Hacker News Reader

Comment by Kafkish | Hacker News Reader

I just discussed this with a bunch of my friends. If you're having a high level technical exchange with somebody that you don't know, then you find out that that other person is a female, you're really impressed, that a girl will be that good at this very technical topic.

If, OTOH, you find out that that other person is a black guy (assuming you're white), you go through one of two reactions: If you're opinion of blacks is low, then you're really impressed. If you don't particularly like blacks (read: racist), then you're disappointed, and slightly pissed off - that that other guy knows more than you do, or know so much about a very technical topic, when he belongs to a group that you've been told are not very bright.

Humans are interesting creatures in this regards. That's why the right to remain anonymous online should be a given.

View on HN

This seems to say a lot about you but not so much about others. You're saying your default opinion is that women wouldn't be good at a technical topic. And that you believe that white people only have two possible opinions coming in to an encounter with a black person: your opinion could be low, or you could be racist.

That's a very limited perspective.

I also don't see how those are two separate opinions. Having a low opinion of someone based on the color of their skin isn't racism?

Not all people that use this site will have undergone the same sort of intellectual journey into race as those of us in more diverse areas. True tolerance would be to understand that not all people in the HN demographic come from places like the US that are true melting pots. There was no evidence of racist thinking in the OP's remarks, and you don't have to go about suggesting there was to make the point you're attempting to make.

You don't have to come from a "true melting pot" to know not to be racist.

I do believe there was some racism to GP's remarks, that this hypothetical white guy can only make prejudice assumptions.

Being rebuked for saying something ignorant and harmful will just be part of their "intellectual journey".

Look, you are clearly chastising an account whose first language is not English, and for not having penned their remarks in a way that would satisfy the crypto-fascist tendencies of the average tech worker living in SF. You can call what he said ignorant on some level if you read into it enough - why would you, is my question? - but the idea that it is harmful is ridiculous. Your remarks and others calling this guy racist are far more harmful than anything he's said so far.

Many of us may be programmers but we should still be able to grok things with more nuance than this.

>you are clearly chastising an account whose first language is not English

Why do you think this? Their spelling and grammar show few obvious mistakes to me, and after reading your comment I looked at their history and they seem to be an American for at least twenty years.

> If you're having a high level technical exchange with somebody that you don't know, then you find out that that other person is a female, you're really impressed, that a girl will be that good at this very technical topic.

What nonsense is that? I've never noticed any correlation between gender and technical skills. I mean, I've noticed that there are fewer women in the technical space, but not that their skills are lower.

You then seem to go on to assume all white people are racist against black people. Because both of your examples are racist.

I'm white and a male and I don't share any of these expectations when I interview or speak to folks. I'm further saddened that anyone thinks there's an expectation enough of white people or men that is concrete enough to put it in plaintext like this.

In my head, this is an example of a problem moderation or lack of anonymity won't fix. People have to learn to see this kind of comment for the dud that it is on their own.

My reaction is to say that people should have the choice of being either (1)anonymous or (2)nasty when on-line. Not both. (Non-anonymous and nice obviously being allowed.)

Too bad that seems impossible to effectively implement at scale.

> Too bad that seems impossible to effectively implement at scale

That is the problem. It's an unsolvable problem for the near+ future - unless we shift so much power from the public to the powerful that they can silence the public on a whim.

> Too bad that seems impossible to effectively implement at scale.

There are technical solutions to this. The old one was called hashcash, which a predecessor to cryptocurrency.

To get an account you would have to do something like $5 in electricity worth of computation one time, which you can do without giving anyone your name. But then if you do something foolish and get banned, it'll cost you another $5 (or however much is necessary to provide a sufficient deterrent) to get a new account.

Obviously now you could just have them pay (or mine for you) a small amount of cryptocurrency, which would then go to offset the cost of banning the spammers who still try their luck.

This just seems like punishing the poor, very much like fines for speeding. "Rich" people get the freedom to do and say what they wish, but the poor must sit still and only convey favorable opinions.

Fixed fines always have that issue. Bezos racked up tens (hundreds?) of thousands of dollars in parking tickets in DC while visiting the site of his new house.

> This just seems like punishing the poor, very much like fines for speeding. "Rich" people get the freedom to do and say what they wish, but the poor must sit still and only convey favorable opinions.

It's $5, not $500. Anybody using an account long-term will experience more cost from having it deleted than from paying that amount for a new one.

The reason it works is that a poor person gets to amortize that $5 over the life of the account, typically ten years or more, which makes it a negligible amount even for someone making minimum wage. Whereas the spammer gets banned and needs a new account every 90 seconds.

And if the problem is that your mods are imposing censorship on disadvantaged people, you don't want something that makes that sort of "moderation" effective. But that's a different problem. Maybe try not having such a small number of large platforms so it's easier for people to abandon the ones doing such things.

I have no idea what you are talking about. I think I feel offended even.

This doesn't describe me at all? I am impressed by someone's understanding of a topic and bring no expectations to the table. Not everyone is fixated on race and gender stereotypes. This is a sad lie being pushed by people who want us to stay divided.

You make a lot of assumptions regarding people you have never met. Why do you discount the white people who don't have the reactions that you presume they all do?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com