The whole “LW Women” was simply a project to claim LW as another territory for a specific tribe. It used dishonest methods of argumentation, and as soon as it failed the author was no longer interested in rationalist community—which makes me suspect they were never interested in the community in the first place, other than as another place to conquer for their tribe.
I consider it one of two historical attempts where another tribe tried to conquer Less Wrong for them; the other one was the mass downvoting campaign by Eugine Nier. In both cases, I try not to blame all people from the given tribe, but I do not ignore the fact that those tribes can be dangerous to LW. Whether by public shaming or by secretly exploiting the rules, in both cases the goal was to remove their perceived ideological opponents from LW.
The unfortunate consequence is that both situations made a part of a debate taboo. We didn’t debate gender balance since then, if I remember correctly. We tried to have a rational debate on politics a few times, but it was always immediately used as a platform to promote one specific fringe group which tries very hard to associate itself publicly with LW despite being only a tiny minority here.
I could like to have a debate about gender balance on LW—and let’s be honest, it’s not just about LW; if you go to any atheist conference, or AI conference, you will find a similar imbalance—but the debate itself should be rational. By which I mean:
People speak for themselves, or link to solid evidence, or say “I am not sure, but it seems to me that maybe …”. As opposed to e.g. speaking in the name of all women not participating on LW because obviously they must have exactly the same opinion as you do.
Avoiding blatantly manipulative techniques, such as using filtered evidence to prove your point; e.g. by asking women about their experience, but not asking men whether they had similar experience; or pressure like “nice website you have here, would be a shame if someone accused you of sexism”.
as soon as it failed the author was no longer interested in rationalist community—which makes me suspect they were never interested in the community in the first place, other than as another place to conquer for their tribe.
This is not my read of Daenerys, having met her in person, or at least it’s a very slanted presentation of the same underlying expectations.
As opposed to e.g. speaking in the name of all women not participating on LW because obviously they must have exactly the same opinion as you do.
This in particular seems ridiculously uncharitable. From the call for experiences starting off the LW Women project:
When these gender discussions come up, I am often tempted to write in with my own experiences and desires. But I generally don’t because I don’t want to generalize from one example, or claim to be the Voice of Women, etc.
What was so bad about it, anyway? My most salient participation in those threads has been a disappointed comment on how easily baited into controversy LWers are, contrary to my expectations at the time. A comment count in the triple or quadruple digits, on a website that purportedly taught its users how to overcome bias, stank to me of loads and loads of pent-up “strong opinions” just waiting to be shared.
But that’s a comment about the users, not about the topic, or the intent behind it. It didn’t read as a feminist crusade, except to the extent that you can call inviting women to speak about gender issues, under the protection of anonymity, a feminist crusade. (Some women’s strategy on male-dominated, questionably female-friendly websites is to declare themselves male and to shut up about feminism, to remove their gender as an avenue for further attack. This preserves their personal peace of mind, the collective peace of the community, and it preserves the social norms that made them feel uncomfortable in the first place. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ’em. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was going on on LW, but then again it might not, and the only way to know is to ask.)
I went to check those threads, by the way. Yes, users were drawn like flies and the discussions were heated and low-quality (although I’ve learned in the meantime not to expect much), but on the plus side (though the author might disagree about that) they weren’t echo-chambers. There was some positive feedback and some negative feedback about the initiative. Insofar as it endeavoured to make LW more feminist, it made both feminist and anti-feminist narratives more prominent. And if I remember correctly… daenerys was one of the users who complained about mass downvotes from Eugine_Nier, and that’s why she left and deleted her account. So basically, The LessWrong Culture Wars: An Eternal Golden Braid...
Well, the primary issue was that the entire exercise began by a process which, by its nature, over-represented crusaders who had an axe to grind. The voice of dissent (In the Female privilege post) was accused of being a fake, even as other women chimed in in the thread to say that it was the first “LW Women” post they identified with at all.
It wasn’t about women. If it was about women, they wouldn’t have felt so omitted and under or un-represented. It was about feminism.
The whole “LW Women” was simply a project to claim LW as another territory for a specific tribe. It used dishonest methods of argumentation, and as soon as it failed the author was no longer interested in rationalist community—which makes me suspect they were never interested in the community in the first place, other than as another place to conquer for their tribe.
I consider it one of two historical attempts where another tribe tried to conquer Less Wrong for them; the other one was the mass downvoting campaign by Eugine Nier. In both cases, I try not to blame all people from the given tribe, but I do not ignore the fact that those tribes can be dangerous to LW. Whether by public shaming or by secretly exploiting the rules, in both cases the goal was to remove their perceived ideological opponents from LW.
The unfortunate consequence is that both situations made a part of a debate taboo. We didn’t debate gender balance since then, if I remember correctly. We tried to have a rational debate on politics a few times, but it was always immediately used as a platform to promote one specific fringe group which tries very hard to associate itself publicly with LW despite being only a tiny minority here.
I could like to have a debate about gender balance on LW—and let’s be honest, it’s not just about LW; if you go to any atheist conference, or AI conference, you will find a similar imbalance—but the debate itself should be rational. By which I mean:
People speak for themselves, or link to solid evidence, or say “I am not sure, but it seems to me that maybe …”. As opposed to e.g. speaking in the name of all women not participating on LW because obviously they must have exactly the same opinion as you do.
Avoiding blatantly manipulative techniques, such as using filtered evidence to prove your point; e.g. by asking women about their experience, but not asking men whether they had similar experience; or pressure like “nice website you have here, would be a shame if someone accused you of sexism”.
This is not my read of Daenerys, having met her in person, or at least it’s a very slanted presentation of the same underlying expectations.
This in particular seems ridiculously uncharitable. From the call for experiences starting off the LW Women project:
What was so bad about it, anyway? My most salient participation in those threads has been a disappointed comment on how easily baited into controversy LWers are, contrary to my expectations at the time. A comment count in the triple or quadruple digits, on a website that purportedly taught its users how to overcome bias, stank to me of loads and loads of pent-up “strong opinions” just waiting to be shared.
But that’s a comment about the users, not about the topic, or the intent behind it. It didn’t read as a feminist crusade, except to the extent that you can call inviting women to speak about gender issues, under the protection of anonymity, a feminist crusade. (Some women’s strategy on male-dominated, questionably female-friendly websites is to declare themselves male and to shut up about feminism, to remove their gender as an avenue for further attack. This preserves their personal peace of mind, the collective peace of the community, and it preserves the social norms that made them feel uncomfortable in the first place. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ’em. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was going on on LW, but then again it might not, and the only way to know is to ask.)
I went to check those threads, by the way. Yes, users were drawn like flies and the discussions were heated and low-quality (although I’ve learned in the meantime not to expect much), but on the plus side (though the author might disagree about that) they weren’t echo-chambers. There was some positive feedback and some negative feedback about the initiative. Insofar as it endeavoured to make LW more feminist, it made both feminist and anti-feminist narratives more prominent. And if I remember correctly… daenerys was one of the users who complained about mass downvotes from Eugine_Nier, and that’s why she left and deleted her account. So basically, The LessWrong Culture Wars: An Eternal Golden Braid...
Well, the primary issue was that the entire exercise began by a process which, by its nature, over-represented crusaders who had an axe to grind. The voice of dissent (In the Female privilege post) was accused of being a fake, even as other women chimed in in the thread to say that it was the first “LW Women” post they identified with at all.
It wasn’t about women. If it was about women, they wouldn’t have felt so omitted and under or un-represented. It was about feminism.