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  *You are painting an entire gender (or the majority) with really broad generalities, all under the premise that gender based discrimination is overrated and exaggerated

No offense but it seems like this is a stock response that you've kind of pasted in here. Because it's all very self consistent but it doesn't actually relate to what I was saying because I wasn't generalizing like that and I wasn't assuming the premise that things are exaggerated, I was talking about when people misattribute blame. I know not all women blame like this and I know that there is discrimination based on a number of factors including gender skin color and other perceptions. I was simply saying that the tendency to misattribute blame along those lines of hot topic issues and avoid facing yourself and laying responsibility correctly at your own choices for successes or failures he is disempowering and it's funny how that's often carried out under the guise of these narratives which pretend to be for the empowerment of women or of some other group.

But the second half of your comment I really agreed with. I think there are a lot of these things happening but I think the term microaggressions is a misnomer because it incorrectly dismisses the validity of or presumes a magnitude of people's feelings where you don't actually know if that's the case.

You can't in general say that everybody needs to react the same way so you don't know if something which seems small to someone else is actually really big to another person.

but what I think the mistake of that kind of talk about this is that really this comes back to people being able to communicate effectively about their own feelings with other people who might be crossing boundaries or hurting them somehow. Like you said the other people might not even realize they're doing it and that's reasonable because everybody's reactions are function of their own individuality. so I think the mistake here is in sort of trying to aggregate and assume you know a common reaction and try to solve this as a you know sociological level rather than going no this is a personal problem of being able to communicate effectively with people you interact with and letting them know how you feel about something.

And not having to feel "oh I need to invoke sort of the mighty sword of the Zeitgeist discourse" you know in order to give validity to how I personally feel about something. It should have validity in and of itself and I think if people can be effective communicators about that then they will have a fine time navigating you know personal situations.

the other problem which I think is a basic interpersonal thing which seems to be missing from this discourse is that you can't blame other people for how you feel and react to things. And trying to hold them hostage to or blame them for your own reactions it's just a violation of a basic interpersonal boundary and it's just wrong. and it's also deeply connected with incorrectly mislaying responsibility for things. because by blaming other people how you feel and react you're incorrectly mislaying responsibility for how you feel and react.

The "lifting" of one's own personal reactions to the level of you know a social offense, (as in, my feelings are hurt therefore somebody did something "wrong", sociologically) unfairly limits the ways in which offended people are allowed to react or things about which they're allowed to feel offended, but it also incorrectly invokes the language of systemic bias for things which don't cross that level, which then starts witch hunts and creates more bias, when these common things (incorrectly called "microaggressions") are simply the result of I think interpersonal communication issues. The other thing that that type of labeling of anything that goes wrong for you as some sort of part of something that's wrong with society is that it traps you in and supports The narrative of you being a persecuted victim of some institutionally oppressed class. Which is very disempowering and very limiting for how you will then be able to respond and think about things.

from a cynical point of view of trying to control large numbers of people in groups and that would be great if I wanted to control you and limit your reactions but it would not be great if you valued freedom, authenticity and personal expression.

you might say you can't separate those things like this systemic sociological bias from interpersonal communication but I think it's really important to separate them because you have to have effective individuals to have an effective society and you can't have effective individuals if people do not respect these basic interpersonal boundaries and you know ways of communicating about themselves, that work.

so I think this is the case where there's a sociological solution for a personal problem but it's not very useful, and is actually maladaptive.

so I think there is a separate issue which can be dealt with sociologically and that's the elimination of unfair and discriminatory bias in all forms and education about bias... but confusing, in the way i try to describe here, the issues of responsibility, personal reactions and interpersonal communication with this sociological issue is a mistake.

It's exactly the same! The same type of delusional pathology i think. The way you describe it exactly.

Just because some people think in ways that don't work, doesn't mean that there isn't unfairness toward women. But just because there is unfairness doesn't mean that's the cause of everything.

But i think the incel notion didn't even have a grounding in reality underlying it. Isn't it that sex is scarcity and and there's some sort of conspiracy against them as individuals that means they get no sex? Maybe i don't understand their view, but as i state it's, to me, anyway, complete and utter balderdash.

