
Game Over - slig
http://antirez.com/post/game-over.html
======
blackhole
Some people are going to say that he was in the right, and some will argue
this is a consequence of being wrong, but this doesn't matter. What this
illustrates is the dangerous precipice that the world of blogging is hanging
on to, where the violent hatred that spews forth when anyone writes a remotely
controversial opinion threatens to silence any opinion that sways too far from
mainstream consciousness.

The fact that the first comment that was posted here was just more critique
about the original blog post and how supposedly "wrong" it was illustrates how
much of a problem this has become. Whether or not his opinion is wrong
_doesn't matter_. What matters is that he expresses it as an alternative
_perspective_ to mainstream conciousness.

Problems are solved and society is moved forward by a multitude of various
opinions, all right and wrong in their own ways, interacting with each other.
Each perspective provides a unique method of solving a problem which may not
yet exist. The more perspectives we have, the more ideas we have to work from
when we try to solve a problem.

By violently critiquing such controversial stances, we are indirectly
silencing those voices, and ultimately destroying our own ability to find
progressively better solutions to problems, because we get stuck inside a
single point of view and refuse to move outside of it. It is not simply a
matter of ignoring trolls either, because many of the most hurtful comments,
at least in my experience, are otherwise highly intelligent people who
completely missed the point of what you were trying to say, and have spent 10
minutes writing a scathing critique against a nonexistent problem.

If we continue to censor ourselves, it will destroy us.

 _"I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your
right to say it." - Voltaire_

~~~
ahelwer
I see this from a different perspective. We are finally getting to the point
where a critical mass of people are not going to tolerate sexist misinformed
crap as they encounter it, and will instead speak out en masse.

The blog post on sexism wasn't a "controversial opinion." The author wasn't
bravely standing up to the mainstream. It was just his crappy opinion that
tech needs to continue to try _very hard_ to move past.

Most importantly, his opinion was NOT silenced. Why do people in this arena of
conversation seem to consistently misinterpret the meaning of free speech? He
espoused his opinion, and then a whole bunch of other people espoused theirs.
Nobody was silenced. Quite the opposite, actually.

~~~
basman
This blog post? <http://antirez.com/post/different-take-sexism-it.html>

I'd be curious how many people here find this beyond the pale. As a data
point, I didn't. I don't agree with all of it, but I don't see what part of it
counts as sexist, in the sense of advocating discrimination based on gender.

~~~
jamesrcole
I think it's a thoughtful post. It's clear that he doesnt like discrimination
against anyone, and is proposing how we should act in order to treat everyone
in an inclusive and fair manner, for the benefit of all parties.

------
jhickner
Anyone smart enough to have an interesting opinion on this topic is probably
also smart enough to see that there's absolutely no upside to expressing that
opinion. It either parallels the mainstream (in which case it's redundant) or
it differs in some way, in which case it invites a retaliatory shitstorm.

In a nutshell Salvatore said that he prefers to raise the level of abstraction
(as programmers are wont to do) from focusing on how _female_ humans are
treated unequally to focusing on how _all_ humans are treated unequally. At
worst isn't this a disagreement on methodology rather than a disagreement on
values?

What purpose has been served by turning this topic into a third rail?

~~~
abraxasz
>Anyone smart enough to have an interesting opinion on this topic is probably
also smart enough to see that there's absolutely no upside to expressing that
opinion.

That's my exact conclusion for pretty much every interesting/controversial
topic. There's a very small circle of people (not necessarily friends by the
way) with whom I exchange ideas on politics/religion/philosophy or anything
potentially controversial. I know these people are smart and enjoy an
educating conversation. To the rest of the world I just spew the usual boring
conventional opinion when I'm forced to, or change the subject altogether when
I'm allowed to..

~~~
jhickner
Agreed. Any relationship where you can freely "entertain ideas without
accepting them" (- Aristotle) is something to be cherished. pg wrote an essay
on this topic, for anyone interested: <http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html>

------
venus
There seems to be a very specific pattern where someone says a problem is not
as bad as it's made out to be, and they are immediately jumped on as an enemy
who is not "serious" about the issue by those wishing to position themselves
as being "tough on X" for whatever reason. It doesn't seem to happen in the
other direction much, ie there seems to be little negative consequence about
getting too excited about a particular problem.

One sees this all the time:

\- outrage about someone saying that, all things considered, paedophiles are
not a particularly large risk to children

\- outrage about someone saying that terrorists are not the huge threat they
are made out to be

\- outrage about someone saying we should consider a more nuanced, pragmatic
approach to drug strategy

\- outrage about someone saying that maybe the IT industry is not solely
comprised of misogynistic psychopaths out to crush every woman under their
boot at every chance

I really hate this pattern. Needless to say there is little nuance to any of
the smears, it's all just claims of "terrorist sympathiser" or "he's just
sexist too". Is there a name for it?

