Announcing the Winners of the 2018 MIT Media Lab Disobedience Award
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If you'd like to be perceived as engineers, you demonstrate a serious lack of focus. The Media Lab has historically been focused on innovative human-computer interfaces. When most people have spent significant time and several years interacting with social media, the Media Lab is no more qualified to speak on social media movements enabled by technology than the average person. They're borrowing the reputation of the lab to promote a political position, but its reputation is harmed by doing so.
If being an "engineer" means not being involved in social activism, why would anyone want to be called or perceived as one?
But if you're trying to do research which investigates the social ramifications of a movement like #MeToo, then a biased researcher will seek out methods which highlight how positive and powerful the movement is, while ignoring metrics which make it look weak, unpopular, or causing negative impacts. Getting the title "Doctor" doesn't magically remove one's bias, especially when there is a systemic bias promoted by the institution at large.
Sexually assaulting people and institutionally supporting the perpetrators and covering up their crimes is simply wrong. There isn't another valid side to that argument. The #MeToo movement is on the right side of that argument, and anyone who opposes it or denies it's a problem, like Trump or the Catholic Church, is simply wrong, and likely motivated by their desire to cover up and excuse their own crimes.
You can't fault medical doctors for being biased against cancer, or researchers for being biased against rape and sexual assault.
Further, social activism as engineering is important. It's engineering behavior so we're more inclusive. Inclusivity is important because we need lots of perspectives on how to solve problems. The more perspectives we have, the better our solutions will be.
They stopped being 'cool' and they won't get that image back by pretend stuff like this.
Having Aaron win the Disobedience Award would have been a fitting punishment, instead they took it to the max.
The MIT administration overall is incredibly lawsuit/risk averse after a bunch of heavy settlements, such as the Shin case, the sodium case, and the Wellesley girlfriend stabbing.
"It is as part of this PR campaign that Bin Salman’s visit should be viewed. In exchange for cash, elite universities offer the veneer of a progressive agenda. For instance, Bin Salman’s foundation, MiSK, was accepted as a “member company” to MIT’s Media Lab in 2017, which requires a minimum annual contribution of $250,000 (with a three-year commitment) to the lab. In return, MiSK receives access to the lab’s personnel, technology, and intellectual property." https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/30/elite-...
Aaron broke the academic status quo and generated bad press. That's pretty unacceptable in the quest to make the world a better place for an organization that is primarily about image.
Or risking anything. You want courageous disobedience? Let's talk James Damore.
Those disproportionate risks make it very difficult to do any kind of civil disobedience to protest these federal laws and the prosecutorial overreach associated with them.
Also, finding some way to protect the right to publish publicly funded research actually makes it possible for many people to read and redistribute the primary research related to Damore's memo. That is something most people can't currently do without risking criminal charges.
Given those difficulties and risks, I'd strongly suggest thinking a little more about the Schwartz object lesson rather than shifting to a different topic. (Esp. given we're also discussing MIT.)
Would you say they are constraining the window of acceptable discourse here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window) by claiming "This is what disobedience looks like, don't disobey more than this or you'd be labeled a crazy fringe fanatic"?
I like what they are doing in general. All those are good awards and issues to talk about. Not sure MIT is necessarily the place that these ideas would seem controversial and require a "disobedience" label associated with them. I can think of other countries and places where creating a #MeToo movement would be very controversial.
If your breadth/etc contains higher than allowed testosterone you'll be fined and made to take medication in order to control those extremely toxic traits:
mas·cu·lin·i·ty
/ˌmaskyəˈlinədē/
noun
noun: masculinity; plural noun: masculinities
possession of the qualities traditionally associated with men.
"handsome, muscled, and driven, he's a prime example of masculinity"
synonyms: virility, manliness, maleness, machismo, vigor, strength, muscularity, ruggedness, robustness; [informal] testosteroneBoth of those terms have definitions based in rational discourse, but they are often misunderstood. E.g. "toxic masculinity" does not mean that masculinity is toxic, it means there's a subset of masculine behaviors that can be toxic when over-represented.
If reading the term 'toxic masculinity' is enough to cause you to disengage, I'd encourage you to take a moment and understand why that just happened.
If we talk about toxic Muslims as the subset of terrorist behavior, then most people would still see it as an generalization that invoke a expression of racisms and hate. Lumping together all Muslims, only to then say "Its a misunderstanding, I only meant this small subset that is toxic among Muslims" don't work. Does not work for racism, and it does not work for sexism either. The term toxic masculinity will always seem like veiled hatred against men, and no amount of "that is only a misinterpretation ..." will change that.
But lets go to a political term that currently is seen in the news with wild disagreeing views: the illegal immigrant. The US administration defines this as only being about the subgroup of immigrant that has committed a crime. They see no problem talking about deport all those illegal immigrants, how the illegal immigrants are a drain on the country, and how many of the illegal immigrants are rapists and gang members. And yet when the opposition object they are all talking about immigrants and how immigrants are important for the country and economy. How among immigrants there are very few rapists and gang members, and how the administration are racist when they make general statements about immigrants. And in return the administration accuse the opposition for disengaging from rational discourse, thumping their chests, and grandstanding to defend all immigrants from the perceived slight of being called rapists and gang members.
