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Maybe you could start by dismissing their experience (provided as an example, not as a sum total of the problem) and asserting that they need to provide more da

by zorpner 14y ago

Maybe you could start by dismissing their experience (provided as an example, not as a sum total of the problem) and asserting that they need to provide more data and evidence? It's a pretty good way of marginalizing women in tech if that's what you're shooting for.

smsm42 14y ago
I don't "dismiss" anything. Dismiss is defined by Merriam Webster as "to reject serious consideration of" (among other, irrelevant, meanings). I am doing quite the contrary - I seriously considered it and arrived to the conclusion that attributing a common, if unfortunate, occurrence in human interactions as a proof of special, discriminatory treatment of "women in industry" is wrong. Just as wrong as assuming anybody disagreeing with you just didn't consider your arguments - instead of entertaining the possibility they did seriously consider them and found them lacking. I see lately more and more of examples where common problems - from petty nuisances to serious problems between people - are harvested to find various "isms" in them instead of treating them just as problems between humans - and I personally don't like it. >>>> It's a pretty good way of marginalizing women in tech if that's what you're shooting for. Of course that's what I am shooting for. Marginalizing women in tech is my lifelong dream, and every step takes me a bit closer to it. No way it could be I actually want to discuss the particular article and share my thoughts about it - you can easily see thought this ruse and reveal my true and terrible goal. Me pointing out it is a common experience not suggesting any "ism" is just a wheel in the huge oppression mechanism I am constructing. Now you have subverted my plans to oppress women everywhere, but I will retire to my dark fortress and come back with even more evil plan of marginalizing women in tech by pointing out maybe not everybody actually tries to marginalize women in tech. Watch out!
derefr 14y ago
> dismissing their experience (provided as an example, not as a sum total of the problem) I think a lot of my problem with any sort of social justice commentary is exactly this: providing singular anecdotes with the implication that they're "proof enough" of a trend. I don't want to hear examples--all they do is incite emotional debates[2]. What they obviously are aimed at is getting people thinking about the solution (and being part of it.) Anecdotes, as a tool, are the worst possible means for this; without a better reference frame, other people can only compare a single anecdote to their own anecdotes (which have extremely different context), so conversation devolves in the most literal Babylonian sense. If you want your example to serve a purpose--if you really, really want to change things--then go out, find other people with similar examples, and wrap it up into a study. Then you can cite it, and people will actually derive useful conclusions--because you've now created a reference frame within which the anecdotes will be compared to one another. Otherwise, admit to yourself that (at least insofar as you are a rational being whose desires can be introspected), you just wanted to rant, and you just wanted to rile people up, without causing change to happen. (This is more directed at the generic "social justice blogger" than Rachel, who is a noncentral member[1] of that group.) --- [1] http://lesswrong.com/lw/e95/the_noncentral_fallacy_the_worst_argument_in_the/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/e95/the_noncentral_fallacy_the_worst... [2] Well, these articles also serve to give me heartburn in the middle of reading my morning tech RSS. I read HN to get into an aesthetic (commonly thought of as "hacker") frame of mind--I find that it really does increase my mental "elasticity" to read about things like 3D printing and quirks in the Win32 API before starting work for the day. But stories with a moral quality knock me out of it. It's sort of like interrupting a flow state, but emotionally. I have a feeling that establishing this particular hacker emotional state ("aesthete state") is the true service that HN provides for a lot of people, and that this may be the reason posts like this rile people up more than anything else. I really do wish HN would split, like MetaFilter, into separate "focus on hacker ideas" and "focus on the hacker community" subforms; it'd clean a lot of this up.

by zorpner 14y ago

smsm42 14y ago

I don't "dismiss" anything. Dismiss is defined by Merriam Webster as "to reject serious consideration of" (among other, irrelevant, meanings). I am doing quite the contrary - I seriously considered it and arrived to the conclusion that attributing a common, if unfortunate, occurrence in human interactions as a proof of special, discriminatory treatment of "women in industry" is wrong. Just as wrong as assuming anybody disagreeing with you just didn't consider your arguments - instead of entertaining the possibility they did seriously consider them and found them lacking. I see lately more and more of examples where common problems - from petty nuisances to serious problems between people - are harvested to find various "isms" in them instead of treating them just as problems between humans - and I personally don't like it. >>>> It's a pretty good way of marginalizing women in tech if that's what you're shooting for. Of course that's what I am shooting for. Marginalizing women in tech is my lifelong dream, and every step takes me a bit closer to it. No way it could be I actually want to discuss the particular article and share my thoughts about it - you can easily see thought this ruse and reveal my true and terrible goal. Me pointing out it is a common experience not suggesting any "ism" is just a wheel in the huge oppression mechanism I am constructing. Now you have subverted my plans to oppress women everywhere, but I will retire to my dark fortress and come back with even more evil plan of marginalizing women in tech by pointing out maybe not everybody actually tries to marginalize women in tech. Watch out!

derefr 14y ago

> dismissing their experience (provided as an example, not as a sum total of the problem) I think a lot of my problem with any sort of social justice commentary is exactly this: providing singular anecdotes with the implication that they're "proof enough" of a trend. I don't want to hear examples--all they do is incite emotional debates[2]. What they obviously are aimed at is getting people thinking about the solution (and being part of it.) Anecdotes, as a tool, are the worst possible means for this; without a better reference frame, other people can only compare a single anecdote to their own anecdotes (which have extremely different context), so conversation devolves in the most literal Babylonian sense. If you want your example to serve a purpose--if you really, really want to change things--then go out, find other people with similar examples, and wrap it up into a study. Then you can cite it, and people will actually derive useful conclusions--because you've now created a reference frame within which the anecdotes will be compared to one another. Otherwise, admit to yourself that (at least insofar as you are a rational being whose desires can be introspected), you just wanted to rant, and you just wanted to rile people up, without causing change to happen. (This is more directed at the generic "social justice blogger" than Rachel, who is a noncentral member[1] of that group.) --- [1] http://lesswrong.com/lw/e95/the_noncentral_fallacy_the_worst_argument_in_the/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/e95/the_noncentral_fallacy_the_worst... [2] Well, these articles also serve to give me heartburn in the middle of reading my morning tech RSS. I read HN to get into an aesthetic (commonly thought of as "hacker") frame of mind--I find that it really does increase my mental "elasticity" to read about things like 3D printing and quirks in the Win32 API before starting work for the day. But stories with a moral quality knock me out of it. It's sort of like interrupting a flow state, but emotionally. I have a feeling that establishing this particular hacker emotional state ("aesthete state") is the true service that HN provides for a lot of people, and that this may be the reason posts like this rile people up more than anything else. I really do wish HN would split, like MetaFilter, into separate "focus on hacker ideas" and "focus on the hacker community" subforms; it'd clean a lot of this up.