What People Think You Can’t Say in Silicon Valley
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I wrote Dating for Nerds: Gender differences (http://p.migdal.pl/2017/09/30/dating-for-nerds-gender-differ...) and got no backlash (much to my surprise, though).
From my experience nerds (and aspies in particular) talk mostly to exchange information (learn, share). Same questions are being understood by neurotypicals as expressing intentions, in a covert way.
Nerd: I read that X, on the average, are less interested in tech.
A non-nerd reads it as: I want to kick out all X from tech. / I consider X inferior.
A non-nerd disagrees with the perceived intention and fights back, while a nerd perceives it as immunity to facts and unwillingness for a discussion.
That said:
- not all nerds are well-intentioned and open-minded
- workplace is not a place for all possible talks (or other social activities); if it makes people feel bad, excluded or less productive - it may be an argument to keep such discussions outside of the workplace; in particular, workplace is not an evolutionary biology discussion club
And BTW, from "Interpersonal Traits of Aspies Placed in Context": https://gist.github.com/stared/00ce50e95f9bcecc8965feb04650c... see "Not Recognizing 'Yellow Light' Conditions" and even more: "Doesn't Apologize Readily".
I was out on an internet date with Scandinavian woman a few years ago. She was some type of sociological researcher, which interested me. I told her that part of the discrepancy in representation between genders in tech could be biologically oriented and she immediately said, "I don't want to hear arguments from biology!" She said it with the same tone and conviction you'd label someone a racist.
It's as if once we allow these facts into the argument, it means we can say the fight for gender equality is finished, that whenever equality exists, we can all throw our hands up in the air and say, "It's biology!" I can see the danger but at the same time, the alternative--denying reality--is far more insidious.
- to my knowledge it’s impossible to separate biology and culture with the data we have
- some discriminations were and are made by wrongfully attributing it to biological traits
- since it’s hard or impossible to separate things a lot of people (myself included) adopt « it’s not biology it’s culture » by default because we think if we are wrong it causes less harm and is less dangerous than falsely attributing something to biology, and if it’s right then it helps the society progress.
I understand closing the debate is frustrating for the scientifically minded and rationale people, but my opinion is that it’s not a bad heuristic for society as a whole at least until we make progress. But obviously the debate can happen in the right context, but I find it dangerous to introduce it in the actual climate of crtitical thinking we are in
What do you consider to be the right context for public debates about these thorny issues?
What besides communicating with each other about those issues will move us forward?
I don't think they will go away by themselves and I agree that some cannot be resolved, but then we should politely agree to disagree, after having explained our reasoning for each other's viewpoints, no?
Disclaimer: I work in this space and we get this reaction quite often, so I am happy to read your thoughts on this.
What I'm saying is that introducing biology at this point in the debate, by looking if the inequality is "natural" because phenotype A or chromosome B gives you some edge or not in science or other discipline, is kind of irrelevant given the weight of culture in our societies.
I find it even dangerous because I don't think a lot of people are ready to understand the subtleties of a shift in a normal distribution (if one is present), and it'll just give them a wrong/misused "scientific" evidence for reinforcing their prejudices. Because I can't teach critical thinking in minutes I now resort to "it's always cultural" and try to move the debate forward to the (IMHO) main causes.
(not a native english speaker so sorry if I missed your point)
We can’t say “biology=true science!” and try to shoehorn it in the debate no matter what, this, is unscientific.
Yes, given that we don’t know, assuming it’s always culture to help society progress (and implicitly saying society needs a change) is a political and philosophical opinion, and on this we can disagree, but don’t invoke religion vs science to create a false dichotomy and paint me on the irrational side.
I would even say that, if you don't know the science about an issue, it might be the wisest to refrain from having a strong position on a matter, at all.
Sure, many people do not understand statistics, I would dare postulate many many scientists don't properly understand stats ;)
But, if we do away with the science domain, people will resort to another domain, which is normally trumped in debates by scientific arguments. And that is, anecdotal evidence. And people will use it just as much and as falsely to defend their believes.
