What People Think You Can’t Say in Silicon Valley

https://medium.com/@jasoncrawford/what-people-think-you-cant-say-in-silicon-valley-a6d04f632a00

by sherjilozair • 9 years ago

155 123 9 years ago

vxNsr2• 9 years ago

So basically people with opinions on both extremes feel marginalized and unheard. I guess that's maybe a message to consider a more nuanced position.

spiznnx• 9 years ago

I want Silicon Valley to be a place where you can publicly hold extreme views and not be a huge social liability to anyone you associate with (employer, friends).

paloaltokid2• 9 years ago

What’s an extreme view in your book? Extreme views, by definition, must brush up against the limits of what’s legal or ethical.

gjjrfcbugxbhf2• 9 years ago

The thing is you are free to hold and expose extreme views - and I strongly support your right to do so and not to be subject to persecution from the state for doing so. However I also have the right to not associate with you if I think that you are a dick.

pjc502• 9 years ago

What does that actually mean? It has to mean that your views are consequence-less, that there is no way they could have an effect on the real world.

Do you really think it should be possible to walk around wearing a "kill all Jews" badge, and not recieve so much as an angry glare from a Jewish person?

johnny224• 9 years ago

some positions have no nuance though. There's no middle ground to "black people are inferior to white people". There's no difference to split.

forgottenpass• 9 years ago

Opinions within the overton window are not inherently more nuanced.

There's a line I like about this: "Hegemony means never having to admit you have an agenda."

sddfd• 9 years ago

I read through the list.

My only comment is that if you cannot discuss an idea then the idea cannot evolve, and you probably won't change your mind.

Maybe the problem is not oppression of ideas, but the lack of a discussion culture which can tolerate a wider spectrum of ideas for the sake of debunking some of them.

Aloha5• 9 years ago

I think this is key.

In the south (and other places) you're more apt to spot people who have deep bias against people for intrinsic things - in the North (including CA, and Northwest) those ideas are so completely unacceptable, that those people never get called out on them.

aaron-lebo2• 9 years ago

How did you write that without realizing how oxymoronic it is? Were you trying to be an example of: "people who have deep bias against people for intrinsic things"?

Besides your suggestion that prejudice doesn't exist in the north (lol), you're writing from the Pacific Northwest, one of the least diverse places in the country. Oregon is 83% white; Texas hasn't been that white since 1970, currently 45% non-Hispanic white. Washington state is 72% non-Hispanic. We deal with a diverse culture every day, most of us aren't racist and ignorant.

Why did you say that?

briandear4• 9 years ago

Citation needed.

Are you going to argue that there is more racism in a Texas company than a California company? You are really going to have to prove that.

Have you ever actually lived in a city such as Houston? One of the most diverse cities in the country.

Look how segregated Silicon Valley is. Cupertino and Saratoga Schools are —- about 80% Asian and 2% black. How is that possible given that racism is a “completely unacceptable” idea in California? Those schools are reflecting the employment of the region. Since those are expensive areas, only people with wel paying tech jobs can live there and yet the diversity is pretty much the opposite of the US as a whole.

Perhaps Silicon Valley needs to be called out — far more than those “racists in the south.”

robinwarren• 9 years ago

I think it is reasonable to question what people mean by "can't discuss". As mentioned in the article people can discuss anything, but certain things are met with some pushback which makes discussing them hard or unpleasant.

I would say, if you hold one of these "taboo" opinions there is a reasonable amount of responsibility on you for how you open a discussion on them. If you do want to discuss them you need to try and raise them in a way which shows you are genuinely interested in discussion, including possibly changing your own opinion and trying to get a better understanding of others opinions without necessarily judging them. Rather than coming from a fixed position and trying to convert people, which in my experience rarely works.

If you hold one of more of these taboo opinions and think I am being rude, suggesting you don't discuss properly it that those you discuss with are all perfect reasonable beings that is not the case. But in my experience it is not common for people to open a discussion honestly looking to assess their own opinions as well as those they are discussing with. If you aren't open to change your mind, why should anyone be open to change theirs? If you are already doing that, then good for you! Hopefully some minds will get changed and we can all move forward with a more honest understanding of the world.

meowfly• 9 years ago

If you aren't open to change your mind, why should anyone be open to change theirs?

