>you can be accosted for publicly engaging a wrongthinker.
I don't think he cares about rationality, let alone having the fortitude to say what he means. "Everyone else is wrong and when I get called an asshole it's clearly because it's 1984."
I agree that he's probably an impossible case. He's too arrogant and far too emotionally weak if he thinks public rebuke of ideas is "accosting."
But we are in a public space, and the commonly-endorsed tactic of ignoring trolls has the unfortunate effect of letting this sort of pablum spread. I care about not letting stupid ideas and weak thinking persist without the easy counterarguments. When I say "mental virus" I really mean "mental virus." It's a sickness that only reason can defeat.
> when I get called an asshole it's clearly because it's 1984.
Well, it seems like my concerns are well-founded; because the first thing you did was look at my profile. Clearly you were looking to investigate me in some fashion, who knows why, I'm sure it'll do me no good if you're more than a peon.
Now imagine somebody else who doesn't feel comfortable with the (fairly mild here, thank you folks) level of hostility that I do; that mild-mannered person is the one I want to have an outlet for their thoughts so they don't stew in their own heads.
> because the first thing you did was look at my profile. Clearly you were looking to investigate me in some fashion, who knows why
Technically I read the thread and then looked at your profile. Because people such as yourself always have some self-aggrandizing, pseudo-intellectual nonsense in your bio that -- to everyone else -- clearly displays your ego, irrationality, and how wholly unprepared you are to seriously discuss matters in a forthright manner without trying to weasel your way around the topic. It's almost absurdly comical at how consistently you find such silliness.
>I'm sure it'll do me no good if you're more than a peon.
> Because people such as yourself always have some self-aggrandizing, pseudo-intellectual nonsense in your bio
Well, I added it a few days ago because somebody found a way to contact me, and it made them feel less isolated. They told me that I should have my email address in my HN bio with some words of encouragement (it's meant to be playful, if you didn't detect), so I added it. If you get the impression that it's there to play into my ego, well, that's less of a problem than the crushing loneliness of even one person.
> that -- to everyone else -- clearly displays your ego, irrationality, and how wholly unprepared you are to seriously discuss matters in a forthright manner without trying to weasel your way around the topic.
What have I not been forthright about? I am here, a fully identifiable human being. I was making conversation in the wee hours of the morning, and you two took your egg accounts and started assassinating my character. I did not resort to the same tactics, and I tried to answer each jab and remark as clearly as I could manage. I made sure not to make it personal.
> I'm quoting this just to draw attention to it.
Perhaps we can all sound cryptic sometimes. I'm not sure what you're getting at here. I'm saying that if you have it in for me, and (for example) you have direct access to a blacklist of some sort (usually reserved for management, and not peons), it'll do me no good that you're upset and willing to look for my bio.
No, I'm making a point about white supremacy and you're being pedantic about something tangentially related. It doesn't fucking matter how similar socialism is to communism when white supremacy is the outcome.
The Titanic is sinking and you're arguing with me about the difference between row boats and sail boats.
My sole point in this entire thread is that white supremacy is bad regardless of source.
I merely used an extreme example to show you that you were missing the forest for the trees, and you still are. I'm sorry that you're having this problem.
We've banned this account for repeatedly violating the HN guidelines and using HN for political/ideological flamewar, which is not a legit use of this site. Would you please not create accounts to do this with?
I'm sure white supremacists are concerned about employment, the decline of the American manufacturing sector, and the cost of health insurance. In fact, I'm pretty sure these concerns contribute to their desire to join others who say they have the solution.
> Not even remotely the same thing. Not even in the same galaxy. Not even in the same universe.
Now, I'm not generally one to nickel-and-dime the deathtolls of genocidal ideologies, but I don't think you could credibly argue that in the 20th century National Socialism was more deadly than Communism. At least you'd have to concede that they are in "the same universe", or "the same galaxy".
Don't use hyperbole, else all of your blood will drain instantly from your eyes.
A century later and here we are. Lovely book by the way, I highly recommend anyone read it while keeping in mind the era it was written in. It should make you question our social policies, or lack thereof.
