Post: #1

I'm sure everyone remembers the Pax Dickinson affair where he got suspended from BI for tweeting some neo-reactionary stuff that didn't jive with a lot of victim groups. Back then, Valleywag's Nitasha Tiku got on the case.

And... She's at it again. This time Y Combinator's Paul Graham is on the hitlist for the following quote:

"We can't make women look at the world through hacker eyes and start Facebook because they haven't been hacking for the past 10 years.."

Well, I hope everyone survived their heart attacks reading this.

Why some women these days find it insulting to hear someone somewhere claim they aren't into computers like nerdy guys are from a young age is beyond me, but, then agan, most of this PC hunt stuff is beyond me. I notice how Nitasha lists a few of Paul Graham offenses first. He didn't think much of "startup founders with strong foreign accents" (Indians?) nor did he seem to give one iota about women in tech in general -- who does? She does however make it seem like he's really on thin ice by stating the obvious.

I just don't get why Graham felt a need to explain himself. Isn't he a bit too big to be annoyed by trolls like this?

Post: #2

Fuck that. Paul Graham is brilliant. I've read pretty much every single one of his essays, as well as his book "Hackers and Painters". Highly recommended.

Edit: The essay that may interest RVF the most is What You Can't Say and his follow up.

Post: #3

Post: #4

Turns out she has a boner for him: http://valleywag.gawker.com/dear-paul-gr...1228175284

Post: #5

Paul Graham's next tweet should be, "Nitasha, stfu...BITCH!"

Post: #6

(12-28-2013 03:06 PM)Maciano Wrote:  I just don't get why Graham felt a need to explain himself. Isn't he a bit too big to be annoyed by trolls like this?

No one is too big. The ideological imperatives of feminism take precedence over such trivia as someone's accomplishments. It's like a bloodless version of a communist society where the scribblings of a professional denouncer like Nitasha can make powerful men tremble.

Of course the guy (Graham) is in reality completely party-line:

Quote:If someone was going to be really good at programming they would have found it on their own. Then if you go look at the bios of successful founders this is invariably the case, they were all hacking on computers at age 13. What that means is the problem is 10 years upstream of us. If we really wanted to fix this problem, what we would have to do is not encourage women to start startups now.

It's already too late. What we should be doing is somehow changing the middle school computer science curriculum or something like that. God knows what you would do to get 13 year old girls interested in computers. I would have to stop and think about that.

Paul, there is no "problem" and there is nothing for you to "think about". What you'd have to do to get 13 year old girls interested in computers is give them a Y chromosome, but why bother? There are enough dudes to do the job.

So, in fact, this guy is a faithful but somewhat naive party member who is earnestly trying to figure out ways to solve the spurious and unsolvable "problem" of getting sluts to become hackers. But any perceived deviation from the party line, no matter how small, is forbidden. That's how it is and how it must be under the ascendant reign of a totalizing ideology.

Post: #7

Women are better suited performing mindless menial work like data entry and customer service. They don't have the spacial awareness or depth of reasoning it takes to be a hacker. They might be able to envision a concept like Facebook but they're clueless when it comes to implementing it.

Post: #8

Lizard of Oz Wrote:Paul, there is no "problem" and there is nothing for you to "think about". What you'd have to do to get 13 year old girls interested in computers is give them a Y chromosome, but why bother? There are enough dudes to do the job.

So, in fact, this guy is a faithful but somewhat naive party member who is earnestly trying to figure out ways to solve the spurious and unsolvable "problem" of getting sluts to become hackers. But any perceived deviation from the party line, no matter how small, is forbidden. That's how it is and how it must be under the ascendant reign of a totalizing ideology.

Based on his writing and background, I have a feeling that he is not a faithful party member. But consider his position. It's easy for you and me to say whatever we want behind anonymous handles on the internet. Maybe a few of us even express these views on Facebook with our real identities (albeit watered down versions). PG has millions and a reputation to risk by publicly espousing verboten views. Look at the trouble he's facing for commenting on founders with accents and female hackers.

Before you judge a man too harshly, put yourself in his shoes.

Post: #9

Peregrine, you may well be right -- he could be a secret heretic for all I know. The point remains that his public heresy is a quite modest one -- it's not really a break with the party line, maybe a small wiggle in that line. No matter, it must still be squashed at once.

Post: #10

Consider the following response he wrote:

Paul Graham Wrote:Why didn't you say some of the things you can't say?

The most extreme of the things you can't say would be very shocking to most readers. If you doubt that, imagine what people in 1830 would think of our default educated east coast beliefs about, say, premarital sex, homosexuality, or the literal truth of the Bible. We would seem depraved to them. So we should expect that someone who similarly violated our taboos would seem depraved to us.