A lot of discussion/debate is less about changing minds and more about mutual understanding of the underlying values. The problem is these "taboo subjects" all too often have people assuming the other's intentions and therefore the underlying reasoning for those bad arguments never get fleshed out. Thus the person with the taboo perspective just feels misunderstood.

I imagine this is also how athiests feel in deeply religious parts of the US.

to_bpr• 9 years ago

SV has championed a super toxic, toe-the-liberal-line-question-nothing atmosphere in the workplace for years now. The damage is done.

You'd have to be a total fool to bring up any of the non-left-wing, yet totally valid comments on that post in a tech workplace in 2017.

gaius4• 9 years ago

Here's how it works in London: a right-wing racist will call you a racist epithet to your face. A left-wing racist will talk a lot about diversity but work behind the scenes to ethnically cleanse your neighbourhood (aka "gentrification").

perfmode• 9 years ago

It seems regardless of one’s viewpoint, there is a strong reluctance to digging deeper to examine the roots of one’s beliefs.

A lot of these people might not believe what they believe if they were to attempt to justify their beliefs in a rigorous and intellectually honest way.

venomsnake• 9 years ago

I can think of one taboo opinion - supporting prop 8. Results - being fired. Also it was made effective with back date. The firing of Brendan Eich was as chilling effect as possible.

In the current climate you could get a pitchfork mob after you extremely easy for even stuff perceived as homophobic - as the recent suicide of August Ames showed.

bdamm• 9 years ago

"Silicon Valley" is a workplace, and it's generally considered rude to bring your political views into the workplace. Everyone has met the very passionate on both the left and the right, and having someone stand outside your cube or in the lunch line trying to "win" you over to their view just isn't conducive to getting your work done and making money.

stevenwliao• 9 years ago

The contention is that the “correct” views can be openly discussed.

briandear4• 9 years ago

Unless you are on the left, then in SV it’s perfectly acceptable.

WillPostForFood• 9 years ago

It isn't political debate that it is the issue, it is the absolute assumption that everyone agrees with the standard SV dogma, so people say political things all the time, with no intent to debate, because they are just the accepted truth. A subtle example would be trashing "flyover" states. There is no intent to debate whether people from Texas are rednecks, but people feel free to say it.

gaius4• 9 years ago

A subtle example would be trashing "flyover" states. There is no intent to debate whether people from Texas are rednecks, but people feel free to say it.

Similarly the Brexit vote revealed alot about people's true characters and beliefs. The vote largely broke down along class lines, working class for Leave, middle class for Remain. And those middle class types, who tirelessly virtue signal about how left-wing they are, when confronted with what the actual Workers really want, are quick to condemn the entire lot as racist mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging morons. Class divisions are never far from the surface in the UK.

Cookingboy6• 9 years ago

"Silicon Valley" is a workplace, and it's generally considered rude to bring your political views into the workplace.

In theory, yes, but in practice it's only considered "rude" when you bring unpopular political views into the workplace. In a partisan locale such as SV people openly talk about the popular political view at work, all the time.

A Googler can go to TGIF Q&A and openly bash Trump/GOP and he'd get sympathetic responses from Larry, if not cheers from the audience (and a bunch of new memegen entries), but I highly doubt the same would be true for someone expressing opposite views.

cinquemb• 9 years ago

I used to work for a start up in Boston (co-lo'd with a bunch of other startups) a couple years ago, and people would openly talk about politics of the left-wing establishment variety and go around patting each other on the back for it.

The stuff rude awakenings are made of…

RU9x8wHmjH8m6Nm• 9 years ago

Totally agree with respect to irrelevant political views.

But sometimes sensitive topics become relevant in the workplace (e.g. diversity in hiring). If any suggested divergence from the party line is repudiated, we risk losing objectivity.

An open mind easily discards a bad idea. A closed mind may miss a good one.

bassman9000• 9 years ago

and it's generally considered rude to bring your conservative/libertarian/non-liberal political views into the workplace

FTFY

cowpig2• 9 years ago

It's funny, I don't see it on the list but by far the biggest taboo in SV in my experience is talking about things going badly. You're doing great, killing it even, or you should keep it to yourself.

johnny224• 9 years ago

now that's taboo.. so taboo it doesn't even make the list because people can't even think it :)

malmsteen• 9 years ago

I don't know if it's really specific to startup. In life in general no one cares about you and people tend to avoid you if it's going badly (except very close friends).

cowpig2• 9 years ago

Well, I grew up in NYC where sarcasm and cynicism reign supreme. SV culture is really jarring.

evangelista• 9 years ago

“A lot of the ideas here will not actually get you ostracized from Silicon Valley society.”

