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Comment by quxbar | Hacker News Reader

This guy seems to veer out of the way of the natural conclusion near the end:

> The term “woman-child” lacks teeth, because damseling and self-infantilization are acceptable for women.

He seems to think that the fact that women are infantilized is a bonus, as if the 'pity points' accrued are the utility function of the game being played. This completely ignores the -actual advantages- that have been accruing for thousands of years from -massive, systemic violence-.

The author seems to have trouble realizing just how pervasive the misogyny goes. It's not some tit-for-tat twitter debate about who pays for dinner (this is what PUA forums try to pretend). The attempt is to pull ourselves out of the hole of human ignorance, despite our cultural foundations being pretty incredibly problematic. Taking a look at the history of the 'west' makes it pretty clear: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rape_of_the_Sabine_Women

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75% of women survived the Titanic, compared with 19% of men. (http://www.icyousee.org/titanic.html)

At the massacre of Katyn, an estimated ~22,000 men and exactly 1 woman were executed by the Soviets.

The West has undeniably patriarchal elements of its history. But trying to spin this into a narrative of pervasive misogyny ignores the very real value that society places on the well-being of women. Even in your own example, the men angrily avenge the treatment of the women by outsiders.

I'd guess this has something to do with if a bunch of men die in the tribe it doesn't matter too much, but if a bunch of the women die in the tribe that's the end of the tribe.

Men are pretty expendable when it comes to what's required to reproduce - that mixed with fighting for status/high risk behavior being attractive probably complicates things.

This is a group selection based argument.

Excuse the obvious plug. Here is my article on why I disagree with Pinker's attack on group selection. http://darkcephas.blogspot.com/2018/01/on-group-selection.ht...

It seems that altruism can be explained without resorting to group selection. Statistically speaking over history, your group is overwhelmingly likely to be your kin. So gene selection / kin selection seems sufficient explanation for the evolution of group-altruistic behavior.

The idea that its a privilege to be viewed as "pretty expendable" is to me a rather odd. In any war where a minority group is used as an expendable meat shield, I have never seen anyone argue that its proof that that minority group holds power and carries "-actual advantages-" in society. In contrast, when some individuals of a category holds power while others are viewed as expendable it indicate that that categorization (ie, this one based on being male) is a poor predictor for privilege.

That isn’t my view?

I just suspect it’s a component of why cultures tend to protect women in disasters.

The problem is that there is a conflation between misogyny and genuine inquiry about social justice and the methods employed to achieve it.

I was so disappointed to see how many people didn't even read Damore's article before admonishing it as misogynist.

Damore never denied the existence of misogyny nor did he deny that it was systemic! If anything, his essay identified that Google was created by men and the operational part of the business was still poisoned by predominantly male ideas. It amounted to saying, "hey just setting the bar lower is not working." People took it to mean that he thought women did a worse job than men, so things had to be "simplified" for them. I took it to mean that he thought it was the wrong approach to the problem and that there was a better way. No, that's not what he meant. Ok, that's not what he meant, but what if it's a good point - what if it is the wrong approach? Yet, bringing that up would mean admitting you're a misogynist and so no productive discussion could be had.

Even more disappointing was how any genuine discussion to ask why he was wrong was met with the same talking points: he's a misogynist, he's wrong (why?), I'm not going to google for you (googling, mind you, would just bring you back to the same talking points). It's the most intellectually lazy way to address something that is so important! I just can't come to terms with how someone can simultaneously claim the importance of equality and then try to shut down any approach toward trying to have a better understanding of equality. Toward better ideas about it.

It turns out that, maybe, boys go to Jupiter to get more stupider and girls endeavor to use their stronger synthesis of equally strong math skills and superior social skills to make the world a better place. [0] And yet had I never read Damore's paper, I may have never come across this article. Maybe men have just made some fields too boring and women want a better challenge? A more meaningful one.

It seemed like no one wanted to admit that Damore was bringing new ideas that, even if they were scientifically inaccurate, may have been asking good, new, pondering questions. And even if Damore's ideas were hateful (were they really though?), they led me to a conclusion about equality that no one here was willing to even talk about! A bunch of equality posers who wear the equality shirt but don't know the lyrics of equality.

So even if Damore is wrong (I'm not saying he's right, just that no one offered very compelling arguments that he was wrong), why not appropriate his ideas into something that is right? What's so scary about that?

My final take away was that someone had attacked a core tenet of the fundamentalist religion of Google and the fundamentalist Google zealots were out to defend their honor. Damore may have been a virus that the Google organism finally eradicated, but don't forget that viruses have played an evolutionary role in making us who we are.

[0]: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/rabble-rouser/201707...

This was when I stopped reading:

* When you keep rewarding people for becoming injured, they self-modify to become injured more easily. Once this fragility is enacted, it is difficult to reverse, because there is an enormous amount of perceived harm associated with not prioritizing their concerns. This eclipses the actual harm done in general, creating a negative utility monster. *

I think he is actually trying to explain what most of us know as superficiality or dishonesty, but because he fails to recognize it as such, he came up with this disgusting theory. Or maybe it’s just manipulative.

For anyone having their mind blown by his claim, one way to develop a better understanding of the many nuances of experience, motivation and intention, reading history makes it surprisingly accessible. You will find bits of your experiences in the struggles of past lives, but entirely reconfigured! It’s important to realize because it grants humility and exposes value of too easily making judgements of others.

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