Comment by edison85 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by edison85 | Hacker News Reader

Having read the full manifesto, I find myself agreeing with the author's thought process for a bunch of his points and clearly disagreeing with others. He presented them well, not offensive at all, and if I had a discussion with him I'm sure he seems open to change certain beliefs if presented with ample evidence. I would generally love talking to this guy. Instead everyone shames him, tells him his mostly very valid thought process is sexist and his career is done. This guy woukd never discuss this with anyone and things will go on as they do today or worse he'll ostracize the left completely and will go in his own bubble and no positive change. This is what happened with Trump, an acquaintance posted on Facebook how the gender wage gap was almost nonexistent at the same job, industry and role but how we should instead work towards empowering women to better deal with promotions and re entering work force after pregnancy and unanimously got destroyed by maybe a hundred fb friends. He removed most of them and started jut posting pro trump stuff and I don't blame him

"That's how you create monsters".

Reminds me of that guy in France, Dieudonné. He was a pretty famous comedian and he ended up making a joke about jewish people on TV. The jewish lobby got hard on him, got him banned from TV channels. Consequently he got banned from radios, cities started refusing him touring, etc...

Now he became a huge antisemitic and he's friend with all the extreme-right people.

http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2017/08/07/google-fires-viewpo...

He was contacted by breitbart the alt right extremist nationalist paper which is comprised of very xenophobic individuals, at least as of now, and he responded to their emails and not to others as far as I can tell. He's now clearly pissed and will speak out because he's ostracized completely by the left. MIT Harvard phd, damn it got another Dieudonne

> Instead everyone shames him, tells him his mostly very valid thought process is sexist and his career is done.

It's a method: https//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struggle_session

Broken link (missing a colon): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struggle_session

> Instead everyone shames him, tells him his mostly very valid thought process is sexist and his career is done

What? This guy has gotten an unbelievable amount of attention and debate on the topic he wanted to discuss, both in support and against it.

Trump got the same attention, and constantly complained he didn't get enough.

Enough with this lie that certain [far right] conservatives don't get enough press. They get plenty of it by making outlandish statements that they know will get them lots of attention, both good and bad.

You fail to see the difference between attention and actual debate. Very few of the opposing views actually try to dissect his statements, but choose to rant away. Yonatan's piece being a prime example of an ad hominem that attacks views he never once wrote in favour of.

It's also quite dishonest of you to liken a reasonably well written, source referenced piece with the rants from the clown in the oval office. The manifest was to start a debate, not chants of MAGA.

Instead of general statements about outlandish remarks, attack what he actually said.

> It's also quite dishonest of you to liken a reasonably well written, source referenced piece with the rants from the clown in the oval office.

The parent comment mentioned Trump, and I'm responding to that. Fact is, the parent comment, the manifesto author, and Trump, all complain about not getting the proper attention. Meanwhile, they're getting a TON OF IT! and laughing all the way to the attention-bank.

> You fail to see the difference between attention and actual debate

"Actual debate"? Sounds like you want the debate to happen on your terms. That's not how debate works.

The original author wrote that women have "higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance". That is highly debatable. Yonatan responds to the author's belief that "women and men are intrinsically different" as it pertains to the workplace.

We all know that, historically speaking, women have had fewer rights and opportunities than men. Women won equal rights from government, and it's not so shocking to me that a company might try diversity training in order to move the needle further towards equal opportunity.

You are saying what the guy posted wasn't offensive and also that everyone is finding it offensive.

That makes no sense unless everyone is stupid.

Maybe everyone is stupid. Not really -- some are malicious, for example, this medium post starts with a bald-faced lie.

You're correct, but this story is being buried on HN. The lie at the beginning;

>about, essentially, how women and men are intrinsically different and we should stop trying to make it possible for women to be engineers, it’s just not worth it

Thank you for pointing this out, really changed his credibility in my eyes.

> You are saying what the guy posted wasn't offensive and also that everyone is finding it offensive.

This is exactly what's been going through my mind following the threads on this issue today.

> That makes no sense unless everyone is stupid.

I think this is a false dichotomy. The offended comments seem to be offended by arguments similar to those in the manifesto rather than those in the manifesto. E.g. offense is rightly taken at the argument "biological differences explain job preferences" while the manifesto argues "biological differences explain job preferences [in part]".

So rather than [A] being being offended by something that is not offensive (i.e. stupid) or [B] the manifesto being offensive I think we're left with [C] people being rightly offended by something that's not in the manifesto.

With this the argument becomes: That makes no sense unless people have bad reading comprehension

Which I happily accept :)

Actually, what I was trying to say was that the document cannot be simultaneously non offensive and yet offend everyone reading it unless "everyone is stupid = has bad reading comprehension"

I don't think everyone has bad reading comprehension, tbh. It is what parts of the document that you focus on - the ones that align with your existing world view - that cause you to agree with it or get offended by it.

Some see it as "just sharing an opinion" and others see it as "questioning my capability of doing the tech job"

Both sides are reading the same document.

> Some see it as "just sharing an opinion" and others see it as "questioning my capability of doing the tech job"

Could you point me to a quote taken in context that does that? I just reread the document and fail to see where the manifesto questions an individuals capacity of doing a tech job. I'm honestly trying but fail to see the offense.

AFAIK the author questions whether the percentage of capable and willing individuals is the same between men and women [1].

The manifesto also contains this quote to put the above in context

> I’m also not saying that we should restrict people to certain gender roles; I’m advocating for quite the opposite: treat people as individuals, not as just another member of their group (tribalism).

[1]: I agree with his conclusion that a non 50/50 split is not necessarily bias. The reasoning can't be discussed without the removed references.

PS: > "everyone is stupid = has bad reading comprehension" I disagree with the equality in general but I think your interpretation is fair as well - we probably just disagree on the context (e.g. did people pay full attention or even read the article at all).

> Could you point me to a quote taken in context that does that? I just reread the document and fail to see where the manifesto questions an individuals capacity of doing a tech job. I'm honestly trying but fail to see the offense.

I'd second this. I've read it a few times and can't see the problem. To be explicit, I'm not saying there is no problem, I'm asking for help to see it.

The basic premise that we disagree on is do men and women have the same mental ability to do the same engineering task.

It sounds like you agree that there are differences in men and women that mean a non 50/50 split is understandable without being blamed of bias.

Have I understood you correctly?

You are saying what the guy posted wasn't offensive and also that everyone is finding it offensive.

Heh, interesting point, though I chalk it up to a bit of carelessness. When you say:

That makes no sense unless everyone is stupid.

Actually it has nothing to do with intelligence or stupidity and everything to do with what ought to be considered a baseline "thickness of skin," in the context of a discussion of corporate policies and priorities. Parent is saying that a reasonably normal and well-balanced person should be able to read the manifesto without being offended. Certainly, anyone who thinks they are in a position to provide advice to a company with a half a trillion dollar market cap should have a thick enough skin to read that without getting offended.

Also, it's worth considering the distinct possibility that the people acting offended and outraged by the manifesto aren't being genuine. Or else they haven't read it and have simply been told to be offended. That's how this works. A bunch of writers for big-name media properties get people outraged by running a story claiming that a Googler wrote an "Anti-Diversity Screed," which sounds awful of course. The problem is that such a claim is simply not true.

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