JesperRavn

It seems like a borderline example. I feel that the "brogrammer" stereotype was invented up mainly because the nerd stereotype was too sympathetic. I'm genuinely curious if there are examples of the kind of stereotypes in the article being promoted right now by tech companies.

As an aside, these sorts of critiques of mainstream/White culture are somewhat contradictory in that they criticize any specific cultural identity as being exclusive and insular, and yet whenever this is lacking, they point to how boring mainstream/White culture is. Even lack of crime can be turned into evidence of boringness. For example, for every article on the negative effect of nerd culture on diversity, there is an article complaining about the decline of nerd culture and the rise of corporatism. The latter tend to be highly revisionist and pretend that the tech industry was founded by LSD taking hippies who coded inside isolation tanks. But the contradiction is still stark.

Did I say that persecuted nerds have the right to cordon off CS as a refuge for their culture? I thought that I said the opposite. Your later comments suggest that you break things down exactly as I do: it's ok for nerds to be nerds, and it's ok for nerds to cluster in tech, but it's not ok to promote the idea that only nerds can do tech, or to promote an stereotype that goes beyond reality.

Did you read my comment carefully? Was I unclear at some point? Do you disagree that a lot of male nerds are resisting the diversity movement because they feel that it attacks them, and that this article notwithstanding, often the diversity movement does attack them?

Note I'm submitting this article with with its title unchanged, but the story is more notable for having been removed from Forbes as a violation of their terms of service. I think its relevant given the recent discussion around internet.org, that controversial content is increasingly removed for violating a site's terms of service.

This was a very well written and balanced article. I want to contribute a reason why I think that many men in tech hold back from fully endorsing this viewpoint.

The reason is that there is a very fine line between saying that you don't have to be nerdy to be in tech, and failing to acknowledge that in general being nerdy is a disadvantage in society, and many people found a refuge in tech where they were mocked and often bullied outside[0]. To fail to acknowledge this is to risk promoting the same negative attitudes towards nerds within tech, as exist outside it.

So I would say that we should all encourage tech to be as open an welcoming as possible, and to avoid any implication that you have to have a certain personality, appearance or interests to succeed in tech. But we shouldn't dismiss the traits of people who currently are overrepresented in tech as a "stereotype", much less a "negative stereotype". I also don't think this is what the author was suggesting. As the article says, "stereotypes are only partly true, and women who actually take classes in computer science don’t hold the same prejudices as women who get their ideas from pop culture."

[0] E.g. see http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/mar/08/programmin...

It makes sense. Advertising is inefficient, wasting people's time and attention for the gain of the advertiser.

Advertisements have long been used as a form of micropayment, to fund first TV shows and now websites, where a monetary payment would be infeasible.

There is no such reason to allow advertising in public property (private property is more complicated, but generally the outward appearance of buildings is considered a public good, and highly regulated). The person viewing the building or billboard is not a party to a transaction, so there is no reason to charge that person a hidden fee for viewing that space. In a way it is the ultimate hidden tax.

If one looks at GDP per capita or life expectancy, progress did not stop or slow in the 50's.

I think the main difference is that progress is now made in much smaller increments. E.g. smartphones have transformed our lives, and yet the smartphone era really begin with the iPhone, which was itself not revolutionary from a purely technological viewpoint. It was however, sufficiently better in its hardware and software to appeal to a much larger market.

I don't go out of my way to modify my language (although I can see how without extra context, like the fact that I met these people at a social event not a professional event, you might object in this particular case) because I don't believe that cultural attitudes to gender are the primary cause of this sort of harassment, or are a big problem in general.

On the contrary, I think that men whose behavior is harassing or otherwise immoral, are primarily responsible as individuals for their actions. This is closely related to my original point. I think that another bias is that people, especially men, who attain positions of power tend to be likable, either because that's what got them there, or because people tend to like powerful people. Therefore people make excuses for these men, blaming the culture in general for actions that are really the fault of the individual.

I thought the principle you and the other poster were arguing for, was to minimize conflict. In the case of "bro" the conflict arises from a feminist critique of the word's usage in the context of a male dominated industry. In the case of the menorah, the conflict arises from the political controversy of the state of Israel, and its relationship to the Jewish community[0]. I don't have a problem with pro-Feminist websites or anti-Feminist websites, I just think it's professional to avoid stirring up debate with terms or symbols that would likely offend people with a particular viewpoint.

Perhaps you think the feminist viewpoint in this case is objectively correct and therefore deserves more consideration. In that case I would counter that the pro-Palestinian viewpoint is objectively correct. But my original argument was neutral on this issue.

[0] A relationship usually asserted to exist by the supporters of Israel, as is the case here.

I agree. The intentionally prevocational logo (a Menorah) has put me off CLISP[0], I would guess many others too.

[0] See the explanation at http://www.clisp.org/impnotes/faq.html#faq-menorah-why which starts off with "it's not political" and then provides multiple links to pro-Israeli websites.

Sounds like the real asshole is the person who instead of trying to understand and critique people with different opinions, simply lambasts them as "assholes".

A great example of the author's inability to engage with opposing views is in the intro:

Afterward, one of the event organizers thanked me for coming, even though, she said, “I disagree with almost everything you said.” Seriously? So it’s okay to evict poor people to make room for new rich people? Is that what the SF Chron talked about today with a story called “psychology studies suggest rising wealth means more jerks in SF?”

Note how the author is more interested in psychology studies about people, than what those people would actually say for themselves.

The worst stories of sexual harassment I've heard have always been from women in the social sciences. I commented on this to two girls doing PhD's in social psychology, who were describing harassment by their faculty, and they agreed and thought that this was due to self-licensing[0]. That is, these faculty who had proven to themselves that they were good liberals, then had less qualms about their own behavior.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-licensing

I would like to see nerd elitism and nerd bashing both stop.