Oh dude you have just not been paying attention.

Can you show me a single example of someone in tech who publicly expresses, at any point, any of the beliefs which are “not allowed?”

I’m looking for one.

Find me one person on Twitter in tech aside from John McAfee or Peter Theil who would dare. Sam Altman was good enough to step forward, I hope he won’t be the last. The complete and total castigation of the dude by every tech media outlet showed exactly what happens to anyone who isn’t rich enough not to care.

While Sam Altman can take a beating, a standard employee like James Damore can’t. Did we forget about him? Apparently we did!

Show me a single tech luminary staying that diversity is overrated and has numerous downsides (such as the degradation of communal trust which had swept the valley), that we don’t actually need additional codes of conduct to add protections that are already covered in the US legal code at every Meetup, that all gender bathrooms are lunacy or that most of the Millenials coming into the job market have an incredibly broken and fearful view of the world that is unwarranted by the available evidence.

Show me a single tech luminary willing to say that women should realize they have advantages and disadvantages and should take responsibility for guarding themselves st off-site social events to avoid being approached by men.

One! Show me one!

I can find these opinions on conservative podcasts but I have never seen anyone express them in tech. Ever!

I see a non-stop avalanche of one set of these opinions on every social media feed, internal company meeting and industry conference.

I have NEVER seen ANYONE notable in tech aside from Peter Thiel, who has been made untouchable st this point.

Why is that? It’s because they know it’s not good business and they will get to join Peter Theil in the excommunicated pile.

A great example is Scott Adams. Scott used to make hundreds of thousands of dollars per year giving paid speeches.

When he began writing about Trump, he was excommunicated and all of his speaking gigs were cancelled.

Another great example is the systematic and deliberate demonetization of conservative YouTube videos. People who are very balanced and fair like Dave Rubin have had their videos defunded for having conservative speakers as interview guests.

Twitter has been notorious for slowing down or “never getting around to” giving Blue Check Marks to conservative speakers - If I remember correctly, Scott Adams had to reach a simply insane number of followers before being given the check.

The hatred of conservatives and direct, persecutory and economic attacks on them is real, ongoing and getting worse.

Seriously - if you believe most of these opinions won’t harm your career if expressed publicly, you have really not been paying attention.

If you don’t believe me - Try it. Go on Twitter right now and say: “all gender bathrooms are stupid.”

Watch what happens.

tstactplsignore3• 9 years ago

I don't think I could convince you of anything. But can I ask: if the other side were right, and some of these views are so abhorrent that the outrage against people who express them is almost entirely justified- would you be able to tell?

There are definitely some political views that should be socially discouraged and attacked and there should be social repercussions for the people who express them. You disagree on whether some particular views fit in this category. You must admit that from your position, it can be very difficult to distinguish between unfair persecution and genuine persecution.

For the record, if a company I work for invited someone as purely evil / anti-intellectual and vapid as Scott Adams to give a speech, I would absolutely resign in protest.

yzhou• 9 years ago

why do you say Scott Adams is purely evil?

blfr2• 9 years ago

I can maybe see how Scott Adams is anti-intellectual, although people claiming to be rational should definitely consider his view, but how is he "purely evil"?

Cookingboy6• 9 years ago

If you really think Scott Adams is "purely evil", as in Hitler level, I have some strong suspicion that you are a troll that is trying to make liberals look ridiculous.

If not, then I have a feeling that you mistakenly equate many opposing ideas to "pure evil ideologies".

sunsets_44• 9 years ago

But can I ask: if the other side were right, and some of these views are so abhorrent that the outrage against people who express them is almost entirely justified- would you be able to tell?

Well, on some issues you can always appeal to authorities - for example if people have strong opinions on economic issues you can compare that consensus to IGM Forum polls. People are oftentimes predictably biased.

Alternatively, you can try to get people who disagree with eachother to perform an ideological Turing test. It should be informative if someone basically cannot meaningfully articulate the actual arguments that are being presented that they disagree with.

Cookingboy6• 9 years ago

some of these views are so abhorrent that the outrage against people who express them is almost entirely justified- would you be able to tell?

Yes, we can tell most of the time, and yes even if it gets difficult sometimes and we fail to distinguish unfair and genuine persecution, we will try our best to discuss it, study it, and get better at it. That's how we should approach the problem. That, is the intellectual way.

