6 ms·

Pure speculation, though.

DoreenMichele 6y ago
"Pure speculation" ...by a woman who is likely the only woman to have ever spent time on the leader board of HN, who is a former full-time wife and mom, who was a top student in her graduating high school class and a National Merit Scholarship winner and ended up a homemaker anyway instead of having a "real career," who has studied social things both formally (in college) and informally (out of personal interest trying to figure out why I didn't get the two-career couple lifestyle I thought I would get)...among other things. (edited to correct a typo)
- jpxw 6y ago
  The chip on your shoulder is showing
  - DoreenMichele 6y ago
    Rather ironic that my above comment is being downvoted and I am being accused of having a chip on my shoulder in a discussion about how Einstein's first wife got insufficient credit for her contributions to his work. I'm merely explaining what informs my point of view to someone whose handle was about 30 minutes old when I replied to it on the assumption that they have no idea what my background is.
- coldtea 6y ago
  Wouldn't that make it less strong than speculation? It would make it speculation by someone with a stronger bias towards a specific explanation due to their personal experiences.
  - DoreenMichele 6y ago
    It's a somewhat unique point of view from someone who has studied such things to try to figure out how and why they work that way in hopes of escaping such patterns. It's frustrating but not exactly surprising that this is rapidly turning into a dismissive pile on.
    - herodoturtle 6y ago
      FWIW, I for one enjoyed reading your perspective. This is something my wife and I discuss all the time. We're both ambitious in our respective careers, and your points have added value to my view of this discussion. Thanks for sharing.
    - pjc50 6y ago
      Yeah, if a woman suggests that HN might be a bit sexist there is inevitably a horde of people rushing to prove their non-sexism by downvoting the one woman in the discussion.
      - Chris2048 6y ago
        b/c if there is one woman in a discussion then that woman is the official rep/mascot/bellweather of all womankind.. or maybe the sex/gender of the user is not relevant to the reason for the downvotes? and maybe even refraining from downvoting a post b/c that user is a woman is itself sexist?
        coldtea 6y ago
        >and maybe even refraining from downvoting a post b/c that user is a woman is itself sexist? You're not supposed to say that, or treat women as equals -- in that you equally troll them / equally openly disagree / become equally aggresive / or equally "well actually" them as you'd do for any fellow nerd... Equality somehow means "treat women equal, but different". For example "well actually" it's something a nerd does to another nerd all the time. If you do it to woman though, it's "mansplaining" and its sexist...
    - monoideism 6y ago
      ...
      - DoreenMichele 6y ago
        Stephen Hawking had a very serious disability. He had a real career. Without knowing all the details, the respectful thing to do is keep your (dismissive) speculation about my life to yourself.
- jb1991 6y ago
  > woman who is likely the only woman to have ever spent time on the leader board of HN What?
  - DoreenMichele 6y ago
    The leader board of HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders My previous handle is Mz. It hit the leader board in October 2017. About six weeks later, I changed my handle to this one. As far as I know, I am the only member who posts as openly female who has spent time on the leader board.
    - jb1991 6y ago
      Since you spend a lot of your time on this social media site and get listed as one of its frequent users, that means you can empathize with Einstein's wife?
      - DoreenMichele 6y ago
        No, that's just a thing I can relatively readily point to that gets respected here if you have male bits between your legs but gets roundly dismissed as worthless internet points if you have female bits between your legs. I can empathize with her because I was one of the top three students of my graduating class and had the highest SAT scores of my class. I was STAR student and a National Merit Scholarship winner. I was inducted into Mu Alpha Theta, a college-level math honor society, at age 16 in eleventh grade, the earliest you can be inducted. At age 15, I was state alternate for the Governor's Honors Program, a residential gifted summer enrichment program. That means only two other people outperformed me in the entire state of Georgia on a topic I sort of picked randomly out of a hat because I was a well-rounded student and didn't have any particular area of obvious strength like most candidates. But more to the point, I have a form of cystic fibrosis and I have been getting myself well for nearly two decades while the entire world calls me crazy and a teller of tall tales and a liar and throws me off of one forum after another which is why I don't cite it more often as a reason I can empathize with someone like Mileva Einstein. I much more often compare myself to Semmelweis and talk about trying hard to not end up locked up in an insane asylum and beaten to death for the crime of thinking I know something medically useful. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis What I know really ought to qualify me for something like the Nobel Prize in Medicine. But I'm not holding my breath. I'm not likely to ever get any recognition for my accomplishments. The dismissive nonsense in this thread is very much the norm, unfortunately.