(no worries, not a native speaker either :) )
It's like you didn't read the comment you're replying to. You do not have good evidence that romance is shaped by evolutionary, rather than cultural, forces. Of course there's a biological motivation for procreation but unless you're going to play semantic games and define "romance" as any activity involved in pursuit of procreation, that motivation doesn't explain specific behaviors.
"It" being a biological basis for romantic behavior? We've survived this long without know how, or if, biology determines our current romantic behavior, I think we'll be okay. We're not going to go extinct because everyone is fucking robots.
Do we? Because I see no evidence of the opposite. Also, culture (and sociology for the matter) is biologically determined.
> no evidence of the opposite
There's plenty of evidence that romantic behavior is culturally determined. Just look at how much it has changed over the centuries even though, biologically, humans have hardly changed at all. There's also the wide variance between cultures geographically in which we're all biologically the same.
First of all, almost everything and its opposite can be argued from biology, and evolution. Among the reasons for that is a sort of circular logic, because many ideas of early human life we still hold are based on today’s stereotypes.
Secondly, arguing from biology denies the single most important difference of humans and other animals: that we are unique in having the capability to overcome our biology.
Right, facts.
Most of the biological arguments are very touchy-feely. But .. we can see differences in MRI between gays and straights (or men and women, or some other divide du jour)! That's to be expected. Unless your equipment is broken. But the facts that patterns in the brain has established doesn't tell us anything how, or why, they developed.
Scan a professional piano player and compare with a regular person and you'll pick up patterns there as well. Is that some sort of argument that piano talent is innate? If hypothetically some statistical factor could be identified that is more prevalent among black people and piano player, does that mean black people are more suited to be piano players?
No, it does not. Yet when considering sex differences, and to some extent race differences, those are the kind of argument that goes for factual. I doubt it's the factual part that bothers people, but rather the logical hoops necessary for these argument to gain practical relevance for decisionmaking.
I can somehow relate to the tiredness your friend expressed. In some other areas where I have taken active part for the past decade or two, I still encounter the same arguments over and over again (for example why open source is by necessity non-innovative), and every person genuiney believe they came up with a new and important thought that other people needs to consider. Just a quick skim of the discourse in the relevant area would really go a long way of presenting them in a more informed way.
So it might not be the arguments themselves that are tiring but the repetitivesness with the way they are presented.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding things, but if some statistical factor was identified with predictive power, does that not literally mean that generally they'd be more suited to be piano players?
This isn't some argument about philosophically what constitutes a piano player. If this were true, you'd expect on average that this group has a higher proportion of piano players, and you could say heuristically that, yes, they are more suited to be piano players.
Caveat: this does not necessarily mean you should base decisions solely off of whether they belong to the group, as it depends on how strong said predictor actually is.
Depending on exactly what you mean by "predictive". You can identify someone as more likely to be a piano player while the person may not be more suited to be one.
The example was meant to be illustrative of a confounding effect, but perhaps a better one could have been chosen.
1. Scandinavian society is largely based on that biology isn't a good enough justification for inequality. Unless you're being very specific you also end up making an argument against Scandinavia equality. Which is something that many Scandinavians would obviously disagree with. (the argument, not necessarily the arguing).
2. Scandinavians, compared to other people, have few things in modern history to be ashamed of. Unfortunately eugenics is one of those few things. [0]
3. Presenting a casual theory to someone in the field is generally not a good idea. Maybe especially so if it's in a social setting, if your theory states the importance of a competing field and/or if you are part of the historic majority addressing the historic minority. Since them not being taken seriously can be an issue.
4. The research of biological traits doesn't seem to support the large gender difference in technology. The overlap between men and women is large, the correlation between gender traits and e.g. intelligence is weak and differences to other fields seem hard to explain. Even if you accept the idea that women don't like x and technology has a lot of x it's hard to explain why technology must have a lot of x. Other than being dominated for a long time by people who like x. At least while establishing causation, or even correlation, between the factors.
I don't buy that at all. As long as the argument is based on science, there's no reason you can close your ears to other fields of study that could affect your own.
> The research of biological traits doesn't seem to support the large gender difference in technology.