No he CLAIMED he wanted to treat people like individuals, but that's literally, completely negated by the rest of his memo. He cites statistics with some sources that aren't even reputable and others than haven't been touched in a quarter of a century, and when there is credible science he attempts to create detached conclusions that implied that these certain psychological traits across various populations were somehow applicable to the professions those populations are in -- with absolutely NO substantive data on the subject. He literally just winged it and went "Obviously these traits, that are barely statistically significant across the general population, SURELY negatively affects being an engineer or a manager. Just believe it. Moving on here are my totally worthless solutions at solving my totally made up, detached conclusions."
And people are trying to treat it as scientific, and some still want to pretend he wasn't shoe horning a political point in while masking it with feel good language. Despite the fact that he uses all of his data to separate populations by sex and treat them differently. My mind is being blown this morning.
Yeah, there's no evidence for gender preferences at all, except for the tons of evidence for gender preferences. This evidence is certainly up for debate, but don't go preaching on your high horse about how it is settled and no one has ever studied this, and how dare he even make an argument.
Err, where did I say there's no evidence for gender preferences? Where did I say it's settled? Why are you characterizing my statement as "preaching on a high horse" simply because I recognize that forming conclusions based on disparate sets of data (some of which is continually contradicted) is not a rational thing to do?
>This evidence is certainly up for debate
Well thankfully you had the cognition to see that.
I'm advocating for discussion, but pretending that you can start setting up solutions based on the data we have around how psychological traits affect professional outcomes, attempting to shoe horn those "solutions" into a political framework that treats everyone else that rationally disagrees with it as being in an "echo chamber", especially when you are essentially characterizing an entire population of professionals, is pretty foolish and toxic.
Did you even read the article you linked? How is that even remotely relevant to anything I said or what the memo's goal was?
Yes they did. The post was on an internal board which, if I understand right, was in response to a question by Google management about their diversity practices.
I find it hilarious that this guy was somehow okay with using disparate, unrelated facts to create detached conclusions to make a contrived political point, and when the obvious solution is to fire him because of his toxic, baseless beliefs that disrupt a working environment it's suddenly about free speech? That's delusional.
You out right take an unreasonable course of action, "predict" that there will be negative out comes from it, and cry foul when those negative outcomes come to fruition. What's sickening is how dishonest that is, what's disheartening is that the memo's creator is being defended by a sizable audience in the tech community.
There's a good deal of irony where the memo wanted to remove emotion from the conversation and face the "true" facts, yet the defenders of this guy want to cry about free speech (that isn't being violated) and defend terribly contrived pseudo-scientific points just to be outraged to defend some principle that was never being threatened in the first place.
It seems to be a continuing trend that people aligning to one side of the political spectrum are surprised when the rest of society rebukes them, and they get unimaginably offended at the reality that people actually react to things you do and say, especially when the latter statements are completely baseless.
You can apply it on higher level like that guy who bruteforced the 7roach rush for Zerg in SC2.
http://lbrandy.com/blog/2010/11/using-genetic-algorithms-to-...
Problem is that build orders are just optimizing the opening economy and these unbalanced openings will be just patched out in the future.
>This is precisely why we're stuck where we are in the first place.
No it isn't. It's a failure to acknowledge the reality of society we live and the language that powers and enables the status quo. It's an uncomfortable truth and one that has been painstakingly dug up over decades, but for every two steps forward on this subject the powers that be cause us to take one step back. Your unwillingness to substantially acknowledge such realities is what is stagnating this conversation, because certain ideas and solutions need to be repeated over and over again and sometimes re-branded to make it more appealing to people who don't want to address the problems present in our society.
Here we have a "memo" that uses credible science but has conclusions and ideas completely detached from that science, and then when it is pointed out how incredibly shit his conclusions are, it suddenly becomes an issue about "free speech." It's pretty akin to the whole "states rights" branding that happens with certain other political conversations. It IS dog-whistle language and utilizing such language while pretending you're not, and even worse pretending like you're actually making a point, is incredibly counter-productive to advancing anywhere on gender/sexual issues for everyone. It's dishonest at worst and ignorant at best.
This whole topic has PG's psuedo-philosophical musing's stink all over it and it's quite nauseating to have to dig through it. It's the bullshit asymmetry principle in action.
>you can be accosted for publicly engaging a wrongthinker.
I don't think he cares about rationality, let alone having the fortitude to say what he means. "Everyone else is wrong and when I get called an asshole it's clearly because it's 1984."