- vagrantJin 6y ago
  > ...a National Merit Scholarship winner and ended a homemaker anyway instead of having a "real career," I would be interested to know why you feel you are entitled to a 'two-career' lifestyle. That you are not is a choice you made, unless you can give the name of the person who pointed a gun to your head to prove otherwise. If you are unhappy with your choices, take responsibility and make amends.
- watwut 6y ago
  None of that however makes you more likely to be right about 1930 Germany social structures and behavior. It does give you some insight into stay at home situation and such. > possibly because he was treating a woman like his equal This for example is complete speculation. Him being Jew and him being undisciplined (his bad grades in math were totally due to that) had likely to do with it a lot more.
  - tpush 6y ago
    > [...] (his bad grades in math were totally due to that) Einstein never had bad grades in math, that’s a myth.
    - watwut 6y ago
      His undergraduate and graduate results were mediocre. He had good high school results, but not in college.
      - cvbcvbcvbcvbc 6y ago
        He was given extra reading material and read advanced math books while in high school, afaik.
- will4274 6y ago
  > the leader board of HN Fwiw, the [hacker news guidelines](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) ask that you avoid commenting on voting (like this one). > Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. This pattern - posting something controversial and breaking the rules - and then blaming it on people not liking the controversial thing you said - is not uncommon. Indeed, I frequently see comments to the effect of "See Trump was right about the tech companies being monopolies but people here will downvote me because they hate Trump" sitting at the bottom of every thread when I enable "showdead". In sum - if you want to get more votes (as you apparently care about votes) and for people to give your ideas more consideration - consider not self-sabotaging by pairing your ideas with a rule breaking comment. Fwiw, this is the third time I've seen you bring up your rank on the HN leaderboard. It's also the third time I've heard of the HN leaderboard. I'm not sure if somebody being ranked on HN makes me more or less likely to consider their argument - probably less, because it means they spend too much time on social media - but it's not a strong effect in any case. Simply put - does literally anybody care about that leaderboard besides you?

"Pure speculation" ...by a woman who is likely the only woman to have ever spent time on the leader board of HN, who is a former full-time wife and mom, who was a top student in her graduating high school class and a National Merit Scholarship winner and ended up a homemaker anyway instead of having a "real career," who has studied social things both formally (in college) and informally (out of personal interest trying to figure out why I didn't get the two-career couple lifestyle I thought I would get)...among other things. (edited to correct a typo)

jpxw 6y ago
The chip on your shoulder is showing
- DoreenMichele 6y ago
  Rather ironic that my above comment is being downvoted and I am being accused of having a chip on my shoulder in a discussion about how Einstein's first wife got insufficient credit for her contributions to his work. I'm merely explaining what informs my point of view to someone whose handle was about 30 minutes old when I replied to it on the assumption that they have no idea what my background is.
coldtea 6y ago
Wouldn't that make it less strong than speculation? It would make it speculation by someone with a stronger bias towards a specific explanation due to their personal experiences.
- DoreenMichele 6y ago
  It's a somewhat unique point of view from someone who has studied such things to try to figure out how and why they work that way in hopes of escaping such patterns. It's frustrating but not exactly surprising that this is rapidly turning into a dismissive pile on.
  - herodoturtle 6y ago
    FWIW, I for one enjoyed reading your perspective. This is something my wife and I discuss all the time. We're both ambitious in our respective careers, and your points have added value to my view of this discussion. Thanks for sharing.
  - pjc50 6y ago
    Yeah, if a woman suggests that HN might be a bit sexist there is inevitably a horde of people rushing to prove their non-sexism by downvoting the one woman in the discussion.
    - Chris2048 6y ago
      b/c if there is one woman in a discussion then that woman is the official rep/mascot/bellweather of all womankind.. or maybe the sex/gender of the user is not relevant to the reason for the downvotes? and maybe even refraining from downvoting a post b/c that user is a woman is itself sexist?