Nor does the research support that the large difference in due to social construct. The default answer "It's all due to social construct" is presumptuous.
There's an interesting paradox. In countries with more gender equality, like Sweden, women end up in more traditionally female fields, like nursing where as in countries with less equality, like India, women end up in more traditionally male fields, like engineering. Do a search for the Swedish gender equality paradox.
The male to female ratio of autism is 4:1. There are other studies that show genetic differences in gender that exist outside of social construct. Male monkeys tend to play with boy toys, while female monkeys play with girl toys.
There are obviously genetic differences between men and women as well as genetic preferences. How these affect the ratio in technology is very difficult to ascertain. We can't just say it doesn't seem like enough to account for the difference because we don't know how that difference plays out throughout people's lives.
Keeping your mind open to other fields as a researcher doesn't mean, nor is reliant on, having to accommodate casual opinions over dinner.
> Do a search for the Swedish gender equality paradox.
I've read about it, I'm not convinced. If gender equality overall was the main culprit for gender inequality among professions we should see a difference between similar European countries with different levels of equality. According to the figures on the web page of the book popularizing the theory, the UK is far less gender equal than Sweden. Yet, the UK seem to have a lesser percentage of female engineers than Sweden. Just to name one example.
What seem more plausible is that inequality tends to correlate with development. The less time a country has been "developed", the less gender equality there is. But being "developed" recently also mean that you have less cultural baggage.
Sweden is an old engineering culture dating back to at least Alfred Nobel (of Nobel Prize fame). Ericsson was formed in 1876, ASEA in 1883, Volvo in 1927 etc. It also avoided the second world war, when women in other countries "got their break" in technology. And has since the 80s had one of the strongest informal computer cultures in the world. This is obviously quite different from an emerging economy were much of the industry has formed in recent decades.
"Nearly two-thirds of all university degrees in Sweden are awarded to women." Obviously unequal. But they brag about it and call it equality.
https://sweden.se/society/gender-equality-in-sweden/
And when that inequality was noticed and affirmative action began to benefit men, affirmative action was outlawed.
http://arhiva.dalje.com/en-world/sweden-to-abolish-affirmati...
Their definition of "equality" ignores vast inequalities favoring women.
The problem is that there's a very slippery slope between stating a difference, ascribing causality (the difference is due to biology, for instance), and justifying it as a moral imperative (we should treat men and women differently).
It's dangerous because if differences between groups are easy to pinpoint, they're much harder to explain. Even if you can get to a plausible causal mechanism, it doesn't say anything about how things should be anyway.
Skimming through it, it does seem pretty even-handed. Although I'd like to point out that you're writing a "guide for nerds" and consistently addressing the reader as if they were a man. Women can be nerds, too. It's fair to have a guide for male nerds, since the experience is bound to be quite different for men vs. women, but it'd make sense to actually point that out.
For nerdy women (dating man) some problems are similar (and I got quite a lot of of positive reaction from this group; and a few requests to write a text for that setting). For nerdy women dating women, it seems that most problems are the same (see also: Emma Lindsay's blog posts).
My only comment is that if you cannot discuss an idea then the idea cannot evolve, and you probably won't change your mind.
Maybe the problem is not oppression of ideas, but the lack of a discussion culture which can tolerate a wider spectrum of ideas for the sake of debunking some of them.
In the south (and other places) you're more apt to spot people who have deep bias against people for intrinsic things - in the North (including CA, and Northwest) those ideas are so completely unacceptable, that those people never get called out on them.
Besides your suggestion that prejudice doesn't exist in the north (lol), you're writing from the Pacific Northwest, one of the least diverse places in the country. Oregon is 83% white; Texas hasn't been that white since 1970, currently 45% non-Hispanic white. Washington state is 72% non-Hispanic. We deal with a diverse culture every day, most of us aren't racist and ignorant.
Why did you say that?
Perhaps you would like it if even this more carefully worded thing was something people didn't say. If so, it'd probably be interesting to unpack why.