If you want rational discourse then start by using language that do not dehumanize people. Second step is to avoid large generalization that is only veiled hatred. Only then is there even a possibility for rational discourse.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/30/elite-...
(This is not to imply that I think anyone in this article is undeserving of an award for things they've done.)
It’s the safest stand you can possibly take in 2018.
However, Defense Distributed should get the disobedience award, not Cody Wilson.
Specially when the award is given by a science lab.
My guess (as an outsider but with some small insight into the group making these awards) is that Elbakyan would have generally strong support for her direct work on Scihub, but would be unsupportable to some because of her political beliefs. That is, I think her anti-capitalist ideology and less-than-full-fledged support for modern liberal beliefs may more of a problem for the committee than her anti-copyright stance.
Here's a presentation where Elbakyan talks more about her political beliefs: https://openaccess.unt.edu/symposium/2016/info/transcript-an...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/20/us/me-too-movement-tarana...
> In 1997, Tarana Burke sat across from a 13-year-old girl who had been sexually abused. The young girl was explaining her experience, and it left Ms. Burke speechless.
Have female friends ever confided stories in you that left you speechless, helpless, and angry? And even that would normally just be the tip of an iceberg, not a full, detailed report of all the stuff that is going on... not even in their life, not to mention the world. The abuse that is going on is greater than our capacity to even face it.
And it is hard for people to speak about this stuff, and while I agree that it might not be "as brave" to encourage others to speak out, I think it's absolutely fine to award her. She's not the kind of person who gives a shit about awards. She wants actual abuse to actually end, she wants actual wounds to actually heal -- nothing more, nothing less, fair enough, godspeed, you go girl, all the good things... not just for her, but for the people she represents, and who are acknowledged by this award as well.
> Tarana Burke said she will not let her movement that she founded in 2006 and that has resulted in her getting death threats and having to challenge black leaders to support it, be co-opted by pretty girls and Hollywood.
So everybody agrees -- except the abusers, the people who don't want to hear about abuse, and the people sending death threats of course :P
https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/metoo-founder-tarana-burke...
> “We heard every manner of excuse ‘It’s really about white supremacy because our folks don’t have a history of that kind of thing back in Africa’ or ‘the real issue isn’t sexual violence, it’s false accusations against black men’ or my personal favorite ‘This is not a social justice issue; this is a social work issue.’ ”
> She cited statistic after statistic about women who aren’t famous but attacked because of their gender identity or economic powerlessness. But the worst, she said, was the fate of indigenous and Native American women “the group we talk about the least,” she said.
> She cited a Justice Department study that found that an estimated one in three Native American women will be assaulted in their lifetimes, that 92 percent of Native American girls reported having been forced to have sex against their will — and that nine of 10 Native American women and girls who survived rape or sexual assault were attacked by assailants of a different color, most of them white.
> “That’s definitely a racial justice issue,” she said. “And, at the end of the day, it’s a human rights issue.”
She seems to have the heart in the right spot, I'll say that much. Every "movement" can always attract anyone to do anything in its name, but I am absolutely down with what I read of that woman so far.
If anyone wants a source, this is probably referring to page 38, table 9 in https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/223691.pdf, showing that 57% of sexual assaults against American Indians were committed by white offenders (who represent 77% of the US population). But I'm not certain I'm reading the table correctly, if anyone wants to double-check.
And you shift them into a complete own goal, too. From what I could find, that award only exists since 2017:
https://www.media.mit.edu/galleries/2017-disobedience-award/
It comes with a cash prize of $250k, and that would probably have been great to get earlier on. On the other hand, maybe they now had over 11 years of experience, and know a much better use for the money than they might have 11 years ago. I have no clue, but I don't see how this is anything but trying to see a problem where there is none.
- For the sake of its own efficiency and security, the System needs to bring about deep and radical social changes to match the changed conditions resulting from technological progress.
- The frustration of life under the circumstances imposed by the System leads to rebellious impulses.
- Rebellious impulses are co-opted by the System in the service of the social changes it requires; activists "rebel" against the old and outmoded values that are no longer of use to the System and in favor of the new values that the System needs us to accept.
- In this way rebellious impulses, which otherwise might have been dangerous to the System, are given an outlet that is not only harmless to the System, but useful to it.
- Much of the public resentment resulting from the imposition of social changes is drawn away from the System and its institutions and is directed instead at the radicals who spearhead the social changes.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ted-kaczynski-the-sy...
I feel like I'm going insane.
But, I'm not walking on eggshells. I'm having, and will continue to have debates with women, and more often than not, have my view expanded by the conversation.
Things are changing, pretty rapidly. I hope the continue to change. Current situation is untenable for men and women, which is probably a societal improvement over situation way untenable for women.
I'm also accepting that this is going to continue until men do a better job of policing men.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_Media_Lab
> Some recurring themes of work at the Media Lab include [..] designing technology for the developing world.
