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That's quite curious to me, since the overwhelming majority of the argument I've seen that cites the Damore memo glosses right over that distinction, or, at bes

by rosser 8y ago

That's quite curious to me, since the overwhelming majority of the argument I've seen that cites the Damore memo glosses right over that distinction, or, at best, does an, "I'm not saying the thing, but, you know, the thing..." with this very question. Maybe that's an inference I'm putting there, in at least some of the cases, but in another nontrivial subset of them, it's a serious exercise in creative interpretation to find any other read of the person's own words.

pygy_ 8y ago
Damore did not mention the variability hypothesis, but he clearly made his points in terms difference of distributions, implying that aiming for exact parity while using metrics that are biased in favor of males was foolish. At least that's what I remember of his essay. The whole thing was a bit ham-fisted though...
lawnchair_larry 8y ago
Haha, it glosses over that because it seems obvious! Why is a disclaimer necessary? It feels inappropriate. Why would someone assume I’m saying this other awful thing, instead of saying only what I’m saying, nothing more and nothing less? Your last comment is truly perplexing to me, and it’s something I’ve observed from other “detractors”. Why are the words not read and interpreted literally? Why does it take a serious exercise in creative interpretation to not assume ulterior motives? I’ve spent a very long time puzzling over that. I considered it might be a “once bitten, twice shy” type situation, in which there is hyper vigilance involved, but that would only seem to explain “victims”, not allies, who do the same thing. This would seem to be supported by the observation that it’s only racist/sexist in one direction. But I really don’t know.
- rosser 8y ago
  > Why does it take a serious exercise in creative interpretation to not assume ulterior motives? Because I try to follow the HN guideline of assuming good faith on the part of the people with whom I engage. I'm definitely not always successful, but I doubt anyone is. When I find I'm having to get creative with my interpretation of the comment I'm reading, to the extent that I'm reading in things that appear counterfactual to the comment's intent, or things its author has said elsewhere in the thread, in order to find a position that isn't premised in this broken extrapolation between populations and individuals we're discussing, is when I feel left with little choice but to assume it is thusly brokenly premised. That is to say: I try not to find it, but when I find myself twisting someone's words in order to make it not appear in them, my fallback case is to (tacitly) assume it's there, pending better evidence. Does that clarify the perplexity my (admittedly somewhat awkwardly phrased) comment seems to have created?
telotortium 8y ago
Without taking a position on the strength of the arguments in the Damore memo, if most of your news diet comes from the anti-Damore side of the debate, you're more likely to see only the less reasonable people on the pro-Damore side, for the same reason that people on the anti-SJW side mostly encounter the most inflammatory arguments on the pro-SJW side.
- rosser 8y ago
  > if most of your news diet comes from the anti-Damore side of the debate On this particular subject, most of my "news diet" has been the discussion in this very forum — which, net-net, I have an incredibly difficult time filing under "anti-Damore" — and the articles that inspired it. Please try not to make unsubstantiated assertions about the ideological breadth of my input. Please also consider whether using the term "SJW" is going to serve the point you're trying to make, or if you're (perhaps unintentionally) alienating people by using language that, from their perspective, is tantamount to name-calling. Even if in this specific instance you weren't doing that, it's going to go over about as well as an "SJW" describing a behavior on the part of the person with whom they're speaking as "racist" or "sexist". From the speaker's perspective, the term may merely seem descriptive, but from the listener's, the speaker has probably just killed the dialogue. No further understanding is likely come from it, because now the listener is primed defensively towards whatever else the speaker has to say. EDIT: Seriously, HN. How is an autist the one pointing out such basic interpersonal dynamics?
- lawnchair_larry 8y ago
  How the hell did this guy get flagged? Is SJW a trigger word now?
  - rosser 8y ago
    No, but it's corrosive to constructive discourse, per my other comment. I'm legit a little slack-jawed in "did you really go there?" to see this comment adjacent to that, considering. EDIT: I didn't flag that comment, fwiw. EDIT 2: "Trigger word" is another great example. That's a dismissive use of the notion, implying the people being "triggered" are irrational, emotional, and, by inference, wrong. It's an ad hominem, and it's destructive discourse. I don't know when we decided it was cool to conflate people expressing disapproval with people who've been traumatized and are reacting to a stimulus that's evocative of their trauma, but it's not. Speaking as someone who's experienced multiple kinds of the traumas that can legitimately warrant "trigger warnings", it's really, really not. I truly want to understand how someone thinks they can talk to and about people like that, and then cry foul at blowback.