Also, I'm not sure that geographic location counts as an intrinsic trait. And no matter how diverse your circle of association is, beware of assuming they're representative of what you'd see in a geographic cross section. Based on my survey of my Republican acquaintances in my home state, I would have assumed that Trump wouldn't have won the primary there.
I'm arguing that people who are biased is a constant - but in parts of the south its more culturally acceptable to be open about it.
The way to end bias like this is by direct, constant exposure, as in interpersonal relationships with people who are different from you in; race, sexual orientation, or socioeconomic background.
When you create a culture where people who are biased do not expose themselves, their perspectives will never ever be changed.
Are you going to argue that there is more racism in a Texas company than a California company? You are really going to have to prove that.
Have you ever actually lived in a city such as Houston? One of the most diverse cities in the country.
Look how segregated Silicon Valley is. Cupertino and Saratoga Schools are —- about 80% Asian and 2% black. How is that possible given that racism is a “completely unacceptable” idea in California? Those schools are reflecting the employment of the region. Since those are expensive areas, only people with wel paying tech jobs can live there and yet the diversity is pretty much the opposite of the US as a whole.
Perhaps Silicon Valley needs to be called out — far more than those “racists in the south.”
Texas is part of the South. Rich white south instead of rednecks, but definitely South.
I'm arguing that people who are biased is a constant - but in the south its more culturally acceptable to be open about it. The way to end bias like this is by direct, constant exposure, as in interpersonal relationships with people who are different from you in; race, sexual orientation, or socioeconomic background.
When you create a culture where people who are biased do not expose themselves, their perspectives will never ever be changed.
Your final sentence raises exactly the point I was trying to make - you need a 'marketplace of ideas' to change anyones mind about anything - monocultures do not change minds - they just drive those who disagree underground, and if anything give those who disagree a persecution complex, and subtly reinforce their views.
I would say, if you hold one of these "taboo" opinions there is a reasonable amount of responsibility on you for how you open a discussion on them. If you do want to discuss them you need to try and raise them in a way which shows you are genuinely interested in discussion, including possibly changing your own opinion and trying to get a better understanding of others opinions without necessarily judging them. Rather than coming from a fixed position and trying to convert people, which in my experience rarely works.
If you hold one of more of these taboo opinions and think I am being rude, suggesting you don't discuss properly it that those you discuss with are all perfect reasonable beings that is not the case. But in my experience it is not common for people to open a discussion honestly looking to assess their own opinions as well as those they are discussing with. If you aren't open to change your mind, why should anyone be open to change theirs? If you are already doing that, then good for you! Hopefully some minds will get changed and we can all move forward with a more honest understanding of the world.
A lot of discussion/debate is less about changing minds and more about mutual understanding of the underlying values. The problem is these "taboo subjects" all too often have people assuming the other's intentions and therefore the underlying reasoning for those bad arguments never get fleshed out. Thus the person with the taboo perspective just feels misunderstood.
I imagine this is also how athiests feel in deeply religious parts of the US.
You'd have to be a total fool to bring up any of the non-left-wing, yet totally valid comments on that post in a tech workplace in 2017.
In the months after 9/11, if you spoke up and said you didn't agree with US foreign policy (invading Afghanistan) or that you didn't approve of Bush and wanted him to resign, you got blacklisted.
I had a friend, every house in his neighborhood had an American flag except for his, because his dad was an introverted engineer and uninterested in politics. The absence of the flag was obvious, and after a few nights of things like eggs on the door, flaming dog shit, and finally a dead animal left on the door mat, he put up an American flag and all the drama went away.
I personally believe some viewpoints really are inappropriate to bring up in a professional working environment. If I genuinely believe read-headed people have a brain structure which makes them inferior developers, I don't think I should bring this issue up during a meeting. Sure, my red-headed coworkers have the option of challenging my viewpoints and perhaps a fruitful discussion will follow - where I will convince them with rational arguments and evidence that my viewpoint is correct. But I think it is fair if said red-headed colleagues would prefer not to have the discussion at all.
I notice the top taboo subjects are diversity, racism, sexism etc - exactly subjects where you can indirectly question a colleagues competence.
