Calling out virtue signalling is always itself virtue signalling. The goal is to prevent people making opposing arguments by shaming them, instead of addressing the point they made.
It's a silencing tactic, that also serves to poison the well.
"Sounding like" means "giving the impression that he was", implying that I don't think he actually is. In other words, the exact opposite of what you took it to mean.
I'm trying to be as fair to Damore as possible, not assuming anything about his views when I don't have clear evidence and trying to take everything in the best possible light. I do that because I want to have an honest and open debate about what he said.
It's hard to accept he is naive because he seemed able to research the biology well enough, yet completely ignored everything else. It's like discussing painting as a branch of chemistry. Chemistry is important, the availability of pigments and types of paint influenced the art, but it would be a very unusual individual who was completely unaware of the other aspects.
People around here always complain that progressives and feminists ignore things that contradict their arguments, but that's exact what Damore did. I'm trying to be charitable to the guy, maybe he read a load of anti-feminist nonsense somewhere and dismissed the last 100 years of work on the subject without really considering it, but even then failure to address it in the memo made it look deliberately selective and misleading.
No one is disputing that the environment needs to change, that's the uncontroversial part of the memo. The dispute is over the nature of the change. Damore says women are on average more neurotic so the job should be made less stressful. Everyone else is saying that the nature of the job is mostly fine, it's all the additional stress factors that women have which is the problem.
Damore's argument is that women's biology is the cause, the more widely accepted argument is that systemic problems causing additional stress are the cause. While it's reasonable to consider Damore's argument, of course, we have to consider that it's not new and was being made back before women had the vote, and decades of evidence refute it. Note that I'm not saying that the biology he cites is wrong, merely his understanding of the gender imbalance issue.
Unfortunately it is almost impossible to have this debate, because it's already so polarized and any dissent gets modded as flamebait. But I would really like to have an open and frank discussion about it.
I'm not saying that, I'm saying that ignoring the wider context and drawing conclusions from just those facts leads to conclusions that were debunked in the 1940 or earlier.
The short version of the story: A guy named Matt, whom Schumer had a giant crush on, called her at 8 AM for a booty call, after he apparently had been turned down by every other woman in his little black book. Amy, thinking she was being invited for an all-day-date, only discovered his real intent when she got to his dorm room and he romantically drunkenly pushed her onto the bed and started fingering her.
After several failed attempts at intercourse, and what she describes as an âoeambitiousâ attempt to go down on her, he finally gave up and fell asleep on top of her. Lying there listening to Sam Cooke, she decided she didnâ(TM)t want to be âoethis girlâ any more, âoewaited until the last perfect note floated out, and escaped from under him and out the door.â
For clarity, I use quotes around rationalism because his arguments have the superficial appearance of being such while actually failing to integrate decades of debate and rebuttals on the subject.
Do you understand the difference between an opinion and a law? Because my opinion is that the correct response is a rebuttal, only you think I'm trying to police it.
Well, no, the issue was that he ignored decades of arguments on this subject, but that they didn't exist. People assumed that if he had done that much research he must have been aware of them, and ignoring them is a common tactic used by actual misogynists.
To be clear I don't think he was being malicious or that he hates women, he just tried to tackle a very difficult subject (because it relates to people he works with every day) in a very badly misjudged way. He ended up sounding like a typical "rational" misogynist, and didn't make any effort (even to this day) to clarify.
I'm not saying it makes him wrong in the simplistic terms he put it, I'm saying if you make statements like that which ignore context then people are unlikely to accept it as childish naivety.
It's the same with his memo. If he had addressed the decades of rebuttals or at least showed some awareness of current thinking he would probably have been okay.
Flamebait means it is designed to provoke an emotional response, specifically offense and anger. Calling something flamebait is literally saying it offends you.
There is no -1 Disagree or -1 Wrong mod. The correct response is to post a rebuttal. A rebuttal to the actual argument, not an accusation of malice.
