
Smearing Free Thought in Silicon Valley - cosmiccartel
http://quillette.com/2017/09/25/smearing-free-thought-silicon-valley/
======
ares2012
This article is a great example about why there is a sexual harassment problem
in technology. It's conflating two completely different things in the name of
"free thinking": the facts about men and women and the severity of sexism. Are
men and women different? Yes. Have those differences ever been shown to affect
their ability to do the same job? No. Sexism exists because of the perceived
answer to the second question, not the first.

The dismissal of Costolo's point about the urgency of addressing sexual
harassment based on a false dichotomy summarizes the key flaw in the entire
article. You cannot simultaneously have an intellectual debate about a topic
when one of the parties involved is being actively demeaned and marginalized.

~~~
alexandercrohde
I'm confused by your last sentence. How else can we decide which side or sides
is/are being demeaned/marginalized other than intellectual debate?

~~~
neuronexmachina
> How else can we decide which side or sides is/are being
> demeaned/marginalized other than intellectual debate?

The problem is that "intellectual debate" often ends up just being thinly-
veiled excuses for why it's ok to discriminate against the marginalized group.
It's kind of like how "intellectual debate" about phrenology was used to
justify attitudes about different races.

~~~
alexandercrohde
I notice you didn't answer my question.

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insickness
Why is this post flagged?

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alexandercrohde
I think the policy of flagging without providing an explanation is becoming a
problem on contentious issues. It allows a minority to have disproportionate
influence on a discussion.

I think there are several conflicting ideas of flagging:

\- Reason: I'm tired of this topic (I feel like this doesn't happen much, or
else all this bitcoin talk would have stopped 3 years ago, as well as
"Building X in language Y").

\- Reason: I think this piece is non-factual and doesn't present any
falsifiable claims.

\- Reason: I think this piece is demonstrably inaccurate

\- Reason: I think this is a controversial topic

I think controversy is an indication of the importance of a topic.

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yahna
> In the aftermath of the so-called Google memo affair, there has been no
> shortage of misleading and in some cases downright inaccurate media coverage
> painting the author, James Damore, and his supporters in a very unfavorable
> light.

Personally I think the biggest problem is that people who criticize him keep
going "he's wrong" "you can't say that" "saying women are less interested is
sexist". It just lets others further their manufactured outrage and act like
victims of oppression.

Vs he said things that strongly implied his female coworkers were less
competent and he was fired because of the damage this did to the work
environment.

> it is difficult to see how one could read his memo in its entirety and walk
> away with the conclusion that it was written by someone who seeks to keep
> women out of technology

uh huh. I'm getting really tired of being told I just didn't read it or
understand it. I read it. I think Damore is a fucking idiot for writing it
that way. I also think the basic idea "maybe less women are interested" is
perfectly reasonable to talk about. I think bringing up how much more neurotic
women are was incredibly fucking stupid. I think bring up the fact that he's a
conservative was just him whining. I think the people who say "it's science"
are missing the point. I think his memo was incredibly slanted and discussed
no reasons beyond some tenuous biological links as reasons for women not to go
into tech.

I also think a lot of the people who keep complaining about how they want a
dialogue are being disingenuous, because when someone says something against
the memo the response is that they obviously didn't read it.

> a political movement seeking to raise awareness of how gender inequality
> issues affect men and boys that has long been smeared in the media as
> misogynistic.

maybe cause it's pretty misogynistic. check their Reddit sometime (although
it's not as bad as MGTOW).

> it is not a hate movement rooted in misogyny

but there does seem to be a lot of misogyny in it.

They have real complaints about some things, but I feel like it's pretty easy
to why people are turned off by it.

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jordigh
Every repugnant conclusion has always come coated in a veneer of rationality.
No racist, sexist, islamophobe or any other kind of bigot has ever called
themselves by these appellations or expressed their opinions without being
able to bring in piles of dubious evidence to back up their opinions.

Let's take the example of the Men's Rights Movement discussed in the article.
While there are of course many factions within the MRM, the very existence of
something that arose specifically to counteract the rise of feminism is a slap
in the face to the struggles brought forth by women. With the same veneer of
rationality, its purpose is to drown out women's concerns by raising the
voices of men to a raucous cry.

This is not to say that men do not experience problems, but the MRM is almost
exclusively a reaction to feminism. It's an age-old divisionary tactic, of
pitting an oppressed group against an even more oppressed group. The English
American colonists considered the genocided Native Americans to be one of
their biggest oppressors, the war-torn Germans took to blaming the Jews who
have already been persecuted for centuries. It's easier to find a weaker
target than to look for the deeper causes of oppression.

The problem with Damore is not that his stats are wrong, but their veneer of
rationality. Disagreeing with his repugnant conclusions (such as, eliminating
Google's diversity programmes), is not because we hate scientific discourse,
but because his veneer of rationality is just that: a veneer. The causes and
explanations are far more complicated than what he cites or could cite in the
space of 11 pages, and in the meantime it's far better to err in the side of
caution and offer an advantage to the underrepresented group.

~~~
creaghpatr
Note the veneer of rationality in the above comment.

~~~
WaxProlix
I must have missed it - could you elaborate a bit?

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alexandercrohde
I think his point is that "veneer of rationality" almost serves solely as ad-
hominem, because there is no way to establish which side is truly rational
other than through debate itself.

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aaron-lebo
It's still hard for me to get over the fact that the very first people Damore
had interview him were Stephen "cult leader" Molyneux and Jordan Petersen.
He's also got interviews with Tucker Carlson and Ben Shapiro. It's totally
possible that they were the only outlets that would give him a platform, but
those are very biased and partisan outlets. If he was as objective and free
thinking as he's depicted as, why was his first reaction to jump to one of the
extremes?

[https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Stefan_Molyneux](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Stefan_Molyneux)

~~~
cosmiccartel
I'd mainly chalk that up to them being the only ones open to a genuine
discussion with him. The articles coming out in the aftermath were all
extremely demonizing of Damore.

I remember watching Peterson's interview with him, and Damore didn't really
seem comfortable with many of the former's statements, just based on his body
language. Maybe that was just social awkwardness.

Also, I don't follow Molyneux or Carlson, but neither Peterson nor Shapiro can
be truthfully called extreme.

~~~
yahna
Shapiro seems pretty extreme, just more mainstream conservatism.

Peterson just has a head the size of ontario at this point.

