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Comment by OrvalWintermute | Hacker News Reader

> Stroll through an engineering office and you are likely to hear the (mostly white, mostly male) denizens making statements like:

This racist/sexist stereotypical line jumped out in the reading of this article.

I cannot support Micheal Natkin writing pejoratively about groups in this manner.

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Aren't engineering offices populated with such people? Is that at issue at all?

This page seems to support the statement: https://www.zippia.com/engineer-jobs/demographics/

The statement is absolutely true but the people who have bought into the Woke Mind Virus nonsense are going to cry about it anyway. And then they will use some other statistics that they think will be a justification for making racist statements without understanding why one thing is racist and the other thing isn.

Have you considered that there might instead be a consistent, principled objection towards injecting the author's personal stereotypes of random ethnic groups? A 5 word aside that takes the discussion from analysis corporate culture towards people complaining about other hypothetical people who complain about the "Woke Mind Virus" seems both toxic and ineffective.

I have not, nor do I care to entertain that line of thinking.

There are resolutely principled people of all kinds.

What is your basis for saying it is “absolutely true” that the loud, strongly-held opinions this author is railing against, come mostly from white males? I’m guessing just your personal observation.

Would you be shocked to learn my experience has been different?

Are you saying that the author's not allowed to observe that some demographics engage in particular behaviours more frequently than others?

I thought that we should strive to be rational, meritocratic, observation and data-driven people...

Rationale, meritocratic, observation and data driven people can directly make the observations they need, rather than using skin color or gender as a proxy.

If someone saw your comment out of context they'd probably assume you were defending some pretty vile shit.

But he presents no evidence! And this in an article about having evidence for your opinions.

Oh grow up. This is pure concern trolling.

“Concern trolling” is when someone pretends to be concerned but isn’t actually, and really thinks the opposite.

I’ll wager the commenter was legitimately bothered by the statement (as I was). You may disagree with his opinion, but it’s not cool to question his motive.

It’s totally cool to question motives and in fact it’s an important part of understanding why things happen.

On HN I think we expect better, which includes the courtesy to not question each other’s earnestness, and to challenge people’s positions and not their motivations.

Well I hate to tell you this but motives are an important piece of how the world works. People don’t think and say things in a vacuum. I am not generous with giving people the benefit of the doubt when their position is in alignment with white supremacists.

> It’s totally cool to question motives

Oh yeah? OK, in that case: Yours are looking ever increasingly dubious.

Most of HN submitted content is worth reading for technical merit alone, but it does not include with racist or sexist content. If anything, we treat racist and sexist content as something to fight.

That I raised attention to this issue does not justify a problematic label like "concern trolling".

We are better than this, and our content should reflect that.

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