Bingo. You find arguments that you disagree with offensive, because you feel that they are making someone you like look like an asshole. You can't set that feeling aside and simply make a counter-argument, you want the post removed from your sight so it can't upset you any more.
And P.S. You just described about a century of feminist literature claiming men are inherently inferior, violent, and evil beings who belong in concentration camps or must be reduced to 10% of the human population. SJWs always project.
It's impossible to debate with you when you think feminists are basically Nazis, and I am a feminist.
If you want to have a serious discussion about this you are always welcome. I'm always open to a point well made and a reasoned argument. But if you insist on mis-characterizing my arguments and dismissing us as "SJWs", it's clear that your mind is closed and I won't waste my time.
you cannot say that that is a misogynistic viewpoint.
Fortunately I didn't.
Please, and this goes for everyone, please carefully read my posts and don't assume I said things that I didn't actually say.
they should change the engineering workplace to one that is more suited to women
Yes, that there should be change is uncontroversial.
To pick and example, Damore says that women are less able to deal with stress on average. The problem is that while there may be some statistical evidence for that, it's not clear how much is due to social factors (like having more stress to start with, or being more inclined to admit to feeling stress) and how much is biological. And even accounting for the biological component, is that the actual problem here? There is decades of study that says most of the problems are social/cultural, and affect both men and women.
So in that light the suggestion that women need special low stress jobs is both patronising and suggests that they are the problem. I'm aware that some people argue he didn't mean it that way, but when you look at some of his later tweets it seems like he probably did. In any case, he hasn't offered any clarification to date when challenged.
Slashdot Mirror
I see. That's a pretty interesting idea. Has it been tried before?
So how does it relate to diversity policies specifically? Are you saying there should be fewer, less effort? Or something else?
Thanks, I didn't know that. It's an area I really should find out more about.
It's it at all possible to discuss the actual issues, and refrain from it turning into a rant about feminists and "the left"?
Do have have specific issues with management style, for example?
Calling out virtue signalling is always itself virtue signalling. The goal is to prevent people making opposing arguments by shaming them, instead of addressing the point they made.
It's a silencing tactic, that also serves to poison the well.
"Sounding like" means "giving the impression that he was", implying that I don't think he actually is. In other words, the exact opposite of what you took it to mean.
I'm trying to be as fair to Damore as possible, not assuming anything about his views when I don't have clear evidence and trying to take everything in the best possible light. I do that because I want to have an honest and open debate about what he said.
It's hard to accept he is naive because he seemed able to research the biology well enough, yet completely ignored everything else. It's like discussing painting as a branch of chemistry. Chemistry is important, the availability of pigments and types of paint influenced the art, but it would be a very unusual individual who was completely unaware of the other aspects.
People around here always complain that progressives and feminists ignore things that contradict their arguments, but that's exact what Damore did. I'm trying to be charitable to the guy, maybe he read a load of anti-feminist nonsense somewhere and dismissed the last 100 years of work on the subject without really considering it, but even then failure to address it in the memo made it look deliberately selective and misleading.
No one is disputing that the environment needs to change, that's the uncontroversial part of the memo. The dispute is over the nature of the change. Damore says women are on average more neurotic so the job should be made less stressful. Everyone else is saying that the nature of the job is mostly fine, it's all the additional stress factors that women have which is the problem.
Damore's argument is that women's biology is the cause, the more widely accepted argument is that systemic problems causing additional stress are the cause. While it's reasonable to consider Damore's argument, of course, we have to consider that it's not new and was being made back before women had the vote, and decades of evidence refute it. Note that I'm not saying that the biology he cites is wrong, merely his understanding of the gender imbalance issue.
Unfortunately it is almost impossible to have this debate, because it's already so polarized and any dissent gets modded as flamebait. But I would really like to have an open and frank discussion about it.
I don't. It's what the memo said.
What is your evidence that they are opportunistic? Almost all so far have been either admitted or supported by strong evidence.
I'm not saying that, I'm saying that ignoring the wider context and drawing conclusions from just those facts leads to conclusions that were debunked in the 1940 or earlier.