Almost anything can be thought of as indirectly questioning colleague's competence. Suppose I saw, "U. Waterloo is a great school, let's hire more people from there.", this is indirectly questioning the competence of anyone who's not from U. Waterloo. Suppose HR decides to offer employees free LASIK surgery, then they are questioning the competence of people who choose to wear glasses instead. Encouraging employees to use desk in stand-up mode questions the competence of people who prefer to work while sitting. The list is endless.
My wife doesn't work in tech, but she did lose a job over a post on a message board that didn't agree with her boss' politics. (She thought it was a waste of money to rename a school)
I'm wide open with the co-workers that I'm close to (i.e. in my working group). I'm more reserved among others, and since I work for a large entity, I'm aware of the people that pose a political challenge and do my best not to piss them off. I know of a few people in tech who let the wrong words out and ended up losing jobs as an indirect result. (it wasn't "you said X, you're gone", it was more "he said X and a few weeks later - surprise surprise... he doesn't work here anymore") I haven't seen anything like that outside of the bay area and I've worked all over.
Yes, that can happen. If you argue on your blog that red-headed people are inherently inferior developers and it gets back to your colleagues, there will be people who treat you differently.
As an example, Peter Thiel (if I remember correctly) criticized women having the vote. Certainly a controversial viewpoint, but not controversial enough to get him ostracized. But his support for Trump did get him ostracized to some extent. I think this shows the difference between what is just controversial and what is considered unacceptable in SV.
I agree that there are problems with not allowing people to express all kinds of ideas, but there's a big difference in the two types above: You should be more careful when attacking the already weak, for their position is already brittle.
For instance, when talking about skewed power dynamics when it come to gender, you could look at the number of men vs. women in management positions. Being able to fire someone is a form of power. Or you could look at raw salaries, and say that money is a form of power. And so on. Would make many discussions a lot clearer.
Ignoring people who we don't agree with is how we got to a place where supporting your political party was more important than having an ideology you could morally justify.
I personally lean fairly far to the right but I spend a lot of time listening to NPR, reading slate, and other pretty lefty publications. When I talk to people who only consume one side of the media, whether it's right or left, I feel like I'm talking to a wall of nonsense. People have so little understanding of those they disagree with and will dismiss them with "they're a bunch of idiots" so quickly that their position has no basis in reality. I'm not saying we should give everyone a platform, I'm saying that if someone says "all the rich should be killed" or "gay men don't know love" each position despite being on diametrically opposite sides of our current political landscape need to be understood if we want to move forward.
You are talking about listening to Democrat opinions.
Very very different thing.
I am quite happy to be friends with people with different political opinions or who vote for another party.
I am also happy to know who is spouting racist, sexist or crazy drivel. This allows me personally to avoid them.
Others may choose to engage with the extremists I choose not to waste my time. This is a matter for individual free will.
NB once again listening to Democrat/republican media when you are voting for the other party is just normal and has nothing to do with choosing not to associate with e.g Klansman.
Do you really think it should be possible to walk around wearing a "kill all Jews" badge, and not recieve so much as an angry glare from a Jewish person?
There's a line I like about this: "Hegemony means never having to admit you have an agenda."
A lot of these people might not believe what they believe if they were to attempt to justify their beliefs in a rigorous and intellectually honest way.
Similarly the Brexit vote revealed alot about people's true characters and beliefs. The vote largely broke down along class lines, working class for Leave, middle class for Remain. And those middle class types, who tirelessly virtue signal about how left-wing they are, when confronted with what the actual Workers really want, are quick to condemn the entire lot as racist mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging morons. Class divisions are never far from the surface in the UK.
In theory, yes, but in practice it's only considered "rude" when you bring unpopular political views into the workplace. In a partisan locale such as SV people openly talk about the popular political view at work, all the time.
A Googler can go to TGIF Q&A and openly bash Trump/GOP and he'd get sympathetic responses from Larry, if not cheers from the audience (and a bunch of new memegen entries), but I highly doubt the same would be true for someone expressing opposite views.
The stuff rude awakenings are made of…
But sometimes sensitive topics become relevant in the workplace (e.g. diversity in hiring). If any suggested divergence from the party line is repudiated, we risk losing objectivity.
