I think 'considering the immediate response' used to be a valuable heuristic, but isn't any more. Too many people have become too polarized.
There are a bunch of folks from the tech industry on Twitter that I have followed for years, including some HN regulars, that are now, IMHO, in the 'too polarized' group. I no longer trust their opinion on various 'political' subjects to be the result of deliberate consideration, like I did for years.
Scott Alexander wrote another one of his great considerations of this sensitive subject [1], but he wisely disabled comments. To quote Scott:
A lot of people without connections to the tech industry
don’t realize how bad it’s gotten. This [he quotes an
example before this paragraph] is how bad. It would be
pointless trying to do anything about this person in
particular. This is the climate.
[..]
This is the world we’ve built. Where making people live in
fear is a feature, not a bug.
Every suggestion that maybe this Google guy wrote something reasonable was met with derision, including by these people I follow, effectively shouting down anyone who responded in a moderating way. They are implicit in creating this climate, this world.
I bet none of them actually read the memo and know if the things this guy was saying were actually that bad. They were reacting this way because others were reacting this way, assuming someone down the line would be correct that there was a good reason to be angry. Yet I doubt anyone not already polarized knew.
As far as I can see this was a lynching and whether the guy was actually guilty, and how guilty, is irrelevant.
> There are a bunch of folks from the tech industry on Twitter that I have followed for years, including some HN regulars, that are now, IMHO, in the 'too polarized' group.
Thank god, I thought it was just me. This place (or at least, popular members of this place) seems to have become more ideological in recent times. I used to be pretty comfortable in knowing that most here were of the classical liberal/enlightenment ilk and would discuss the majority of reasonable ideas with open eyes and ears. Now I see a lot of angry and dismissive reactions that would have been uncharacteristic of this community only a few years ago.
> I think 'considering the immediate response' used to be a valuable heuristic, but isn't any more. Too many people have become too polarized.
It's also the medium. Social media...now that I think about it, actually today's media landscape in general is a self-reinforcing catalyst for this kind of polarization and emotionalization.
> Every suggestion that maybe this Google guy wrote something reasonable was met with derision, including by these people I follow, effectively shouting down anyone who responded in a moderating way.
You could also consider the possibility that they're right to deride the memo. Many studies are easily read incorrectly or have counter studies showing the effects aren't what they thought.
But even if the memo were factually correct, I think a lot of this comes down to miscommunication. The current tech culture may drive women away for some reasons, even possibly benign ones having nothing to do with discrimination. Some, maybe most people like this culture without being biased against women in any way. That's all perfectly reasonable.
Other people think this culture could change so that it's more attractive to women, presumably thinking that we can preserve what's great about the current culture, but simply introduce new perspectives and so on.
That's also entirely reasonable, but obviously can't be true in all cases. Some changes will be inherently incompatible with existing culture. Certainly this will grate on some people who don't see the need for change. Whether the change needs to happen is a separate issue I won't touch.
The memo's arguments that women are inherently disinterested in the current tech culture are then completely moot, because the goal isn't to try and fit women into the existing culture, but to change the culture so that women want to join it. So you can maybe see why people can be so derisive of the memo's arguments: it's a complete straw man from their point of view.
I personally don't even think each side realizes what they're arguing for and how they differ. They're all talking past each other, and the derision just gets in the way, but I suppose that's human nature.
They may be right to deride the memo. They are not right to deride anyone who wonders whether writing something like that, and sending it internally to a mailing list intended for discussions of this subject, is maybe not an offence that deserves the outrage it garnered. Nor what basically amounts to a social death sentence.
Otherwise I'm with you until your last sentence. This is not a kind of human nature that I think we should accept. Especially because, as you say, it just doesn't work.
There are a bunch of folks from the tech industry on Twitter that I have followed for years, including some HN regulars, that are now, IMHO, in the 'too polarized' group. I no longer trust their opinion on various 'political' subjects to be the result of deliberate consideration, like I did for years.
Scott Alexander wrote another one of his great considerations of this sensitive subject [1], but he wisely disabled comments. To quote Scott:
Every suggestion that maybe this Google guy wrote something reasonable was met with derision, including by these people I follow, effectively shouting down anyone who responded in a moderating way. They are implicit in creating this climate, this world.I bet none of them actually read the memo and know if the things this guy was saying were actually that bad. They were reacting this way because others were reacting this way, assuming someone down the line would be correct that there was a good reason to be angry. Yet I doubt anyone not already polarized knew.
As far as I can see this was a lynching and whether the guy was actually guilty, and how guilty, is irrelevant.
[1] http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagger...