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Comment by wongarsu | Hacker News Reader

This claim about women [1]? Calling that "doesn't seem to think that women have any role to play in his profession" seems like a wild misquote bordering on slander. His statement is essentially "women might have the same ability but are for biological reasons on average less interested in programming". Which is a statement I don't agree with at all, but also a statement that doesn't make any claims about the role women should play or could play, and he repeatedly states that he is talking about statistics and averages, not all women.

1: https://www.resetera.com/threads/jonathan-blow-the-witness-b...

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That's the same thing as happened to James Damore, who is, in my view, a harmless guy (even nice) and whoever cancelled him or is unable to acknowledge he had a point is much closer to fascism. I don't like throwing that term but just to return it.

It _boggles_ my mind that someone might find it controversial that there are on average differences between the sexes in terms of behaviour and interests. And to throw extremely strong accusations like "fascist" for a totally reasonable assumption or observation like that, I don't have words for that, I think those people have been smoking too much pot.

> there are on average differences between the sexes in terms of behaviour and interests. And to throw extremely strong accusations like "fascist" for a totally reasonable assumption or observation like that

That’s not why they’re calling him fascist, but because of things like being a Trump supporter. You’re conflating arguments.

I quote:

> Blow is a full-bore fascist sympathizer who also doesn't seem to think that women have any role to play in his profession.

The latter part being argued with a post where he merely opines that the sexes have different interests.

“who also” means “in addition to”, it doesn’t mean the points follow from each other.

The quote does not support your point.

Don't be silly, it's brought up as a support clause that is also lacking any factual evidence.

Why are you so hung up on scrutinising Blow’s words to defend him, but then take the critic’s words with a broad general brush to dismiss them?

You even decry the lack of factual evidence in the critic’s case, but for some reason said nothing about Blow doing the same first.

That’s what looks silly to me. You’re not treating them the same.

Not scrutinizing Blow's words. One must be extremely careful when calling anyone fascist or similar labels. The burden of proof is on the accuser, not on the accused. It's obviously right to demand precision from the accuser, and to interpret whatever the accused said in good faith.

> One must be extremely careful when calling anyone fascist or similar labels.

Which I’m not doing.

They're reading the statement correctly, imo.

It might be the _logically_ correct interpretation that these are separate things. Now let's talk about rhetorics. Why are two unrelated, heavy accusations combined in a single sentence? Then consider that the added accusation (misogynist) doesn't hold water even on a logical level (let alone the bad faith involved here), it is a crass misreading of the evidence that was brought up for it.

I’ve never seen a thread so reflective of this meme:

“It's amazing how much leftist discourse is just them pretending not to understand things, thus making discourse impossible.”

That is a claim I neither made nor defended, I merely pointed the asker to the information they requested in the article to let them decide for themselves.

I even explicitly said I never encountered that claim before. As such, I’m not going to do very stupid armchair expert thing I’m criticising and comment on it. The points I made are on the things I know and reflected on, not on superficial information received three minutes ago.

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