Your method of automatically shutting down discussion of controversial ideas just because a small percentage of them are truly evil, is in fact more anti-intellectual than anything Scott Adams has ever said/written.

TheAceOfHearts2• 9 years ago

I agree with some of the points you make, and I think they're pretty reasonable positions to take.

But I'm curious as to the arguments against all gender bathrooms? I've visited tons of restaurants over the years that just had a single restroom, and it's never been a problem. When you have people over they might use your bathroom, and that's also not considered a problem. Heck, at all the doctor's offices I recall visiting they always had a single bathroom. I always find it slightly frustrating when I try using the restroom and it's occupied and I'm forced to wait, even though there's a unoccupied bathroom mere feet away. What are people's concerns with shared bathrooms?

gaius4• 9 years ago

As someone who grew up watching Ally McBeal, I am pretty sure that noone of my generation really has any problem with unisex toilets. But where the confusion comes from is that I think that the concept of a "bathroom" has somehow been conflated with that of a "changing room", e.g. at a gym or something. I have found that people who are passionately against them, with gently probed, actually mean the latter.

4bpp2• 9 years ago

Not the parent poster, but I'll barge in and say I don't have any. Who knows, though - maybe there are actually some really good ones, and I'll never know them because everyone who came up with one kept quiet lest they be blacklisted and hounded out of polite society. Human reasoning is a cooperative effort (when can you say have you last won a debate on a topic widely regarded as important using only arguments you came up with yourself in a vacuum?); if you expel a position from the commons, you tilt the playing field against it in a way that is orthogonal to its truthfulness, and thereby destroy what would otherwise be a useful correlation between how a position fares in the debate circuit and how likely it is to be true.

curun1r2• 9 years ago

But I'm curious as to the arguments against all gender bathrooms?

In college, my freshman-year dorm bathroom was unisex. It initially created huge complaints from everyone. The women complained that the toilets were always messy and the men complained that the toilets were always occupied. Those may be stereotypes, but they're also frequently true. We eventually resolved our issues by designating 1 stall as "standing only" and the other 2 as "sitting only" to ensure that men could always pee without a wait and women could always sit without having to clean first.

But that only worked because we could impose those kinds of rules. A public bathroom is a different matter and I'll bet both genders get annoyed with having to share with the other absent those kinds of imposed rules.

Note that this kind of thing can be cultural as well. At my last job, the non-Asian women complained about some of their Asian counterparts' bathroom use. It seems that women who grew up with squat toilets liked to stand on the seats so they could use their preferred squatting technique. This resulted in much the same sort of messes that result from men standing when they pee.

tzs• 9 years ago

What do you mean by "conservatives"?

I've occasionally advocated online policies that were taken from Ronald Reagan or the first President Bush or from their leading cabinet members and advisors and not run into any problems in liberal forums online.

I got banned from /r/republican for advocating such policies.

Conservatism today has been largely taken over by the extreme right. Conservative political leaders thought they could court the extremists like white supremacists, anti-immigration fear mongers, religious bigots, conspiracy theorists, and just plain nutcases and the like for their votes but would be able to keep them under control. They were wrong.

wolco• 9 years ago

One quote I picked out. Early stage employees have it bad. This is true but the increase freedom can balance this out.

Stock options are generally useless and in many ways force employees not to move on to better opportunities.

EmilStenstrom2• 9 years ago

There's a big difference between ideas that weaken minorities, and ideas that weaken majorities, because you get blowback for different reasons. When you attack minorities the people that get upset with you, are people that are worried that weakening an already weak group is a bad thing. When you attack majorities however, you get blowback from the people that are afraid to lose their power.

I agree that there are problems with not allowing people to express all kinds of ideas, but there's a big difference in the two types above: You should be more careful when attacking the already weak, for their position is already brittle.

briandear4• 9 years ago

Why weaken anyone? It isn’t zero sum. The free market has nothing to do with minorities or majorities: people don’t care about the race of a person selling them bread — they just want the cheapest bread at the highest quality.

johnny224• 9 years ago

they sure did care for the race of the people they sold it to though. In any case, none of what you said matches actual American history.

kazagistar• 9 years ago

(I'm going to assume from context you don't mean minority as in population, but rather power dynamics as you talk about for the rest of the post.) The problem distinguishing stronger and weaker sides is that there isn't an objective metric that both sides can agree on. The reason gender issues are so prevalent on this list and are such a hot topic is exactly because it is a debate about which side is weaker, about which measures of power are valid and invalid, and so on.