An open mind easily discards a bad idea. A closed mind may miss a good one.
FTFY
Oh dude you have just not been paying attention.
Can you show me a single example of someone in tech who publicly expresses, at any point, any of the beliefs which are “not allowed?”
I’m looking for one.
Find me one person on Twitter in tech aside from John McAfee or Peter Theil who would dare. Sam Altman was good enough to step forward, I hope he won’t be the last. The complete and total castigation of the dude by every tech media outlet showed exactly what happens to anyone who isn’t rich enough not to care.
While Sam Altman can take a beating, a standard employee like James Damore can’t. Did we forget about him? Apparently we did!
Show me a single tech luminary staying that diversity is overrated and has numerous downsides (such as the degradation of communal trust which had swept the valley), that we don’t actually need additional codes of conduct to add protections that are already covered in the US legal code at every Meetup, that all gender bathrooms are lunacy or that most of the Millenials coming into the job market have an incredibly broken and fearful view of the world that is unwarranted by the available evidence.
Show me a single tech luminary willing to say that women should realize they have advantages and disadvantages and should take responsibility for guarding themselves st off-site social events to avoid being approached by men.
One! Show me one!
I can find these opinions on conservative podcasts but I have never seen anyone express them in tech. Ever!
I see a non-stop avalanche of one set of these opinions on every social media feed, internal company meeting and industry conference.
I have NEVER seen ANYONE notable in tech aside from Peter Thiel, who has been made untouchable st this point.
Why is that? It’s because they know it’s not good business and they will get to join Peter Theil in the excommunicated pile.
A great example is Scott Adams. Scott used to make hundreds of thousands of dollars per year giving paid speeches.
When he began writing about Trump, he was excommunicated and all of his speaking gigs were cancelled.
Another great example is the systematic and deliberate demonetization of conservative YouTube videos. People who are very balanced and fair like Dave Rubin have had their videos defunded for having conservative speakers as interview guests.
Twitter has been notorious for slowing down or “never getting around to” giving Blue Check Marks to conservative speakers - If I remember correctly, Scott Adams had to reach a simply insane number of followers before being given the check.
The hatred of conservatives and direct, persecutory and economic attacks on them is real, ongoing and getting worse.
Seriously - if you believe most of these opinions won’t harm your career if expressed publicly, you have really not been paying attention.
If you don’t believe me - Try it. Go on Twitter right now and say: “all gender bathrooms are stupid.”
Watch what happens.
There are definitely some political views that should be socially discouraged and attacked and there should be social repercussions for the people who express them. You disagree on whether some particular views fit in this category. You must admit that from your position, it can be very difficult to distinguish between unfair persecution and genuine persecution.
For the record, if a company I work for invited someone as purely evil / anti-intellectual and vapid as Scott Adams to give a speech, I would absolutely resign in protest.
If not, then I have a feeling that you mistakenly equate many opposing ideas to "pure evil ideologies".
But I don't think we can reconcile our viewpoints in the comments here, and I think you missed my entire point. My point was it is very difficult to tell right from wrong when those wrongs are widely accepted by society. A majority of Germans in the 1930s either believed in Nazism or believed it was just an "opposing idea". An even larger majority of Americans in the 60s disapproved of MLK, and either believed in racist laws or believed that they were just "opposing ideas".
My point is that once again, you are now in a position where a minority of people believe that some ideas are truly evil and not worthy of any merit. You are sympathetic towards these ideas, or unsympathetic to their opponents (just as many who disapproved of Jim Crow laws but thought MLK was too radical)- so I hope you can at least realize that statistically speaking, you're in a position where it has traditionally been very difficult for people to determine right from wrong.
>My point is that once again, you are now in a position where a minority of people believe that some ideas are truly evil and not worthy of any merit. You are sympathetic towards these ideas, or unsympathetic to their opponents (just as many who disapproved of Jim Crow laws but thought MLK was too radical)- so I hope you can at least realize that statistically speaking, you're in a position where it has traditionally been very difficult for people to determine right from wrong.
