This is a good thing to do when you think someone is being an asshole. It gives them a chance to recognize if they are, and you a chance to recognize if they're not.
Great point. In the past, I've often been too willing to take offense and taken things the wrong way. Then when I get home, I realize they didn't mean it the way I initially thought they did, and it was too late to take back my negative response.
Question is, does pregnancy affect viability of an investment?
In my opinion, yes. Sleepless nights, days off taking the child to medical appointments. This isn't magic and you can't wish these things away. It's hard to run a startup, it's even harder when you're not sleeping well. Just my opinion.
Edit - I covered post-pregnancy here, which also applies to fathers, my bad. The women only part would be the hormones and lack of sleep from around t-6 months.
Not to belabor the point, but the reason saying these things can harm a reputation is that they are bad things to say. They suggest poor character. I go out of my way to avoid people I believe to be sexist or racist.
Not saying offensive things loudly is a good start, but if you want to maximize being a decent human being you should also not discriminate against women quietly -- or at all.
Specifically, you use the word "bad things to say". Are you arguing that they are incorrect? Or are you simply arguing that they are correct, but admitting their correctness somehow makes you a bad person?
If VCs are obligated to make suboptimal investment decisions (e.g., investing in founders who are less dedicated to the company but have breasts), who else is? Is Joe 401k also a bad human being if he attempts to maximize his returns and doesn't throw his money after feel-good causes?
This brings up another point. Whenever you're dealing with a traditionally stereotyped person/group you get that walking on eggshell feeling. A small mistake, slip of the tongue, can quickly blow out of proportion. This can lead to increased anxiety in an office environment. Which, for creative programmers, leads to decreased communication and a shitty end product.
I've never met a good programmer who liked office politics. We might laugh at the Foosball table, but it's a secret indicator hinting the workplace is low on office politics.
> Specifically, you use the word "bad things to say". Are you arguing that they are incorrect? Or are you simply arguing that they are correct, but admitting their correctness somehow makes you a bad person?
I would be richer if I stole all your stuff, sold it on eBay, and executed a cunning cover-up to make it look like you destroyed it yourself in a failed attempt at insurance fraud.
That's a true fact. How would you feel if I seriously proposed it at a business meeting? Being an asshole does not magically become okay if it makes you more money.
You're making a use-mention error. If you proposed actually committing theft/fraud ("use") at a business meeting, I think most people would question your ethics. But if you merely say the the true fact that committing theft/fraud could be lucrative ("mention"), I don't think many people would question your ethics. Of course, that would be an irrelevant and unhelpful thing to randomly say at a business meeting, but that's another matter.
Really? Who says that? Maybe female founders can include a standard disclaimer on their pitch deck: "Warning: founder biologically capable of becoming pregnant"
I will think much less of someone who is sexist, whether they express those views softly or loudly. If you can't see why, I'm afraid I don't know what else to say.
It might be productive for you to go think through your views carefully, in particular figuring out what are your underlying values and what are derived conclusions.
That will enable you to go beyond repeating slogans and implying those who disagree with you are assholes while completely dodging their questions.
Discriminating against someone based on their gender is both wrong and, in my opinion, based on fundamentally incorrect assumptions and flawed logic.
I'm fine with disagreement, but I do feel like most misogynists are assholes, yes.
(And if Joe 401k went through his portfolio and divested from female-run or minority-run businesses because he thinks people in those groups are worse leaders, then that suggests to me he might be an asshole, yes.)
I'm still curious whether you think there are beliefs that are both true and sexist, and if so, whether you believe it is "wrong" to hold those beliefs.
No, it means that being a father (negatively) influences your ability to be a successful founder. Like any other barrier, this can be overcome.
To get to the question I think you are trying to raise, it does seem like gender has a non-zero effect on this influence. Even ignoring the fact that, for likely cultural reasons, mothers tend to spend more time with their children, being pregnant itself presents something of a (short term) barrier. Again, it should be quiet possible to overcome this barrier, but not by pretending it does not exist.
Undoubtedly, one could make a case that being a parent is actually a benefit towards being a successful founder.
I don't think anyone pretended it didn't exist. But you oversimplify when you say it's only negative. Learning to fly planes or raising a puppy by yourself has a nonzero effect on your time too, but usually these are considered pluses when hiring someone, because they show responsibility, well-roundedness, maturity, fulfillment, etc.
You shouldn't use this phrase as a way to shut down arguments you don't agree with, without any attempt at explaining yourself further. He gave several reasons in his explanation, and you're not challenging any specific aspect of his response. Try again with a detailed query or argument, not an ad hominem.
Although admittedly tongue-in-cheek, it was a genuine invitation for the author to expand on their point (and hopefully in the process realize how bad it sounds), in the spirit of the original article.
I'm both a father and a startup founder, and I fully agree with his comment and don't think it sounds bad at all. Being a parent takes a good chunk of your time and energy, at least if you want to do a good job of it. That leaves less time and energy for other things, making it more difficult to do things that require a ton of both, like start a company. As gizmo686 says above, these challenges can of course be overcome, and obviously I feel it was worth doing so. But the statements are still true, and I don't see how acknowledging them makes one a bad person.
