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Yes it is a common tactic to back away from an initial claim and pivot after people call you out, but he already let the genie out the bottle.

by DiNovi 5y ago

tomschlick 5y ago
Its also common to not to explain things you think are obvious when initially talking but when someone asks you about it you clarify your position.
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  He also has every single motive to lie here.
  - tomschlick 5y ago
    Or he just thinks that the whole situation is ridiculous because there is zero evidence that we have seen relating any of this to white supremacy. Instead, those allegations are just brought out by people on the left anytime they want as a cudgel to stop all debate on a topic.
    - ashtonkem 5y ago
      Given that he has a history of quoting Breitbart, the primary newspaper of “actually racism against whites is the issue” and “black crime” I do not buy that. I also don’t buy it when they rush to scrub a ton of his chat history after this. That’s fishy as hell. > those allegations are just brought out by people on the left anytime they want as a cudgel to stop all debate on a topic. The irony of course is that this entire situation was accelerated by DHH and Fried creating a new policy saying “no politics or get out”. The people stopping all debate here are management, not the amorphous “left”.
      - tomschlick 5y ago
        > Given that he has a history of quoting Breitbart, the primary newspaper of “actually racism against whites is the issue”, I do not buy that. You have no idea if that's true or not or the extent of his comments. You're going off of an unsubstantiated claim and treating it as fact. > I also don’t buy it when they rush to scrub a ton of his chat history after this. That’s fishy as hell. They didn't scrub history after this. They deleted those forums a week or two before all of this (according to the article), in an apparent attempt to stop the political chatter. It seems when that didn't work they came out with the no politics policy. > The irony of course is that this entire situation was accelerated by DHH and Fried creating a new policy saying “no politics or get out”. The people stopping all debate here are management, not the amorphous “left”. There is still zero evidence that any of this has to do with white supremacy, so someone making that claim is ridiculous and is meant to stop all meaningful conversation. Once someone makes that claim the entire debate becomes about that claim and there is no turning back from it. That is very much the reason it is used so much. It seems they have/had quite a few political activists that were causing contention in the company. I don't blame them one bit for wanting to quell political stuff while on company time.
        ashtonkem 5y ago
        > You have no idea if that's true or not or the extent of his comments. You're going off of an unsubstantiated claim and treating it as fact. I find the selective application of epistemic uncertainty fascinating. Why not treat his rebuttal to the article as completely unsubstantiated? Or for that matter, why didn't he refute quoting Breitbart in the office, if it's not true? He was clearly given a chance to comment, the article includes his version of that meeting. Why are we forced to go into "nobody can possibly know" mode when there are three people saying he did that, and precisely nobody publicly denying it? It's also not "unsubstantiated". You just don't seem to believe the people who are claiming it. That's very different. > They didn't scrub history after this. They deleted those forums a week or two before all of this (according to the article), in an apparent attempt to stop the political chatter. It seems when that didn't work they came out with the no politics policy. You're correct about the timing, my mistake. I do not buy their motivations one bit. Given how publicly political DHH has been, this strikes me much less of "no politics here anymore" and more of "no politics the moment it's critical of us". > There is still zero evidence that any of this has to do with white supremacy I don't see any evidence that anyone originally claimed that the list of names was white supremacist, only that it was a bit racist to mock Asian or African names. This is why they appeared to have been talking about implicit bias so much, which became such a hot button issue later. And I think it's perfectly fair to pull in a bit of implicit bias training in this context, as well as some customer data protection training as well. Discussion of white supremacy cropped up when Ryan Singer allegedly said "I don't believe in a lot of the framing around implicit bias. I think a lot of this is actually racist", which appears to have made things spiral wildly out of control. I don't think it's a great idea to throw out the term white supremacist without a ton of evidence, but I can 100% see why someone would after having one of their executives effectively accusing everyone on the DEI committee of being racist against whites. > so someone making that claim is ridiculous and is meant to stop all meaningful conversation. Ryan tried to shut down discussion with this "Very often, if you express a dissenting view, you get called a Nazi". You don't get to complain about inflammatory, conversation ending rhetoric after coming out of the gate with that. Doubly so when you hold power in the company. Oh, and all this happened after the company had deleted all the threads and publicly announced the policy change to the world first. Its not internally consistent to accuse the “left” of shutting down the conversation with heated rhetoric, given the timeline of DHH and Fried’s decision to ban previously allowed office speech.
eloff 5y ago
Or he clarified a position that he didn't think needed it originally. Because who's so dumb as to caricature his argument as saying there's no white supremacy anywhere? People are just looking for someone to lynch, irony intended.
- dang 5y ago
  Please don't take HN threads further into ideological flamewar. That includes omitting gratuitous flamebait. I realize this thread has all sorts of such things going on in it, but this was a noticeable step hellward. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Yes it is a common tactic to back away from an initial claim and pivot after people call you out, but he already let the genie out the bottle.

