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Up until the last paragraph I thought you were going to say that your opinion of Paul Graham had become much more negative.

To be fair most of the people directly involved in this ruckus don't come out of it looking all that well; but The Information did say the interview was on the record and did tell Graham that it was getting published and didn't get pushback. The fact that Valleywag was able to stir up a controversy and garner a massive amount of traffic off the back of PG's somewhat inept handling of a sensitive question ( that he knew was sensitive ) does no credit to Valleywag, even if it is their business model.

Those people who slotted this into their preexisting models of reality and tried to use it as a teaching opportunity may feel rather threatening to some. which may mean they need to rethink their tactics; but may just mean that some people feel threatened whenever the topic of gender equity is brought up.

Now I get that what PG was saying was not nearly as inflammatory as it was made out to be by Valleywag. However, it did bring to light some unconscious bias on his part; and I get that that is very hard to acknowledge and correct, especially when you have to do so in the full glare of hostile publicity. I do hope the PG can take some time to reflect and to reach out to some of the people who have substantive criticisms of his thinking on this topic.

note: I'm not saying that he needs to turn ycombinator into a feminist reeducation camp, just that he needs to _listen_ to what some of his critics are trying to point out to him.

note the second: I've been participating in HN for 6 years or so; and I have to say that the level of reflexive sexism I've seen in the comments this past week is making me think I should abandon my account.

> it did bring to light some unconscious bias on his part

Can you expand on that? Because from his actual quote I don't find anything unreasonable or biased about his opinions on this particular issue.

It seems to me like while pg is no longer guilty of being overtly anti-woman-in-technology, his reputation is now unfairly tarnished by this attention.

I'm just getting familiar with this drama, but to me, it sounds like pg was dropping responsibility for the lack of women founders. Eric asked him about YC doing more to attract women or encourage women founders, and he responded by saying, essentially, "It's not our fault, there's no way we could be biased, women who want to be hackers just don't exist," and passing the buck to middle school curriculums.

But isn't it entirely possible that he's right?

PG can be correct that “hacker-founders” (what YC looks for, AIUI) who are female may not exist in sufficient numbers to be visible to the YC process—and still be in the wrong because there is a strong gender bias against the production of female hacker-founders in our society.

The question—as I read the articles surrounding this—was about the larger problem (of the continuing ultra-dominance of the tech industry by men) and what YC might be doing to improve the situation. (And the answer is…nothing?)

The bias here is the same thing that keeps female participation in OSS horribly low: the “meritocracy” involved is inherently biased toward young males because of the way that our society works as a whole. YC can't fix this, but there may be things that can and should be done to improve how it handles that existing bias.

Isn't that lack of female hacker-founders exactly what pg was saying? I don't understand how pg could personally be in the wrong about that. And this is exactly my point, pg is now vilified for what? Not doing enough? It's ridiculous.

I think that what you're missing is that while the fact that there's a lack of female hacker-founders is true…only looking for hacker-founders further solidifies a blatantly sexist problem in the tech industry.

So his statement is right—but the attitude is wrong and it is pure blame-shifting. Facts like this can be correct in the small, but wrong (not incorrect, but…ill-intentioned) in the large. The issue is about the larger problem, not the smaller problem. pg has been defending the smaller problem (the facts of the analysis) while ignoring the larger problem. At least in the articles I read this evening (I was on vacation last week when this apparently broken).

It's a systemic/societal problem, and YC certainly can't fix it on its own, and has limited ability to fix it in any case. They started doing something different with Watsi…maybe there's something they can do different for female founders (as pg himself has suggested that there's another essay coming, plus some announcements from YC in that direction in any case).

Looking for hacker-founders is what YC does. That is its reason for existence. It's not an employer. It's not a general investment firm. It's not a school. It invests in hacker-founders. PG expertise is hacker-founders. Only looking for hacker-founders isn't sexist, in of itself.

If there is a larger problem in society, that's not really PG's domain of expertise and we shouldn't expect it to be.

