Comment by wolfgangK | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wolfgangK | Hacker News Reader

I hope that he also sues media outlets for slander. To sum things up :

  - fairness & lack of prejudice wrt minorities/women : goal
  - minorities/women % in the workforce : metric
  - diversity hiring : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell%27s_law because https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkson%27s_paradox .
  - without diversity hiring, differences in women vs men applicants pools, which can be explained by differences in *distributions* of interests, have no impact on distribution of skills in the workforce
  - women are talented enough so that they just need to be *attracted* (e.g. better work/life balance) rather than pity-hired

This is my takeaway from the "screed". How could it be framed as «anti-diversity», much less «alt-right» ? How could saying that «women are, on average more people-oriented and men are more thing-oriented» be framed as «women are inferior, biologically incapable of coding» ? I hope that people get punished for such a dishonest character assassination !

The Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows: You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.

In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

- Michael Crichton

I just finished reading it. I agree with some of the points, particularly: "Don't alienate conservatives." I consider myself left leaning. But if we are going to talk about tolerance and acceptance, then you have to attempt to do that across the board.

The entire manifesto seems like a first draft. I don't think presenting gender differences as biologically based was even necessary to support his main points. Even if on average genders exhibit different preferences, I'm still on the fence as to why.

And I can't tell which part was so offensive that people had to take time off and this guy needed to be fired.

I consider myself as leftist as possible with a functioning and informed brain. Yet I know that "left leaning" and "right leaning" are mostly biases that we use to orient ourselves in a world too complex to be fully understood. EDIT : I think that everybody should read http://righteousmind.com/ from J. Haidt.

Wrt to whether differences are biologically based or not, I'm convinced that one day, we'll look back at the Nature vs Nuture debate like we do with the Particule vs Wave debate for light. The sooner the better.

As to which part was so offensive, it's akin to wonder which spells got the witch burning at the stake. Witnessing so many smart and compassionate people join the angry mob really scared me : I have no reason to believe that I would not do the same if the right buttons were pushed.

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