So what are you suggesting here? Should we automatically crown the minority's opinion as the "right one" because they challenge the status quo being accepted by society? Yes, you have examples of Jim Crow and MLK, does that mean every time someone writes off an idea his argument is automatically as valid as MLK's and his opponents are automatically the KKK?
> so I hope you can at least realize that statistically speaking, you're in a position where it has traditionally been very difficult for people to determine right from wrong.
My point is that it doesn't matter whether we can determine right from wrong. I can't do that easily, and neither can you. So let all sides debate and engage with each other and make history judge the outcome. You do not get to jump through this step.
Remember, Fascism and Communism rose to power by being the "progressive minority" at first and claimed morale high ground against their oppositions and shut down all forms of public debate soon after.
If you think the majority is bad at judging good from bad, what makes you think the minority is better in this case?
Dr. King's speech started with "I have a dream", not "I'm right and you are wrong and is not even worth my time to debate". Unfortunately, Social Justice Warriors today are no MLK.
So endorsing Trump is literally "pure evil" on the same level as Hitler?
Yeah, at this point I'm afraid that I can't take anything you say seriously.
Well, on some issues you can always appeal to authorities - for example if people have strong opinions on economic issues you can compare that consensus to IGM Forum polls. People are oftentimes predictably biased.
Alternatively, you can try to get people who disagree with eachother to perform an ideological Turing test. It should be informative if someone basically cannot meaningfully articulate the actual arguments that are being presented that they disagree with.
Yes, we can tell most of the time, and yes even if it gets difficult sometimes and we fail to distinguish unfair and genuine persecution, we will try our best to discuss it, study it, and get better at it. That's how we should approach the problem. That, is the intellectual way.
Your method of automatically shutting down discussion of controversial ideas just because a small percentage of them are truly evil, is in fact more anti-intellectual than anything Scott Adams has ever said/written.
I disagree that we can tell most of the time. I think we can't tell most of the time. Most Americans couldn't tell in the 60s- about 33% of the country had a favorable view of MLK. Most Germans couldn't tell in the 30s. And so on and so on. If we were any good at tellint, then evil wouldn't be so scary!
My point is that here you are again, in a similar situation to those, saying the exact same sorts of things the people who were wrong in those circumstances said. It's possible we're not in that kind of situation, but I hope that you realize that (a) some of the things that you're upset about (educated people pushing some ideas out of their institutions; radicals and communists protesting in the streets; highly charged and accusatory language) were the exact same sorts of things the people who ended up being wrong in those circumstances were upset about, and (b) historically, people sympathetic towards these bad ideas or unsympathetic to their opponents could not tell the difference in their own times.
You don't get claim victory by shutting down the debate at the beginning. You don't get to moral high ground by "proclaiming" it, you get there by engaging the opposition in debates and by fighting to change people's mind with positive examples.
MLK knew he was right, and he worked hard to convince the remaining 66% of the country by engaging with them, by changing one mind at a time.
>My point is that here you are again, in a similar situation to those, saying the exact same sorts of things the people who were wrong in those circumstances said.
That's some crazy logic fallacy. Just because you are pushing new agenda doesn't mean you are automatically correct and your opposition are literally the same as Nazis. You also automatically assume that your ideas are the "good ones" and anything that differs even slightly to your opinion is "bad ideas". How can you tell that you are not the one being sympathetic toward "bad ideas", it is after all, like you said, hard to tell right?
You know who used the same kind of logic? Literally Nazis and Communists. They automatically proclaimed their ideology as the "righteous ones" and brutally shut down any debates.
I'm of the opinion that if you have to forcefully shut down opposite views from even debating you, then your idea is not worth debating in the first place, and you are just some immature child putting himself on a moral pedestal.
I don't know how old you are, but I wish one day you get to learn that the world is not black and white, but different shades of gray. And yes, even your own opinions will change throughout time, for different reasons.
