I agree with all of that. I think the multipliers kick in on particular tasks which may or may not produce a net benefit overall given conflicting requirements. Your example of one person being too clever with some code for others to read is an example of that.

There’s no question that there is difference in intellectual ability. However, I think that it’s highly questionable that it translates into 10x (or whatever-x) differences in productivity.

It does not simply depends on how you measure, it depends on what you measure.

And it may be more than “raw intellectual power”. For me it’s usually experience.

As a passionate programmer, I’ve faced more problems and more bugs than my colleagues.
So it often happens that I solve in minutes problems that they have struggled for hours (or even days).
This has two side effects:

• managers tends to assign me the worst issues
• colleagues tends to ask me when the can’t find a solution

Both of this force me to face more problems and bugs… and so on.

Also such experience make me well versed at architectural design of large applications: I’m usually able to avoid issues and predict with an high precision the time required for a task.

However measuring overall productivity is another thing:

• I can literally forget what I did yesterday morning (if it was for a different customer than the one I’m focused now)
• at time I’m unable to recognize my own code (with funny effects when I insult or lode it)
• when focused, I do not ear people talking at me
• I ignore 95% of mails I receive (literally all those with multiple recipients)
• being very good at identifying issues during early analysis at times makes some colleague a bit upset
• being very good at estimating large projects means that when you compare my estimation with others, mine is usually higher (at times a lot higher) because I see most costs upfront. This usually leads to long and boring meeting where nobody want to take the responsibility to adopt the more expensive solution (apparently) but nobody want to take the risk of alternative ones either…
• debating with me tends to become an enormous waste of time…

So when it’s a matter of solving problems by programming, I’m approach the 10x productivity of the myth despite not being particularly intelligent, but overall it really depends on the environment.

Oh, I don’t mean code quality, I mean productivity. I know some devs that can work on the same simple task for weeks, miss the deadline, and be move on to a different task that they also don’t finish.

Even if the code they wrote was amazing, they don’t ship enough progress to be of much help.

You’re defining programming ability by if a business succeeds though. There are plenty of other instances where programming is not done for the sake of business, though.

In India a common practice is to order a huge panel of tests for a patient. The tests cost a lot of money and are often done at specified vendors. In the United States this particular practice is slightly less common but there are well documented problems of doctors prescribing therapeutics from particular vendors. It’s possible that in Italy the Hippocratic Oath vastly reduces such misconduct, while in India and the US it doesn’t, but I am skeptical, again from my observations of human nature.

You want people who Yarvin declares are inferior to politely accept his views? Why should they?

Since you’re being in good faith, do read this next like I’m just bluntly saying something instead of losing my shit or being loud. ;)

“You have never had your life or well-being threatened by people or organizations like the ones the author calls out, and you have never had to be concerned with whether or not they were active or influential in the spaces you inhabited. “

You’re assuming I don’t understand the concept because I’m presumably white male. My first school experience was being attacked or mocked because I was a “nerd.” All but a few people excluded us which happened varying degrees whole time in school. That included “minorities.” They all do to nerds what they claim others do to them, including violence by alpha males but not police. They might interrogate or arrest them if something happened involving computers if said nerd is known programmer or hacker.

Next, I was white in a black-run, mostly-black school where they added to mockery or exclusion the fact that we were shouted down if disagreeing with any issue (especially racial) plus randomly attacked. I doubt most of these people talking about their minority concerns have been held down on a bus while black people take turns beating them with the smirking driver not reporting it. Attempts like that were too common for me until I learned kickboxing and paranoid vigilance, esp wide turns around corners. Still had to dodge fights due to rule white people can’t be allowed to win against black people either at all or too much. Varied. My friends and brothers who went to other black schools endured the same where just bending over a water fountain could be too much vulnerability. I avoided bathroom stalls, too, after seeing what that led to.

I also got to be a man in places run by women who favored women. Essentially, whoever stayed in their good graces talking about what they talked about, being an insider, laughing at anti-male jokes, and so on had more privileges in those places. That would benefit grades, get more work hours, increase odds of promotion, even get some guys laid with those opposing sexism shamed. Unlike women on average, it’s been a while since I dealt with that but happening again in my current company. Highly-political, card-playing woman took over a specific department I was almost transfered to. After exit-interviewing her ex-employees, I blocked transfer fast before expected changes happened: she hired mostly black folks like her (esp exploitable youth), promoted only the older black women exactly like her kissing up instead of mix of races/genders who outperformed them, and politics over performance further destroyed that departments’ numbers with them saying nonsense about why. Current team is good with mix of straight/gay/lesbian, white/black, and liberal/moderate/redneck. Usually fun, interesting group with occasional in-fighting due to differences all apologize for after.

