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Your assumptions about me are pretty off base and that’s the problem. You’ll never be rhetorically successful by invalidating people’s personal experience. I ha

Your assumptions about me are pretty off base and that’s the problem. You’ll never be rhetorically successful by invalidating people’s personal experience. I have a lifetime of making decisions and viewing their outcomes to draw from. You have theory. I can look at what works for me, do more of it and see it pay off. I can see people do the opposite and fail. This is why I think the concept of privilege will never grow beyond the people who already believe in it. It’s just too smug at its core.

joshuamorton 9y ago
>I can look at what works for me, do more of it and see it pay off. I can see people do the opposite and fail. And this is the fallacy in your thinking. I can find people who made terrible choices and became more successful than you. I can find people who made similar choices to you and are much less successful. If that's all you do, then plain and simple, your experiences are invalid. They don't matter. They're not data. And anyway, you're already successful now, so your choices practically don't matter anymore. Success begets success. To put it simply, you need to accept that there are people who made good choices as you did, and aren't successful despite their hard work and good choices. Because that's fact. That's the world we live in. That's not smug. It's a hard pill to swallow, sure and I don't really blame you for refusing to. But there's nothing smug about it.
- malvosenior 9y ago
  Do you really believe that nothing we do matters? That it’s all a roll of the dice or uncontrollably riding the waves of systematic oppression and privilege? I don’t see how that’s useful. Yeah, life is not always fair but if you don’t believe in free will or that you can actually have some impact on your own existence, then what’s the point of even living it? And let’s be real, if you’re good at what you do, you’ll be fine. Every good developer can get a job. That’s the economic reality we live in. People are capable of achieving that with hard work. Like you said though, it doesn’t matter. It worked for me and it worked for millions of other people so whether you think that was luck, privilege or something else it doesn’t impact my success. What you may accomplish is encouraging people who could help themselves to not do so. Probably not even that though because the kind of people who can help themselves are already used to ignoring the naysayers.
  - joshuamorton 9y ago
    >Do you really believe that nothing we do matters? That it’s all a roll of the dice or uncontrollably riding the waves of systematic oppression and privilege? No, and this is the second time now that you've made a ridiculous strawman out of my statements. I'm saying systematic oppression and privilege matter and have an impact. This is opposed to what you said which, if I understand correctly is "work hard and you'll be successful, no matter the situation". When I say "no the situation matters too", you manage to interpret this as some kind of fatalistic "everything is predetermined" argument, which it is not. To be clear, I'm not saying that privilege is the only component of success. I'm saying that hard work is not the only component of success. So far you seem to be interpreting the second as the first. Perhaps if you actually tried to understand what I was actually saying, instead of going out of your way to misinterpret it, you would realize that it wasn't as much nonsense as you think. >And let’s be real, if you’re good at what you do, you’ll be fine. Every good developer can get a job. That’s the economic reality we live in. People are capable of achieving that with hard work. There are a lot of people that don't have the means to "become a good developer". I'll agree that good developers can get a good job, but for a lot of people, there aren't enough hours in the day to do what you handwave away as a given. >the naysayers. What, specifically, am I doing that is naysaying? Is saying "your success is a product of both your hard work and your circumstances" naysaying? Really?
    - malvosenior 9y ago
      You say this: > To put it simply, you need to accept that there are people who made good choices as you did, and aren't successful despite their hard work and good choices. I 100% disagree. If you make good decisions and work hard you'll be more successful than you would have been without doing that. If you study something with economic value, you'll get to participate in that value (if you're good). I've never seen someone who is actually good at what they do (if it's something that's valued economically -- I've seen plenty of poor but skilled musicians for instance) live in destitution. Not once. > There are a lot of people that don't have the means to "become a good developer". There are people who don't have the mental capacity to do it yes, but I accept that and have no problem with it. We can't all be successful, utopias are a fantasy. I'm talking about the people with the capability to be successful. They should work hard and not give a moment's thought to anyone telling them to "check their privilege". It's a pointless exercise, you don't owe anyone an apology for doing well.

joshuamorton 9y ago

>I can look at what works for me, do more of it and see it pay off. I can see people do the opposite and fail. And this is the fallacy in your thinking. I can find people who made terrible choices and became more successful than you. I can find people who made similar choices to you and are much less successful. If that's all you do, then plain and simple, your experiences are invalid. They don't matter. They're not data. And anyway, you're already successful now, so your choices practically don't matter anymore. Success begets success. To put it simply, you need to accept that there are people who made good choices as you did, and aren't successful despite their hard work and good choices. Because that's fact. That's the world we live in. That's not smug. It's a hard pill to swallow, sure and I don't really blame you for refusing to. But there's nothing smug about it.

malvosenior 9y ago
Do you really believe that nothing we do matters? That it’s all a roll of the dice or uncontrollably riding the waves of systematic oppression and privilege? I don’t see how that’s useful. Yeah, life is not always fair but if you don’t believe in free will or that you can actually have some impact on your own existence, then what’s the point of even living it? And let’s be real, if you’re good at what you do, you’ll be fine. Every good developer can get a job. That’s the economic reality we live in. People are capable of achieving that with hard work. Like you said though, it doesn’t matter. It worked for me and it worked for millions of other people so whether you think that was luck, privilege or something else it doesn’t impact my success. What you may accomplish is encouraging people who could help themselves to not do so. Probably not even that though because the kind of people who can help themselves are already used to ignoring the naysayers.
- joshuamorton 9y ago
  >Do you really believe that nothing we do matters? That it’s all a roll of the dice or uncontrollably riding the waves of systematic oppression and privilege? No, and this is the second time now that you've made a ridiculous strawman out of my statements. I'm saying systematic oppression and privilege matter and have an impact. This is opposed to what you said which, if I understand correctly is "work hard and you'll be successful, no matter the situation". When I say "no the situation matters too", you manage to interpret this as some kind of fatalistic "everything is predetermined" argument, which it is not. To be clear, I'm not saying that privilege is the only component of success. I'm saying that hard work is not the only component of success. So far you seem to be interpreting the second as the first. Perhaps if you actually tried to understand what I was actually saying, instead of going out of your way to misinterpret it, you would realize that it wasn't as much nonsense as you think. >And let’s be real, if you’re good at what you do, you’ll be fine. Every good developer can get a job. That’s the economic reality we live in. People are capable of achieving that with hard work. There are a lot of people that don't have the means to "become a good developer". I'll agree that good developers can get a good job, but for a lot of people, there aren't enough hours in the day to do what you handwave away as a given. >the naysayers. What, specifically, am I doing that is naysaying? Is saying "your success is a product of both your hard work and your circumstances" naysaying? Really?
  - malvosenior 9y ago
    You say this: > To put it simply, you need to accept that there are people who made good choices as you did, and aren't successful despite their hard work and good choices. I 100% disagree. If you make good decisions and work hard you'll be more successful than you would have been without doing that. If you study something with economic value, you'll get to participate in that value (if you're good). I've never seen someone who is actually good at what they do (if it's something that's valued economically -- I've seen plenty of poor but skilled musicians for instance) live in destitution. Not once. > There are a lot of people that don't have the means to "become a good developer". There are people who don't have the mental capacity to do it yes, but I accept that and have no problem with it. We can't all be successful, utopias are a fantasy. I'm talking about the people with the capability to be successful. They should work hard and not give a moment's thought to anyone telling them to "check their privilege". It's a pointless exercise, you don't owe anyone an apology for doing well.