This is the shallowness of that kind of P.C. bullying--Paul Graham has done much more for women in technology than any Internet bully, but he will continue to be attacked because it is possible to assign uncharitable interpretations to a few things he said once. When one realizes that this whole kerfuffle is not about being pro-woman, it's about posturing such that one appears to be pro-woman, then the attackers' views make more sense.
If you look at the comments below, the anti-PG crowd seems either to a) not care about YC's contributions to women in tech, or b) adopt a "so what" attitude. So what that YC has a disproportionate amount of women in high places and funds a disproportionate amount of female founders? I don't care, instead I'm gonna pick out some logical flaws in his arguments. (As an aside, there's few things more tedious than a nerd on the Internet concerned with "logical flaws" in peoples' "arguments".)
I'm reminded of Ted Kaczynski's take on P.C. activism:
"Leftists may claim that their activism is motivated by compassion or by moral principle, and moral principle does play a role for the leftist of the oversocialized type. But compassion and moral principle cannot be the main motives for leftist activism. Hostility is too prominent a component of leftist behavior; so is the drive for power. Moreover, much leftist behavior is not rationally calculated to be of benefit to the people whom the leftists claim to be trying to help. For example, if one believes that affirmative action is good for black people, does it make sense to demand affirmative action in hostile or dogmatic terms? Obviously it would be more productive to take a diplomatic and conciliatory approach that would make at least verbal and symbolic concessions to white people who think that affirmative action discriminates against them. But leftist activists do not take such an approach because it would not satisfy their emotional needs. Helping black people is not their real goal. Instead, race problems serve as an excuse for them to express their own hostility and frustrated need for power. In doing so they actually harm black people, because the activists' hostile attitude toward the white majority tends to intensify race hatred."
I think the aim of making the tech industry friendlier to women is better served by continued outreach efforts, rather than making an example out of individuals arbitrarily.
I was referring to a specific subset of leftist behavior which I called "P.C. bullying."
But good job applying it to all leftist activism. By quoting the Unibomber. Because the Unibomber has done so much more for the cause of women and blacks than have left-wing activists.
That is to say, I'm not interested in going all anti-leftist and turning things into politics. You have me mistaken.
I'm not saying you're anti-leftist, simply quoting someone's take on the psychology behind P.C. bullying. Not everything has to involve left/right-wing tribalism.
You say as you post a paragraph from a (whoops: not dead) terrorist's tirade against liberals. I don't think you could have possibly picked a worse example to hold up as not involving tribalism...
You are mistaken. The Unabomber is and was a horrible person. Yet I found mcantelon's quote from him to be very insightful, even if I don't agree with it in its entirety.
Judge the quote on its content, not the messenger. The only instance in which shooting the messenger is valid is when we rely on the messenger's credibility in evaluating the opinion, which is not the case here, at least for me.
I don't see how the example is tribalist. Ted Kaczynski, in my understanding, was a loner that was neither left or right wing. And I'm not sure why the fact he's a terrorist is relevant to his analysis.
You don't have to be in the opposite of a group to spew hate against that group. And I see very little "reasoning" in that quote, just lots of eloquently-worded polemic which weakly attempts to cast negative aspersions on an entire political view. Some of it is outright false.
In other words, it's content that wouldn't look at all out of place on a right-leaning website's "This is why liberals are bad" section.
That's true, but that's just one quote of his (he's still alive btw). Here's another:
> The conservatives are fools: They whine about the decay of traditional values, yet they enthusiastically support technological progress and economic growth. Apparently it never occurs to them that you can’t make rapid, drastic changes in the technology and the economy of a society without causing rapid changes in all other aspects of the society as well, and that such rapid changes inevitably break down traditional values.
Dr. Kaczynski is an anarchist who opposes virtually all political establishments.
Mm. But notice the difference in delivery of those two quotes. This one concerns itself with a straight true statement (progress is at odds with tradition). The worst you can say here is that he says conservatives "whine".
Much unlike the other one which implies that leftists are all about power as opposed to what they say they are.
If he's an example of tribalism, as you claimed earlier, then he should be aligned with a tribe. "The conservatives are fools" is a fairly unambiguous denunciation of that tribe. Regardless of whether you feel he favors one over the other, he clearly rejects both.
Well, the difference is that the first one is usually fact based and best delivered neutrally. The second one is usually emotion based and delivered with harsh invective, and additionally usually doesn't concern itself with facts.
>"Dr. Sally C. Johnson's psychological report describes Theodore Kaczynski, the confessed Unabomber, as a man whose early brilliance was ruined by paranoid schizophrenia.
>"Johnson made her evaluation after interviewing Kaczynski, his family and people who knew him, analyzing psychological tests, and studing of the Unabomber's journals which document over 40 years of his life."
>"She cites "an almost total absence of interpersonal relationships," and "delusional thinking involving being controlled by modern technology" as examples of his illness."
That's why we can't have nice things. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Such bullying incidents may look like PR victories for the PC crowd in terms of shaping public opinion. What they miss though is that even when they don't backfire loudly (see "donglegate"), they turn off moderate people who are otherwise neutral or sympathetic to reasonable calls for equal opportunities. By trying to guilt trip the whole white/male segment of society as "privileged" and "misogynistic", some will bite but many won't, much more so when they feel they are unfairly put on the defensive. And while some will bend over backwards and become more Catholic than the Pope promoting their social justice causes, many will grow more and more resentful. They won't tweet and blog about it but they will be taking notes and making sure they stay the hell away from PC zealots and their ilk, be it in hiring decisions, investment funding or anything else. Congratulations, you have turned a sizable part of the silent majority into an opponent.
