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> The only way that free speech works is that people feel free to vociferously disagree. Given the volume of, say, Domingos' tweets, he certainly feels free to

> The only way that free speech works is that people feel free to vociferously disagree. Given the volume of, say, Domingos' tweets, he certainly feels free to disagree. At this point the same can be said of Gebru and Anandkumar. Great! What's the problem here? Can't we just all just argue and get along? Well, given that Anandkumar tried to publicly shame a number of people over these discussions, clearly we can't all argue and get along if this is what it devolves into. And that's kind of the point. Why can't we have innocuous discussions that end in "let's agree to disagree" without someone deciding that public humiliation and threats to people's careers are now okay? Why are the stakes suddenly inflated to "the future of female involvement in STEM" in these squabbles? We can go around and around over who said what, but clearly Anandkumar crossed an ethical boundary here, and it's important to call that out. Creating a more diverse and inclusive community does not involve public threats. I wish that didn't need to be said, but apparently it does.

kaitai 6y ago
What are the public threats that you are citing? And what is the recourse Anima has in this fight? Pedro tweets sexual innuendo about her porn habits, and truly, what is there to do? All these fights are asymmetrical. That is why I am angry. I see women fired for "not following procedure", women harassed out of their jobs, women failing to advance, women failing to be funded, and then on top of it any important, well-respected guy can tweet about my sexual preferences, my porn habits, what he thinks about my body, what he'd like to do to my body, ON TOP of the professional disrespect, and... that's just dismissed in this farce of a letter that says harassment is bad and is signed by people who are explicitly and publicly guilty of harassment. There is no acceptable recourse for a woman in this fight -- you understand that, right? If I don't speak up, I'm complicit or agreed to ill treatment. If I do speak up, I'm participating in "cancel culture", haha. This letter seriously says, "Scientific discourse should be based on mutual respect, use of civil language, and professional conduct. Indeed, all disagreements in the scientific community, however heated or fraught, should be addressed through argument and persuasion and not through personal attacks or by coercively shutting down those with dissenting points of view," and is signed by a man who Tweeted, among other things, "So you get porn sites and I don't? Must be Google's personalization algorithm," and "There is no oppressor here, only deranged activists." I frankly don't see anything wrong with shaming people online, because that's the only tool many folks have got. Always I get told that the polite, private correction that doesn't embarrass or shame is optimal; but those corrections just don't work. If that worked, "the ladies" would have had the vote in 1776 in the US, as Abigail Adams so politely requested of her husband. Instead it took marches, hunger strikes, arrests, and all sorts of unpleasantness. If it's going to be unpleasant if we speak up online or stay silent online, what is there to lose? At least one way we get to keep our integrity. Pedro Domingos is the kind of guy who thinks he is oppressed because of his viewpoint. He is in fact disliked because of his unkindness. But it's oh so easy to cloak himself in words about "respect" while his words & actions show the opposite.
- Chazprime 6y ago
  > What are the public threats that you are citing? The threats she mentioned in her apology. > And what is the recourse Anima has in this fight? Pedro tweets sexual innuendo about her porn habits, and truly, what is there to do? As you suggested in your earlier post, she can choose to ignore a comment like that because it’s a silly argument. And even if she doesn’t, his comments still aren’t justification for her behavior.

kaitai 6y ago

What are the public threats that you are citing? And what is the recourse Anima has in this fight? Pedro tweets sexual innuendo about her porn habits, and truly, what is there to do? All these fights are asymmetrical. That is why I am angry. I see women fired for "not following procedure", women harassed out of their jobs, women failing to advance, women failing to be funded, and then on top of it any important, well-respected guy can tweet about my sexual preferences, my porn habits, what he thinks about my body, what he'd like to do to my body, ON TOP of the professional disrespect, and... that's just dismissed in this farce of a letter that says harassment is bad and is signed by people who are explicitly and publicly guilty of harassment. There is no acceptable recourse for a woman in this fight -- you understand that, right? If I don't speak up, I'm complicit or agreed to ill treatment. If I do speak up, I'm participating in "cancel culture", haha. This letter seriously says, "Scientific discourse should be based on mutual respect, use of civil language, and professional conduct. Indeed, all disagreements in the scientific community, however heated or fraught, should be addressed through argument and persuasion and not through personal attacks or by coercively shutting down those with dissenting points of view," and is signed by a man who Tweeted, among other things, "So you get porn sites and I don't? Must be Google's personalization algorithm," and "There is no oppressor here, only deranged activists." I frankly don't see anything wrong with shaming people online, because that's the only tool many folks have got. Always I get told that the polite, private correction that doesn't embarrass or shame is optimal; but those corrections just don't work. If that worked, "the ladies" would have had the vote in 1776 in the US, as Abigail Adams so politely requested of her husband. Instead it took marches, hunger strikes, arrests, and all sorts of unpleasantness. If it's going to be unpleasant if we speak up online or stay silent online, what is there to lose? At least one way we get to keep our integrity. Pedro Domingos is the kind of guy who thinks he is oppressed because of his viewpoint. He is in fact disliked because of his unkindness. But it's oh so easy to cloak himself in words about "respect" while his words & actions show the opposite.

Chazprime 6y ago
> What are the public threats that you are citing? The threats she mentioned in her apology. > And what is the recourse Anima has in this fight? Pedro tweets sexual innuendo about her porn habits, and truly, what is there to do? As you suggested in your earlier post, she can choose to ignore a comment like that because it’s a silly argument. And even if she doesn’t, his comments still aren’t justification for her behavior.