I think you're missing the point that I'm making that only looking for hacker-founders (and landing mostly with young men) is sexist in and of itself because it both perpetuates existing stereotypes and reinforces sexist roles. Note that I'm not saying that YC should change its selection criteria—I understand what they're looking for and why. But they don't get to wash their hands of this societal/systemic problem and say that it's Just That Way. Change has to be proactive.

YC is in a position to help make a difference. It has disproportionately large mindshare in the tech industry. Maybe it's next non-profit needs to be something to address the gender imbalance in tech.

You are just saying that women can't be hacker-founders but you don't think YC needs to change it's selection criteria. What you really want is for YC to be more charitable to support women. That's fine. But at least be clear what you are talking about.

Personally, I don't know exactly what PG is doing to support women in technology right now. But from what I gather it's not nothing. He's probably doing more than any of us. Maybe you should get off your high horse and stop telling other people what they should be doing to solve the problem.

> Maybe you should get off your high horse and stop telling other people what they should be doing to solve the problem.

If that’s what you think I’m doing, then I have either failed to make myself clear or you have failed to comprehend what I’ve said. I’ll be charitable and assume the former.

1. There is no legal obligation for YC to change its selection criteria.

2. I am not looking to have YC change its selection criteria.

3. As long as YC has selection criteria that are inherently biased (as the YC selection criteria are[a]), the only thing that I’m saying is that they can’t pretend that the criteria aren't biased against women (and certain visible minorities).

I’m not on a high horse and telling YC to change things. I don’t expect them to be more “forgiving” of female founders not meeting their extant criteria. But it’s socially irresponsible to say that “I can't do anything about it, because the problem happened ten years ago.” I’m pointing out that while this is a thorny problem not of YC’s creation, there is an opportunity and perhaps a social responsibility that they have to encourage the people they fund to help fix this problem for the young women coming up five or ten years from now.

[a] As stated before: the bias behind the YC selection criteria is a fact, and it's admitted by PG himself in his response to this debacle. Selection criteria that expects someone to have ~10 years “hacking” experience prior to choosing YC is biased heavily in favour of people who already have accumulated advantages that permit them that exploration time (and are encouraged to do so in that particular direction) and against people who do not. This means that women are underrepresented because technical/engineering disciplines are not seen as “acceptable” for girls to do; certain visible minorities are underrepresented because, at least in America, race is strongly correlated to income and corresponding free time. These are facts.

You're saying that they can't pretend that the criteria isn't biased against women -- which they aren't because that's how we got into this discussion in the first place. You seem to want YC to be assholes so you have something more to say about them. When they're not, we still get to have the conversation but now it's hypothetical.

It's not socially irresponsible for the them to answer why their aren't more women in YC today is because the problem happened ten years ago. That's just an answer to the question. It's likely a true and factual answer.

So there's a thorny program that they didn't cause. You don't expect them to change YC's selection process. But they have a social responsibility that's worth this much discussion?!? They have no more social responsibility than the rest of us. And they're already doing more than most of us.

So what could he / YC do? And what can they do right now?

The main thing that comes to mind is to do some marketing outreach to diverse pools of potential techie founders (Ada Initiative, PyLadies, etc).

Beyond activities like this, can pg or YC be held responsible for the preceding stages of the pipeline?

Not really, no. Everyone is biased. The point isn't to eliminate them but to acknowledge them and understand how they affect you.

Sexism in tech is a very large problem, and like every other large problem, it's made up of many small problems. I think it's silly for pg to claim that there's nothing YC can do to get more women founders. No one's asking him to fix the whole thing — only to explore some ways that he could do his part to fix his small problem and get some more women founders through YC.

I think it's silly that you think pg is claiming there is absolutely nothing he can do.

The problem is now that many many people are now reading as much as possible into everything that he saying. If he has an opinion, you don't know exactly what it is. But you'll analyze every word, every phrasing, and make up your own assumptions. That is all that is happening here.

The full transcript is at the bottom of the submitted article's page, and from the conversation, it's pretty clear that pg thinks there isn't anything he can do. When asked what YC could do to bring more women founders in, he says they don't exist and then says we need to start looking at middle school computer science curriculums. Those are two things he flat-out said; I'm not reading anything into it.

