A "significant tax on goods from China" is actually precisely what Trump is saying.
> Wouldn't that just mean less cheap useless crap being purchased by people who can't afford it anyway?
More likely it would just cause a price hike on goods and reduce interest, forcing companies to find alternative places to source those goods, like Mexico.
This piece spoke to me in a lot of ways. I’m not an adderall (or similar) user, but as a startup co-founder I can totally see the appeal of it that drives others—people much like myself—to it.
The first thing that stood out to me was the normalization of this in the San Francisco/Silicon Valley culture, which casually overlooks or ignores the risks involved. Not one person I know in tech who's taken it recreationally has ever made mention of the risks, perhaps because they don't think they experience any side-effects (or they're not impeding enough for them to care).
Then, the pressure of being the "10x" performer is very real; hero programmer or startup co-founder, you're weirdly expected by the tech environment—rarely by individuals, in fact—to be able to pull off amazing productivity and quality. Especially as a startup founder, this pressure—if you're susceptible to it—can lead to a very pro-work, anti-social [activities] feeling, which is isolating and subtly demoralizing on an [inter-]personal level.
Lastly, the part in the piece about reasons people use to self-diagnose away any symptoms of ADHD and argue (again, to themselves) that they don't have ADHD spoke to me in a very eye-opening manner. I've done all of those things, and have felt miserable over them. Now, my 'symptoms' could still be caused by the stress of being a startup founder, but this piece set me on the course to explore and treat it as potentially a real condition I can get medication for. Or, find out it's not that (for me), and have the comfort of knowing this is something I can reduce by reducing my stress. Either way, I'm immensely grateful for this piece.
I clicked on that expecting some kind of study to refute my random theory, which I'd find interesting, but it's a high level vague theory from Neil DeGrasse Tyson about the evidence of bias in society. (Something we should give approximately the same weight as any theory based on anecdotes and personal experience.)
He'd be the last person to tell you his observations and this anecdote should be seriously used as a citation to lend yourself weight in an argument about the source of gender bias in tech.
“I can't believe that any woman” — stop right here. Whenever anyone on HN ever says this, they're really showing themselves to:
1) lack imagination
2) lack empathy (egregiously so)
3) generally be wrong about whatever follows next
What you're doing here is saying you think all women who would have an interest in tech are exactly the same. This is IDIOTIC and you're revealing yourself to seeing women as "a demographic" rather than as 3.6 billion unique individuals who each have their own unique personality, interests, etc.
Also, you're revealing your massively shortsighted perspective and utter inability to educate yourself a little on the matter before chiming in with your assertions, but let me help you improve perspective and learn something new:
> A scientific study of 4,000 job descriptions revealed that a lack of gender-inclusive wording caused significant implications for recruiting professionals tasked to recruit women to hard-to-fill positions underrepresented by women.
So, your assertion that it's "ridiculous goop" has actually been proven (repeatedly) by scientific studies, and is a tremendously stupid assertion to begin with (it hinges on the assumption that all women are exactly the same).
Perhaps next time, before opening your mouth, assess whether you actually have any fucking knowledge of what you're about to assert.
>What you're doing here is saying you think all women who would have an interest in tech are exactly the same
No, I asserted the opposite by specifically qualifying the women I was targeting with the clause "of substance". That's the part of my quote you left out to make it look like I was lumping "all" women together.
I just showed those supposedly better job descriptions to a female coworker I would categorize as a "woman of substance" and she just rolled her eyes at it. The word "intimate" is groan-inducing and out of place.
I don't personally know Marissa Mayer (ex Google, now CEO Yahoo) or Carol Bartz (ex AutoDesk) but I don't believe women of such caliber require baby talk. In my opinion, it would be quite insulting to them.
>Study: Women Do Not Apply To ‘Male-Sounding’ Jobs
I never asserted that a text can't be overtly (even offensively) male gendered. That part I agree with. However, the over-zealous post-modernism rewrite does not always make the end result gender-neutral. On the contrary, the article shows that the end result looks silly and idiotic. (EDIT TO ADD: the article's author recently commented in this thread and she herself conceded[1] that the wording in those "improved" job descriptions could use some work so I'm not totally off base in my criticism.)
>I never asserted that a text can't be overtly (even offensively) male gendered. That part I agree with. However, the over-zealous post-modernism rewrite does not always make the end result gender-neutral. On the contrary, the article shows that the end result looks silly and idiotic.
