Comment by 127 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 127 | Hacker News Reader

This is silly. Just because Scalzi has problems with listening to what people are saying, does not mean that everyone else has. Also, just because it's good to listen, emphatize and understand where people are coming from, it's not good for anyone to just stand there and take abuse. Nip it in the bud. Don't feed the trolls. Respect people who respect you. If people are silent and don't share their feelings and opinions, ask them questions, get them engaged into the conversation. Be a builder, feed constructive, respectful discussion.

Assuming that everybody has something worth listening to makes a huge, fallacious assumption that simply causes you undue suffering. People use words to inform. People also use words to manipulate and gain power over someone. Recognize the difference. You will feel much better and be a much more effective communicator.

Just because the only way you understand discussion is in order to share information and discuss things logically, someone else may just use words to try and twist your mind, use whatever dirty tactic to gain an advantage over you, or over a group. They don't care about logic, they don't care about information, they don't care about fairness. Only thing in their mind is power. Recognize.

>Just because Scalzi has problems with listening to what people are saying, does not mean that everyone else has.

Yes, but I can assure you that when it comes to discussing privilege, well, yes, everyone else does have.

Privilege is a heavily loaded word that is difficult to use in context of contructive discussion. You are by default swallowing the feminist bait and playing by their rules. Making it impossible to gain any ground because of fallacious, circular logic.

I'm not denying that privilege exist at all. I'm just saying that how it's understood and used is heavily biased and politicized. It would be much more productive to discuss about topics without resorting to feminist dogma.

FWIW, I found Scalzi's post to be much more constructive (not to mention well-written) than whatever agenda you're pushing here, which is coming across as fairly toxic...

It seems pretty clear that people's obliviousness to their own privilege is a much bigger problem than too many people "swallowing the feminist bait."

Oh, I'm sorry, I mistakenly engaged a troll. I'll stop now.

welp, an argument you can't win! Time to insult people!

Once someone has preemptively labeled anything you might say as "dogma", there is no argument. I don't believe in drinking from poisoned wells.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogma

Dogma is the official system of belief or doctrine held by a religion, or a particular group or organization. It serves as part of the primary basis of an ideology or belief system, and it cannot be changed or discarded without affecting the very system's paradigm, or the ideology itself.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equity_and_gender_feminism

http://bit.ly/OExNvm

I think some feminist thought has good ideas worth listening to. Gender feminism and feminism projected through the lens of most modern women does not.

Individual women have a lot to tell. Individual women are very much worth listening to.

Here's one interesting comment from the Pinker article:

Forwarded this article and got the answer, paraphrased, from a liberal 'it isn't that liberals disagree, it is the moral hazard of agreeing; there's nothing to stop the lower orders from returning to all of the horrors of the past.' And, there you have it. The Left has no faith in traditional religions to counteract the evil impulses of the past so a proxy religion becomes necessary even if not entirely believed by its adherents. And, then the sacraments of that religion come to control us all and to be used as a cludgel against all competitor religions.

> Nip it in the bud. Don't feed the trolls. Respect people who respect you.

I would agree with you entirely. The problem is that a lot of people in this current PyCon discussion are assuming that certain other people are trolling and disrespectful when, in fact, they're trying to talk about a serious issue that deserves attention.

Yes, jumping to conclusions, arguing with pure conjecture, having no patience nor empathy. Those are things that I often bump into when discussing about various things in the internet. It's hardly new.

Claiming that someone is a troll requires evidence. Simply because someone disgrees with you does not make them a troll.

Recognizing when someone is being disingenuous is an art, I think. Human beings have evolved complex mechanism for it through body language and facial gestures, which all are missing from internet discussions.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com