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>Your deciding what is and isn't important for women to care about is a perfect example of privilege. What privilege exactly? The privilege of sharing my opin

by batista 15y ago

>Your deciding what is and isn't important for women to care about is a perfect example of privilege. What privilege exactly? The privilege of sharing my opinion on HN and getting down-voted for it? I thought "privilege" was a concept related to power, what happened to that notion? Women, like men, also care about BS. Non-issues, stupid issues, moral non-issues, religious hard-lines, the latest celeb gossip, some fad, etc. One can decide for himself what he considers important for other people to care about, like I did, and tell those other people his opinion. Like I did. And apparently, like you did. Free speech, is a bitch. You don't only get people complaining about sexism in "that's what she said jokes". You also get people complaining about meta-sexism, ie, whether the first kind of complaining is important or stupid. >When somebody says they care about something, the right response is to take note of why they care, and try not to repeat the mistakes on display here. Responding with arguments about why we shouldn't care about this is furthering the problem. If there IS a problem in the first place. Because, sometimes the problem is "caring about something", itself. For example, when you are a hypochondriac, the problem is not the diseases, rather the problem is that you consider them a problem in the first place.

Lockyy 15y ago
One thing that bothers me about any and all up-vote/down-vote systems is exactly what has happened to Batista. He expresses an opinion that is contrary to what other people are saying and he gets down-voted into oblivion. This just feeds into the creation of a culture bubble and never lets anyone in the communities views get challenged. As a side note, I would like to clarify that my view on the issue is: A) Not relevant to the point I'm bringing up; and B) Not the same as Batista's. However, nor is it the same as anyone else’s in this discussion. (It's worrying that I have to clarify this for fear of being down-voted like him. I should not have to sit here and worry that I will get branded a sexist for not just mindlessly hitting down-vote on him. This is a horrible trend that needs to stop.) I'll be down-voted myself anyway for even daring to defend someone’s right to express their opinion however. You get given a down-vote at a high karma so that you can use it against spammers and not just to use it on people you disagree with. So god damn it learn to argue with people properly instead of just trying to silence them. Edit: Also, down-voting people as you disagree with them verbally is like gagging them whilst you debate them. It doesn't convince anyone, it just angers them and sets them in their ways more.
- hythloday 15y ago
  One one hand, down-voting someone because (you think) they're wrong is counterproductive to a healthy discussion, but batista is doing the equivalent of walking into a technical discussion about, let's say, improving Django performance and saying "look, just use Rails, duh!" - there's nothing insightful about that position (which just seems to mirror normative culture), and the posts have a slight tin-foil-hat tone. There are some statements that are just not worth arguing against and are tangential to the point of distraction. Would you agree that those kinds of comments are worth downvoting (even if you don't agree that batista's comments fall into that category)?
  - batista 15y ago
    >One one hand, down-voting someone because (you think) they're wrong is counterproductive to a healthy discussion, but batista is doing the equivalent of walking into a technical discussion about, let's say, improving Django performance and saying "look, just use Rails, duh!" That would be "being off topic". But what I did was being counter-general-HN-sentiment, which is different. I replied on the same topic, added counter arguments (which few of my commenters did --instead, they kept it on the personal level, Batista this and Batista that, like here) >- there's nothing insightful about that position (which just seems to mirror normative culture) So, normative culture has nothing insightful to offer? Hundreds of millions of people beg to differ. I'd rather say that it's the prevalent position that can be described as de facto normative, and the prevalent position on the thread happens to be the opposite of mine. So, could a counter-position be insightful? Or is just nodding in agreement and adding another argument in favor of the prevalent thread position insightful? >There are some statements that are just not worth arguing against and are tangential to the point of distraction. And, as always, people fail to mention which. Or argue against them, since, as they claim, it's so "easy".
- pndmnm 15y ago
  Batista is not being downvoted because they're expressing a differing opinion. They're being downvoted because they're not taking the time to fully consider the issues and engage in reasonable debate. As an example, from their first post, they suggest that it's not legitimate to worry about this sort of problem because larger problems exist. This form of argument is not only blindly hypocritical (that is, if the arguer believed it, they would not be engaging in the subdebate but rather be working to resolve the larger problem) but intrinsically ridiculous -- it supposes that it's not legitimate to discuss any issue while "worse" problems persist. It's a self-defeating argument on a specialized forum like HN, and utilizing it indicates that someone isn't actually arguing the topic at hand (in a sense, it's a "universal" argument, and thus like nonfalsifiable theories, completely irrelevant). They then literally compare their own downvoting to the Salem witch trials (the irony of which is beyond belief, and further calls into question their sincerity), and additionally claim that proportion of women in tech is "not a serious issue in its manifestation or it's consequences at all", and when pressed that many people disagree, compare people who care about workplace sexism to hypochondriacs in order to marginalize their beliefs (this is particularly poisonous and a clear indicator that they're not interested in the viewpoints of others). They also fall into a really standard "I'm just expressing my opinion" backtrack, which is particularly ironic given that their initial complaint was that people were expressing their opinion on this topic rather than doing something more worthwhile. Regardless of their viewpoint, they're not participating in reasonable intellectual discourse. We're not obligated to argue with someone who's plainly not interested in having an actual argument, and the up/down-voting is working as it should in this instance (I'm certainly not saying it works as it should in all instances, but this is pretty clear).
lifeisstillgood 15y ago
Re Lockyy - the trend of people downvoting and then continuing to argue with someone is annoying. Sometimes the font is so small I literally cannot read what has upset people is this a technically solvable problem - if you downvote doyou then get your reply link taken away? Is this actually a problem or are downvoters different people to those who keep on arguing?