I did. I contend you're reading too much into the study by American Psychological Association by the authors Gaucher, Friesen, & Kay called, “Evidence That Gendered Wording in Job Advertisements Exists and Sustains Gender Inequality.”
They polled 96 random women.
The study in its limited form did not (or even try to) differentiate the characteristics of any women who would find terms such as "intimate" in an engineering post as patronizing and incongruous.
I'd prefer not to alienate those type of women. To do so would run counter to the objectives the article is trying to promote!
Firstly, he didn't assert shit. He said he believed things to be a certain way - at no point did he state any of his -opinion- was fact.
Secondly. What he had to say was really not that sensationalist. If you strip away your political correctness glasses you will see that he was just saying that he thinks women would prefer to be hired (and attracted to a position) by their ability, not some specially crafted touchy-feely job description.
Whether you agree or not is another thing entirely but seriously back of the the PC Police attitude, it doesn't do you any favours.
The "you clearly know jack shit" assertion is just outright offensive though and doesn't belong anywhere let alone here.
"Calm down" is patronizing; "political correctness police" is pejorative. This is language one uses not when trying to have a civil, substantive discussion, but when trying to skewer an adversary.
I called it a personal attack because it's needlessly personal: it implies that the other person is an overwrought ("calm down") fanatical ("political correctness") bully ("police"). If that doesn't meet your definition of "personal attack", I'm happy not to quibble. Either way, though, it doesn't meet Hacker News' definition of civil, substantive discussion, and therefore is inappropriate here.
"Sorry, but that is ridiculous goop." <- this is about as explicit and concrete an assertion of his opinion stated as fact as you can get.
Also, you should really stop with the multiple cases of whining about "political correctness". It doesn't make you look like a decent person at all, because what you're really saying is that you think not being a fucking self-entitled shmuck who ignores evidence but makes massively sexist sweeping statements equates to "political correctness".
The status quo is clearly failing our industry and our community. Any argument made against changes or even just _suggested_ changes, especially those backed up with mountains of scientific research and evidence, is a toxic argument in favor of more status quo, and cultivates the upholding of deeply misogynistic and racist systems of oppression.
…that the article and board members in question are willing to reveal.
It's still entirely possible (and more likely if you ask me) that the Prop 8 angle and subsequent objections raised by many Mozillans and Firefox developers have changed their minds about this, but these are big-time board member CEOs we're taking so of course they're not going to say the political position on Prop 8 of the newly appointed CEO is what's making them resign. That's still a bad career move in today's world, but saying "we wanted someone from outside the organization with experience in XYZ" is not.
Mozilla is an organization that prides itself on openness and equality, on being inclusive as an organization and a culture. This is reflected in its products, in many different ways—all of them good, generally speaking.
The CEO is the figurehead of a company or organization; they have to represent the company, establish its culture, define its vision, and so forth and so forth.
Having a CEO who has a history of donating to an anti-equality campaign, an act that very strongly suggests having an unequal view of certain groups of people (LGBTQ folks in this case), does not mesh with an organization that prides itself on equality (among other things). They are pretty mutually exclusive.
It was already a conflict with Eich as CTO, but at least in that position he had no say over the company culture or its policies when it comes to people, just technology. As CEO, all that changed.
Additionally, by making a donation to (what is essentially) a campaign of hatred (and FUD), he took it WAY beyond a personal belief or view. Expressing your views in public or making a donation that way is an act, not merely "holding an opinion", and actions matter. His action in the form of the donation harmed the lives of thousands of people, with no justifiable cause for it.
Now, there's tons of people who hold such bigoted views and even express them in the form of acts through public statements or donations, but most of the time we don't award those people with the CEO position of a major corporation.
(to clarify how this is not a litmus test: while it sure can be applied that way, plenty of organizations have bigots as CEOs — see e.g. Chick-fil-A — but what’s mainly happening here is that it is simply a matter of bad judgement and people objecting to the appointment because he's unfit to lead an org like Mozilla)
> but what’s mainly happening here is that it is simply a matter of bad judgement ...
Only if you assume either that his position is so wrong that it could not be held by a reasonable person, or that he shouldn't speak or act on his position in any public way. I consider both of those assumptions to be highly suspect.
> ... and people objecting to the appointment because he's unfit to lead an org like Mozilla
You can be reasonable in many aspects and behaviors of your life, and be unreasonable in some that happen to matter more to the situation at hand.