by DiNovi 5y ago

Yes it is a common tactic to back away from an initial claim and pivot after people call you out, but he already let the genie out the bottle.

tomschlick 5y ago

Its also common to not to explain things you think are obvious when initially talking but when someone asks you about it you clarify your position.

ashtonkem 5y ago
He also has every single motive to lie here.
- tomschlick 5y ago
  Or he just thinks that the whole situation is ridiculous because there is zero evidence that we have seen relating any of this to white supremacy. Instead, those allegations are just brought out by people on the left anytime they want as a cudgel to stop all debate on a topic.
  - ashtonkem 5y ago
    Given that he has a history of quoting Breitbart, the primary newspaper of “actually racism against whites is the issue” and “black crime” I do not buy that. I also don’t buy it when they rush to scrub a ton of his chat history after this. That’s fishy as hell. > those allegations are just brought out by people on the left anytime they want as a cudgel to stop all debate on a topic. The irony of course is that this entire situation was accelerated by DHH and Fried creating a new policy saying “no politics or get out”. The people stopping all debate here are management, not the amorphous “left”.
    - tomschlick 5y ago
      > Given that he has a history of quoting Breitbart, the primary newspaper of “actually racism against whites is the issue”, I do not buy that. You have no idea if that's true or not or the extent of his comments. You're going off of an unsubstantiated claim and treating it as fact. > I also don’t buy it when they rush to scrub a ton of his chat history after this. That’s fishy as hell. They didn't scrub history after this. They deleted those forums a week or two before all of this (according to the article), in an apparent attempt to stop the political chatter. It seems when that didn't work they came out with the no politics policy. > The irony of course is that this entire situation was accelerated by DHH and Fried creating a new policy saying “no politics or get out”. The people stopping all debate here are management, not the amorphous “left”. There is still zero evidence that any of this has to do with white supremacy, so someone making that claim is ridiculous and is meant to stop all meaningful conversation. Once someone makes that claim the entire debate becomes about that claim and there is no turning back from it. That is very much the reason it is used so much. It seems they have/had quite a few political activists that were causing contention in the company. I don't blame them one bit for wanting to quell political stuff while on company time.
      - ashtonkem 5y ago
        > You have no idea if that's true or not or the extent of his comments. You're going off of an unsubstantiated claim and treating it as fact. I find the selective application of epistemic uncertainty fascinating. Why not treat his rebuttal to the article as completely unsubstantiated? Or for that matter, why didn't he refute quoting Breitbart in the office, if it's not true? He was clearly given a chance to comment, the article includes his version of that meeting. Why are we forced to go into "nobody can possibly know" mode when there are three people saying he did that, and precisely nobody publicly denying it? It's also not "unsubstantiated". You just don't seem to believe the people who are claiming it. That's very different. > They didn't scrub history after this. They deleted those forums a week or two before all of this (according to the article), in an apparent attempt to stop the political chatter. It seems when that didn't work they came out with the no politics policy. You're correct about the timing, my mistake. I do not buy their motivations one bit. Given how publicly political DHH has been, this strikes me much less of "no politics here anymore" and more of "no politics the moment it's critical of us". > There is still zero evidence that any of this has to do with white supremacy I don't see any evidence that anyone originally claimed that the list of names was white supremacist, only that it was a bit racist to mock Asian or African names. This is why they appeared to have been talking about implicit bias so much, which became such a hot button issue later. And I think it's perfectly fair to pull in a bit of implicit bias training in this context, as well as some customer data protection training as well. Discussion of white supremacy cropped up when Ryan Singer allegedly said "I don't believe in a lot of the framing around implicit bias. I think a lot of this is actually racist", which appears to have made things spiral wildly out of control. I don't think it's a great idea to throw out the term white supremacist without a ton of evidence, but I can 100% see why someone would after having one of their executives effectively accusing everyone on the DEI committee of being racist against whites. > so someone making that claim is ridiculous and is meant to stop all meaningful conversation. Ryan tried to shut down discussion with this "Very often, if you express a dissenting view, you get called a Nazi". You don't get to complain about inflammatory, conversation ending rhetoric after coming out of the gate with that. Doubly so when you hold power in the company. Oh, and all this happened after the company had deleted all the threads and publicly announced the policy change to the world first. Its not internally consistent to accuse the “left” of shutting down the conversation with heated rhetoric, given the timeline of DHH and Fried’s decision to ban previously allowed office speech.

eloff 5y ago

Or he clarified a position that he didn't think needed it originally. Because who's so dumb as to caricature his argument as saying there's no white supremacy anywhere? People are just looking for someone to lynch, irony intended.

dang 5y ago
Please don't take HN threads further into ideological flamewar. That includes omitting gratuitous flamebait. I realize this thread has all sorts of such things going on in it, but this was a noticeable step hellward. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html