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Comment Re:Am I Missing Something? (Score 1) 493

So, do women have lower expectations of female students?

Everyone has lower expectations of female students. This is not a gender war men vs. women. It's a matter of cultural inertia vs. women. Oh hey, by the way men are harmed by this inertia too. Nobody benefits from anyone having their potential artificially capped.

It's not about blame. It's about understanding the problems, finding solutions, being open to other viewpoints, and making our world and our society better.

Comment Re:Boys and Girls are different (Score 1) 493

So my entire grade of 7th graders spent an entire semester programming in BASIC. Every boy, every girl - all of us. We always worked in teams of two (mostly boys paired up and girls paired up, as is typical at that age). Further, this was commonplace in most schools of the era.

So here is what we *should* have seen. Since we had boys and girls all being equally submersed in the writing of software for hundreds of thousands of children, if boys and girls equally relate to, identify with, and enjoy programming, then we should have seen a surge of that generation of girls also becoming computer scientists.

That is what we should have seen if that quality of education had been present in the majority of elementary and middle schools, and continued throughout high school and college. I assure you, it was not and it did not.

Men and women are not different in their innate capacity or interest for math and science. The biases that push women away from technology fields are small, but they accrete.

Men and women are different in the way that they perceive and process information. I believe that my industry sees a lot benefit from having access to diverse viewpoints and novel perspectives. I benefit personally. So I am attempting to correct for the biases that push women away from technology.

Comment Re:You have got to be fucking kidding me (Score 1) 493

In my experience, anytime someone starts giving attributes to a label and talking about what "they" want and how "they" operate, several things tend to be true:

The speaker has had very little actual physical contact or dialogue with specific people fitting that label. The speaker appears to believe that the label is well and narrowly defined. But on closer examination, the label is vaguely defined, and the specific people it applies to are difficult to identify at all. If specific people are identified, those people often would not apply the label in question to themselves. If those specific people do personally identify with the label, they define the label very differently than the speaker. Any discrepancies in label definitions will be waved away by "No True Scotsman". Yet usually the labelled party is made out to be an overwhelming force on the brink of obliterating the speaker's very way of life. Very little data is presented, and confirmation bias is significant.

In other words, you are participating in identity politics. Identity politics is entirely populated by straw men.

Yes, supremacists are bad. Female supremacists are incredibly rare, and you probably vastly misunderstand anyone that you think is one.

Comment Re: Double Irish? TAX ALL FOREIGNERS!!! (Score 2) 825

When did it become "greedy" to keep your own money, and "justice" to take someone else's?

When clever accountants figured out that they can just make up inter-company fees in order to make it look like the company is making money in Ireland when all their actual customers live in the US. Seriously, the title of this thread is "Double Irish" - look it up.

Comment Re: Slashdot stance on #gamergate (Score 1) 693

Yes, life is more complicated than the argument that white men start on easy mode. But that is the basis on which the more complicated fractal reality exists, and the new right wants it even simpler: they think everybody has an equal opportunity -- it's right here on this piece of paper -- so if you're poor, you fucked up. The left's argument is more complex than the right's, and less complex than reality.

Who are you calling you people.

Comment Re:Slashdot stance on #gamergate (Score 1) 693

Let's recap here. Zoe Quinn slept with all the major game reviewers and/or their editors. She gets rave reviews for a game people who actually bought have panned mercilessly. Literally caught with their pants down, they point to their customers and scream "sexist!". That's the point of the scandal. You can dress it up however you like, but at the root it's about corruption in the gaming press.

This sounds about right to me.

You are right that GamerGate has some kind of unholy obsession with Quinn instead of Grayson, who should be the target of criticism if that criticism has merit. That criticism has very little merit.

But if you think the italicised summary is 'about right', you haven't been paying attention. Here's what really went down:

a) Grayson wrote two articles talking about Zoe Quinn's game as an interesting tool for dealing with emotional issues and an interesting direction for games to explore
b) Months after these articles were published, Grayson and Quinn slept together
c) Months later, Quinn's ex aired his dirty laundry in public and made a lot of false accusations along with one or two true ones
d) Depression Quest was and is a free game. It never got rave reviews, except as an interesting anomaly. It's pretty similar to the reviews of Dear Esther.
e) The "Gamers are dead" articles all talked about "The word gamer carries a common stereotype: basement-dwelling misogynistic nerd. That stereotype is inaccurate -- gamers cross all demographics -- and should be discarded. Studios should make more games that appeal to wider and alternative audiences"
f) Actual basement-dwelling misogynistic nerds got mad about this and made a hue and cry.
g) Non-basement-dwellers, non-misogynists, and non-nerds who identify as gamers heard this hue and cry, skipped reading the actual articles, and got involved
h) Folks who have been campaigning for ethics in game journalism for a long time jumped on the bandwagon
i) GamerGate continues to dig into the lives of outspoken women and 'expose' their exploits, and call for boycotts of sites that do actual criticism and talk about larger societal issues in the context of game review, while largely ignoring real actual problems in game journalism like paid shills and editorial conflict of interest with advertisers.
j) The misogynistic troll segment of GamerGate explicitly uses "it's about ethics in game journalism" to distract from their trolling.
k) 4chan (4chan!) kicks these assholes out and they regroup on 8chan.
l) The proponents of ethics in journalism fail to realize that their flag has been ripped and smeared with shit by the channers and continue to wave it.

Comment Re:Slashdot stance on #gamergate (Score 1) 693

If you are not a racist, homophobic, misogynistic cockstain, then those names are not directed at you.

The thing is, the perception of GamerGate is preponderantly misogynistic. That's what people see when their only targets are outspoken women who provide evidence that they are targets of constant, vile death and rape threats. Some people in GamerGate, presumably you among them, are not misogynist, and are truly interested in improving the state of video game journalism. Yet you align yourself with this stained movement that continues to focus on these women despite the arguments against them being largely debunked, and ignores the very real and very pervasive real problems with game journalism. Shadows of Mordor? Gamergate gives a quick mention at best, then crickets as people continue to point fingers at Sarkessian, Wu, Quinn.

You take offense when people call the movement out on its bullshit, then wonder why you're getting smeared with the same brush?

Comment Re:Slashdot stance on #gamergate (Score 1) 693

Game journalists are friends with game developers. That is true industry-wide, and it's not an ethical problem. Political journalists are friends with political staff. Foodie journalists are friends with restaurateurs. That's how it works -- that how you get the story.

There are real problems with game journalism. Paid video bloggers; advertisement vs. editorial; publisher-sponsored 'reviews'. Zoe Quinn is not among these real problems, yet she is still front and center in the GamerGate discussion six months later. Literally nobody outside GamerGate and depression treatment advocates cares that a free game got top billing in a minor piece as one of 50 minor games that were greenlit, nor that the developer and the writer were friends, nor that the writer was mentioned within a long list of other pre-release testers in the credits of that game. It is in fact counter-productive to keep bringing it up.

GamerGate folks keep complaining about someone shooting a squirrel while ignoring the concentration camp next door. If GamerGate was really interested in journalism ethics, Zoe Quinn would be the least of their concerns. Why aren't you talking about Geoff Keighley or Shadows of Mordor -- i.e. real, major, glaring problems with game journalism? Why is GamerGate so narrowly focused on women? Even in relation to the minor ethical issue with Depression Quest, GamerGate is entirely focused on Zoe Quinn, and not on Nathan Grayson, to the extent that in a slashdot article about Zoe Quinn -- not about GamerGate nor game journalism -- GamerGate still pops up to spout this inanity.

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