This is a tricky area of ethics though. Ideally everyone would have equal opportunity to do anything they want to do, including start a company and/or have a family. It is generally culturally accepted that it would be unfair for one's marital or parental status to have an effect on their career prospects. And I agree that that's a noble ideal. But imagine you're an investor with two hypothetical identical investments to choose from. They are identical in every way except that you know one of the founders is single and plans to remain so at least while getting the company off the ground, and the other is a parent with six children (to use an extreme example). It seems reasonable to expect that the former would be more likely to succeed, all else being equal. As much as you would like both to have equal opportunities, is it fair to force you to ignore this piece of evidence when making your choice? (What if you're investing others' money and have a fiduciary responsibility?)
There are two conflicting ideals here as I see it, and no perfect way to reconcile them fairly.
At least with my hypothetical above, you could say that the "family founder" chose to make family a priority, so in some way it is fair that they sacrifice some potential to receive investment in their startup. Even if we accept that though, it gets trickier if you instead consider male and female founders, both planning to have families. For simple biological reasons, even aside from cultural ones, the female time will probably have less time to focus on the startup, to some extent at least, but obviously she didn't choose to be female. So again you have this conflict, where we would certainly like to treat everyone equally, especially in areas they have no control over, but at the same time it is unfair to force people to make less optimal investments all else being equal.
You could draw parallels to favoring more attractive applicants to hospitality jobs, or even more intelligent applicants to programming jobs say. You don't control your intelligence, so it's not really fair that it affects your prospects. On the other hand, it's certainly not fair to force an employer to hire a less intelligent applicant. It seems like the general rule in cases like this is that if the difference materially affects a one's ability to do the job, generally it is ok to 'discriminate' based on it. So it's ok to discriminate based on weight or skin colour for an actor, but obviously not for a programmer. The contentious areas seem to be ones where the (potential) impact on performance is less direct. The parenthood debate would seem to fall under that category. A more obvious one would be something like physical appearance of waiters and waitresses. It's not as clear cut as an actor, where it's obvious that matching the part matters, but at the same time it's fairly obvious that having attractive waitstaff could be beneficial for a restaurant.
It seems to me that the average societal reaction in these grey areas is a sort of subconscious group decision that the benefits to one side outweigh the detriments to the other. So if we say it's wrong to discriminate based on parental status, what we're really saying is that we as a society value parenthood sufficiently that it takes precedence to some extent over other rights. These kinds of tradeoffs are made all the time; for example, we value free speech sufficiently that in many cases we allow it to override people's right not to be subjected to material they find objectionable. We value a basic standard of living such that we 'forcibly' deprive wealthier members of society of their property (via taxes) in order to redistribute a portion of it to the less fortunate. (In fact, we force people to contribute to many things that they may not personally support via taxes.)
Anyway, this ended up being far more than I had planned to write, but I guess my basic point is that few things are black and white. Usually some sort of compromise is necessary, and the goal is to find the one that best matches our societal values. Often our instinctive reactions to these grey areas are representative of a personal or societal value that we haven't fully consciously expressed.
Ideally everyone would have equal opportunity to do anything they want to do, including start a company and/or have a family.
Are you sure this is an ideal? Michael Jordan and I don't have equal opportunity in sports. Richard Feynman and I wouldn't have equal opportunity in winning a Nobel Prize. Jude Law and I don't have an equal opportunity to be nominated for academy awards.
How do you actually make us equal in sports? I could train for years, and even take steroids, but even then, the only way I could match Jordan is if someone were to come along and break all of his arms and legs.
Or take Feynman. I loved calculus and physics in college. But I'm just not even near the level of many of the TAs and professors that taught me, let alone a genius that wins prizes. In order for me to have true equal opportunity with someone at Feynman's level, you'd have to put him in a drug-induced coma for several days of the week, lest he think about physics.
I'm not going to belabor the point with Jude Law, except to say that maybe we'd be equal if I got plastic surgery, and his face was badly injured in a car accident.
So as far as I understand it, we are all different. Some of us are better at or more suited to some things than others. There's no way to lift everyone up to the same height as the best person in a field, so equality in practice has to involve cutting down achievers. Is that really ideal?
NB: When I say "equality," I'm not talking about equality before the law, which is something I'm completely in favor of. Here I'm talking about equality in ethics - the kind of thing that philosophers (such as John Rawls) get into.
I think it is an ideal, yes. But there are other ideals it needs to be balanced against. For everyone to have equal opportunities, everyone would have to be equal, or in other words, everyone would have to be the same. Even if that were possible, it wouldn't be worth losing our diversity. (And as I mentioned above, while giving everyone equal opportunities despite their differences might be more fair to them, it could be less fair to others involved, like the startup investor.)
My point was that we need to recognize these situations where our ideals conflict, so that we can decide what balance we prefer. It seems like by accepting 'discrimination' based on intelligence or athletic ability, we are recognizing that the value of having the most skilled people doing certain jobs outweighs the unfairness to the less skilled applicants, who may work just as hard, but have no control over their innate characteristics. On the other hand, while it may be true that a person with a family has less time or energy to devote to work than a single person, or a male with a baby has more time than a female with a baby, we have decided that gender equality and the right to have a family outweigh the unfairness to the investor who would ideally take all information into account when choosing an investment. I think that's totally reasonable, but it is helpful to recognize that that is what we're doing, rather than simply making statements like "sexism is wrong", without thinking about it any further. (Because we will eventually run into a situation where our initial reaction doesn't turn out to match with our core values, and it would be good to recognize and correct that.)
In that same vein I've known many a new father has very similar difficulties that would likely be a factor in worrying about the investment. I think it's largely a cultural issue that men don't usually take the same amount of leave (either at the same time or later to help deal with the new born). That said if I was investing and the founder was alone and planning on starting a family soon would probably turn me off unless they had a co-founder that I felt could take over during that time.
I've seen a co-founder get pregnant and have a baby while running a successful start-up.
I think people take an unnecessarily negative view of pregnancy and child rearing. Sure you can enumerate distractions (such as sleepless nights). But how about enumerating positives: for example, what if having a baby made a founder, man or woman, happier and more fulfilled? That would have a positive effect on the start-up.
The question you are asking is "what will make Founder A more productive". You are hypothesizing that a baby will (I find this unlikely, but it's irrelevant).
That's not the question the investor was asking. He was asking whether to invest in Founder A or Founder B. Suppose A gets their happiness from a baby - this makes them happier and more fulfilled in their remaining 50-60 hours/week. Founder B gets their happiness from marketing - this makes them happier and more fulfilled in their remaining 50-60 hours, plus they spend 20 extra hours on marketing.
All else held equal, B is a better investment than A, even if A+baby is a better investment than A sans baby.
You're making an incredible assumption that marketing offers the same level of happiness as parenting. You might say it's just a hypothetical, but it's a totally unsupported one that offers zero insight on the question.
The questions is not merely one of "happiness" either. Parenting also involves maturity and well-roundedness. Much like other extracurricular interests and accomplishments which are considered great positives in say college admissions, despite how they might take 20 hours away from studying each week.
As an investor I care about productivity, not happiness. If you want to run a trading strategy on the theory that parents are better founders, be my guest. Complaining that this investor ran a different strategy is silly.
Running that strategy may or may not make him wrong.
Saying "actually, if I'd known I wouldn't've funded you", when (a) he already had (b) she was already committed to parenthood provided no useful information whatsoever to her ... except for the information that one of her investors was capable of engaging in pointless criticism based on couterfactuals and that as such her estimate of his capacity to maintain relationships with other people should likely be revised downwards.
Because, realistically, non-actionable after-the-fact criticism is a WOFTAM and risks damaging the relationship to no gain.
Elsewhere in the thread I agreed with this point. The profit-maximizing action for the investor to take would have been to hide his feelings of disappointment from the founder, and quietly alter his process and raise the bar for women or try to assess the likelihood of them becoming pregnant.
He screwed up and spoke honestly for a moment. That makes him human, not an asshole.
Given it's already happened, he should either be focusing on the specific negative consequences on her engagement with the startup ... or if there aren't any such, recalibrating to not be disappointed. Continuing to hold the estimate related to a guess when you're about to get actual data seems ... suboptimal, at best.
Also, I specifically said that the "estimate of his capacity to maintain relationships with other people should likely be revised downwards" which was intentionally rather more nuanced than "asshole"/"not an asshole".
You completely missed the point about it being about more than happiness. If you want to run a college admissions program on the theory that significant extracurricular accomplishments offer no value, are mere happiness-generating distractions and that maximum study time is the sole key to academic fitness, be my guest.
It would in fact be silly for a school to run such a program, if only because the data on achievement so strongly opposes it. Same for entrepreneurship and parenting; the median founder age is 40 and older age correlates with success[1]. No doubt many of these older, more successful founders are parents.
Of course we're not talking merely about study time or even parenting, but an attitude and complex of poorly reasoned arguments calculated to keep women disadvantaged. This is beyond silliness; it is chauvinism masquerading as (pseudo) intellectualism.
You should read up on why colleges ask about extracurriculars and leadership:
Neither strategy worked [to keep the Jews out]. Finally, Lowell—and his counterparts at Yale and Princeton—realized that if a definition of merit based on academic prowess was leading to the wrong kind of student, the solution was to change the definition of merit...
...Lowell told his admissions officers to elicit information about the “character” of candidates...provide a photograph...personal essays, demonstrating their aptitude for leadership, and list their extracurricular activities.
But yes, I'm sure you are right - expecting founders to focus solely on their startup is "calculated to keep women disadvantaged". I'm sure that if a man wanted to, I dunno, do a startup without quitting his day job, investors would be totally fine with that.
"But what did Hunter achieve with that best-students model?... As graduates... they weren’t nearly as distinguished as they were expected to be... The researchers spend a great deal of time trying to figure out why Hunter graduates are so disappointing, and end up sounding very much like Wilbur Bender. Being a smart child isn’t a terribly good predictor of success in later life, they conclude. 'Non-intellective' factors—like motivation and social skills—probably matter more... [Harvard] wanted superstars, and Bender and his colleagues recognized that if this is your goal a best-students model isn’t enough."