What about this? Is this not also activism in a way?
IMO, if engineers were just making little toys they in engineering clubs with no impact on wider society, sure, they could have no interest in human affairs for all I care. But insofar they want to draw from and impact on human affairs, they need to assume the responsibility they have anyway, if they accept it or not.
From the 2017 award page:
> Their work shows that science and scholarship are as powerful tools for social change as art and protest, and it challenges those of us in academia to use our powers for good.
And again, this is really not a rhetorical question, what would a paper on "the impact of metoo" by an engineer even look like?
Would there be a personal opinion in it somewhere, if not of the author then of "subjects", or would it be all "objective" and mathematical, employing "best practices" with no judgement calls in sight? I'm totally not seeing it, so my main "opinion" on that is surprise, and interest, like when a program exhibits a really odd bug where I don't even see how that part could possibly affect that other part. I don't have an opinion on it at this point like I would on a program feature because I can't even parse it as such. It seems like a category mistake, if that's the right term.
> It's hard to trust a paper you've published on the impact of #MeToo when your department is literally rewarding the founders.
Which does raise the questions
> why would an engineer write a "paper on the impact of #MeToo" that anyone would need to "trust" purely on the engineering experience of the author?
and
> what would a paper on "the impact of metoo" by an engineer even look like
I didn't post that up top precisely because I didn't want to trigger silent downvotes. But some apparently can't even leave something that is at the bottom be. Well, if it's so horrible, let's actually hear it. Anyone who asks anyone to have a opinion on a thing, or downvotes someone for asking what that thing is, should at least have a mental model of said thing they can explain to others. So do that.
Where I struggle with being a woman in tech is how dismissive many people can be of their female colleagues. As with any discussion that happens behind the safety of a computer screen that attitude seems to be amplified on HN.
In my experience, the assumption seems to be that women have to “prove” their tech competence where men are given the benefit of the doubt until they demonstrate incompetence. For example, I’ve been told that I “wouldn’t understand” code that I wrote. I’ve also found that my StackOverflow account gets better and more productive responses when I use the display name “Andrew” instead of “Andrea.” Just this morning I had a potential investor ask me to name my “silent tech partner.” An odd request considering I was very clear that I had no partners but it was simply inconceivable to him that I had managed on my own.
And that’s on top of the difficulties women face in male-dominated fields generally. In my prior career[2] I’ve had a coworker grab my ass in the elevator because I was wearing “fun pants.” (They were navy blue.) As an accounting student intern I attended a mandatory “Women@Deloitte” event that consisted of a fashion show and tea party while my male counterpart got to do actual work. And as an attorney I once brought a team of my direct-reports (all men) to a Board meeting only to have the new Director that I hadn’t yet met ask me to go to the kitchen to get him a cup of coffee.
As a woman, each of these things in isolation is frustrating, but I have a job to do and I try to brush them aside and let my work speak for itself. Aside from the elevator ass-grab I really, truly, don’t believe that any of these slights demonstrate intentional sexism. But that makes it all the more frustrating to try to tactfully navigate (tolerate?) these realities and then hear conversations and see posts/comments that dismiss or flatly deny that women deal with things like this on a regular basis.
Worse still are the comments that being a woman in tech is “actually easier” or “a hiring advantage.” I can assure you it’s not easier and I challenge anyone who reads this to make a new HN, SO, or even email account that indicates your gender is female and use it for a few weeks to see how differently you’re treated. Most importantly, I think it needs to be said that even if it there were some sort of affirmative action happening in the Valley I don’t want to be hired or funded just because I’m a woman. I simply don’t want to be dismissed because of my gender. Given HN’s obvious skew towards intelligence/education I really struggle to understand how so many of my brilliant colleagues just can’t seem to understand why this is a problem for us.
[1] https://www.media.mit.edu/groups/civic-media/overview/
[2] Full disclosure: I'm a 30-year old self-taught female programmer. My technical knowledge/skillset is probably about that of a recent graduate. Before I quit my job to focus on my start-up full-time I worked on Wall Street as an attorney and also happened to oversee the Information Security team. I suspect I’m more accustomed to working in a male-dominated field than most females. I (wrongly) assumed that Silicon Valley couldn’t be any worse than Wall Street. It seems that Wall Street’s culture has at least had the benefit of a generation of women working with them while Silicon Valley is still adjusting.
I can relate to some of this - when I post on math overflow, my questions are heckled for poor English - by French mathematicians, when the reality is that I grew up in India with English in schools from the age of 5, and completed my Ph. D in the US. The hidden condescension, emboldened by my verifiable physical presence in India (from the profile), turns the conversation _that little bit_ nastier than it should be. All the while, the responders evade the perfectly legitimate question entirely. The tone of the responses on mathoverflow, by identifiable researchers, is quite bad and has turned me off the whole thing to a large extent.
The scientist in me also finds your experience very interesting. For the most part we think of these online platform as "anonymous" because we aren't conversing face to face. Yet our biases find other ways to creep in, often unnoticed.