The way Amy tells it... http://www.vulture.com/2014/05...
The short version of the story: A guy named Matt, whom Schumer had a giant crush on, called her at 8 AM for a booty call, after he apparently had been turned down by every other woman in his little black book. Amy, thinking she was being invited for an all-day-date, only discovered his real intent when she got to his dorm room and he romantically drunkenly pushed her onto the bed and started fingering her.
After several failed attempts at intercourse, and what she describes as an âoeambitiousâ attempt to go down on her, he finally gave up and fell asleep on top of her. Lying there listening to Sam Cooke, she decided she didnâ(TM)t want to be âoethis girlâ any more, âoewaited until the last perfect note floated out, and escaped from under him and out the door.â
You seem to regard arguments that you disagree with as "malicious propaganda lies".
Wait... You thought I meant literal law enforcement... After you used the same metaphor... Ok.
And you feel the need to mod posts down just in case this hypothetical entity is offended?
That's even worse.
For clarity, I use quotes around rationalism because his arguments have the superficial appearance of being such while actually failing to integrate decades of debate and rebuttals on the subject.
I'm not implying he is sexist.
You complain about policing language, and in the same breath police language with terms like "virtue signalling".
Do you understand the difference between an opinion and a law? Because my opinion is that the correct response is a rebuttal, only you think I'm trying to police it.
Well, no, the issue was that he ignored decades of arguments on this subject, but that they didn't exist. People assumed that if he had done that much research he must have been aware of them, and ignoring them is a common tactic used by actual misogynists.
To be clear I don't think he was being malicious or that he hates women, he just tried to tackle a very difficult subject (because it relates to people he works with every day) in a very badly misjudged way. He ended up sounding like a typical "rational" misogynist, and didn't make any effort (even to this day) to clarify.
I'm not saying it makes him wrong in the simplistic terms he put it, I'm saying if you make statements like that which ignore context then people are unlikely to accept it as childish naivety.
It's the same with his memo. If he had addressed the decades of rebuttals or at least showed some awareness of current thinking he would probably have been okay.
Flamebait means it is designed to provoke an emotional response, specifically offense and anger. Calling something flamebait is literally saying it offends you.
There is no -1 Disagree or -1 Wrong mod. The correct response is to post a rebuttal. A rebuttal to the actual argument, not an accusation of malice.
Nobody gave a flying fuck when
Probably because those things are made up.
Bingo. You find arguments that you disagree with offensive, because you feel that they are making someone you like look like an asshole. You can't set that feeling aside and simply make a counter-argument, you want the post removed from your sight so it can't upset you any more.
And P.S. You just described about a century of feminist literature claiming men are inherently inferior, violent, and evil beings who belong in concentration camps or must be reduced to 10% of the human population. SJWs always project.
It's impossible to debate with you when you think feminists are basically Nazis, and I am a feminist.
If you want to have a serious discussion about this you are always welcome. I'm always open to a point well made and a reasoned argument. But if you insist on mis-characterizing my arguments and dismissing us as "SJWs", it's clear that your mind is closed and I won't waste my time.
you cannot say that that is a misogynistic viewpoint.
Fortunately I didn't.
Please, and this goes for everyone, please carefully read my posts and don't assume I said things that I didn't actually say.
they should change the engineering workplace to one that is more suited to women
Yes, that there should be change is uncontroversial.
To pick and example, Damore says that women are less able to deal with stress on average. The problem is that while there may be some statistical evidence for that, it's not clear how much is due to social factors (like having more stress to start with, or being more inclined to admit to feeling stress) and how much is biological. And even accounting for the biological component, is that the actual problem here? There is decades of study that says most of the problems are social/cultural, and affect both men and women.
So in that light the suggestion that women need special low stress jobs is both patronising and suggests that they are the problem. I'm aware that some people argue he didn't mean it that way, but when you look at some of his later tweets it seems like he probably did. In any case, he hasn't offered any clarification to date when challenged.