I'm confused as to the point you are trying to make.
You cited an explicitly anti-semitic policy as a model of what investors should be doing, while implying that anyone who disagreed was somehow trying to keep women disadvantaged. Huh?
You then cite a study showing that drive and determination matter in addition to academics. No one disputes this. That's why a woman founder demonstrating a lack of determination (i.e., choosing to divide her focus) was a disappointment to the investor, who was stupidly honest for a moment before deciding to hide his real feelings.
Certain specific seemingly non-academic factors also promote life success. That doesn't mean that any random hobby does. An investor isn't an asshole simply because he doesn't think that pregnancy is on the list of non-academic factors that do promote investment success.
Did no such thing. You cited it, incorrectly characterizing it as "why colleges ask about extracurriculars and leadership."
You misread your source, and are wholesale missing the bigger point that success is often about more than maximizing hours in the office/library.
You actually remind me of that right-wing group that Tim Cook just smacked down in the latest Apple shareholder meeting. Poor politically-motivated reasoning masquerading as shareholder interest.
Parents do tend to be better workers. They have commitments to keep that are personally important to them. They have people they care about counting on them. They tend to be more reliable, more committed, etc. Young, single and childless may give you the time and energy to do more but it doesn't necessarily give you the impetus to do so.
Actually, there seems to be no correlation between working hard and becoming the next Airbnb. Working hard is necessary the same way intelligence is necessary: past a certain threshold, other things matter more. And if a metric has no correlation with mega-success, then investing based on that metric is a mistake.
(If working harder was correlated with mega success, then the winners would be easy to pick out: invest in anyone whose team spends all their time on the startup. But many startups do that yet still fail, so it must be true that those extra 20 hours per week shouldn't factor into any any investor's decision making process, counterintuitively.)
Your first and second sentences contradict each other - if hard work is necessary up to a certain threshold, then hard work is correlated with success.
If working harder was correlated with mega success, then the winners would be easy to pick out
The fact that a predictor is correlated with outcomes does not mean it is the sole predictor.
I don't really think the childish language helps. There's a culture of "you are an asshole because I say you're an asshole and if you disagree you're an asshole because my views are universally accepted truths" that dampens grown-up discourse.
Evidently, from the fact this thread exists:
- The concept that people should not disclose life changing circumstances to investors is not universally accepted.
- Nor does wishing to be informed of material facts affecting an investment mean one hates women.
Well it's not just pure sexism that would make an investors or co-founders nervous about a pregnancy. If I was starting a venture with capital for 10 months of runway, and my co-founder told me that they (or their spouse) was 3 months pregnant - well I would be happy for them personally, but I definitely would be concerned about our venture. I think anybody in their right mind would be concerned because you know they will have to take at least some time off for the birth - then who knows how they will feel about working after that. Maybe they'll be driven, maybe they'll decide they need to stay home with their new child. It's pretty tough to say, nobody knows for sure how they will feel. It's not something you really want to be dealing with while getting a company off the ground.
That's no excuse for the rude, sexist comments made in the article, though.
If they're happy and fulfilled from having a child, they'd seek less fulfillment from their start-up.
Hell, they might take an early out in hopes for stability to provide for the new child. That could mean thousands, millions, or billions (if you have a chat app with more than 3 users).
I don't think many people would argue that it's impossible for a co-founder to have and raise a child while building or running a start-up. But I also don't think many would argue that it would on average have a net positive outcome on the start-up.
But having a child is a -huge- commitment- I don't think I'd be able to have one, and run a business at the same time. Sleepless nights devoted to the baby, medical concerns, etc. all of those are large factors that weigh on the effectiveness of a leader.
I do agree that most of this stuff is ingrained behavior that most people know is wrong, asking for a clarification usually can snap them out of it.
I can't believe this needs saying, but discriminating against mothers is wrong (and likely illegal!) no matter how hard you might imagine it would be to be one.
It's certainly not illegal to decline an investment opportunity because a founder is pregnant or just had a child. No one can force you to invest in something if you don't want to.
It may be stupid to turn down a great founder for this reason, it may be ass-holish, but it's not illegal.
You seem very certain about that. IANAL, but I would not be so sure. It's true that no one can force a bank to offer a loan to a female-owned business but I don't think they are allowed to consider the founder's gender anywhere in the process.
What about a bank offering a home loan? The bank needs to verify your capacity to pay, and if a single income isn't going to cover the loan then a pregnancy probably does come into it. I'm just speculating though, and rules/laws in your area may vary.
Actually Eli is right regarding FDIC regulated commercial banks, especially for home loans. Considering gender or pregnancy (in a provable, systematic basis) would certainly be grounds for a lawsuit (in the US at least).
I couldn't find a specific law from Australia, but many lending institutions offer a 6 month deferral of payments for parental leave. I would also assume that if the second parent plans to return to work, then the second income would be included to calculate serviceability.
You appear to be confused. What's illegal is when you discriminate on a candidate based on factors that have nothing to do with their ability to cover the loan.