I think it's pretty safe to say that thinking some of your employees are lesser human beings because they happen to not conform to your outdated view of sexuality, romance, and gender identity, is a pretty demonstrably unreasonable position.
The jump from "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California" to "thinks gay people are lesser human beings" is absurd. This is why it's not possible to have a reasonable discussion.
>The CEO is the figurehead of a company or organization; they have to represent the company, establish its culture, define its vision, and so forth and so forth.
To emphasise this point - the importance of the choice in relating to the outside world - this is just in:
The Victorian AIDS Council and Gay Men's Health Centre, one of the most important gay charities in the state of Victoria in Australia, is boycotting Mozilla and removing Firefox from their machines.
More than that, they issued a PRESS RELEASE to this effect.
So the Firefox brand is becoming toxic well outside the world of disgruntled techies.
I don't disagree per se, but do you apply this generally, disqualifying people with any expressed anti-egalitarian politics from leading a pro-egalitarian organization such as Mozilla? Would you apply a "no Randians" or "no libertarians" litmus test as much as a "no Christian fundamentalists" or "no social conservatives" test? In my opinion, the economic and social equality angles are of fairly equal relevance to Mozilla's stated goals.
I agree that it can quickly become murky with certain things. As I said though, actions matter. Being a libertarian is a very different thing from donating $1000 to an anti-equal rights campaign.
If economic and social equality angles are of fairly equal relevance, then Eich shouldn't be CEO, because him being CEO puts the economic angle as significantly more important than the social equality one.
> Being a libertarian is a very different thing from donating $1000 to an anti-equal rights campaign.
If you mean that people should be able to think whatever thoughts they want without me conducting paparazzi-style investigations to find out what they think, sure: I'm not advocating a campaign to find everyone who owns a copy of F.A. Hayek's Road to Serfdom and ostracize them (in fact, I own one!). But how about donating $1000 to Rand Paul's campaign? I would consider that equally odious, and yet it is (unfortunately) not that uncommon in the tech community, even among fairly high-profile people with board positions. In my opinion, the right of people with congenital heart diseases to receive medical treatment is of a similar level of importance as the right of gay people to have their marriages recognized by the state—if anything, actually somewhat more urgent in its importance—but a certain sort of "yuppie liberalism", which I think exists more or less only in Silicon Valley, takes the opposite view.
I think the piece you are missing is that someone could reasonably apply the same logic you are to your politics. If I feel that taxation is theft or that bombing Pakistan with drones is grossly immoral I could ostracize anyone who holds those beliefs under this logic. Maybe even target supporters of those arranging such activities like say anyone who gave money to Obama. You can either deal with opinions you don't like or you can freak out try to target those who hold them. It's your life.
>> Actions matter. Thoughts that you keep to yourself? I don't care. Go nuts with that.
If only life were so simple.
Bigots who keep their thoughts to themselves (and there are plenty of them in C-level positions) often get away with discriminatory actions with weasely excuses like "they're not a fit for that position" and "they're not quite ready for that position".
As a conservative-ish person in tech, I'm glad I made the decision to hide my politics beginning a few years ago. You people are vicious. I'd love to have an open debate or conversation, but that doesn't seem to be your game.
Our culture is in middle of making unprecedented changes to a core social institution that goes back into prehistory. It's going to be a messy process and some people are going to disagree. That's reasonable and shouldn't be grounds for disbarment from polite society. Let's dial back the vitriol
Lastly, equality isn't an unmitigated good. We treat different people differently depending on the circumstances, and for good reason. For example, you probably don't believe that children should be able to marry, or more than two people. "Equality" isn't a magic word that wins all arguments.
Personally, I raise an eyebrow when a six year old boy raised by adoptive lesbians decides he is transexual, and I feel like society may be failing that boy. But we are so drunk on the doctrine of equality that there is no stepping on the brake...
> Personally, I raise an eyebrow when a six year old boy raised by adoptive lesbians decides he is transexual, and I feel like society may be failing that boy.
This is a near perfect instance of xkcd's girls suck at math[1]. Shitty parents are tragically common, and we are failing children who are victims. But when a heterosexual couple destroys a child's life, we don't start talking about taking kids away from heterosexuals.
Also, I don't think polyamorous marriage is a good argument point against gay marriage. In time, as a society we'll see those opposed to the former as bigoted as well.