I would say it's pretty clear that PG thinks there isn't any more he can do. Lets not assume that he's doing absolutely nothing now.

I'll ask again: isn't it possible that he's right? There seems to be general consensus that girls do not get into computing science at a young age. So it makes sense there would be shortage of women with right ability at the right time for YC. There's nothing controversial about that. And short of inventing a time machine there isn't anything PG can do about that.

I know a lot of women in computing and almost none of them started as young as my male peers. These women code and some started their own companies. But they didn't do it in their late teens or early 20's because they hadn't even discovered it then.

It's possible he's right that there's absolutely nothing more he could do. I think it's extremely unlikely, though. If women feel uncomfortable in YC-funded companies, I think that's a problem he could address. If women feel uncomfortable in the culture surrounding YC, I think that's another problem he could address. It's very un-hacker-like to, when confronted with a problem, throw your arms up in the air and proclaim there is nothing more you can do.

You're still not addressing the point. If there is a shortage of women in computing then nothing you just mentioned will fix that. Sure those might be problems that could be fixed but that's not even what we're talking about. Those things aren't going to solve the underlying shortage.

That is what we're talking about... They're problems that need to be addressed that pg has decided aren't his responsibility. That's the whole point of what we're talking about.

You don't need to mold someone from adolescence in order for them to be a founder or a hacker. It's not something you have to grow up with.

You do need to mold someone from adolescence in order for them to be a founder or a hacker in their late teens and early 20's.

PG is in the business of spending very small amounts of money on in the slim hope that a few of them will be wildly successful and return hundreds of times on that original investment in a relatively short time frame. He invests in people who move to the valley and live huddled together on peanuts and ramen. Those young people are a very small and specific subset of all people who can be founders or hackers.

But Otherwise I agree with you entirely.

Why is it pg's job to encourage ANYONE to get into any given profession or area of study? How would you feel if, when you were a kid (or adult for that matter), someone came up to you and told you what you should or shouldn't be doing for a living. That one profession has less of your type so you should do that. Doesn't that seem a little ridiculous? There are plenty of jobs that have many more women than men. Do you see massive outrage because the workforce is lacking in those jobs? How about the hundreds of other fields that are male-dominated? Perhaps VC/Startups/Tech is an easy target because the field is so lucrative.

The world needs less belief and viewpoint shaping and more free-thinking. Where this nonsense arises is when we put people into groups or they put themselves into groups. Be yourself.

You seem to be conflating a lot of things.

For starters, no one is saying it's pg's job. The interviewer asked him if he felt there was anything he could be doing to get more women into YC.

Second, "encourage" does not mean "order someone to do something." No one is going to up women, putting their hands on their shoulders, shaking them, and telling them they must be developers! Instead, they're creating spaces that are welcoming and friendly to women. They aren't forcing them through the door; they're opening it for them and showing them all the delicious cookies inside.

> There are plenty of jobs that have many more women than men. Do you see massive outrage because the workforce is lacking in those jobs?

Yes. There are plenty of initiatives to get more men into nursing, fashion, and teaching. Just because you didn't take the three seconds to search for them doesn't mean they don't exist. You don't hear about them because, what a shocker, you aren't part of those communities. It's almost like you're on a website dedicated to tech culture or something!

  For starters, no one is saying it's pg's job. The interviewer asked him if he felt there was anything he could be doing to get more women into YC.

Of course this is just my opinion, but to me the tone of the interview sounds as though the interviewer was suggesting that pg should be doing more, himself, to get more women into the field.

  Second, "encourage" does not mean "order someone to do something." No one is going to up women, putting their hands on their shoulders, shaking them, and telling them they must be developers! Instead, they're creating spaces that are welcoming and friendly to women. They aren't forcing them through the door; they're opening it for them and showing them all the delicious cookies inside.