by batista 15y ago

Lockyy 15y ago

One thing that bothers me about any and all up-vote/down-vote systems is exactly what has happened to Batista. He expresses an opinion that is contrary to what other people are saying and he gets down-voted into oblivion. This just feeds into the creation of a culture bubble and never lets anyone in the communities views get challenged. As a side note, I would like to clarify that my view on the issue is: A) Not relevant to the point I'm bringing up; and B) Not the same as Batista's. However, nor is it the same as anyone else’s in this discussion. (It's worrying that I have to clarify this for fear of being down-voted like him. I should not have to sit here and worry that I will get branded a sexist for not just mindlessly hitting down-vote on him. This is a horrible trend that needs to stop.) I'll be down-voted myself anyway for even daring to defend someone’s right to express their opinion however. You get given a down-vote at a high karma so that you can use it against spammers and not just to use it on people you disagree with. So god damn it learn to argue with people properly instead of just trying to silence them. Edit: Also, down-voting people as you disagree with them verbally is like gagging them whilst you debate them. It doesn't convince anyone, it just angers them and sets them in their ways more.

hythloday 15y ago
One one hand, down-voting someone because (you think) they're wrong is counterproductive to a healthy discussion, but batista is doing the equivalent of walking into a technical discussion about, let's say, improving Django performance and saying "look, just use Rails, duh!" - there's nothing insightful about that position (which just seems to mirror normative culture), and the posts have a slight tin-foil-hat tone. There are some statements that are just not worth arguing against and are tangential to the point of distraction. Would you agree that those kinds of comments are worth downvoting (even if you don't agree that batista's comments fall into that category)?
- batista 15y ago
  >One one hand, down-voting someone because (you think) they're wrong is counterproductive to a healthy discussion, but batista is doing the equivalent of walking into a technical discussion about, let's say, improving Django performance and saying "look, just use Rails, duh!" That would be "being off topic". But what I did was being counter-general-HN-sentiment, which is different. I replied on the same topic, added counter arguments (which few of my commenters did --instead, they kept it on the personal level, Batista this and Batista that, like here) >- there's nothing insightful about that position (which just seems to mirror normative culture) So, normative culture has nothing insightful to offer? Hundreds of millions of people beg to differ. I'd rather say that it's the prevalent position that can be described as de facto normative, and the prevalent position on the thread happens to be the opposite of mine. So, could a counter-position be insightful? Or is just nodding in agreement and adding another argument in favor of the prevalent thread position insightful? >There are some statements that are just not worth arguing against and are tangential to the point of distraction. And, as always, people fail to mention which. Or argue against them, since, as they claim, it's so "easy".
pndmnm 15y ago
Batista is not being downvoted because they're expressing a differing opinion. They're being downvoted because they're not taking the time to fully consider the issues and engage in reasonable debate. As an example, from their first post, they suggest that it's not legitimate to worry about this sort of problem because larger problems exist. This form of argument is not only blindly hypocritical (that is, if the arguer believed it, they would not be engaging in the subdebate but rather be working to resolve the larger problem) but intrinsically ridiculous -- it supposes that it's not legitimate to discuss any issue while "worse" problems persist. It's a self-defeating argument on a specialized forum like HN, and utilizing it indicates that someone isn't actually arguing the topic at hand (in a sense, it's a "universal" argument, and thus like nonfalsifiable theories, completely irrelevant). They then literally compare their own downvoting to the Salem witch trials (the irony of which is beyond belief, and further calls into question their sincerity), and additionally claim that proportion of women in tech is "not a serious issue in its manifestation or it's consequences at all", and when pressed that many people disagree, compare people who care about workplace sexism to hypochondriacs in order to marginalize their beliefs (this is particularly poisonous and a clear indicator that they're not interested in the viewpoints of others). They also fall into a really standard "I'm just expressing my opinion" backtrack, which is particularly ironic given that their initial complaint was that people were expressing their opinion on this topic rather than doing something more worthwhile. Regardless of their viewpoint, they're not participating in reasonable intellectual discourse. We're not obligated to argue with someone who's plainly not interested in having an actual argument, and the up/down-voting is working as it should in this instance (I'm certainly not saying it works as it should in all instances, but this is pretty clear).

lifeisstillgood 15y ago

Re Lockyy - the trend of people downvoting and then continuing to argue with someone is annoying. Sometimes the font is so small I literally cannot read what has upset people is this a technically solvable problem - if you downvote doyou then get your reply link taken away? Is this actually a problem or are downvoters different people to those who keep on arguing?