Denying a black man or a woman when you grant the loan to someone with the exact credit history otherwise, for example.
If a single woman makes enough to pay the mortgage, you shouldn't be denying her the loan based on your moralizing on her inability to survive without a man's wages.
I don't think I am confused. I specifically brought up the ability to service a loan. If a prospective mother is asking for a loan, then the question of whether or not she will be returning to work after the pregnancy should become a relevant question if that income is required to service that particular loan.
And I say that because maybe, just maybe, the poorly phrased "I wouldn't have invested if I knew you were going to get pregnant" actually had to do with the founder not being able to "service" her company. Whether the founder could dedicate enough time, as perceived by said investor, is a relevant concern to that investor. Is that sexist? I'm not sure. Is it a shitty thing to say (in that way)? Most definitely. Is it wrong to use pregnancy as a "signal" (positive or negative) for investment? I have zero ideas considering I'm not an investor.
"I specifically brought up the ability to service a loan."
Again, that is not what is illegal. What is discrimination is to pick one candidate with equal background ability, and drive over another. Yes, it is wrong to use it as a signal for not being invested in a company.
I am not a lawyer myself, but the laws about these things tend to be very specific (what's true for an FDIC regulated bank doesn't carry over to other financial institutions). Discrimination laws tend to exempt startups with less than a certain # of employees.
I'm not commenting on the rightness or wrongness here .. I think startups are very unique and no blanket statements make sense. For example, if it were a baby food startup or pregnancy app, I'm sure it would be a tremendous advantage to be pregnant or a new mother. (talk about talking to users)
The gender is irrelevant. The same would go for an expecting father. I don't think it is wrong for investors to discriminate on the basis of the priorities and time commitments of founders. On the contrary, I think such discrimination is crucial.
I gather the huge commitment you're referring to goes way beyond the pregnancy itself and extends to the actual parenting. In which case, why discriminate against moms but not dads? Why can a male founder have a kid but not a female one?
Because statistically a mother is likely to spend much more of their time on childcare than a father. And since you're not allowed to ask questions about their intentions, the statistics are all you can go on.
Run a business or start a business? People have been doing this exact thing for thousands of years, so maybe you're selling yourself short or you don't have what it takes.
I'm a founder with a young child. It's awesome. You can't do it alone obviously but with a partner and a support system it's totally doable. Even the sleepless night thing is mostly contained to the first couple months.
"What do you mean" is a nice easy response. I like it. It's not going to stop all assholes but it will filter out the ones are are ashamed of themselves, which is probably a lot. What it won't stop is the ones with pernicious superficial rationalizations for excluding women.. the "short people shouldn't be firefighters" crowd.
Was the first investor an asshole for thinking what he did, or for voicing that thought?
If it was for voicing the thought, is there a more delicate way he should have phrased it? Or should he have just kept his mouth shut, denying her useful (if insensitive) feedback?
I am not a fan of the framing here. This is not about someone "being an asshole." This is about someone opening mouth and inserting foot. Okay, so when men unthinkingly default to stupid assumptions and phrasing, it can seriously hurt women. The fact that women get hurt doesn't mean the harm was intentional, malicious, etc.
What the investor said was probably just the uncomfortable truth coming out. IIRC, Paul Graham has made remarks not terribly unlike that. A lot of investors are leery of investing a woman of child-bearing age. Is that "unfair" to women? Perhaps. But I don't think saying it after the fact is "being an asshole." He did invest in her company. Now she needs to preform, baby or no baby.
This piece is not about "people being assholes." It is about men opening mouth and inserting foot, probably fairly innocently in both cases cited. A lot of remarks of that ilk are not intended as hostile. I think the phrase "what do you mean?" is probably a good one to use in such situations but I really think this article with this ugly title rooted in ugly assumptions does women more harm than good.
Don't finance people (at least Wall Street) pride themselves on being big swinging dicks? I'd give them a chance in private to fix things, then I'd put them on public blast. By that I mean go to their partners or whatever.
I don't know, I'm just a simple country programmer, your big city ways frighten and confuse me!
As someone who's recently had a child, and who's been through several startups; I think this is excellent.
I've made the offhand comparason of having a child to working for a variety of 1990's startups, I'm an ops guy and craptastic perl code made my sleep schedule less than ideal. I optimized and my life got easier.
The training from that made dealing with the wakeups a lot easier, and my wife and I worked out a schedule.
Working for a startup, like having a baby, requires good partners. If you don't have a good partner(s), life becomes significantly more complicated and I am not sure I'd recommend it.
Ask me about my ops strategy, stuff I design generally can do 99.999 uptime.
This is a very useful and adult tool for dealing with these types of situations, but the child in me will always want a witty retort, usually in the form of a quote from The Princess Bride.
Perfect example of a dumb investor who thinks he has a better idea of how to run the company than the founders themselves. I'm quite certain that bad influences of such investors have broken more startups' backs than pregnancies.
I think it's amazing that people would debate whether to fund a company led by a hard-working mother when nobody questions the logic of funding a company run by someone who worships a malevolent invisible sky wizard.
