Nathan made a thread as a reply to this piece on him
Any social engineer can tell you that appearances are half the battle. A white male in a hardhat with a clipboard could get into most construction sites. A white male in a suit could probably get into most office buildings.
There's some rather vehement responses in this thread. I wonder how many people are threatened by the idea that their accomplishments are partially due to them "looking the part" and not just their work and skill.
From my readings of pentesters doing social engineering, female pentesters have the vast advantage when trying to gain building access.
A woman is going to have a far easier time getting into an office building.
I just haven’t seen very many in industries such as education or government
On the other hand, our profession does have the benefit of being able to be done with zero knowledge of appearance. In fact, I credit that fact to enabling smart teenagers to make key contributions to open source they otherwise would be excluded from due to assumptions coming from age.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_...
> There's some rather vehement responses in this thread. I wonder how many people are threatened by the idea that their accomplishments are partially due to them "looking the part" and not just their work and skill.
Additionally I think a lot of people understand the concept of probability and likelihoods, but when it comes to this topic people get very uncomfortable thinking that where they are today is partially due to luck but as well due to structural factors that benefited them unrelated to any active actions they took.
And usually the emotional response is either doubling down on the parts they did control (completely ignoring the fact that plenty of other people put in more effort or did better at those same parts and didn't get as far as they did), or claiming that yes the problem does exist but "not in my area, because no-one actively does anything bad like that", or the other "my intuition says it's a minor issue or an already resolved issue therefore that's true" - which goes against the research that says - no it is a problem.
There was an example a while ago of the issues black CEOs face in SV [1] and it's just something you'll never see as a cis white man. I've certainly never encountered any issues relating to my race or my gender or how I present myself, but if you're a black man you're already used to dressing a different way to prevent being perceived as a threat [2].
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23540162
[2] https://mashable.com/2015/08/08/black-men-dressing-up-police...
I hope HNers can take the time to read this with an open and introspective heart and mind. Unrolled: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1278777095670370304.html
As best I can tell the distinguishing characteristic between people who believe in the existence of white/male privilege and those who do not is political affiliation.
The people who are not white, not cis-male, or not straight are the people who have encountered consistent barriers as a result of these negations.
These are all immutable parameters, not political affiliations. No one chooses to be white (or not). No one chooses to be male (or not). No one chooses to be straight (or not).
Women? Barriers.
Trans? Barriers.
Black? Barriers.
Middle Eastern? Even though we're classified as white by tax code? Barriers.
Gay? Barriers.
Jewish? Muslim? Even Catholic? (Considering the mental trauma that often arises with rapid disillusionment from religion, this is largely considered immutable) Barriers.
Hispanic? Asian? Aboriginal? Native American? Barriers.
I get that it's uncomfortable to hackernews because we like to think that every startup operates in a meritocratic manner, but that's been consistently proven false just with the sheer volume of white straight cis-men managing and leading companies in the US, Australia, the EU, wherever you look.
tl;dr: it's not political because the people who understand that it's an issue overwhelmingly tend to be the victims, and the people who don't understand that it's an issue mostly tend not to be victims, and the victims tend to be victimized because of immutable traits rather than ideologies.
One of the few times I was caught was at a psychoanalysis conference where I stood out for being roughly 20 years younger than most attendees. I wish I had a badge in that case because I was very obviously called out due to my age alone.
If making political statements is the reward he wants for doing the legwork to document what the Fed is doing, he can have it.
How does he know? Is there any evidence for this? Were women or blacks 'barred'? Because if so, I would expect someone to sue and win easily.
The rest of the tweets are a stream of similar and all-unsubstantiated accusations. But we can't dispute any of what he said, because he made his accusations without enough specificity for them to be checked in any way. He chose not to name the 2010 conference.
There's nothing trifling about such accusations. Just because nobody is in a position to respond doesn't mean you're not hurting people. Whether the accusations are made against individuals, specific groups, or a whole ethnic group. If you're gonna slag someone you should have evidence, and you should be specific.
In any case, he chose a good strategy to maximize his personal outcomes. He'll benefit greatly from this. D on fairness and principle, A on strategy.
i.e. if you're the only non-white but otherwise fit the part / especially if dressed on the smarter end some people are less likely to question you because they don't want to be seen applying a bias. Actively questioning the one black guy is a lot more obvious than actively not questioning him.
Many people aren't immediately conscious of their biases. This isn't the same situation, but I thought this article about being a black CEO was illuminating. I've seen the similar bias-exposing mistakes happen to women.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/06/16/for-black-ceos-in-sil...
They're easy mistakes to make (I made an similar mistake by assuming a young woman was a nurse and not a doctor), but the most important bit is to learn and be aware.
Anyhow, MMT is a very popular thing right now, so it's obvious he would get attention regardless of his age, gender or race.
He made a vastly more hurtful claim - that everyone else was 'barred'.
You're simply not responding to the charge that's been made, you've chosen to try to argue a far weaker claim (which is trivially true) instead in the hopes that nobody notices the difference.