Comment by nl | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nl | Hacker News Reader

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He didn't miss that; in fact, he wrote about it frequently in the past.

Can you point to that?

if you express your disagreement with the current feminist/social justice ideology on a public forum

While I agree that kind of behavior is what he is referring to, I'd note that is a perfect example of exactly what I said.

In the case of Damore specifically, yes, he lost his job but in return picked up numerous speaking engagements and is now a player in the culture wars. That's a long way from being executed!

He's suing Google, and being represented by Harmeet Dhillon, "a prominent San Francisco Republican who was considered for a post in the Trump administration" who is "a member of the Republican National Committee". Is it possible to be more entrenched in the mainstream culture wars than that?

Far from being Kolmogorov or Giordano Bruno, it seems to me he is closer to Kanye West circa the 2006 "Bush Doesn't Care About Black People" interview, or the Dixie Chicks anti-war comments, or Judith Miller's pro-Iraq war NY Times columns. All made some people really, really mad, and had some consequences for their authors, but long term just solidified their position for the other side.

If you're genuinely interested in how someone could view the situations as equivalent, here's one post (regrettably long, but I haven't found better): http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2009/01/gentle-...

Kolmogorov also becomes more relatable if you consider Damore's computer-science-related activities at Google science, and the role he's now cast into as politics. We don't execute, but we can blacklist and exclude. (Consider what might happen if he wanted to present a paper at a conference.)

That linked article was too long to read properly sorry.

In the history of American democracy, if you take the mainstream political position (Overton Window, if you care) at time T1, and place it on the map at a later time T2, T1 is always way to the right, near the fringe or outside it. So, for instance, if you take the average segregationist voter of 1963 and let him vote in the 2008 election, he will be way out on the wacky right wing. Cthulhu has passed him by.

Clearly 2009 and 2017 are pretty different worlds.

We don't execute, but we can blacklist and exclude. (Consider what might happen if he wanted to present a paper at a conference.)

This is precisely my point. There is no we - there are multiple groups, and while some may exclude others will welcome him.

As a specific - real world - example I'd note the rapturous reception any anti-climate change paper gets, and how authors get invited to present at anti-climate change conferences.

Yes, they maybe excluded and blacklisted from orthodox scientific conferences, but they have an entire separate world open to them. That's very different to being suppressed.

If all you care about is the camaraderie of people who think like you, that is fine. But many people care about other things too.

For example if you believe that climate change is a conspiracy by the Chinese to weaken the American economy, then even if you can go to anti-climate change conferences and be popular among climate change denialists, you won't be very happy because you will believe that in the end the Chinese are still going to destroy your country.

You could gain some social power but lose all your structural power[1]. For the sort of people who care more about objective reality than about popularity contests, that is a bad deal.

[1] https://squid314.livejournal.com/354385.html

I think this post is the one that is most relevant to what you mentioned about politization:

http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/04/ethnic-tension-and-mean...

As for Damore, it looks like he is being advised by socially savvy people. A nobody who expressed that opinion and didn't attract the attention of powerful allies would get fired unceremoniously without us ever hearing about them.

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