Some people claim that to be a programmer you need to have a certain personality or hobbies, and this is wrong.

But nerd elitism is also a reaction to having been excluded, ridiculed and sometimes bullied. That doesn't make it right, but it also means that bashing nerds and nerd culture, as is all to common amongst progressives, is both unfair and counterproductive.

What I would like to see more people saying is that it's ok that many people in tech have certain hobbies or personality traits in common, but that a person doesn't have to have these things to work in tech.

But people complaining about "corporate censorship" are smart well informed people? How is internet.org controlling what website people get to see different from, for example, YouTube controlling which videos people get to see? And how are the whims of whoever will control or influence internet.org different from the (mostly left wing) groups that (sometimes successfully) pressure companies to remove material from their websites.

I wasn't saying that Facebook should be regulated like shopping malls. I was saying that people who say that private censorship is not problematic, do not have an answer for things like internet.org. Facebook are legally free to set up programs like this, but people are also right to criticize Facebook for setting up a system that takes away from the freedom of the open internet. The shallow analysis of the XKCD comic ignores these issues, yet I often see that comic posted when people complain about left wing censorship online.

I hope this gives some pause for people who advocate the XKCD line on free speech[0]. While not every platform should be required to host every kind of content, when a platform becomes sufficiently dominant, its ability to censor content becomes a free speech issue.

[0] https://xkcd.com/1357/

Article reposted here: http://techraptor.net/content/there-is-no-diversity-crisis-i...

Unqualified as I am, I feel compelled to give some commentary. This is the real deal. As the article describes, the Nobel Prize was awarded for a discovery of facts that are inconsistent with the (poorly named) Standard Model of particle physics. That is, facts that are inconsistent with the equations that so far have been assumed to describe all of physics except for gravity.

Neutrinos, which according to the Standard Model have zero mass, have been shown to have non-zero mass. That's the limit of my knowledge.

countless new techbros with no respect for Seattle culture who spend 11hrs/day at work and don't have time to develop a personality romping around town give it a real bad reputation.

I think you do a great job summarizing the hypocrisy of the left on this issue. According to the left, if a person is financially disadvantaged, they deserve sympathy and support. However if a person is socially disadvantaged[0], they not only deserve it, but also should be shamed for taking up space that more interesting people could be occupying.

[0] I don't believe for a second that there are many people working 11 hours a day. The people you describe are simply more introverted/shy people who work in tech, and you're looking for some explanation that makes their social situation their own fault.

And creating "fragile" models because they don't have the tools to reproduce their own experiments. How many authors of academic papers in ML could reproduce the exact same results a year later? I would guess around 10%.

In my high school they didn't know the word "techie" so they had a different word for kids they considered quite and boring. Ironically it was the same word they used to describe people like John.

I'm guessing that he means that his work is closely related to arithmetic geometry (which I was once told was one of the hardest fields in pure math), and so someone with no background would have a lot of trouble getting it. Presumably it takes even longer to become an expert in arithmetic geometry (15 years?).

I also happen to believe in 10x programmers, in fact I think I am one. HN places a big emphasis on denying the importance of virtuosity or intelligence in programming, and characterizing it as a craft. It's very hard to argue against since nerds have had excessive modesty (often literally) beaten into them. At least you get the occasional boastful athlete who says "I'm just really talented".

The people in the article are Jewish, not Christian, so I'm not why a critique of Christianity is relevant here. What is your opinion on Judaism?

No guarantees, but in general it does. Look at, for example, graphs of GDP vs life expectancy.

OK, how about this for starters: do you agree that the following two statements are inconsistent:

1. Increasing tax dollars does not benefit the world by increasing the services provided by the government.

2. Rich people should pay more taxes.

The fact that total tax revenue must ultimately equal total government expenditure in the long run, is not bullshit, it's basic accounting. And the things you listed don't come close to canceling out the benefits of aid (and what is wrong with the IMF in the first place?)

Also whenever you earn more money, some the tax you pay goes towards programs like this whether you donate anything extra or not. So getting a high paying job alone helps.

Technology is the main driver of growth in GDP per capita. Technology is what makes wealthy countries wealthy in the first place, and gives them enough surplus that they can afford to help poorer countries (whose problems may not be lack of access to technology per se, but other issues specific to their societies, such as unstable government, lack of education, etc.)

By making the developed world richer, technology helps everyone.

I'm sorry, I'll stick to using "you must be an ugly loser" as an argument in future.

Are you seriously saying that ugly people aren't able to form a reasoned opinion on dating? That's a horrible thing to say.

I really liked this article. Even though we don't have access to the most relevant information (e.g. dollars per ton CO2 saved, or a cost benefit analysis using a shadow price of CO2), the author presents a lot of very compelling figures to show that recycling is overrated.

For example, given the overwhelming concentration of the benefits of recycling in paper and metal (as opposed to plastic and bottles), surely collections efforts and public education should be focussed on these.

And the author is exactly right to refer to "indoctrination" regarding recycling. At least that was my experience in primary school and high school.

I think the most important problem with the Green movement is not special interests per se (I doubt recyclers really that powerful) but the mindset that says that changing other people's opinion is more important than presenting them with the most accurate information.

On the other hand, China did have the equivalent of losing a war and living under a foreign imposed rule, which was the aftermath of the Opium Wars. The result was about 60 million deaths, mostly due to the breakdown of law and order.

Due to that, Chinese are probably a bit wary of benevolent Europeans/Americans running their country for them. The current regime has huge problems, but it is stable and not completely oblivious to the wellbeing of ordinary people.