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by spacehome
3878 days ago
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Yea, this is a much better criticism because this comment actually allows for the the conversation to move forward. For what it's worth (i.e. not much) I didn't get the same sense from jonesb6's comment that you did. It would have been nice if jonesb6 went into a little more detail about the supposed misrepresentations, but talking about misrepresentations of facts and statistics (should they actually exist) is a far cry from complaining of tone. Finally: > Is it ad hominem if it's true? Definitely. Most ad hominem arguments are true -- that's not what's wrong with them. |
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But for the rest, the complaining about misrepresentations felt like rationalization to support the tone argument (much like making it a question rather than a statement). It's a very common pattern. My bluntness was a vent of frustration with that style of argument. If he'd wanted to make a substantial criticism, he'd have pointed to specific examples of misleading or incorrect statistics. He did not.
More to the point, quibbling about the numbers doesn't change the fundamental truths of the original article - first, that black engineers are badly underrepresented at Twitter, and second, that Twitter's attempts to address the issue have been misguided and ineffective. If the core point doesn't change, then why the quibble?
Which brings us back to tone. Which in turn brings us back to privilege.