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Social Justice Warriors are shrinking the bounds of possible thought and tarnishing people's reputations. If you're not self-employed, they can get you fired. I
by crassus 13y ago
Social Justice Warriors are shrinking the bounds of possible thought and tarnishing people's reputations. If you're not self-employed, they can get you fired. I'm an old-fashioned liberal: I believe that thoughtful, free discussion leads to improving our knowledge of the world. So first of all, SJWs are the enemy of free thought and they have turned their eyes towards tech. I hate to see the enemy wielding power or gaining in it.
Secondly, I agree it is useful to introspect into tech culture and hiring practices to make sure we are not turning away good candidates. But we cannot judge the fairness of a hiring process solely by results because the hiring process doesn't control the larger culture that a person grows up in. If the cartoons kids watch at age 8 only have pimply male geeks in tech roles and as a result your startup has a skewed gender ratio 14 years later, that doesn't make the startup founders a witch, oops I mean sexist.
Changing the culture is a monumental task, but the startup community is not shying away from it. They are investing in early childhood education and other initiatives to give all people the opportunity to code. But the fruits of these projects will be long-term.
In the meantime, I want people to be able to discuss the issue openly and honestly without being attacked/fired, because I believe that makes us most effective and I believe that is what is right. The SJWs looking to burn witches aren't adding anything and they can go to hell.
- tptacek 13y agoYour comment would have been just as effective without its first and last graf; had you refrained from trying to caricature everyone who feels like gender imbalance is a problem, I would merely disagree with most of it. It is simply not true that cartoon representations of computer programmers are a necessary component of an effective startup hacker. Changing the culture is indeed a monumental task, but the startup community seems to be embracing the current culture and back-rationalizing its attributes. You see this when you see people describe how getting started at age 13 is somehow important to building CRUD websites.
- crassus 13y agoJust curious - do you think that outlets like Valleywag are a positive or negative for our industry? If something is a positive for everybody who believes the "right" way and negative for everybody else, I tend to believe that's a net negative because it makes us dumber in the aggregate.
- tptacek 13y agoNegative.