That covers structural racism and sexism which the type of politics I fight denies even exists for whites or men despite supporting data. We get no help. What about “neo-reacitonary?” Well, I am an outspoken liberal and Union man who defends decent Muslims and calls out police corruption on the side in the rural South deep in Trump, meth, and capitalist country. Interesting enough, one insult they fling at me here is probable Hillary supporter while people I argue with on liberal forums assume I’m a right-winger. Biases… Being outspoken in rural spots led me to have to negotiate with people intent on beating or killing me right there if I got too many words wrong. Rare people but non-passive outsiders will run into them. Most online “activists” on social media talk about threats which I find are folks talking shit online or with prank calls that don’t on these issues result in hospitalizations or anything almost ever. Just irritating trolling by jerks shielded by anonymity. Pales in comparison to what even a trip for groceries can cost a white person in impoverished areas in or around Memphis, TN. The First 48 was banned from there over too much stuff to cover. Some police are gang members, too, so gotta act in a way to reduce risk of their attention.

Since you admitted it, you might have privilege of growing up as or hanging with white people that didn’t face racism, sexism, or drug heads’ threats on regular basis. Lot of us in poor areas, minority-controlled areas, areas of opposing politics, isolated areas… these are some where many say they have similar experiences to me. We find it strange people “speaking for oppressed” as they might say ignore existence of probably millions of us due to skin color or gender. Especially rural whites given their high rates of both drug addiction and suicide, too. My friends and family have had to fight those.

Alright, what about someone like Sophie or I who are concerned with environments where we might be facing racists or sexists that hate our group? Well, I agree with you entirely that it can be reassuring to see someone bringing that up saying it doesn’t happen at a specific location. Going from an all-black school to a mixed school where they didn’t hate us was… it was heaven. We had fun together! Likewise, groups with fair/excellent women or being around civil Southerners who only get X-ist if explicitly talking politics. I’d definitely want to know every place or group where I could avoid groups I mentioned first in favor of others if that was best I could hope for.

That said, remember how it started was exclusively portraying the field based on worst of the worst. I don’t do that. Since we’re at that point, I’ll tell you the violent people I met were single digit percentage of each area, the negative bias was huge, there were coping mechanisms to get me past some of it, there were neutral/decent people, and some were so fair or good they inspired me to be more skilled or tough. If I talk about a field, I try not to throw them under the bus entirely or I take the counterpoint I had coming for screwing up due to emotion winning or whatever. You’ll see that in programming with C or PHP languages where I’m a strong opponent but don’t pretend they’re 100% bad even if many developers do damage. Likewise, following my politics, I’m still getting along with and exchanging tips with specific Lobsters who were strongly opposing me in prior political debates.

So, what she was doing isn’t the only way to respond. It was a weaker, overly-broad, politically-charged claim that got low-value reactions followed by a whole battle that distracted from her main points. She set her post up to fail to quite a degree. I’d have told her to be more fair and accurate since bringing politics in is putting a spotlight and a metaphorical scope on you. The negative responses left over would have to be haters or themselves prioritizing some politics. Easy to dismiss when they have little to no ground to stand on. Those of us in minority positions unfairly have to be careful about our claims since they’ll get more scrutiny and attack.

Since she probably made up her mind, I just mentally deleted it like I trained myself to do when saying something to that person won’t change their views IRL. Focus on good, shrug off perceived bad if not an intentional attack, and go on from there. It’s how we integrate and survive down here in our powder keg of diversity. Works fine, too, with most of us getting along well enough. :)

“These kinds of messages, from “the other side” as it were to those people who might be afraid of what they’ll find when they get there, are super important.”

This I disagree on if they’re aiming to affect policy or law anywhere. I’ve already seen it happen in many places with ultra-liberal universities being good examples. In those, allowing it to go too far without participation shifted power to those groups. Those groups built on their politics and power until they regularly belittle whites or males in various ways. They also try to silence disagreement on political issues saying it’s not about them. Well, if we stand to lose anything (even rep or jobs) by decree, then it is about us and we should at least weigh in. I don’t gripe about the reasonable stuff where each person has a view they can state, chance at the job, etc. I’m usually backing it.

I find passive aggressive sarcasm allows for remarkable concision, but whatever. I don’t respect you and your group as the arbiters of good and bad values and all people like you have done is make me care substantially less about being labeled a patriarchal maximalist or whatever you’d like. Many people I know feel similarly. We’re not going to leave the field if you succeed in banning us from the recurse center

“controversial and offensive” is a fluid social contract that changes with audience and context. The big problem is nobody can ever agree on what is controversial and offensive. At the same time people’s nuanced opinions are routinely caricatured as the most extreme version (in both directions, and I’m guilty of it too) then paraded on social media to people with no context.

I’ve noticed more discussions here lately being sort of tangential sniping threads. I posted an article a few weeks ago and the entire discussion was a thread about whether people like PDFs.

I agree with this. It happens in political threads so much I voted against politics in meta. I can’t overemphasize that since, yet again, one disagreement with a political point in a submission created another situation like this. I basically just represent the dissenting side if they’re getting dogpiled or call out double standards when people pretend it’s about logic or civility rather than politics.

I totally agree, though, about the sniping thing with me preferring some kind of rule against it if not politics in general. Maybe in addition to. It should make for a quality improvement. I’m still fine with tangents, though, so long as they’re adding insight to a discussion like the meta stuff I try to do connecting sub-fields.