Anything that violates live and let live between consenting adults is on thin ice.
Polyamorous marriage is a good argument that the campaign for marriage equality is a sham.
We should call the campaign for gay marriage exactly what it is, a single-issue campaign for gay marriage, and not a campaign for marriage equality.
It is clearly wrong to talk about civil rights and human rights when the campaign clearly excludes minority groups who don't fit into the two person heterosexual/homosexual category.
Bringing in "children can't marry" is quite the misdirection on your part, since they're universally seen as not having enough maturity for a host of things, not just marriage.
Edit responding to your new last paragragh:
Regarding the parents of the child identifying as transsexual, why specify that they're adoptive lesbians? You're already stacking the deck. Lesbians can have natural children, and straight people can (and do) encourage transexualism in their child. And I don't mean 'can' in terms of finding an outlier and pointing to it as representative.
I am the natural child of a lesbian (born in wedlock to a man), I have helped adult transexuals come out at their own pace, and only two months ago I was arguing against a friend who was glorifying a straight couple in the news who were encouraging transexualism in their six-year-old daughter. I am straight myself, as was my friend I was arguing against, just like the parents we were arguing about.
So it drives me nuts when folks make an argument like you have: oh, it's not enough to decry the action on its own merits, I also have to demonise the people around the action in a way that reinforces inaccurate negative stereotypes. "The people who are fucking our kids up are these 'really weird' couples". Bullshit.
We're not the ones treating other people as lesser human beings who should be treated as second-class citizens in our society.
> Lastly, equality isn't an unmitigated good.
"Equality" in the sense of civil rights and social liberties doesn't mean "give every person exactly the same set of everything under any and all circumstances imaginable" — that's a very programmer (dare I say, robot-like) way of looking at the term. Equality, in this context, is about ensuring that certain groups are not discriminated against in systems, in cultures, and in society at large. Ensuring equal rights often does, in fact, demand unequal laws to counteract an unequal status quo, etc. I'll spare you the crash course of legislation 101.
> For example, you probably don't believe that children should be able to marry, or more than two people.
Yes I do, but I also believe that marriage should not be a government institution in the first place, because too many people think of it as having a religious aspect (for understandable and legitimate reasons), but as such it does not belong in government. Separation of Church and State and all that. So I'm in favor of civil unions for all legal adults, and that includes poly unions. Children can then marry all they want, but they are not legal adults yet, so doing so has no impact whatsoever on their legal status in any way.
> Personally, I raise an eyebrow when a six year old boy raised by adoptive lesbians decides he is transexual, and I feel like society may be failing that boy.
I feel you're failing society by having that viewpoint. Who the fuck are you to judge like that, seriously?! Society is doing great if a young girl who was assigned male sex organs feels comfortable and safe enough to state this wish to her parents — and here you go thinking it would be better if she would feel trapped and unhappy in her body the entire rest of her life?! That's not just judgmental, but severely lacking in empathy.
As a conservativeish person on HN, I have to say that pushing to deny a legal arrangement to gay couples is different than being skeptical about their impact on society.
Rant: Also, I'm irritated that this is the "conservative" position. Our culture is doing away with the institution of marriage, and its to the detriment of our children and our families. In the face of that, conservatives should not be in the business of discouraging people who want to build families.
I'm probably the furthest thing from conservative (Anarchist), but I appreciate your view on families. I was raised in a very conservative christian home and I really believe in the importance of family; it doesn't really matter to me how a family is organised, but having one (in whatever form) is a good and beautiful thing.
I accept your challenge to an open debate about how the government should endorse relations between consenting adults.
My view as of a couple years ago, which has changed somewhat, is freely available online under my legal name, Jordan Birnholtz. I hope this provides you an adequate starting point. I will even include it here so you do not have to search: http://www.michigandaily.com/content/viewpoint-divorce-marri...
How would you like to structure it and over what media?
Yeah. A friend who has a PhD in a relevant topic did a great presentation on the phrase "biblical marriage". I forget all the permutations, but aside from the traditional man+wife, there was man+slave, man+wife+slave, man+dead brother's wife, and a few others. Basically, the people talking about biblical marriage were immensely selective in their interpretation of the bible, finding in it the exact prejudices they brought to it.