EmilStenstrom2• 9 years ago

That there isn't a metric is a really interesting problem. I think most debates should start with talking about metrics.

For instance, when talking about skewed power dynamics when it come to gender, you could look at the number of men vs. women in management positions. Being able to fire someone is a form of power. Or you could look at raw salaries, and say that money is a form of power. And so on. Would make many discussions a lot clearer.

anonbanker• 9 years ago

This is a fantastic HN thread to scroll to the very bottom, and see which opinions have been greyed-out from heavy downvote bombardments. Highly recommended.

aestetix• 9 years ago

What I read about the current climate in the US reminds me a lot of how things were in the months after 9/11. While I don't have unbiased data like in the link, I can share a personal anecdote:

In the months after 9/11, if you spoke up and said you didn't agree with US foreign policy (invading Afghanistan) or that you didn't approve of Bush and wanted him to resign, you got blacklisted.

I had a friend, every house in his neighborhood had an American flag except for his, because his dad was an introverted engineer and uninterested in politics. The absence of the flag was obvious, and after a few nights of things like eggs on the door, flaming dog shit, and finally a dead animal left on the door mat, he put up an American flag and all the drama went away.

briandear4• 9 years ago

Try putting up a Ted Cruz sign in Mountain View.

paloaltokid2• 9 years ago

That’d be kinda silly since Ted Cruz is a Texas senator. But if you mean for President, probably you’d take some heat.

rdiddly2• 9 years ago

And that is why we won't stop fascism - people are too in love with it!

danieltillett• 9 years ago

I think the most interesting thing about the recent debate is our true rulers must be getting worried that things are getting out of control. They have not forgotten about the Reign of Terror [0] or where this sort of thing can lead. There is the real risk the masses actually might not be distracted by the usual left/right pointless bickering and actually follow the money.

0. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reign_of_Terror

Edit. Good to see what the real topic is you can't discuss in SV ;)

rdiddly2• 9 years ago

The "taboo" list is surprisingly run-of-the-mill. All of it seems like stuff I see people discussing on the internet all the time. I thought there might be a few original thoughts, but even the things they claim they can't say are things they're kind of supposed to think. Different sides of boring issues.

Anyway rest assured there's no need to stifle heretical ideas with these people. The ones thinking anything truly original were probably either the ones left out of the 108, or never bothered answering or are already in institutions etc.

blfr2• 9 years ago

These cannot be original ideas because they must have been expressed a few times before people learned you shouldn't discuss them.

olavk2• 9 years ago

As someone living far away from SV, this is fascinating reading. But I think the survey could be more precise about what "can't say" really means. Will you get literally ostracized for holding the viewpoint in private or on a blog, or will you get fired for bringing it up in the workplace?

I personally believe some viewpoints really are inappropriate to bring up in a professional working environment. If I genuinely believe read-headed people have a brain structure which makes them inferior developers, I don't think I should bring this issue up during a meeting. Sure, my red-headed coworkers have the option of challenging my viewpoints and perhaps a fruitful discussion will follow - where I will convince them with rational arguments and evidence that my viewpoint is correct. But I think it is fair if said red-headed colleagues would prefer not to have the discussion at all.

I notice the top taboo subjects are diversity, racism, sexism etc - exactly subjects where you can indirectly question a colleagues competence.

backpropaganda• 9 years ago

If your company is spending a significant fraction of its capital on increasing the number of red-headed employees, and purports to be a place where you can voice your opinions about anything that's going wrong, etc., then you might consider discussing whether we as a company are spending too much much money and effort to hire more red-headed people, and that the net effect is bad whether your goal is diversity or performance.

Almost anything can be thought of as indirectly questioning colleague's competence. Suppose I saw, "U. Waterloo is a great school, let's hire more people from there.", this is indirectly questioning the competence of anyone who's not from U. Waterloo. Suppose HR decides to offer employees free LASIK surgery, then they are questioning the competence of people who choose to wear glasses instead. Encouraging employees to use desk in stand-up mode questions the competence of people who prefer to work while sitting. The list is endless.

Steeeve• 9 years ago

SV is an oddly judgemental area. When people have unpopular opinions they tend to discuss them quietly.

