merit on the basis of evidence for each person, but it exists.

amsheehan 9y ago

What I would take away from that notion is that large is relative. A large portion of the country still has fewer people than New York City. I am of course, not trying to start a flame war either, but my take on it is that those sorts of issues would be inappropriate to bring up at work or in a job interview in the first place, regardless of your position. Based on your description, I believe I probably espouse the opposite position on those issues, and even though I work at a large tech company in NYC I still don't bring them up at work. That said, I can totally see where you're coming from. I have a friend who ended up being a pretty staunch Donald Trump supporter, and I watched as a lot of colleagues ostracized him (even though he never really brought it up at work). It takes hard work to see past issues that divide us. In the case of my friend, I always just try to focus on our shared interests. It's what has kept us friends. In closing...there are of course different degrees of ideas that people will tolerate, and it may just be that large cities have spoken, and they don't want intolerant people in their ranks. shrugs, walks away

throwaway8766 9y ago
That's a great point and worth clarifying. I agree that neither side is super appropriate to bring up at work. I'm referring more so to circumstances like your friend who is a Trump supporter. It also gets murkier nowadays because companies are expected to take stances on social issues, and with certain ones are criticized when they don't.
- mikeash 9y ago
  Companies have always been expected to take stances on social issues. Within living memory, companies in many parts of the country were required by law to segregate their customers by race. In other parts of the country, many companies were expected to do this as well, although it wasn't a legal requirement. Similar things were true for companies' treatment of same-sex couples, unmarried heterosexual couples, single women, and non-Christians. The main difference I see is that the expected stances are more liberal than they used to be, and the penalties for failing to conform tend to be much less severe.
elsif1 9y ago

longerthoughts 9y ago

I've lived in cities on both sides of the political coin and can comfortably say that this is consistent for both liberal-dominant and conservative-dominant cities. I think part of the problem is that a lot of the issues you mention are seen as moral rather than ideological because peoples' values become so deeply rooted once they've spent enough time in like-minded communities (and perhaps some of the issues were really a question of morality to begin with). Beyond that, there's a heightened degree of generalization of "the other" when you're in a homogeneous community - if you support anything that aligns with an opposing political party, people will tend to project other values onto you that are generally associated with that party, regardless of whether or not you've expressed them.

bradleyjg 9y ago

> but in a major city I can never mention these things or I'll immediately become unemployable. The situation isn't great right now, I agree. But wild exaggeration doesn't help. It just makes people that you might be able to convince that the situation isn't great dismiss everything you are saying because of that wild exaggeration. Or at least some of those people, there may be an age divide here. But the point is if you want to be maximally persuasive you should avoid wild exaggeration. I live in a major city in the US. I know two or three quite vocal Trump supporters. Yes, they face social sanctions. Yes, it might affect their career on the margin when it comes time to look at e.g. who to promote or who to lay off. No they aren't unemployed, much less unemployable.

throwaway8766 9y ago
I appreciate the feedback. That wasn't intended to be an exaggeration, that is often how I perceive the situation (look at Brendan Eich), but it is certainly fair to consider whether that perception truly reflects reality.

lutorm 9y ago

I don't mind people being socially conservative, you can have whatever opinions you want about how you think people should live their lives or whatnot, and I'm perfectly willing to discuss them with you. I may not understand how you came to hold those views, but that likely goes both ways. What I'm not OK with, however, is people not respecting other people's rights to have their own views. And that goes from calling them names to refusing to serve them in their business to refusing to offer them the health insurance they want. Edit: Just to be clear, I agree that merely expressing views should not result in an online inquisition. That people whose views I generally agree with do makes me very uncomfortable, and I agree with Sam Altman that this makes it difficult to have serious discussions.

rgossiaux 9y ago

I think you're missing a key distinction. The problem is not that merely that you hold a political belief-- as you say, this by itself is over-the-top and unreasonable. The problem rather is that your particular political belief is viewed as being actively hostile towards people themselves or towards their friends or family or others. Voicing opposition towards gay marriage comes across as an attack on all gay people. That's where the reaction comes from. A political belief that's not treated as openly hostile towards others (for example, supporting charter schools or something) doesn't get this reaction, of course. It's not merely that "you just can't say that you believe certain things are right/wrong if it goes against norms"; you're missing the nuance here.

cookiecaper 9y ago
The issue is that with just a little bit of lather, it's possible to construe virtually any controversial opinion as "an attack" on the people that may be affected by it, however tangentially. Nothing in life is free and it is rare that there is a clean "perfect compromise" waiting to be discovered, which means that most trade-offs will have groups that can interpret the activity as hostile, even if their group is totally unaddressed ("Why does group Z get that thing and group Y only gets this thing?"). If we accept this argument that some opinions or positions are unconscionable because they are fundamentally "against" other people, we end up on a slippery slope, and the situation in SF is somewhere on that slope (in my opinion, nowhere near the bottom). Everyone wants in on the sympathy train and everyone loves shaming and silencing their opponents. We have to be careful to actively protect civil dialogue from such encroachments, because while they may feel sympathetic and nice at the time, that self-righteous reward system gets put on a feedback loop and drowns out everything else. If we've already seen people getting agitated into conflating arguments over the semantics and technicalities of a dry legal instrument like marriage with their individual right to self-existence and safety, that's proof of this phenomenon in itself.