~~~
Karunamon
I've ended up defining it as a kind of poisoning the well. I posted on both
Reddit and HN about this and got some interesting responses:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/r5zrf/is_there_a_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/r5zrf/is_there_a_word_for_this_debate_phenomenon_and_is/)

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3732508>

------
powera
Just from reading the blog posts, it seems like this is a bit of an
overreaction to some mild criticism of a mediocre blog post.

Then I looked at Twitter.

If there are multiple people tweeting basically "you're stupid" dozens of
times ( <https://twitter.com/kendall> seems particularly egregious) it's not
being in any way productive, it's a bunch of people being assholes and
claiming "you're sexist" as a shield against anything they might do.

I don't know if it's something specific to Twitter, or just making people
"celebrities" who aren't ready to handle the stupid comments that come with
it.

~~~
rntz
It's twitter-endemic, if not twitter-specific, for the simple reason that it's
hard to express a coherent, well-justified argument in 140 characters, but
easy to express anger.

The anger might even be justified; just don't go to twitter expecting to
_read_ the justification.

------
waratuman
It is a shame to see such hate against people. @antirez was attacked for
openly sharing his thoughts about sexism. The sad part is that those who
attacked him seek respect for their points of view yet do not give it to
others.

------
tomasien
While I agree that vitriol isn't the best response to someone displaying a
lack of understanding, as you did, I hope you don't get defensive and instead
try to learn something from the people who made reasonable critiques of your
thoughts. Because they need some adjusting.

~~~
antirez
Hint: you are saying that my thoughts need to be "adjusted".

~~~
tomasien
(edited because it was in the wrong place in the conversation)

Your thoughts about sexism, at least how to express them? Absolutely. I don't
want to diminish you or your ability to assess a complex system, but it seemed
to me (and a lot of other people) that you expressed a great deal of ignorance
and a lot of classic misguided assumptions based on limited and biased
personal anecdotal experience. But if you don't agree after considering that,
then that is just that. I only urge you to take this opportunity to do some
thinking. Isn't that why you put your thoughts out publicly in the first
place?

~~~
iamdave
_based on limited and biased personal anecdotal experience._

It's not as he presented his case as stone-cold fact and call me crazy, but
aren't personal anecdotal experiences exactly the things that give birth to
opinion?

Since when did sharing a belief/stance/daring to opine on something demand
anything other than anecdote? I don't like that thought pattern at all.

~~~
tomasien
I'm not saying they're not valid because they're based on anecdotal
experience, but that anecdotal experience is much weaker than say, serious
study. Saying his opinions were based on anecdotal observations isn't why I'm
saying they're off, it's why I'm saying perhaps there are deeper resources to
be examined. That's all, I'm really not trying to demonize his experience in
any way, just hoping for further reflection rather than simply being defensive
against the extreme reactions from some

------
silentmars
Is there a link to the thing that happened to set off this post? I read the
previous post and its comments and saw nothing out of the ordinary.

~~~
antirez
long story short, a blog post about sexism I wrote generated a reply that
remembered me that I was probably not in a communication environment I was
happy to be in... so I'm finding new ways to communicate that don't involve
tweets.

~~~
mst
I tend to treat twitter as a broadcast platform and largely ignore the replies
anyway - but I certainly won't discuss sexism on there. It's ... far too easy
for topics like that to generate a flash mob; if you don't find "ignore it" to
be an acceptable response then leaving seems fair enough - but I'd recommend
to anybody on twitter to ignore any replies to controversial statements in any
case.

------
unoti
Leaving the flamewar world and focusing more on the work seems like a real
healthy thing to me.

------
dacilselig
Perhaps it's just me (and the irony of me saying this will be obvious after
reading this post) but if you are writing blogs, isn't it obvious that
eventually you will get negative feedback and in some cases verbal harassment?
My perspective on such things is that say you have 1000 followers of your blog
and you write on a topic. Odds are that out of the 1000, 75% of them will
likely not give any feedback, 10% will give positive, 8% will give negative
and then there's the 2% that may verbally harass you because they are
offended. Does this mean that they are bad people for doing something like
that? Well I guess it's up to you to decide whether they are.

However, try to remember that there are people out there who were not taught
or never picked up on the idea that you should be courteous when talking to
over individuals. Maybe they were never taught it, taught the opposite, or
have difficulty in controlling their anger. They can also believe so strongly
in something to the point of doing something unethical. The point is not to
take things personally when people attack you directly versus your ideas.
Instead why not ask them why they felt it was necessary to talk in that
fashion?

Apologizing for offending them can also help in alleviating any direct attacks
as it makes them aware of how they are acting. A little social engineering is
a good thing to know. Don't just run away from it. There are so many better
ways of going about it.

------
recuter
The medium is not the message.

With that being said, antirez, it seems that your experience got too noisy and
counterproductive and it makes a lot of sense to disengage a bit. You're
missing out on very little.

Also, thank you for your work.

------
eykanal
I have no idea who you are or what you do, so this comment includes a certain
naïveté. That being said, turning off comments doesn't accomplish anything. As
you see here, your article was posted, and there are comments, and you're
reading them, and you have no control over them. People will have opinions and
that has nothing to do with you.

The article itself-—as with any article that discusses sexism--was guaranteed
to be controversial from the get-go, given its topic. Given that you seem to
be somewhat popular, a controversial post from a popular person will elicit
all types of discussion, including lots of flaming. I'm not sure why this
surprises you, or why you are responding so strongly, but I would definitely
encourage you to reconsider; I love interacting with people whose articles I
read frequently, and I imagine the same is true in your case with your
audience.

