Hackernews is living proof. Pre-election, you could voice a contrary opinion here and have a discussion. Post-election, even the faintest wrongthink shibboleth gets silently downvoted into oblivion.
Hackernews is living proof. Pre-election, you could voice a contrary opinion here and have a discussion. Post-election, even the faintest wrongthink shibboleth gets silently downvoted into oblivion.
Hackernews is predominantly right wing & conservative.
The irony is not obvious so here it is:
You want Damore to be ex-communicated from Google, for having an opinion you disagree with. People of HackerNews have decided to ex-communicate YOU, for having an opinion they disagree with. (Assuming that's what happened on HackerNews, and not that you were voicing your opinion in a manner that's counter-productive)
Do you see how you're crying about the very same behaviour you're all for, when it's somebody else?
The double-irony is that you're allowed to post on HackerNews again, and Damore is not back at google!
What concerns me most is equality of all people, and liberation of all people from systems of oppression. James Damore furthered an oppressive system (patriarchy) by perpetuating sexist ideas that attacked and hurt women at Google. With all the stuff about free speech or whatever, the opinion that he wanted to advocate for was nothing more than old school sexism: women are on average worse engineers because of their biology, so any discrepancies of outcome is a result of their natural inferiority, not broken social and economic structures. Is that really a valuable, constructive opinion that should be inside the marketplace of ideas at Google? What kind of company culture does that lead to? One in which discrepancies and injustices can be rationalized and justified through "innate differences" and where women who experience sexism and discrimination would feel more uncomfortable expressing their concerns.