Just because that's bs, doesn't mean that all women are good people who treat everyone fairly, it doesn't mean that some women don't deliberately try to hurt people in relationships and surrounding matters, just like some men do... But the notion that there's a conspiracy targeting some self identified subset of the male population to deprive them sex is just crazy. Plus the notion that somehow they are entitled to some minimum sex quota and are being unfairly shortchanged...which is like the flipside of toxic masculinity. Like defeatist beta male toxic masculinity. Plus the notion sex is scarcity. It's not at all. So the underlying narratives are just bullshit i think. But atop that bs narrative the same type of disempowering delusional pathology that women attributing every failure to institutionalized patriarchal oppression also succumb to.

Another connection I see albeit less commonly occurring in the population is the narrative used by terrorist recruiters. You know like it's not your fault that everything sucks in fact it's the result of someone else some institutionalized oppressor who is deliberately targeting you because of a group membership (that you can rally around), and you need to blame them for everything. It provides a fake pretext for violence, which i think you also see to a lesser degrees with incels and then a type of emotional or reputational violence with twitter mobs.

And i think there's connections with Trump supporters and the white Christian America under attack narrative, although in that case there's a lot of different dynamics at play and it's not as easy to parallel because it's such a popular movement.

I do think there's a common thread that runs through all of these different movements, and whether consciously or unconsciously at work, it's a tool in tool box of people who try to enroll you in these movements and get you to do useful work in them, and that is to cast you as a disempowered member of some targeted group, setting you up to realize that there's "salvation" (or at the very least comforting consolation) achievable via this new group identity.

Apart from the tragedy of the violence which sometimes results, and which is then justified and explained away within the parameter set up by these narratives (at least by the supporters themselves), there's another tragedy where the group identity or "cause" is abused to lend legitimacy and motivation to the movement, and this often disenfranchises people who are authentic members of those groups by clouding their message and hijacking their collective voice (such as actual victims of discrimination, or true followers of Islam)

Of course there's a lot of room within these group definitions for a diversity of people to be genuine members of the group but I suppose that's the point, because it's the inclusivity of these groups that provides this vulnerability of their "brand identity and message" (if you will) to the abuse and exploitation of these movements that co-opt these for something else. These platforms could be sources of good. But when misused like this, the hijacked groupe messaging ends up getting in the way of people who should be doing good, or seeking good, through them. I think such misuse is the second tragedy.

the third tragedy is the that you end up with all these people who are ostensibly seeking empowerment ending up disempowering themselves by believing and acting in alignment with this stuff.

None of these tragedies insignificant. Even in the case where the second tragedy doesn't apply because, at least to me, there's no legitimate narrative underpinning the movement such as in the case of incels, the remaining tragedies are not insignificant.

  So, this scenario isn't exactly uncommon in the startup world. It happens all the time. But because she's a minority female and her competitor is a white man, it suddenly becomes an example of white supremacy and the patriarchy conspiring to oppress her.

Doesn't this sort of thinking basically make these notions into a conspiracy theory? Every piece of evidence interpreted in a way that it supports the chosen narrative.

One consequence is so many opportunities for insight and thoughtful constructive reflection are lost. It's funny to me that under the guise of narratives that supposedly empower women (narratives which have also, as in the above example, been abused beyond their true purpose of calling out actual unfair bias), women are instead holding themselves back and getting in their own way mightily... and they don't seem to realize it? How can so many smart women have such a whopping blindspot to be duped into acting this way and think this is "power"?

I think it has something to do with how compelling and self-satisfying these stories are. You know, the ability to blame everyone else rather than face yourself and take personal responsibility. So, sadly i think, many people just get addicted to this as a short circuit substitute for actually doing the hard work of processing experiences and cultivating useful insights out of them. They just short circuit to feeling good temporarily, sadly prioritizing these fake stories and reasons over getting results.

It seems if a movement was really interested in empowering women it would try to address this glaring structural weakness of the current approach rather getting them hooked on these fake payoffs that don't get them anywhere :(

Good article.