Warren Buffett figured out that hiring women was all-win long before most. Kudos to him.
Do you think people should question the logic of religious investors investing in companies run by atheist founders?
And what does this have to do with the posted topic?
Edit:
I'm finding it hard reconciling what you said below [0] with what you said above.
0. Yep - I am not a big Dawkins fan. He does a lot of damage to the image of non-religious people, because he's such a jerk to the people he disagrees with.
It's late and I should probably not try to make coherent statements concerning politics and religion after 4am.
I've had intelligent religious folks suggest to me that they are shocked I'm not a jerk, because so many of the prominent atheists in popular culture are jerks. Dawkins is a primary offender: he has a hard time answering any question without sounding smug and superior.
This is a problem for me because I believe that he's mostly correct in his assertions.
However: people don't remember what you say, they remember how they felt after you said it.
I wouldn't call him a "miserable" alcoholic. He was quite proud of his prodigious intake of alcohol and tobacco, to the extent of writing essays defending these habits and refusing to change his tune even in the face of death due to them.
He was more of a "celebratory" alcoholic and smoker.
Why do you say no one would question that logic? If a founder ended his pitch claiming that his startup would succeed because he prayed all the time, I'm pretty sure questions would be in order (along with a polite decline).
Essentially I was trying to make the point that as a non-religious individual, it's always wild to me how people can find the time to ponder whether a woman would have the audacity to start a family while building a company, but nobody questions a founder that worships a paranormal creator entity. Lots of people do both, yet somehow it's becoming a mother that is considered crazy.
And, I was trying to say it without being an asshole myself.
I don't think anyone said becoming a mother was considered crazy. It's simply a change in lifestyle, especially if this is their first child.
I'd say it's a bigger impact on women, because they need to give birth to the child. If I was invested in a new company, and the founder (male or female) said they're going to be a new parent, I'd be concerned. I think having children is one of the biggest impacts someone can have on their life, both financially and mentally. How is this going to affect the business? Will they have less time to be involved in the project? Are they going to be adverse to risk with the business and prefer to focus on a stable income? Is one parent free to look after the newborn, or is there a chance the founder is going to step down for a while?
The statement from the investor was rude, but I have no problem with the viewpoint, and I'd be wary of investing in soon to be parents as well.
Religion seems to have a smaller impact, I don't care if you believe in God, the same way I don't care if you like apples or oranges. If it doesn't get in the way of your work, and you seem mentally stable, why should I be concerned? If you suddenly said you have a change in religious beliefs, and you need to exercise a call to prayer every morning for 3 hours, and take the last week of every month off, I'd start to worry. Not because of the beliefs, but because I didn't anticipate this change in your life, and I'm unaware of how you'll handle it along with work.
As an atheist myself, I don't know what to make of people who say they're religious or believe in god. Are they for real, or are they just saying that for cultural reasons.
I don't remember ever believing in anything supernatural (not even santa claus or the tooth fairy), so I can't know whether it's really possible.
I find the vast majority of "religious" people aren't really religious, but rather quite agnostic if you question them.
Although I'm not religious, I am agnostic. Why? Because no one can credibly say they know a damn thing about the metaphysical. To me, hardcore atheists are almost as bad as religious fundamentalists in their own way. Basically, both groups of people believe something which they feel everyone else needs to accept or else they're wrong and are evil. And in both cases the thing they are so self-assured about is essentially unknowable.
To me, religion is a branch of philosophy. There are a lot of useful ideas developed there over the centuries. Atheists often talk about the evil created religion, but evil will use whatever tool is available—we sit in this forum worshiping startups, yet capitalism has done just as much evil as religion (or at least, it's on its way to). The other thing atheist fundamentalists do (as peterforde does above) is set up a strawman to be argued from a scientific perspective. If you say that god is a bearded man sitting in the sky then of course it sounds ridiculous, but that's ignoring the fact that it's a millenia-old imagery created for pre-scientific people. As much as we get angry over evolution-deniers and creationists, it's equally ridiculous to cherry-pick some age old metaphor, state as a falsifiable hypothesis and then demonstrate its ridiculousness on scientific grounds.
Atheists often claim rationality on their side, but how rational is it to invoke religious beliefs in a thread about sexist asshole talk? It's an utter non-sequitur and what it demonstrates is an irrational axe to grind.
Atheism is not the belief that there is nothing supernatural, it's simply the absence of any belief that there is.
> "To me, hardcore atheists are almost as bad as religious fundamentalists in their own way"
This is ridiculous, religious fundamentalists kill people in the name of their religion. What atheist has ever done that?
> "capitalism has done just as much evil as religion"
You're comparing apples with oranges. This is just as much of a non-sequitor as bringing up atheism in a discussion about sexism (like you mentioned below).
> "Atheists often claim rationality on their side, but how rational is it to invoke religious beliefs in a thread about sexist asshole talk? It's an utter non-sequitur and what it demonstrates is an irrational axe to grind."
Agreed, not sure what peterforde was trying to accomplish here.
> This is ridiculous, religious fundamentalists kill people in the name of their religion. What atheist has ever done that?