And the whole argument about tradition, although undoubtedly interesting to some, is irrelevant as far as civil marriage goes. In the recent decision on gay marriage in Michigan, the judge made it clear that "that's how we've always done it" isn't sufficient justification for a law. The state has to have some rational purpose. And multiple courts, including the one that overturned Prop 8, have concluded that the straights-only marriage laws have no rational purpose.
We respond to systematic oppression with angry words, and we're the vicious ones?
Look, I'm sorry you feel hard done by. The folks down in Birmingham felt hard done by, too, when they were told they had to put up with black people dirtying up their lunch counters. These next few decades are going to stress you out just as much as the last few did them. I truly, honestly hope that you'll eventually be able to find another way of looking at things.
> Lastly, equality isn't an unmitigated good. We treat different people differently depending on the circumstances, and for good reason. For example, you probably don't believe that children should be able to marry, or more than two people. "Equality" isn't a magic word that wins all arguments.
I wouldn't let children drink alcohol. Should we ban gays from pubs? Children can't vote. Should we etc etc etc.
> Our culture is in middle of making unprecedented
> changes to a core social institution that goes back
> into prehistory.
Homosexuality was not a big deal during Ancient History. Then came Christianity and its obscurantism, shaming everything that was not in the good book for the sake of control. Our culture is going back to its roots paganism and greek heritage it's a long way since the Renaissance.
Some caution about throwing out the moral foundations of our culture that have served for 1,800 years is not unreasonable. The assumption that Christianity, monogamy, or even the nuclear family can be removed with no negative consequences is full of reckless hubris
> Personally, I raise an eyebrow when a six year old boy raised by adoptive lesbians decides he is transexual, and I feel like society may be failing that boy.
How do you feel when a 3 year old boy raised by non-adoptive heterosexual parents acts transgendered, regardless of what his parents do to try to get him to be like what people like you think boys are supposed to be like?
The vitriol is lame and so is the ratio of reaction to sustained belief, such as in the case of Oculus.
Who bought them again? oh yeah, facebook. Three days ago, it was a web-wide disaster. Now, they hired some famous tech guy (unknown to me, casual gamer here) and people can't be riled anymore.
Something that actively reinforces the status quo by what it is, is unable to ever be “part of the solution” by its very nature. The very idea of meritocracy reinforces the status quo, by virtue of “merit” generally being defined by the people who have the most privilege and power, and who, additionally, rarely ever recognize the merit of the contributions of people who are Not Like Them. (also, the term was coined as a parody, as a warning; it wasn't just "written about")
That criticism doesn't make sense: I don't think anybody believes that in general the people in power today are so because of their merits. So how does a call for meritocracy cement the status quo? I think people want people with actual merit in power instead of many of the current crop.
OK, the GitHub carpet perhaps made that claim, but they were truly trying to create a new kind of company. I'm pretty sure they didn't define merit to be "privilege and power" but coding skills and open source contribution.
Now you can make a very complicated case trying to reason why some people are excluded from open source and programming, but I don't really buy it. Everybody can start coding with an investment of perhaps 300$. Maybe some people are unlucky in that they never hit upon the idea. But it would be very difficult to prove that people can be actively prevented from programming (except by ways that would exclude them from everything, like making them slaves and never giving them any free time to do anything).
Also, why does the status quo always have to be bad?
> But it would be very difficult to prove that people can be actively prevented from programming
Well, kids growing up in poverty without the right role models are pretty close to being "actively prevented from programming".
> Also, why does the status quo always have to be bad?
It doesn't, but it can't be an ideal either. The status quo can be better than the past (or "relatively good"), but still very far from an ideal. If you believe people should always work to make the world better, than trying to maintain the status quo is pretty bad (unless you see some danger looming).
"Well, kids growing up in poverty without the right role models are pretty close to being "actively prevented from programming""
Not really - they can still get a computer for 300$, head to the nearest library and get started.
Yes, there are bad fates - perhaps they never learned to read and so on. It's really possible someone never gets the chance. But as I said, programming is then really the last skill that can be blamed for being unattainable, plenty of other professions that would be way more forbidding.
" If you believe people should always work to make the world better, than trying to maintain the status quo is pretty bad"
But wouldn't people be forced to try to have merit, so they would automatically work on improving the world?
> Wouldn't that just mean less cheap useless crap being purchased by people who can't afford it anyway?
More likely it would just cause a price hike on goods and reduce interest, forcing companies to find alternative places to source those goods, like Mexico.