My wife doesn't work in tech, but she did lose a job over a post on a message board that didn't agree with her boss' politics. (She thought it was a waste of money to rename a school)

I'm wide open with the co-workers that I'm close to (i.e. in my working group). I'm more reserved among others, and since I work for a large entity, I'm aware of the people that pose a political challenge and do my best not to piss them off. I know of a few people in tech who let the wrong words out and ended up losing jobs as an indirect result. (it wasn't "you said X, you're gone", it was more "he said X and a few weeks later - surprise surprise... he doesn't work here anymore") I haven't seen anything like that outside of the bay area and I've worked all over.

rectang• 9 years ago

Will you get literally ostracized for holding the viewpoint in private or on a blog

Yes, that can happen. If you argue on your blog that red-headed people are inherently inferior developers and it gets back to your colleagues, there will be people who treat you differently.

olavk2• 9 years ago

Oh certainly, but that does not necessarily mean you "can't say" such things. I would definitely treat a colleague differently if I discover they write a blog arguing in favor of Hungarian Notation. Of course people will judge your character. But if such a blog post would get you fired then it would be fair to say you "can't say" it.

As an example, Peter Thiel (if I remember correctly) criticized women having the vote. Certainly a controversial viewpoint, but not controversial enough to get him ostracized. But his support for Trump did get him ostracized to some extent. I think this shows the difference between what is just controversial and what is considered unacceptable in SV.

stared2• 9 years ago

My impression is that it is not only about topics, but also perceived intentions (and if you step, however unintentionally, on a trigger (of a landmine)).

I wrote Dating for Nerds: Gender differences (http://p.migdal.pl/2017/09/30/dating-for-nerds-gender-differ...) and got no backlash (much to my surprise, though).

From my experience nerds (and aspies in particular) talk mostly to exchange information (learn, share). Same questions are being understood by neurotypicals as expressing intentions, in a covert way.

Nerd: I read that X, on the average, are less interested in tech.

A non-nerd reads it as: I want to kick out all X from tech. / I consider X inferior.

A non-nerd disagrees with the perceived intention and fights back, while a nerd perceives it as immunity to facts and unwillingness for a discussion.

That said:

- not all nerds are well-intentioned and open-minded

- workplace is not a place for all possible talks (or other social activities); if it makes people feel bad, excluded or less productive - it may be an argument to keep such discussions outside of the workplace; in particular, workplace is not an evolutionary biology discussion club

And BTW, from "Interpersonal Traits of Aspies Placed in Context": https://gist.github.com/stared/00ce50e95f9bcecc8965feb04650c... see "Not Recognizing 'Yellow Light' Conditions" and even more: "Doesn't Apologize Readily".

insickness3• 9 years ago

"A non-nerd reads it as: I want to kick out all X from tech. / I consider X inferior."

I was out on an internet date with Scandinavian woman a few years ago. She was some type of sociological researcher, which interested me. I told her that part of the discrepancy in representation between genders in tech could be biologically oriented and she immediately said, "I don't want to hear arguments from biology!" She said it with the same tone and conviction you'd label someone a racist.

It's as if once we allow these facts into the argument, it means we can say the fight for gender equality is finished, that whenever equality exists, we can all throw our hands up in the air and say, "It's biology!" I can see the danger but at the same time, the alternative--denying reality--is far more insidious.

tarsinge3• 9 years ago

I can of understand her reaction (I would have had the same) and for me it’s in fact not very dangerous:

- to my knowledge it’s impossible to separate biology and culture with the data we have

- some discriminations were and are made by wrongfully attributing it to biological traits

- since it’s hard or impossible to separate things a lot of people (myself included) adopt « it’s not biology it’s culture » by default because we think if we are wrong it causes less harm and is less dangerous than falsely attributing something to biology, and if it’s right then it helps the society progress.

I understand closing the debate is frustrating for the scientifically minded and rationale people, but my opinion is that it’s not a bad heuristic for society as a whole at least until we make progress. But obviously the debate can happen in the right context, but I find it dangerous to introduce it in the actual climate of crtitical thinking we are in

matt4077• 9 years ago

There are two reasons for that:

First of all, almost everything and its opposite can be argued from biology, and evolution. Among the reasons for that is a sort of circular logic, because many ideas of early human life we still hold are based on today’s stereotypes.