Good point, I was narrow in my thinking and didn't mean with regard to real violence, I was speaking more to the endless debates seen on the internet and generally in western society.
Of course, following your definition, the absence of belief makes it hard to attribute anything specifically to atheism. My point is not to condemn atheism in general, but rather the militant variety that is not to content to judge people on their actions and deeds, but must attack their beliefs. Attacking someone who has beliefs you do not share is certainly not unique to atheists (it's fundamental human nature I suppose), but there is a certain hypocrisy about it that I find very distasteful.
Well as long as you acknowledge that "militant atheism" is not the same thing as "militant islam" (etc) in that the key word "militant" means a very different thing.
A "militant" atheist may be distasteful, but his/her "attacks" don't physically hurt people and harm society.
I would think that the willingness to suffer or die because of your beliefs is a reasonable piece of evidence that the beliefs are genuine. Obviously that doesn't happen much in the Western world these days, but it certainly has happened a lot throughout history and continues to happen today.
> I would think that the willingness to suffer or die because of your beliefs is a reasonable piece of evidence that the beliefs are genuine.
Surely you didn't mean to say "genuine", assuming you understand the meaning of the word. You may have meant "sincere". But "genuine" implies that the belief is true, which is a property not necessary for a belief to be sincerely held, and that contradicts the meaning of "belief" as a view held without regard for the evidence.
In my sentence, "genuine" modifies "belief," not the thing that is believed. I believe this is common English usage. "Genuine belief" is a common phrase with the meaning I intended, as in "I hope you don't genuinely believe that."
All I am saying is that, in English, to avoid confusing people about your meaning, you're much better off saying "sincere belief".
> My phrasing matches standard English usage.
So does saying "literally" when you mean figuratively -- all the dictionaries now list this perversion, but it's still inadvisable and still sows confusion among educated readers.
It's one thing to argue that a usage is accepted by lexicographers, but quite another to try to engage in effective communications.
> So does saying "literally" when you mean figuratively -- all the dictionaries now list this perversion, but it's still inadvisable and still sows confusion among educated readers.
No, that's not advisable. Just like I'm using "genuine" correctly (it has meant "authentic" at least as far back as the 17th century), "literally" can also be correctly used to mean "figuratively." Simply put: you are not the authoritative body of the English language.
> I'm using "genuine" correctly (it has meant "authentic" at least as far back as the 17th century) ...
Yes, you did use it correctly, but in a context that leads the reader to wonder whether you're referring to the belief itself, or to its holder's sincerity in holding it.
> Simply put: you are not the authoritative body of the English language.
Point to any of my words that give you that idea. Can't do that? My point is not correct usage, it is effective communication. With respect to that, there are no authorities except the outcome.
> but in a context that leads the reader to wonder whether you're referring to the belief itself, or to its holder's sincerity in holding it.
That's been my point this entire time. You appear to be the only reader who was confused, and it seems to be due to some rather bizarre ideas you have about the English language. I am confident that my original comment would serve as effective communication to the overwhelming majority of native English speakers. The intended audience of my comment did not include advocates of prescriptive linguistics, which is fine, because vanishingly few of those exist, and the ones who do spend most of their time attempting to argue that everyone else doesn't know how to effectively communicate.
>> but in a context that leads the reader to wonder whether you're referring to the belief itself, or to its holder's sincerity in holding it.
> That's been my point this entire time.
Yes, I know, and rather than take the advice of someone with six decades of English writing experience, you chose to defend a questionable word choice as thought it was self-evident.
> You appear to be the only reader who was confused ...
How very scientific. Has it occurred to you that I am also the only reader? In any case, this is easily resolved by polling common usage:
And looking more carefully, one finds that many of the "genuine belief" citations are meant to refer to a belief in something thought to be true. Example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtBCrMLBCPw, in which this remark appears in the comments: "How could a belief that contradicts available information be a genuine belief?"
> and the ones who do spend most of their time attempting to argue that everyone else doesn't know how to effectively communicate.
To the degree that I do this at all, I reserve my efforts for examples in which ... wait for it ... someone clearly doesn't know how to effectively communicate.
I should add that I suffered through the video you mentioned (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtBCrMLBCPw) long enough to establish that the word usage in the video's description matches my usage. She is arguing that people who believe in Hell (in the context of Christianity) do not truly/sincerely/actually/genuinely believe. Her argument is that belief based on fear rather than on evidence and sensory experience is not true/sincere/actual/genuine belief. She references fideism and belief for the sake of belief:
> Yes, I know, and rather than take the advice of someone with six decades of English writing experience, you chose to defend a questionable word choice as thought it was self-evident.
I don't care how much writing experience you have or claim to have. You're wrong in this case. All the evidence is against you, and frankly I'm confused why you persist in your argument.
Your use of Google results of as suppose evidence is extremely damning to your own position and to your grasp of the English language. So my usage is 66% as common as yours? That's pretty good evidence that both are very common and well-accepted. You're also implying that only the most common way to phrase an idea should be used, which is ludicrous, especially coming from someone who claims to have writing experience. "Cat" has 447 million results, while "feline" has a mere 11.2 million, so according to your logic, "feline" is a misuse of the English language.
