Hacker News Reader

Comment by RodericDay | Hacker News Reader

I think everyone understands the frustration with taking down these notes on 'hurting so many to get to him?' grounds

but do any of you see the opposite viewpoint? that's the one that barely anyone in this HN thread is discussing? that MIT is basically saying to any profs "you play around with this and you're done"?

I feel like it's extremely encouraging to women, and may very well outweigh the marginal benefits of yet another physics lecture set online, particularly since they can easily be reinstated after the punishment and political message sinks in.

all of this stuff about the sanctity of information rings really hollow in a forum full of cynics anyway. and the skepticism about the accusations is just the cherry on top.

View on HN

I agree with you. So many seem willing to give this guy a pass based on the quality of his lectures. I think that's bullshit. We need to get rid of the notion that genius academic output forgives sexual harassment. Fuck that. Genius academic output forgives bad dinner party hosting skills or walking around the office in an 8-day-old t-shirt, not harassing women.

However good this guy might be at teaching physics, this "loss" to the community cannot begin to approach the loss of uncountable women who decided to avoid quantitative fields because of the male culture dominance.

Meanwhile, as we discussed a few days ago, image processing researchers continue to use the studio-lit, soft focus, 1970s slide film captured, limited color gamut, badly scanned, low resolution 'Lena' image as if it is even a tiny bit relevant for today's image processing applications.

I'm sure there are many fun and engaging physics teachers at universities big and small across the world who can lecture equally well and don't harass women online. One of them can step up.

The 'Lena' thing always seems to me like 'mountain out of a molehill'. Sure, there's something there, but of all the things you could worry about... Honestly it seems to me like its persistence tells us rather little. Benchmarks have always had long lives by nature- just look at dhrystone, which has declined tremendously in relevance, but is still run plenty often today.

I'm not saying it is an appropriate image. Rather, at this point its continued use could easily be thanks simply to inertia rather than crushing sexism. However, I don't work in image processing so I can't say for sure.

> However good this guy might be at teaching physics, this "loss" to the community cannot begin to approach the loss of uncountable women who decided to avoid quantitative fields because of the male culture dominance.

This comparison is completely inappropriate. You're pitching the contributions of one individual against the mores of the entire society over generations, as if Walter Lewin is single-handedly responsible for this "loss of uncountable women". How are you not ashamed to do this?

> I'm sure there are many fun and engaging physics teachers at universities big and small across the world who can lecture equally well and don't harass women online. One of them can step up.

Well, MLK was a plagiarist. Do you think it'd be a good idea to stop celebrating his life and works, stop citing him, revoke the holiday, etc.? After all, there are many fun and engaging civil rights activists around the world. One of them can step up.

Well, MLK was a plagiarist.

For someone calling shame on another for poor debating tactics, engaging in this level of misdirection is pretty poor form.

Not to mention that MLK has been dead for over 40 years, so it's not like he's stepping down to leave a place vacant right now.

I don't understand where the misdirection is in what I said. It's not like I'm actually suggesting to debate whether MLK should be forgotten: I'm making a point through comparison.

MLK being dead plays to the strength of this analogy, because Lewin is retired. Removing his lectures on OCW, recorded 15 years ago, is like refusing to read or watch MLK because of his moral failings. The issue with the MOOC on MITx, where he participated as late as last year, is different, and I would agree with barring his participation on the platform in case the transgressions are serious enough. But if you look over the discussion, it is the removal of the static, non-dynamic, incredibly popular and famous lectures on OCW that strikes many people as unjustified.

P.S. Feynman was a creep, and anyone who thinks that fact should cause people to stop reading his justly famous textbook and prefer that others "step up" is, not to put too fine a point on it, an idiot.

Plagiarism isn't illegal. Were there policies in place where MLK agreed to not plagiarize?

While on the other hand, MIT has public, written rules against sexual harassment and takes active measures to reduce sexual harassment. It's also illegal for MIT to be a workplace which allows sexual harassment.

It's a bit of a stretch then to make the comparison. Why not be more direct and use Bill Cosby as your comparison? Last I heard neither Cosby nor Lewin have been charged with any crime. And Viacom has stopped showing reruns of "The Cosby Show", last recorded 22 years ago.

You're missing the point.

We don't want to give him a pass, we just don't think society should suffer for his sins.

The loss here isn't a scare-quotes loss, it's a real loss. Removing freely accessible, high quality instruction makes it just that much less likely future generations of people (including women) seeking to be scientists will succeed.

No one has said genius academic output forgives sexual harassment. That's a straw man. It's not under discussion here.

Punish him for his actions. That should be done. What we're saying is that the action MIT has chosen punishes everyone else as well.

I can only hope they're as proactive when a male complains of harassment, even if he's accusing a female. Gendering this problem just feeds in to a sexist culture that discourages men and boys from coming forward when they have problems, which is a self-reinforcing problem.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com