But I'm curious as to the arguments against all gender bathrooms? I've visited tons of restaurants over the years that just had a single restroom, and it's never been a problem. When you have people over they might use your bathroom, and that's also not considered a problem. Heck, at all the doctor's offices I recall visiting they always had a single bathroom. I always find it slightly frustrating when I try using the restroom and it's occupied and I'm forced to wait, even though there's a unoccupied bathroom mere feet away. What are people's concerns with shared bathrooms?
As someone who grew up watching Ally McBeal, I am pretty sure that noone of my generation really has any problem with unisex toilets. But where the confusion comes from is that I think that the concept of a "bathroom" has somehow been conflated with that of a "changing room", e.g. at a gym or something. I have found that people who are passionately against them, with gently probed, actually mean the latter.
In college, my freshman-year dorm bathroom was unisex. It initially created huge complaints from everyone. The women complained that the toilets were always messy and the men complained that the toilets were always occupied. Those may be stereotypes, but they're also frequently true. We eventually resolved our issues by designating 1 stall as "standing only" and the other 2 as "sitting only" to ensure that men could always pee without a wait and women could always sit without having to clean first.
But that only worked because we could impose those kinds of rules. A public bathroom is a different matter and I'll bet both genders get annoyed with having to share with the other absent those kinds of imposed rules.
Note that this kind of thing can be cultural as well. At my last job, the non-Asian women complained about some of their Asian counterparts' bathroom use. It seems that women who grew up with squat toilets liked to stand on the seats so they could use their preferred squatting technique. This resulted in much the same sort of messes that result from men standing when they pee.
I've worked in a gym and bars, back when I was a student, so I have been in women's changing rooms/bathrooms regularly, when we closed up, to clean. Not everywhere has dedicated cleaning staff; sometimes the lifeguards or the bartenders do it at the end of their (our) shift. It's true that men tend to miss and pee on the floor. Alot. But good God, the state of the women's...
I've occasionally advocated online policies that were taken from Ronald Reagan or the first President Bush or from their leading cabinet members and advisors and not run into any problems in liberal forums online.
I got banned from /r/republican for advocating such policies.
Conservatism today has been largely taken over by the extreme right. Conservative political leaders thought they could court the extremists like white supremacists, anti-immigration fear mongers, religious bigots, conspiracy theorists, and just plain nutcases and the like for their votes but would be able to keep them under control. They were wrong.
I'd also say that this is actually very easy to say, since you can also pick out genetic anomalies: I could say the sentence about swimming and Michael Phelps, or running and Usain Bolt, without a single person being offended or disagreeing.
If you want to make the sentence controversial, you need to replace "person Y" with "genetic group Y"; i.e. men, women, caucasians, blacks, asians, mongoloids, or so on.
I am worse at math than the average physics undergrad for genetic reasons, low conscientiousness and interest.
> “Most successful entrepreneurs are simply lucky.”
Probably it's because "common wisdom" says it's the result of being smart and hard work. But if luck plays such a big role (and let's be honest, it does - there are also studies confirming that), it's difficult to be proud of your success. Happy - yes. Proud? No more than a lottery winner. For many successful people this would be an insult.
For those who have never been to US, and just reading news and watching TV on it, it surely is a place full of controversy.
As a matter of fact, I am starting to see this isn't US only at all. It is the same with UK on certain issues ( Mainly Brexit ) but in typical Brit fashion they seems to be much more sensible about it when people disagree.
What happens to the old days where we agree to disagree. Take it on the chin, put a smile on your face and walk away?
This isn't just social media's echo chamber, a lot of people seems to want to blame them. But i think the social media only amplify the problem. Not the course of it.
That’s the real insight here. You wanted a fully networked society, well that’s what comes with a fully networked society.
Anyway rest assured there's no need to stifle heretical ideas with these people. The ones thinking anything truly original were probably either the ones left out of the 108, or never bothered answering or are already in institutions etc.
I am wondering whether previous generations were better able to handle intra- and intergroup differences of ideology.
Stock options are generally useless and in many ways force employees not to move on to better opportunities.
In the current climate you could get a pitchfork mob after you extremely easy for even stuff perceived as homophobic - as the recent suicide of August Ames showed.
0. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reign_of_Terror
Edit. Good to see what the real topic is you can't discuss in SV ;)