> As an investor, of course I clam up. I spend my days looking at the world in terms of risk-adjusted returns and cost benefit analyses, so why would I take a human capital risk? My entire business is based on my reputation and I've seen what happens to the people who get comments like "not the best with Jews at conferences" ... I can count on two hands the number of Jews I would feel comfortable giving the exact same feedback to as I would a non-Jew.
> I appreciate the effort to think of a better word than antisemitism. My question is, is this even antisemitism at all? How many people can get publicly denounced as “antisemites” and have their life ruined because they didn’t speak carefully enough, before it is simply just “smart” rather than “antisemitic” to be extra careful with how you speak to Jews.
> Imagine what it's like being the intended target and not just "collateral damage". It's not a problem that non-Jews are nervous to be candid but it's a problem that Jews are feeling the secondary effects of that?
In response, you made a bunch of quotes in which you replaced the word "women" with "Jews". I just spent several minutes trying to track down those comments before I realized that you were pulling that trick. I'm really shocked that you would stoop to that.
The flamewar trope "I'm going to replace $group1 with $group2 just to show how $xist your comment is" is one of the most common. Usually it's people on the other ideological side who do that, and often garden-variety trolls. It is a strong marker of cheap flamewar and a good example of how the ideological enemies who perpetuate these flamewars actually resemble each other more than they do anyone else.
Do you honestly think the situation improves if the discussion is censored here? Whether you like it or not these industry discussions, and much worse, are happening elsewhere and censoring relatively timid discussions like this only makes matters worse. There are 490 comments at the time of this post and I'd bet the vast majority of them are relatively benign.
It's unfortunately all too easy and common for people to mistake a divided community for a "putrid horror show", dominated by demons [1] or, as the internet likes to call them, "terrible persons", when in reality most people here just have different backgrounds and experiences from one another [2]. I'm not saying that's the only factor—anyone can scan my moderation comments in this thread to find examples to the contrary (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26613942). But I still think the HN guidelines are right to say "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." ...and I think that if you took that guideline more to heart, you might see the bulk of the thread differently. (I don't mean the long tail of trolls and flames—those are always with us.)
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
This is kind of the end result we're heading for, where you can only talk candidly with people who are equal or lower than you on the oppression hierarchy.
Seems pretty clearly gratuitous flamebait. Oppression hierarchy? We're heading to where nobody can frankly speak to anyone? This is 'first they came', in different words and is equally cheap and dumb.
BTW, I am not talking about the actual article. It's fine. I'm merely talking about the ensuing "debate."
Huh, and here I was under the impression that you moderated both sides equally.
You threat women exactly as everybody else. See? Wasn't that hard.