I never said "order someone to do something." In fact I specifically used the word "encourage," but I guess you can twist my words to try and further your agenda. Stating that you want to create female friendly spaces is inherently sexist. I don't know, I think we just differ philosophically and I am more of the mind that people should be friendly regardless of what/who you are. I just don't think that we need special programs for every single "group" that is not interested in something.

  Yes. There are plenty of initiatives to get more men into nursing, fashion, and teaching. Just because you didn't take the three seconds to search for them doesn't mean they don't exist. You don't hear about them because, what a shocker, you aren't part of those communities. It's almost like you're on a website dedicated to tech culture or something!

As someone who originally studied to be a male nurse, yes I am aware of those programs. Please try to not be so condescending.

Well, the bit about having to start hacking at age 13 to have the right mindset to be a founder packs a number of assumptions into one bundle; and some of those assumptions are gendered.

There are girls who start programming at that age, but they learn to mask it because peer pressure runs against them. It also makes assumptions about the socio-economic status of the household; being able to afford even a cheap computer for a child takes some doing even today. It's not an opportunity that everyone gets, and it's a sad fact that in most human cultures scarce opportunities are handed preferentially to boys.

The thing is; and I think PG is aware of this, ycombinator is missing out on good opportunities because of false negatives in this particular area; and even more so because potential founders who happen to be female perceive that they aren't as welcome as they might be.

I think the best thing he could do would be to reach out to some of the people who are seen as his harshest critics ( specifically Shanley Kane and Ashe Dryden ) and open a dialogue with them.

The thing is that Paul Graham and YCombinator have accrued a level of influence and power that can be quite damaging if exercised blindly and he would I think understand the need to use that power responsibly. And in this case that means having some uncomfortable conversations and being challenged in ways that I'd guess he's becoming rather used to not being challenged.

I think PG would agree with everything that you are saying -- and he really hasn't said anything otherwise. We could all maybe totally agree that peer pressure runs against girls, economic status matters, and so on. What is the result of all that? Less women with the right ability at the right time for YC. I don't think there is much to argue about there.

But then you assume that PG isn't doing enough to support women. But that's just an unfounded assumption born out of nothing. The only reason why we're even talking about this is because of some mis-quote to begin with. It's frankly all a bit pathetic.

Oddly, the only thing I said PG _should_ do is open a dialogue with some of his critics.

This is a much better explanation http://danilocampos.com/2013/12/explained-why-people-are-ang...

I could be wrong, but I don't think the YC interview process specifically cares about how long the team has been coding. Other things being equal, if they have more experience, it's better than if they have less.

But given these two scenarios, what would you pick?

- team with great enthusiasm, communication, chemistry that has a cool idea and an interesting prototype. Tech lead has 4 years experience.

- team with weak enthusiasm, bad communication, keep interrupting each other. Tech lead has 10 years experience.

Maybe someone who has been through the process can speak to this?

> I have to say that the level of reflexive sexism I've seen in the comments this past week is making me think I should abandon my account.

I've had the same feeling as well, although it really started during "Donglegate". A few misogynist groups joined HN to spread their filth, and the commenters here lapped it up and even joined in on the harassment.

I'll warn you: You will only notice it more and more, to the point where you wince before clicking into a thread because you know the kind of comments people will make. It's... disheartening, to say the least.

What misogynist groups are these?

/pol/ and /r/MensRights were invading sites during this time. I recall a handful of posts on both that directed users to HN. If you were active on HN during that whole fiasco, you'd remember the huge influx of new accounts that did nothing but "shitpost" in the submissions on here.

Your commenting is bad because it implicitly takes not-universally-agreed-upon-statements as truth in backing other opinions. You could have said (in the GGP of this comment) that /pol/ and /r/MensRights were redirecting posters to the forum. Instead you have to go out of your way to say "misogynist groups" and "filth". That's not a good characterization of the influx of posters (if we go by the description you've just given) because the posters at those sites and coming from those sites do not form well-defined groups, and there's no need to call what they wrote "filth". What you're doing is baking hostility into any conversation that would happen with people that might disagree with you. You just did it again in your reply, saying that I should remember something I don't remember despite being active on HN at the time. Now any disagreement I might say about that notion of yours suddenly turns your comment into an attack against mine. You might have accidentally trained yourself into using these awful conversational technique because they result in you having the last word, or because of some other feelings.