Actually MLK acted perfectly (if a little too quiet at times, though he was portrayed much more obedient that how dynamic he was).
The problem is with priviliged upper middle class white PC police, that are nothing like MLK -- and their "rage" is all show off and conforming to the social norms of their peer group.
In it, he writes: "Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word 'tension.' I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth."
And of course part of what helped MLK's public standing was that there were much more radical people than him. Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam shifted the Overton Window enough that MLK could look reasonable.
My point here is that social change is never comfortable, never easy, and certainly never welcomed by the bulk of the privileged group. Asking activists to be quieter and nicer is pointless; they already know what that gets them, which is being ignored. Which they've already had a bellyful of, or they wouldn't be activists.
People forced Paul Graham to confront the issue. And as he's a visible leader of the startup community, they're forcing everybody to confront it. Will that alienate some number of people? Sure. Would they have been advocates for change anyhow? Nope.
Ask yourself: what did those "more and more resentful" people look like in the civil rights era? Now ask yourself: is that the group you'd like to be remembered as being a part of?
Ah, ok. Sorry for jumping to conclusions. I took it as more of the tone policing rampant in this discussion. I'm glad to hear that wasn't the intention.
Q: How many times was Dr. King arrested?
A: He was arrested 30 times.
Malcom X, by comparison, was arrested only 7 times.
The number of arrests have much more to do with the type/style of protest that they engaged in than it has to do with some nebulous concept of "social behaviour". The reason why MLK and his followers were confident that their tactics would lead to success is because they could force arrests for plainly absurd and not anti-social actions. Force arrests while "behaving well". Instead of getting arrested for smashing police cars, or firebombing businesses owned by racists, they got themselves arrested for things like sitting in a restaurant.
The weird secret of Social Justice, including the "all white men are evil, because the group on average is successful" faction, is that it's mostly white men bullying other white men.
You're one of the few people here that understands this. Thank you. It's mostly white men trying to be someone elses savoir to free themselves from racial tension induced white guilt.
Heck look at the last part of the post and you can see how certain subjects are a complete mindfield with one badly phrased term being pushed thru the descrimination door when not intended. Fact that so many people were asked by PG to check out the draft before posting is testiment to how much overhead is now placed upon those who will at best descriminate individuals to to that individuals actions and then after that individual proving the point many times over and given fair appeal. In short the types of people who only judge the guilty on a person by person basis based upon the actual 100% facts now spend more of there time treading other peoples minefeild that it becomes a overhead and distraction to the tasks at hand. Hell 19 people checked thru that draft (many women as well and no I have not counted how many women compared to men checked the draft as it is irrelevant too me, though some will I bet now). 19 people, that is a lot of people to have for a internet post, I bet even top News Papers have never had that many editors checking a post before (lawyers maybe) and that is all due to people being offended for things that were not intended. It is a mindfeild, it is a overhead and it is a measurable expense many people now have added to the time sinks in there lifes. Innocent non-sexist descriminating people are the ones that suffer, but hey the good `person` always suffers, is that not true :(.
"Thanks to Sam Altman, Alexandra Cavoulacos, Adora Cheung, Tracy Chou, John Collison, Patrick Collison, Danielle Fong, Kevin Hale, Aaron Harris, Elizabeth Iorns, Carolynn Levy, Jessica Livingston, Claire McDonnell, Kat Manalac, Kathryn Minshew, Kirsty Nathoo, Geoff Ralston, Garry Tan, and Olga Vidisheva for reading drafts of this." Would be nice if he added "And no lawyers were harmed in the process of this checking" Just for some sainity of this whole area and would highlight the whole overhead aspect in many other area's of life we see today. Patent Trolls, PC bullying and the like, its a time TAX nobody needs and yet we live it, least the honest good people do.
I think the kind of critique here is subconsciously and pedantically picking up on general tone and perceived lack of authenticity.
PG went on the defensive -- and attempted to dispel critiques with a negative attitude and a logical argument.
This isn't a problem you can logic away. What he needed to do was write from the perspective of social conscience, even if it's not logical, even if it's not strictly absolutely statistically true. He needed to prove that he is coming from a genuinely positive point of view, so that we can see that his great influence is not aimed simply toward the neutral or equal, but in fact good.
He failed to do this, and therefore he receives criticism. The arguments against him are focused on the wrong things, because they're not very self-aware, but they're fundamentally correct in the big picture.
There's a difference between simple absence of evil, tactless neutrality, and genuine good. We like to hope our idols and influences are as far toward the good as possible.
If you look at the comments below, the anti-PG crowd seems either to a) not care about YC's contributions to women in tech, or b) adopt a "so what" attitude. So what that YC has a disproportionate amount of women in high places and funds a disproportionate amount of female founders? I don't care, instead I'm gonna pick out some logical flaws in his arguments. (As an aside, there's few things more tedious than a nerd on the Internet concerned with "logical flaws" in peoples' "arguments".)