Secondly, arguing from biology denies the single most important difference of humans and other animals: that we are unique in having the capability to overcome our biology.

xorcist2• 9 years ago

It's as if once we allow these facts into the argument,

Right, facts.

Most of the biological arguments are very touchy-feely. But .. we can see differences in MRI between gays and straights (or men and women, or some other divide du jour)! That's to be expected. Unless your equipment is broken. But the facts that patterns in the brain has established doesn't tell us anything how, or why, they developed.

Scan a professional piano player and compare with a regular person and you'll pick up patterns there as well. Is that some sort of argument that piano talent is innate? If hypothetically some statistical factor could be identified that is more prevalent among black people and piano player, does that mean black people are more suited to be piano players?

No, it does not. Yet when considering sex differences, and to some extent race differences, those are the kind of argument that goes for factual. I doubt it's the factual part that bothers people, but rather the logical hoops necessary for these argument to gain practical relevance for decisionmaking.

I can somehow relate to the tiredness your friend expressed. In some other areas where I have taken active part for the past decade or two, I still encounter the same arguments over and over again (for example why open source is by necessity non-innovative), and every person genuiney believe they came up with a new and important thought that other people needs to consider. Just a quick skim of the discourse in the relevant area would really go a long way of presenting them in a more informed way.

So it might not be the arguments themselves that are tiring but the repetitivesness with the way they are presented.

aseow2• 9 years ago

Chances are this didn't have so much to do with open debate as making a faux pas.

1. Scandinavian society is largely based on that biology isn't a good enough justification for inequality. Unless you're being very specific you also end up making an argument against Scandinavia equality. Which is something that many Scandinavians would obviously disagree with. (the argument, not necessarily the arguing).

2. Scandinavians, compared to other people, have few things in modern history to be ashamed of. Unfortunately eugenics is one of those few things. [0]

3. Presenting a casual theory to someone in the field is generally not a good idea. Maybe especially so if it's in a social setting, if your theory states the importance of a competing field and/or if you are part of the historic majority addressing the historic minority. Since them not being taken seriously can be an issue.

4. The research of biological traits doesn't seem to support the large gender difference in technology. The overlap between men and women is large, the correlation between gender traits and e.g. intelligence is weak and differences to other fields seem hard to explain. Even if you accept the idea that women don't like x and technology has a lot of x it's hard to explain why technology must have a lot of x. Other than being dominated for a long time by people who like x. At least while establishing causation, or even correlation, between the factors.

[0] http://www.economist.com/node/155244

erispoe• 9 years ago

Sure, there's average differences between groups. Between almost any two arbitrary groups you'll find significant differences.

The problem is that there's a very slippery slope between stating a difference, ascribing causality (the difference is due to biology, for instance), and justifying it as a moral imperative (we should treat men and women differently).

It's dangerous because if differences between groups are easy to pinpoint, they're much harder to explain. Even if you can get to a plausible causal mechanism, it doesn't say anything about how things should be anyway.

kirillkh• 9 years ago

How about the moral imperative "we should treat men and women the same", as opposed to "women are heavily oppressed, we must discriminate in their favor"? Would that imperative be justified by stating a difference?

nhaehnle• 9 years ago

I wrote Dating for Nerds: Gender differences (http://p.migdal.pl/2017/09/30/dating-for-nerds-gender-differ...) and got no backlash (much to my surprise, though).

Skimming through it, it does seem pretty even-handed. Although I'd like to point out that you're writing a "guide for nerds" and consistently addressing the reader as if they were a man. Women can be nerds, too. It's fair to have a guide for male nerds, since the experience is bound to be quite different for men vs. women, but it'd make sense to actually point that out.

stared2• 9 years ago

I address it in the first part, where I clearly point that out (http://p.migdal.pl/2017/07/23/dating-for-nerds.html). First, some pieces of advice are gender-specific. Second, I don't have a living experience of a woman.

For nerdy women (dating man) some problems are similar (and I got quite a lot of of positive reaction from this group; and a few requests to write a text for that setting). For nerdy women dating women, it seems that most problems are the same (see also: Emma Lindsay's blog posts).

TheAceOfHearts2• 9 years ago

Reading through "Interpersonal Traits of Aspies Placed in Context" has gotten me thinking pretty deeply about myself. I found many items in that writeup exceedingly relatable. I've previously been told that I definitely have some aspie aspects / tendencies, but hadn't ever given it much thought, especially on their potential impact.

azinman2• 9 years ago

The lack of self-awareness in many of these comments is really quite shocking — Id say it’s probably better that they’re not typically expressed.

geff822• 9 years ago

Interesting thing is about gender and technology jobs. In „evil“ Iran, about 50% of students of computer science are women. Being a female software developer is common. Cousin of my wife is a programmer, another female friend of the family is a IBM mainframe programmer(now retired), my wife is an engineer with interest in computer science. So its not all about „brain structures“, it is about society. When Iran can do it, how will we westeners?

pas• 9 years ago

http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagger... - in particular see Iran vs Sweden, how more egalitarian cultures show more gender difference for occupations

geff822• 9 years ago

Thanks, very interesting.

cousin_it• 9 years ago

I wonder what percentage of HN users would subscribe to this sentence for some values of X and Y: "I am worse at task X than person Y for genetic reasons."

4bpp2• 9 years ago

Why not run a poll rather than speculate idly? (Of course, the interesting comparison is probably between the percentage that would say that with "better" and with "worse" respectively. You'd also want some restrictions on the set X is drawn from to prevent worthless positives from low-status values of X such as sports, social skills or rote memorisation)

falcolas• 9 years ago

Well, add one. "I am worse at interpersonal interactions than my brother-in-law for genetic reasons."

I'd also say that this is actually very easy to say, since you can also pick out genetic anomalies: I could say the sentence about swimming and Michael Phelps, or running and Usain Bolt, without a single person being offended or disagreeing.

If you want to make the sentence controversial, you need to replace "person Y" with "genetic group Y"; i.e. men, women, caucasians, blacks, asians, mongoloids, or so on.

barry-cotter• 9 years ago

I am worse at playing basketball than the average high school basketball player because I’m of average height, have poor hand eye coordination and a terrible vertical jump, all of which are largely genetic.

I am worse at math than the average physics undergrad for genetic reasons, low conscientiousness and interest.

GuiA• 9 years ago

Both sides feel oppressed! For example, some people think you can’t question diversity efforts; others think you can’t speak out about racism. Some think you can’t praise capitalism; others think you can’t suggest socialism. It’s theoretically possible that the Overton window could be in the middle and exclude both extremes, but to my mind it’s more likely that people just like to think or claim that their views are an oppressed minority.

That’s the real insight here. You wanted a fully networked society, well that’s what comes with a fully networked society.

pjc502• 9 years ago

For reference, a discussion of what you genuinely can't say in China: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=35663&utm_source=dlv...

hardlianotion• 9 years ago

The survey is not very big.

korax3• 9 years ago

Does anyone know of good research on how our ability to confront and discuss controversial matters has changed over the last 50 years?

I am wondering whether previous generations were better able to handle intra- and intergroup differences of ideology.

dvfjsdhgfv• 9 years ago

This one is interesting:

“Most successful entrepreneurs are simply lucky.”

Probably it's because "common wisdom" says it's the result of being smart and hard work. But if luck plays such a big role (and let's be honest, it does - there are also studies confirming that), it's difficult to be proud of your success. Happy - yes. Proud? No more than a lottery winner. For many successful people this would be an insult.

curun1r2• 9 years ago

There's an old saying (IIRC, attributed to Seneca) that luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. I like that way of looking at things because it neither minimizes the work and insight that someone put into their success nor refuses to acknowledge that factors outside their control also contributed.

thuris• 9 years ago

Age discrimination did not make the list. Maybe the survey poster's audience is not affected by it or maybe it's not controversial to admit that it is common practice.

ksec• 9 years ago

So what am I suppose to talk about if I went to US or Silicon Valley? Also wondering if this is just silicon valley or US in general?

For those who have never been to US, and just reading news and watching TV on it, it surely is a place full of controversy.

As a matter of fact, I am starting to see this isn't US only at all. It is the same with UK on certain issues ( Mainly Brexit ) but in typical Brit fashion they seems to be much more sensible about it when people disagree.

What happens to the old days where we agree to disagree. Take it on the chin, put a smile on your face and walk away?

This isn't just social media's echo chamber, a lot of people seems to want to blame them. But i think the social media only amplify the problem. Not the course of it.

thomzi12• 9 years ago

To echo someone else's post, saying you work at [a boring tech company] working on [boring ideas] is what is truly taboo in Silicon Valley.

What People Think You Can’t Say in Silicon Valley

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