by rosser 8y ago

pygy_ 8y ago

Damore did not mention the variability hypothesis, but he clearly made his points in terms difference of distributions, implying that aiming for exact parity while using metrics that are biased in favor of males was foolish. At least that's what I remember of his essay. The whole thing was a bit ham-fisted though...

lawnchair_larry 8y ago

Haha, it glosses over that because it seems obvious! Why is a disclaimer necessary? It feels inappropriate. Why would someone assume I’m saying this other awful thing, instead of saying only what I’m saying, nothing more and nothing less? Your last comment is truly perplexing to me, and it’s something I’ve observed from other “detractors”. Why are the words not read and interpreted literally? Why does it take a serious exercise in creative interpretation to not assume ulterior motives? I’ve spent a very long time puzzling over that. I considered it might be a “once bitten, twice shy” type situation, in which there is hyper vigilance involved, but that would only seem to explain “victims”, not allies, who do the same thing. This would seem to be supported by the observation that it’s only racist/sexist in one direction. But I really don’t know.

rosser 8y ago
> Why does it take a serious exercise in creative interpretation to not assume ulterior motives? Because I try to follow the HN guideline of assuming good faith on the part of the people with whom I engage. I'm definitely not always successful, but I doubt anyone is. When I find I'm having to get creative with my interpretation of the comment I'm reading, to the extent that I'm reading in things that appear counterfactual to the comment's intent, or things its author has said elsewhere in the thread, in order to find a position that isn't premised in this broken extrapolation between populations and individuals we're discussing, is when I feel left with little choice but to assume it is thusly brokenly premised. That is to say: I try not to find it, but when I find myself twisting someone's words in order to make it not appear in them, my fallback case is to (tacitly) assume it's there, pending better evidence. Does that clarify the perplexity my (admittedly somewhat awkwardly phrased) comment seems to have created?

telotortium 8y ago

Without taking a position on the strength of the arguments in the Damore memo, if most of your news diet comes from the anti-Damore side of the debate, you're more likely to see only the less reasonable people on the pro-Damore side, for the same reason that people on the anti-SJW side mostly encounter the most inflammatory arguments on the pro-SJW side.

rosser 8y ago
> if most of your news diet comes from the anti-Damore side of the debate On this particular subject, most of my "news diet" has been the discussion in this very forum — which, net-net, I have an incredibly difficult time filing under "anti-Damore" — and the articles that inspired it. Please try not to make unsubstantiated assertions about the ideological breadth of my input. Please also consider whether using the term "SJW" is going to serve the point you're trying to make, or if you're (perhaps unintentionally) alienating people by using language that, from their perspective, is tantamount to name-calling. Even if in this specific instance you weren't doing that, it's going to go over about as well as an "SJW" describing a behavior on the part of the person with whom they're speaking as "racist" or "sexist". From the speaker's perspective, the term may merely seem descriptive, but from the listener's, the speaker has probably just killed the dialogue. No further understanding is likely come from it, because now the listener is primed defensively towards whatever else the speaker has to say. EDIT: Seriously, HN. How is an autist the one pointing out such basic interpersonal dynamics?
lawnchair_larry 8y ago
How the hell did this guy get flagged? Is SJW a trigger word now?
- rosser 8y ago
  No, but it's corrosive to constructive discourse, per my other comment. I'm legit a little slack-jawed in "did you really go there?" to see this comment adjacent to that, considering. EDIT: I didn't flag that comment, fwiw. EDIT 2: "Trigger word" is another great example. That's a dismissive use of the notion, implying the people being "triggered" are irrational, emotional, and, by inference, wrong. It's an ad hominem, and it's destructive discourse. I don't know when we decided it was cool to conflate people expressing disapproval with people who've been traumatized and are reacting to a stimulus that's evocative of their trauma, but it's not. Speaking as someone who's experienced multiple kinds of the traumas that can legitimately warrant "trigger warnings", it's really, really not. I truly want to understand how someone thinks they can talk to and about people like that, and then cry foul at blowback.