She said this about programming:

“A lot of bad things in the world have been created by programmers: software for operating drones that bomb civilians, data-mining that violates privacy, companies that “disrupt” by dropping vast amounts of capital in to a market without any intention of building a sustainable business. A lot of bad people love programming: open source thought leaders who harbor deeply racist views, authors of popular databases who discuss their sexist ideas openly, neo-reactionaries leading functional programming conferences. “

She painted a picture of programming as if it was mostly bad things done by bad people. She painted the picture that people going to thought leaders, doing database work, or getting involved in functional programming were only going to be dealing with the worst. You’d think the profession was one of most horrible ever invented reading that stuff. Don’t ask that she properly qualify that: take her word for it without any of your own comments or reactions. She is attacking most programmers with a programmer, @wyager, reacting to that statement.

When a man here said something similarly negative about tech industry, several of us countered him pointing out how he was vastly overstating the problem projecting the worst groups onto the average or majority in a way that was unfair to them. Like her, he exclusively considered the bad things and people in tech when judging the field instead of the vast amount of decent or productive things programmers have done many of whom were OK people. We also suggested maybe he avoid the worst if we couldn’t get rid of them since they were ultimately unnecessary to interact with being a drop in the bucket of the many people and resources out there. I don’t remember all these people being there supporting his view shocked anyone disagreed with him. This one was a woman with different set of politics. Let’s see what happened.

So, wyager responds with a political comment that looks very motivated by emotion lacking qualifiers, consideration to others, or evidence much like Sophie’s. While Sophie’s ad hominem is allowed to stand, you imply his rhetoric shouldn’t be present at all. @jules deconstructs his aiming for purely logical or information content with some strawman which was not done to Sophie’s (or most here with similar viewpoints). @mjn said it was not adding anything new which was true about Sophie’s (or most here with similar viewpoints). These replies are exclusively given to people whose politics each person disagrees with but not people doing same things whose politics each agrees with. They’re held to a lesser standard. So, rather than it being what it appears, these comments aren’t really about addressing civility, information vs rhetorical content, and so on. You all mostly ignore those attributes for comments supporting your type of views while downvoting for opposite naturally leads to dominance of your side in those threads. As in, it’s political maneuvering by folks of one type of views against another rather than quality assurance with any consistency.

Here’s a few where those writing thought wyager and others disagreeing were supposed to nod saying it makes sense with what happens next being too ironic and obvious:

“How dare women suggest tech and especially programming is a potentially hostile environment one might not want to enter!” (fwg) (my emphasis added)

“But one group actually gets to say racist, sexist, discriminatory stuff and remain in charge. The other can hardly speak on panels and post on their blogs without the whole world jumping down their throats.” (jules) (emphasis added)

“I’m not allowed to respond about politics?” (wyager)

“I missed the part where anyone asked for you to be deprived of that right.” (vyodaiken)

You must have missed yourself and the others basically telling him to shut up, the downvotes adding up by a vocal minority, and wyager’s thread collapsing into oblivion where it isn’t seen unless we expand it. Quite unlike most low-info-content, political comments here that are in favor of view’s like Sophie’s not disappearing. Doesn’t look like Sophie or other women with her views would be facing the “hostile environment” with “censorship” and people “deprived” of the right to speak. That contrived scenario is instead what people that agree with her were doing to others who express themselves in a similarly low-evidence, rhetorical way like Sophie or some of their crowd, but with different views. Some of these talk about how everyone is out to get people on their side of spectrum in the same thread where they disappear their opponents’ claims. As opposed to just disagreeing or discussing. Then, they defend the low-quality, repetitive, rhetorical statements of people like Sophie on the same threads since they agree with their views.

Gotta love politically-motivated double standards for discourse that exclusively benefit one side. Also, people talking about how folks on their side have a lot to worry about as sub-threads their opponents make sink and disappear with some clicks. That’s just too rich in reality distortion.

For us and partly for others, the root of the problem is there is a status quo with massive evidence and inertia about how we categorize gender that a small segment are countering in a more subjective way.

I know you’re a cool dude and would be more than happy to discuss this with you in private, but I think we all mostly agree that this is now pretty outside the realm of tech, so continuing to discuss it publicly would be getting off topic :) I’ll DM you?

I find the idea that everyone who disagrees with these things should avoid rocking the boat extremely disconcerting. It feels like a duty to rock it on behalf of those who agree but are too polite or afraid for their jobs or reputations to state their actual opinions, to normalize speaking honestly about uncomfortable topics.

I mean, I also think it’s on topic to debate the political point made by the list.

The dont-rock-the-boat, kinder approach wouldve been for person rejecting the gender claim to just ignore talking about the person he or she didnt think was a woman to focus on others. The thread wouldve stayed on topic. Positive things would be said about about deserving people.

Do you believe the most deserving will be talked about most? If you have a population that talks positively about people whether or not they are trans, and you have a smaller population that talks only about non trans people and ignores the trans people, Which people will be talked about most in aggregate? It isn’t kinder to ignore people and their accomplishments.

It is also very strange for technology people to reject a technology that changes your gender. What if you had a magic gun and you can be a women for a day, and then be a man the next, why the hell not? We have a technology now where you can be a man or a women or neither or both if you wanted to. Isn’t technology amazing? You tech person you!

That would be your descendants.