There is a percent of false accusations for any kind of crime. However, it is the lowest when it comes to harassment and other anti-women crimes due to enormous costs victims have to pay (in every sense) to raise their voice. It is ridiculous to use unavoidable and very low percent of false accusations as an argument against attempts that victims make to restore justice with no working framework. Currently we don't have proper mechanisms to protect these victims, and in many cases speaking out is the only thing they can do. They shouldn't be blamed for the absence of these mechanisms.
It's very close to saying something like rape is fine as it prevents killing. Both are kinds if crimes (no matter what the legal status of porn is, it destroys lives of actors and promotes harmful stereotypes and actions towards women too often, which makes it very close to a crime).
All 'anti-vaccine' and 'damorish' types I met were undereducated in one way or another. Not necessarily in terms of university education, often it was some gap in basic self-education resulting in the lack of quality reasoning or soft skills or breadth of knowledge. On the side of an average person, there are many other enemies of science like absence of intellectual honesty, sincere pursuit of truth and ability to work towards it (often combined).
Yeah there are many reports like this, but I think Alexandra behaves quite ok in the given circumstances. Actually these reports of her "inadequate" behavior (mostly by people who intentionally blackmail her and behave no better themselves) is what she protests against as she suspects that it is an organized attempt to harm her reputation and project, and it is very likely that it really is. Her communication style is often harsh, and some of her views are quite unusual, but this is not a crime and definitely not enough to label someone insane or treat like she is treated.
Well, while the text might not be well thought out and calculated, given what comments and level of disrespect she was facing online (maybe offline as well), the tone of this text is not that surprising. As for mental health of the author, we have 0 info about it and we are not doctors to speculate.
..but not for those who belittles and represses science. I guess she tries to influence malicious political practices and public opinions protesting against them this way.
You are actually commenting under the link to one. Zunger's post does an excellent job explaining how this 'memo' is right the opposite of your description: it is vastly incorrect, uncivilized, insincere, awfully written and unreasonable. More links on this: Google has hired a diversity VP — just as it struggles with a sexist memo from an employee https://www.recode.net/2017/8/5/16102476/google-diversity-vp... Dr. Sadedin's Quora answer: https://www.quora.com/What-do-scientists-think-about-the-bio...
Damore shouldn't have shared his opinion (the way he did) because there is a huge gap between what he claims to aim for and what he actually does. He claims that open discussion, diversity and helping to improve the situation are what important to him. But in practice he does right the opposite: creates a hostile working environment with perverted reasoning, loads of bias perpetuating harmful stereotypes, ignoring how his tone will affect others and pretty agressive promotion of these views instead of politely sharing a well thought out intellectually honest opinion.
Given the sensitivity of topic he tries to discuss, 'how' is an extremely important part of 'what', still he manages to twist his declared 'what' to the 180 degree with his 'how'. It seems that he was fired exactly for showing strong intention to continue the promotion of his highly biased opinions while completely ignoring what it actually does to people around him. Disproving the memo wouldn't help to stop it if this was the case.
These early social influences are a very significant part of the whole diversity/discrimination story and of what the diversity policies are trying to solve. The best ways to improve diversity and fix gender biases are still ‘debatable’. But speaking about the ‘memo’, this particular document is incorrect to the level it doesn’t deserve the debate. Despite the author claimed he created it “all in the name of open discussion”, he mainly created a hostile environment for his coworkers, which is unacceptable (and the fact he didn’t even understand that doesn’t excuse him). I agree with this comment on the ‘memo’ story, which is by far the most sane one: https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/so-about-this-googlers-man...
Men are underrepresented in certain professions for sure (and it is a part of the diversity problem), but the current discussion is about underrepresentation in tech, and white men are definitely not the main subject to it (so I don't see any double standards here).
Because in the discussion of a highly disadvantaged group (gender or a minority) what matters is how to provide this group with rightfully equal opportunities, not how to widen the gap by looking how to give more advantages to already extremely privileged one.
Not sure about Canada and Europe, but many countries just didn't reach the level of development where this discussion can start. They are not grown up and are stuck on the lower level, having problems like absence of basic human rights and protections.
You're completely missing one of the main points of the whole gender discrimination discourse: that there are strong social influences that prevent women from going to tech long before your 'before college', as well as during college and after college. There are many turning points at which girls are influenced the way that discourages them from tech instead of helping them to develop interest in it. So yes, discrimination is definitely the reason why women are underrepresented in tech, even if there would not be 50/50 women/men ratio without discrimination. You can claim discrimination if the environment subtly discourages you with constantly signalling that you shouldn't pursue a certain path. And yes, men who'd like to pursue 'non-male' careers also often choose not to because of the social pressure. And no, the diversity debate doesn't 'get too much attention'. It gets significantly less attention than it should, given the scale of this problem and devastating effects the lack of diversity has on societies, working environments, women, men, children - basically, any social group.
We do. It is exactly what we have - plenty of evidence of systematic sexism in tech, many other industries Ana society as a whole. It is so evident that nothing is left to debate about this fact.
In a very subtle and non-evident way. He doesn't do it directly, but as a whole, given the 'memo's structure and its tone, it creates wrong assumptions, ignores important points, emphasizes secondary ones, creates doubts where there is nothing to doubt about and doesn't question things that should be questioned instead, which in general presents an incompetent and harmful way of thinking about the subject. It's like someone would write an essay with a list of science-based points on why raping children is natural and suggest to doubt that it is a crime. Its pretty easy to kind of support any bad thing with scientific facts and make it look right, but doing this is bad in the first place. His post provokes subtle doubts on very sensitive things like female competence and questions if diversity is important enough to tolerate a risk of not hiring the most qualified person. Given what we know about the hardships women often face in society and at work, provoking doubts around those subjects does no good. At least, not in the way he presented the whole topic.
Open culture does not mean that actions that make environment more hostile to some group inside the company should not be punished. The 'memo' definitely did that to his female coworkers. That's why the story is not about open culture or freedom of speech, but in the first place about creating unhealthy environment for a particular group inside the company and setting a really bad precedent. Maybe the guy meant well, but the fact is his actions ended up harming both a particular group and the company.
I don't have any specific routine. There is a large list of various sources in my head, which I check randomly when I feel I need to read something. I don't bookmark things, but occasionally write down my impressions from some sources and posts, which helps me to remember them.
ps Oh, I actually bookmark links on HN, probably this is the only place where I bookmark anything
Which is surprising since all men have at least mothers, and often sisters and female friends. Also why wait until having a daughter to start getting annoyed with things that are blatantly wrong.
I think that the fear of death is natural, normal, and impossible to overcome. The only thing you can do about it is to stop thinking about it all the time and being stressed because of it (or trick yourself into thinking that death is too distant/not that painful/positive in some way). I cope with the fear of death by just not thinking about it too much since I fail to find anything positive about future death. And when I do, I strive to use thoughts about death as a tool for making my life more productive/efficient.
Unfortunately, fame/money often can't help someone who is severely depressed, and can't help to find someone to reach out to who will listen and understand.
I came across one of Reddit's hate groups once and just couldn't believe my eyes. It felt like a swarm of psychopaths planning some isis-style chaos without anyone to stop them. This is the reason I don't use Reddit.
I meant not that marriage is a higher risk for women than being in a romantic relationship (I didn't see any stats on married vs unmarried violence rates towards women), but that in a marriage risks of physical abuse women face are times more significant/important/damaging than any commercial risks men face. Any commercial risk is just nothing in the face of risks like being killed/beaten/raped.