~~~
chewxy
He wrote Redis.

------
eliasmacpherson
I don't know if anyone has suggested this, but if I were you, I'd take your
original article off to the nearest Women's Studies department at a
University. You're far more likely to get a reasoned response than here or on
Twitter.

------
tlear
Following antirez on twitter was one of the few really worthwhile sources of
real signal there for me. Honestly it is really sad to see him leave, I
learned a ton from just reading his feed over time.

------
hakunin
This discussion has little meaning. Everyone makes a call. Author made a call
to express his controversial view, and there is no point in saying that his
free expression was thwarted by others' free expressions. Others made a call
to respond by teaching the author how wrong he is in many constructive and
destructive ways. All of this is meaningless, because controversial opinions
are appreciated when they are the right call, and hated when they are the
wrong call. It's a coin flip for the most part.

Author complains that people are acting badly, but these people are everything
that the world consists of. There is nothing else on the receiving end of his
message except these (and other) people. Who else to express your opinion to?
I'd assume author knows that. When you add salt into your tea, you don't blame
your tastebuds for disliking it. Occasionally, however, you dip bacon into
chocolate and your tastebuds go "whoa, awesome". This is the risk of
controversial opinion. If you make it, just prepare yourself for the
inevitable. There is a reason experiments require goggles.

As a community, we should strive to be calmer and more thoughtful about the
way we express ourselves, and try harder to make the right calls. If everyone
could do that, however, we probably wouldn't have the sexism problem in the
first place.

------
Aldebaran
The gist is basically "People should be treated the same way regardless of
gender/race/...", which I agree to entirely, people who are trolling are
probably incompetent women or sexually frustrated nerds afraid of losing the
few female interactions they are exposed to in the workplace.

~~~
mdonahoe
"people who are trolling are probably incompetent women or sexually frustrated
nerds"

You sound like you are trolling

------
roguecoder
Free speech goes both ways; it is not freedom to consequence-free speech.

Want to express the opinion that women (and presumably men) who are
highlighting and combating sexism are just demanding special treatment and
wasting everyone's time? That's fine, but everyone else has the freedom of
speech to criticize your speech and form an opinion of you based on what
you've said. That's how this works.

Hypocrisy is unbecoming. Self-censorship because other people will point out
how wrong you are isn't censorship; it's doing your homework. If you don't
want to be called ignorant and wrong, don't be ignorant and wrong.

Imagine some journalist coming in and saying the problem with software
development was that programmers didn't document enough. It isn't censorship
for their opinion to be laughed out of the room.

------
atomical
HN is starting to become drama central.

~~~
mattdeboard
Yeah gets like that every September or so. I've taken to calling it, "It's
always September or so"

------
rdtsc
One thing to keep in mind is that unless people strongly agree _but_ even
mildly disagree the will post something in reply. In rest, most people who
kind of agree or the ones that are sort of neutral will not feel the need to
click reply or post. So anything controversial is bound to receive more
negative feedback. Any positive or supportive comments might come as a second
wave, in response to a slew of negative comments but those are sort of a
second order effect.

Trolls will just detect this is a sensitive topic, and regardless if they
personally care or not about the issue, will see a potential for flame war and
will not resist the urge to dump a can of gasoline in the fire and then watch
the show.

------
stefantalpalaru
Yes, sometimes being rational and having common sense will get you flamed but
what's that got to do with twitter? Antirez is a well known programmer and the
amount of reaction he gets is above average. Was anybody expecting anything
else?

------
volta1
if you are apt to stop blogging/tweeting because someone(s) leaves a comment
that hurts your feelings, then you shouldn't be sharing your opinion in
public, anyways.

------
Evbn
Less cyclical arguing, more redis.

Win-win.