If I said this kind of thing, it would be like someone doing a cannonball into a swimming pool. Immediately, the essay would be about that, and not about the more general and ultimately more important point.

Another alternative would be to say milder, moderately controversial things, like those Larry Elder wrote about in The Ten Things You Can't Say In America. I haven't read this book and have no idea if it's any good, but these are certainly not the ten things you can't say in America. I can easily think of ten that would be more shocking.

If I stuck to this kind of mildly shocking statement, it would give people the comforting illusion that these ideas, which you hear often enough on talk radio and in bars, represent the outer limits of what you can't say.

In fact, finding the outer limits is very, very hard. Popular controversialists just go for the low hanging fruit. To really solve the problem would take years of introspection. You have to untangle your ideas from the ideas of your time, and that's so hard that few people in history have even come close. Isaac Newton, smart as he was, wasted years on theological controversies.

How much do you want to bet that one of those ten things he's thinking of would really piss off the feminists?

Having just finished The Way of Men, I agree with Donovan that wealthy men have no incentive to buck the status quo. It serves them just fine. The fact that Graham is saying these controversial things anyway is evidence of intellectual sincerity and honesty. It's a form of courage that we should be lauding. I don't expect him to go full blown martyr.

Post: #11

Well, I have a feeling I would find his "ten shocking things" shockingly mild, if anything.

But in any case, I have no problem with the dude and my point was certainly not to criticize him. I have no doubt he is a smart guy and closer to us than most. I was just noting how mildly he departs from the party line in his public comments, because it's instructive to see how little you need to do or say to earn the ire of Nitasha and crew. Not the least deviation can be tolerated. That's what I'm really emphasizing.

Post: #12

$5 says Nitasha can't code for shit

Post: #13

every time i read these type of ''the it sector is racist/sexist" type articles, the comments are full of the following kind of post:

"this is why quit programming, because people were mean to me"

the reason they quit is because they are mentally weak, if thats all it takes for you to quit, you're not about that life.

im a software developer, and even though i havent received any negative behaviour based on my ethnicity, it wouldnt stop me..there's lots of money to be made, & im not fussed about other peoples opinions that much .. they don't control my future.

Post: #14

(12-28-2013 05:15 PM)The Lizard of Oz Wrote:  Paul, there is no "problem" and there is nothing for you to "think about". What you'd have to do to get 13 year old girls interested in computers is give them a Y chromosome, but why bother? There are enough dudes to do the job.

So, in fact, this guy is a faithful but somewhat naive party member who is earnestly trying to figure out ways to solve the spurious and unsolvable "problem" of getting sluts to become hackers. But any perceived deviation from the party line, no matter how small, is forbidden. That's how it is and how it must be under the ascendant reign of a totalizing ideology.

Are you familiar with Paul Graham's work?

Just saying, myself and many other guys think he's one of the best entrepreneurs AND thinkers of our time. And I'm not even some silicon valley/programmer dude. Even if you don't know shit about the companies he's founded, his writings on political correctness and modern culture can stand very strongly on their own two legs. However, if you read his essay on this topic, you'd know what his stance is:

"It's stupid to simply say un-PC things in the name of fighting political correctness, it's better to just attack the idea of PC in general, or even better, make a laughingstock out of the PC crowd using humor."

He explores this in detail here:

http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html

(And I might add, this could serve as a bit of a "wake up call" for the manosphere to take things up a notch and start getting more philosophical in how they present their ideas).

Post: #15

Andy, I wasn't familiar with Graham's writing until now. I have now read the essay you and Peregrine linked to and a couple of other things. He is clearly a very intelligent guy, and I have no doubt he is very good at what he does. I wouldn't go as far as to say that he strikes me as a great or original thinker, but that is a pretty high standard. I suspect that his "private" thinking is far less free and more conventional than what he believes. However, I don't doubt that he also holds some opinions that many people here including myself would agree with. And we can certainly use allies wherever we find them.

In any case, my post earlier in the thread was made only in reference to his remarks in the interview that was quoted in the Gawker post. I was simply making the point that those remarks represented, at most, a mild deviation from the party line -- and I was making this point to emphasize just how little any public deviation is tolerated.

Post: #16

Watch the clueless & the whiners come to term with the dire problem of "too few women in tech"

http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2010/07/...-tech.html

http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2013/12/girls-who-code.html?

http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/29/what-ma...-and-code/

I've never heard any chick bemoan the fact that she (or any woman for that matter) wasn't pushed into a programmer career from an early age. But times seem to have changed...