= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Swimmer963 comments on Less Wrong NYC: Case Study of a Successful Rationalist Chapter - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (166)
I'm a little surprised to see the issues of LWers interacting with women reduced to "being careful when discussing explicit awareness of social reality" ... with a link to PUA stuff.
1) PUA stuff is hardly the only example out there of "explicit awareness of social reality".
2) It's quite telling that the implication of the post is that "women don't like explicit awareness of social reality", rather than the (more accurate) "women don't like PUA".
One way to encourage women to participate in rationalist communities might be to make a conscious effort not to portray us as silly, manipulative, fickle, irrational gold-diggers. Some rationalists do a good job of this ... many don't. And PUAs, rationalist and otherwise, are usually bad at this. (Yes, there are exceptions.)
I actually had not noticed that LWers alienated women in any way. And yes, I am female. And maybe not very observant.
Also relatively new here. You may have missed the big blow-ups.
I would be interested to see these...are they still on the site?
http://lesswrong.com/lw/134/sayeth_the_girl/
http://lesswrong.com/lw/13j/of_exclusionary_speech_and_gender_politics/
There are many more but I do not want to continue to dig them up.
The first LW post I was ever directed to was so bad (and the comments were waaaay worse) that I didn't comment, decided never to look at this site again, and had to be convinced by the steady campaigning of a friend.
Of course, feminism (and sexuality) is my pet issue. Note the quote from Alicorn in the "sayeth the girl" post that rhollerith posted: "I would almost certainly have vacated the site already if feminism were my pet issue, or if I were more easily offended."
Maybe this is more evidence that I'm particularly hard to offend? Not sure.
I spent a while trying to find the first post I was ever directed to, but I couldn't -- sorry.
I found your blog, and I liked it, and it occurred to me that the mode of thinking and expression that's common in feminist (or kinky, or gender-conscious) circles isn't unrelated to the LessWrong mode. They're different languages, but they're similar in being explicit about social dynamics that are normally implicit, and encouraging people to self-modify their minds and second-guess their own thoughts in a way that provokes a knee-jerk "but that's unnatural!" reaction in "normal" people. So maybe this is a good blog for feminists.
Do you remember what post that was?
As I said, I spent a while trying to find it, but I couldn't. I really wish I could find it, because it was a stellar example. After I failed to find it I thought that maybe it was actually a post at OvercomingBias (don't even get me started on Robin Hanson), but I couldn't find it when looking for that either. I think I must have deleted the email in a fit of rage.
My own vague recollection of this event says it was a Hanson post on the original OB.
Oh, oops, I didn't even notice that last line, or didn't notice it was talking about the same thing. Sorry.
Was this the post?
No, I didn't comment on the post I'm thinking of. It was overwhelmingly sexist (in comments people made jokes about women being gold-diggers, for example), but it didn't have to do with BDSM.
I've gotten better at "sounding rationalist" since I commented on that "is masochism necessary" post, and I've also gotten better at not getting angry. I look back at how I wrote my comment there and I'm a little surprised at myself.