> And looking more carefully, one finds that many of the "genuine belief" citations are meant to refer to a belief in something thought to be true.
In something thought to be true? That's what the word "believe" means. Have you been reading my comments closely? My entire point is that a "genuine belief" is a belief which is sincerely held by someone, regardless of whether the thing believed is itself real. The Google results for "genuine belief" support my usage. I checked literally every result in the first two pages, and every single one supports my usage. A few examples:
"Four billion people say they believe in God, but few genuinely believe. If people believed in God, they would live every minute of their lives in support of that belief, people would give their lives in support of that belief." http://www.mydd.com/users/gary-boatwright/posts/the-man-the-...
"The well known case of British Homes Stores v Burchell (EAT 1980 ICR 303) provides that where an employer dismisses on suspicion of misconduct they must establish (i) that they held a genuine belief the employee was guilty of the alleged misconduct, (ii) that the genuine belief is based on reasonable grounds, and (iii) the grounds for holding that belief were established after an investigation that was reasonable in all the circumstances of the case. The Tribunal does not necessarily have to agree with the employer’s view or consider whether their conclusion was objectively correct or justified." http://www.allanmcdougall.co.uk/employment_law/unfair_dismis...
I agree that they exist, but I don't personally know anyone like that. I'm talking about the average person who says "I'm catholic", "I'm jewish" or "I'm hindu" etc (and are the types of people who usually pitch to VCs). They haven't really questioned their beliefs.
I have no idea about the average person, or how you would even measure or quantify what it means to "actually" believe something you claim to believe. I suppose you could say the same thing about any belief system, even empiricism or scientific rationalism. How do you prove that you "actually" believe in anything?
I suppose you would "measure" how they act rather than what they say. If someone says I'm willing to "die for Allah" and then actually becomes a suicide bomber, that's pretty solid evidence.
Yeah, you are assuming that the question was asked by a religious person. There are atheists who would ask the same question. As an example, Dawkins has been called out as a sexist numerous times - often by other atheists like Rebecca Watson and Jen McReight [1][2].
Yep - I am not a big Dawkins fan. He does a lot of damage to the image of non-religious people, because he's such a jerk to the people he disagrees with.
At least Bill Maher is usually legitimately hilarious in his asshole-ness. Dawkins isn't charming, which distracts from all of the truth in what he's saying.
> but nobody questions a founder that worships a paranormal creator entity.
Does this really surprise you? I'm not saying it's necessarily justified to question either group's abilities to build a company, but if I had to choose one group where problems would be more likely, I would choose the group that routinely becomes pregnant and raises children, both of which (rightfully so) require a very large portion of the parents' time and attention.
What group does that anymore? Other than maybe the aamish, some groups in the middle east and a few mormon sects (in other words, extremely religious and archaic communities).
To be precise, the group routinely has members which become pregnant and raise children. I didn't mean that the group has members which routinely become pregnant and raise children.
I don't think you understand the meaning of the word "routine": a sequence of actions regularly followed; a fixed program.
"Is more likely to become .. " or "more commonly becomes" would make more sense. Nonetheless, what you are getting at (treating individuals as members of a group) is precisely the problem. Treat people as individuals, even if you believe expecting mothers to be a bad investment, don't assume every woman is more likely to become pregnant.
Wow, you're really intent on digging yourself into a hole. "Women regularly and by custom get pregnant and raise children, so they make bad investments" is what you're saying now?
You're the one wasting time with ridiculous semantic arguments, but this time I don't even know what semantic argument you're trying to make. Women absolutely do regularly and customarily (two words which are synonymous) get pregnant and raise children. I never said anything about women making bad investments, and I have no idea where you're getting that idea.
I am speaking very clearly. Pregnancies are common and normal, plain and simple. Use whatever word you like. Regular, normal, usual, routine, etc.
We'll let the readers be the judge. If you think "regular", "normal", "usual" and "routine" mean the same thing, I'd just have to add "synonymous" to get a list of words you don't quite understand ;)
> I have no idea where you're getting that idea
from here:
> if I had to choose one group where problems would be more likely, I would choose the group that routinely becomes pregnant and raises children
> We'll let the readers be the judge. If you think "regular", "normal", "usual" and "routine" mean the same thing, I'd just have to add "synonymous" to get a list of words you don't quite understand
Ah right. The guy in the article was making an insensitive comment towards the wrong group of people. We shouldn't be insensitive towards women, we should be insensitive towards religious people.
>> "I think it's amazing that people would debate whether to fund a company led by a hard-working mother when nobody questions the logic of funding a company run by someone who worships a malevolent invisible sky wizard."
How is that comparison at all valid?
Being a mother is obviously going to take up a lot of your time and energy. Startups require a lot of time and energy. Doing both is difficult (although not impossible). Belief in a god is something most people do for an hour on the weekend. It's unlikely to impact the startup at all.
"I think it's amazing that people would debate whether to fund a company led by a hard-working mother when nobody questions the logic of funding a company run by someone who worships a malevolent invisible sky wizard."