   *Now let’s look at IT in general. When was the last time you heard about or used some really good software library or application developed by a HK company or a bunch of HKers? Exactly. We’ve done fuck all in IT. Do we have programmers and software engineers in HK? Sure we do! But even in IT, we’re just consumers who use the awesome tech developed by people and companies in other countries, to make yet another CRUD or to develop high frequency trading systems so we can pretend to be creating value. In contrast, you see Alibaba, Tencent, DiDi, bilibili, and ant.design ranked among the top 100 organisations on GitHub, based on the number of stars on git repositories. They have contributed to the world widely useful software libraries such as arthas, weui, ncnn, rapidjson, ijkplayer, flv.js, DoraemonKit, and ant-design.*

Excellent points on the whole. Maybe if HKers spent less time bitching about "China bad" and pretending about bullshit ideologies and politics, and go back to the creativity and hungry hard work spirit that initially contributed to HK's growth, they'd get some shit done for once. Until then, the decline is sad to see.

But the issue with the young generation in HK is somehow they are "content" with the reasons over results bullshit, and content "feeling good" by pretending "China so evil", and playing some fake victim fantasy, they are content with this, rather than going, "How can I get results? How can I make my life good? How can I build up HK?" I think probably a lot of people realized "Oh, shit we can't 'compete' anymore, we're no longer the star child" so in the trope of sibling rivalry (even tho it's China-HK are not brothers, more like family), they just gave up, defeatist attitude, and found some weak and pathetic and twisted (and evil, look at the violence of those 'terrorist protesters' during the unrest) way to pretend they're better than China now. Now, all the poor HK kids have been misled by this bullshit, and they're all addicted to this idea that China so bad, because they've got nothing else to contribute, and it's the only thing they have left to feel "good" and deal with the fact that they're no longer number 1. Rather than lift themselves up, they wanna try drag no. 1 down. It's so sad.

Man I wish I didn't see the place I love come to that, but it has. Good article, I wish more HK young people could listen to you about this, but they are too closed minded. They don't want to hear. If you say ideas like this, then they just want to fight (or set you on fire), and react and not listen. I get why. It's too painful to listen. To face the fact: You're not number 1. It's on you. It's no one else's fault. It's your responsibility. No one's coming to save you. It's your responsibility to "make HK great again".

Hard truths to hear, so they stuff their ears and chant "songs of freedom". I'd laugh if it wasn't so real and if I didn't love that place. It's tragic. Oh well, at least China has stabilized HK for now by putting their foot down.

You give an editorial team a chance to leave if you want them to take a different stance and you think not all of them will be onboard.

The following is probably just glib speculation and (trigger warning) I apologize for the mortal harm, and deep and long offense it will cause to our delicate and venerable brothers and sisters who have awakened their righteous moral zeal for a bit of the old fashioned ultraviolence (I mean mob executions) in the woke movement but could this be related to the confluence of:

- Rise of Substack and "unedited/uncensored" writers having a diversity of opinions, readership and success without having to toe any ideological line dictated by the venerable offices of the ministries of politically correct truth (our beloved overlords)?

- Impending decline or unprofitability of cancel culture and Medium's nascent wish to adopt a wider net for writers of all perspectives to try to capture some of the value Substack is surfacing, while acknowledging their existing editorial team is probably too ideologically inflexible and overly fixated on the woke tropes of hunting witches, mob-executions of resistance sympathizers and exiling heretics to be able to benefit from these trends?

- The impossibility of a leader of the Silicon Valley set couching anything in such counter-revolutionary terms, so it needs to be infused with anodyne positivity in order to pre-emptively counter any woke-police criticisms and fly under the counter-woke-dar of our venerable overlords?

- Missive sent from output 9, with greatest respect to our eternally and most woke overlords, may they bless us

> One effective way to do this is to isolate the responsibilities of individuals such that no one but the top few have the whole picture view.

The following is probably just an already completely debunked conspiracy theory with zero basis in fact but what you describe is precisely how special compartmentalized intelligence works. Maybe many of the corporate and government organizations in security and intelligence operate in this siloed way, possibly at the risk of a lack of oversight and accountability which helps any abuses go unaddressed. Official secrecy oaths and classification perhaps compounds this vulnerability to misuse.

And except for the public heads very occasionally rolling, it's likely nobody takes responsibility (in a justice sense) when abuses occur. How do you get people to carry our these things? Simple finance, and isolation could be one way as mentioned. Coercive control via blackmail, planting evidence, fake accusations or intimidation could be other effective methods, especially when you need to secure the cooperation of key people outside the organization, and especially when your daily work involves intelligence collection and deception.

If it occurs at a deep level under the security and compartmentalization shields, then it's unlikely checks and balances could correct it if this sort of corruption was occurring.