      - coldtea 6y ago
        >and maybe even refraining from downvoting a post b/c that user is a woman is itself sexist? You're not supposed to say that, or treat women as equals -- in that you equally troll them / equally openly disagree / become equally aggresive / or equally "well actually" them as you'd do for any fellow nerd... Equality somehow means "treat women equal, but different". For example "well actually" it's something a nerd does to another nerd all the time. If you do it to woman though, it's "mansplaining" and its sexist...
  - monoideism 6y ago
    ...
    - DoreenMichele 6y ago
      Stephen Hawking had a very serious disability. He had a real career. Without knowing all the details, the respectful thing to do is keep your (dismissive) speculation about my life to yourself.
jb1991 6y ago
> woman who is likely the only woman to have ever spent time on the leader board of HN What?
- DoreenMichele 6y ago
  The leader board of HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders My previous handle is Mz. It hit the leader board in October 2017. About six weeks later, I changed my handle to this one. As far as I know, I am the only member who posts as openly female who has spent time on the leader board.
  - jb1991 6y ago
    Since you spend a lot of your time on this social media site and get listed as one of its frequent users, that means you can empathize with Einstein's wife?
    - DoreenMichele 6y ago
      No, that's just a thing I can relatively readily point to that gets respected here if you have male bits between your legs but gets roundly dismissed as worthless internet points if you have female bits between your legs. I can empathize with her because I was one of the top three students of my graduating class and had the highest SAT scores of my class. I was STAR student and a National Merit Scholarship winner. I was inducted into Mu Alpha Theta, a college-level math honor society, at age 16 in eleventh grade, the earliest you can be inducted. At age 15, I was state alternate for the Governor's Honors Program, a residential gifted summer enrichment program. That means only two other people outperformed me in the entire state of Georgia on a topic I sort of picked randomly out of a hat because I was a well-rounded student and didn't have any particular area of obvious strength like most candidates. But more to the point, I have a form of cystic fibrosis and I have been getting myself well for nearly two decades while the entire world calls me crazy and a teller of tall tales and a liar and throws me off of one forum after another which is why I don't cite it more often as a reason I can empathize with someone like Mileva Einstein. I much more often compare myself to Semmelweis and talk about trying hard to not end up locked up in an insane asylum and beaten to death for the crime of thinking I know something medically useful. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis What I know really ought to qualify me for something like the Nobel Prize in Medicine. But I'm not holding my breath. I'm not likely to ever get any recognition for my accomplishments. The dismissive nonsense in this thread is very much the norm, unfortunately.
vagrantJin 6y ago
> ...a National Merit Scholarship winner and ended a homemaker anyway instead of having a "real career," I would be interested to know why you feel you are entitled to a 'two-career' lifestyle. That you are not is a choice you made, unless you can give the name of the person who pointed a gun to your head to prove otherwise. If you are unhappy with your choices, take responsibility and make amends.
watwut 6y ago
None of that however makes you more likely to be right about 1930 Germany social structures and behavior. It does give you some insight into stay at home situation and such. > possibly because he was treating a woman like his equal This for example is complete speculation. Him being Jew and him being undisciplined (his bad grades in math were totally due to that) had likely to do with it a lot more.
- tpush 6y ago
  > [...] (his bad grades in math were totally due to that) Einstein never had bad grades in math, that’s a myth.
  - watwut 6y ago
    His undergraduate and graduate results were mediocre. He had good high school results, but not in college.
    - cvbcvbcvbcvbc 6y ago
      He was given extra reading material and read advanced math books while in high school, afaik.
will4274 6y ago
> the leader board of HN Fwiw, the [hacker news guidelines](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) ask that you avoid commenting on voting (like this one). > Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. This pattern - posting something controversial and breaking the rules - and then blaming it on people not liking the controversial thing you said - is not uncommon. Indeed, I frequently see comments to the effect of "See Trump was right about the tech companies being monopolies but people here will downvote me because they hate Trump" sitting at the bottom of every thread when I enable "showdead". In sum - if you want to get more votes (as you apparently care about votes) and for people to give your ideas more consideration - consider not self-sabotaging by pairing your ideas with a rule breaking comment. Fwiw, this is the third time I've seen you bring up your rank on the HN leaderboard. It's also the third time I've heard of the HN leaderboard. I'm not sure if somebody being ranked on HN makes me more or less likely to consider their argument - probably less, because it means they spend too much time on social media - but it's not a strong effect in any case. Simply put - does literally anybody care about that leaderboard besides you?