I'm not sure how my reply to you baked hostility into it. I didn't mean to offend you by saying you should have remembered. It was a generic "you", not you specifically. My apologies if I did.

I say it was misogynist filth because it was. Not everyone's comment is equal. I'm not going to treat someone with respect if they spout garbage about how women have no place in programming; how men have "logical brains"; how they wish for the days when they could crack jokes about breasts without all those uppity 'females' ruining the place. A spade is a spade, and those comments were filth that didn't deserve the bytes they were served through. You might as well be asking me to be nice to the KKK as they claim black people are an inferior race.

I'm not sure what the point of your comment is, though. You're chiding me for attacking those groups and complaining that I'm setting up any child conversations to be hostile, but you use the last sentence of your reply to attack me, all while contributing... nothing. I mean, there's not really anything in your comment. Was there something I should be responding to, specifically?

While I certainly hope that all females who are qualified and interested find a welcoming home in computing, I am aware that there is social science research suggesting differences in the average cognitive abilities between men and women in some subdomains. This is not saying that only men can program, only that the proportions of the sexes that make good programmers may be different. Think of shifting of the mean of a normal distribution, like this[1].

So I suspect that in a perfect world with no discrimination the proportion of sexes in each field of work will not be equal, and this is important to keep in mind in industry self-flagellation sessions. Our industry is educated enough to buy heavily into feminism, but nature has a way of confounding all breeds of egalitarians.

The progressive explanation for these differences is that they are all culturally determined. I am not convinced that is a parsimonious explanation of the data. I suppose this makes me evil.

For what it's worth, there's also well documented cognitive differences in human subpopulations. Progressives also believe that these differences are all due to culture. I'm not convinced that human groups which evolved apart for 80,000 years in differing circumstances should be exactly equal in all ways modulo culture. Again, I'm evil. But also remember the overlapping bell curves. That's what I'm arguing the global distribution of talents in human subgroups looks like.

I haven't been to /pol or /r/mra much, but I suspect that they do deal in some suppressed truths in addition to a lot of adolescent noise and filth, if only because the forbidden truths are juicier.

[1] https://controls.engin.umich.edu/wiki/images/2/25/Overlap.gi...

Careful, there.

Talking about biological differences upsets a lot of people and is very non-politically-correct.

The party line of the official 'social justice activist' seems to be that there exist no biologically determined differences between any subgroup of humans that you care to define, including between men and women.

Any person can be a good programmer, and the criteria for a good programmer changes each generation. Women were originally thought to be the better programmers because it was considered office-style busywork. Then it shifted to mathematicians, then to nerds, and now it's shifting to "anyone."

And yeah, you're evil — not because you believe those things (that would make you merely ignorant) but because you revel in the fact your beliefs are problematic.

But, much like your beliefs, your comment brings nothing to this discussion. It's a lot of unsourced, pseudo-scientific nonsense hidden behind a veil of verbosity.

The sources are out there, but you might not want to look. What is seen is not easily unseen:

http://hbdchick.wordpress.com/start-here/

http://jaymans.wordpress.com/hbd-fundamentals/

http://www.humanbiologicaldiversity.com/

And although the common insult for people interested in human biodiversity is "KKK", much of the research is not being done by white people. For example, the Chinese are investing huge sums of money into unraveling the genetic basis of intelligence. See: http://edge.org/response-detail/23838

I suppose this is all "filth that isn't worth the bytes its served through" though...

You know, in most cases the refusal to 'fess up just makes someone look stubborn.

The interesting thing in this case is that it makes them look incompetent.

Totally agree with this sentiment. One of the best things enlisting ever taught me is not to quibble. Own up and drive on.

As another old person, I blame the shift from "mea culpa" to "my bad."

One is used when genuinely accepting responsibility and the other is used like a wave after cutting someone off in traffic.

The answer is to reintroduce the classics into the educational system. Cursive, too.