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Comment by bufbupa | Hacker News Reader

Are you arguing we should spare factual discourse for the sake of someones subjective feelings?

Why don't you go ahead and read this:

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2017/08/sloppy-scien...

Simply put, unless you are mindful of someone's "subjective feelings" you will never be able to have a "factual discourse" with them. People are individuals and not statistics. You can quote statistics and average all day long, but if you offend, anger, or harm someone with your words, that person will not listen to you.

> Simply put, unless you are mindful of someone's "subjective feelings" you will never be able to have a "factual discourse" with them.

Isn't that a catch 22? How do we know their subjective feelings if we can't discuss contested issues?

No, not really. For this specific example, Damore knew the issue is a divisive one. If he didn't, then he does need to have some basic sensitivity training. From what I remember reading, he did acknowledge the issue was contentious. In that respect, there are ways and techniques to have that conversation. What Damore did was not that way. He should have consulted a resource like Crucial Conversations (https://www.amazon.com/Crucial-Conversations-Talking-Stakes-...) first.

Sensitivity training would not have helped and is not required here.

He went out of his way to praise women engineers and to emphasize he supports diversity.

There are just certain that intolerant people cannot discuss rationally, like biological gender differences.

The fault lies with the intolerant minds, not Damore's approach.

That's victim blaming. His claims that he supports diversity are nothing more than false virtue-signaling. I have yet to find a person who would say there are no biological gender differences. The problem is assuming those differences are the underlying cause for why women and minorities are under represented in technology. Were you aware the first programmers were females? There are -many- reasons why women and minorities are underrepresented. The biological differences are not a significant one.

> Were you aware the first programmers were females?

That was when there were some low thousands of software engineers in total. Hardly statistically significant to compare with today's population.

The first few engineers were female because of sexism in the 1970s. The only mainstream jobs they were allowed to have were teaching and programming. There are fewer females now because of lack of sexism not due to it. As society became liberal, women started becoming doctors and lawyers, which matches with their interests much more than programming.

Damore is the victim of an aggressive and intolerant mob. I am certainly not victim blaming.

Yes, the fault lies with intolerant minds.

If we forget this, then intolerant minds will have awesome veto powers over what the rest of us will be allowed to discuss.

Intolerant people are likely to use those veto powers.

Damore self-identifies as autistic [1]. Are you seriously suggesting that the proper course of action is that a mentally ill individual should receive training on how to speak and think from his corporation? What has the world come to where this is sanity.

Liberals today: "Embrace diversity of thought, color, and sexual genitalia! Wait I don't like that thing he said, fire him. Wait, he's mentally ill and thus persecuted, he needs to be protected. Wait, autism isn't a metal illness, he's fine just the way he is. Wait, he's a white male, he's not fine just the way he is, he's evil. Wait, he's self-identifying as autistic, he's not really autistic, a doctor has to diagnose him. Wait, no, that's different than self-identifying your gender, that's totally fine."

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/JamesDamore/comments/6thcy3/im_jame...

Thanks for the link, but I disagree with your interpretation and the analogy here. I interpreted this link as saying "don't speak in absolutes", not "don't hurt someones feeling". More often than not, there's information you find out later, and its very likely that you could be wrong. EG: nobody can run a 4 minute mile.

This memo did not say women were bad engineers.

Why don't you reread that article?

>The sloppy scientist says, "on average, across populations, left to its own devices, this group is [not as skilled] [neurotic] [hard to work with] [not as smart] [not as strong] [slower]" etc. They make assumptions without sufficient data, and the rigor is missing.

Here's the line: >The first problem is that human beings aren't averages, they're individuals.

His core argument was that there are biological reasons why women are under-represented in technology and that the initiatives taken by Google to reach out to females were illegal and discriminatory. He attempted to use science to justify his beliefs. That would lead many women, who already are self-conscience about their position, into wondering if they are present to their own merit, or because Google is trying to fill a quota.

The problem is anger and offense are caused by, and mechanisms for dealing with, having our minds changed. The only things you can attempt to persuade someone to change his mind about, without making him angry, is something he doesn't much care about in the first place.

The situation is more dire than that link suggests.

It isn't just that some people are too emotionally reactive to be directly involved in a reasonable conversation.

We are currently shutting down even the possibility of a conversation among any set of a large group of people, because some people in that group are uncomfortable with it.

They aren't even willing to sit out the conversation that makes them uncomfortable, they are insisting that nobody else be allowed to have the conversation within the larger community.

I think this interview with 4 female engineers gave a lot of ways how that discussion could have had. Have you read it yet?

In this case, it's not about "should factual discourse be allowed or not," that's a false dichotomy. It's whether the author of the memo knowingly took an approach to interpretation of the "facts" he selected that was actively harmful to his co-workers by creating a toxic and hostile work environment.

I believe he did, and the parent you're responding to seems to as well, but they didn't say anything about "spar[ing] factual discourse." You seem to be reading that into their comment.

And I would definitely say there are factual discussions that can be had privately between individuals who already trust each other that are better kept private in order to spare the feelings of non-participants. Other humans have feelings, taking them into consideration is not weakness.

"by creating a toxic and hostile work environment" can only be defined as such by those within it. I could say anything was toxic and hostile for any subjective reasoning. And it becomes "true" by your definition if enough people agree with me?

I'm arguing that line of reasoning is not constructive, and the collective's agreed upon opinions should not act as a barrier for scientific discourse. (which is what the memo was asking for)

Not much about that memo was "factual", whatever that means.

Some scientists did agree, even said he wrote an A worthy paper.

Others disagreed.

Even slatestarcodex argued a little for both sides.

Its clear scientific consensus has not been reached, and people need to discuss this openly with out censors.

It's pseudoscience at best.

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