[RangerScience]

> tone policing

No, I get that, and you're not wrong. But...

The more time I spend with people who've been emotionally abused, listening to their experiences, the more I understand how huge a part of abuse is the tone of speech involved in that abuse.

And again, I see that core diversity issue: a lot of us don't start out noticing tone pretty much at all (I definitely didn't!), or with tone having a meaningful impact on our experience of someone else's words, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist, or doesn't matter, or doesn't have an impact. And the more I notice all that, the happier I am with my words, the better they seem to be, and the more people seem to understand them.

As an example of the same communication with very different tone, so I can talk about it: "Here is what's going on, and here's the evidence that demonstrates it". "Here's what I think, and here's what I saw that led me to think that."

IMHO, the first one has a "tone" of "conclusiveness" (similar to "stop words", from Less Wrong). The only way for me to continue the (notional) conversation is to take an adversarial stance; the "tone" of the sentence is one of concluding the conversation. Contrast with the second one, which as a "tone" of "inclusion"; I'm bringing you along with my experience; and which I find has an inherent effect of inviting people to continue the conversation; the "tone" of the sentence if one of encouraging a continuation of the conversation.

I do think JD was attempting to contribute in good-faith (or, more so than less so; people are complex to begin with). IMHO it was a poor contribution in critical ways, and it's both sad and ironic to me how related those specific failures are to the diversity conversation to which he was attempted to contribute.

[civilized]

> The more time I spend with people who've been emotionally abused, listening to their experiences, the more I understand how huge a part of abuse is the tone of speech involved in that abuse.

Have you asked yourself who was emotionally abused in the Damore affair? Who was misrepresented in a defamatory fashion? Who was publicly denounced and fired?

Frankly, I think it's sociopathic to emphasize kindness so much as a moral principle while being so horrible to the people who fall afoul of a favored ideology. This is the one thing about our current elite that I find the most revolting. Fake, hypocritical promotion of kindness, with immediate and overwhelming viciousness to anyone who dares to disagree with them in the slightest.

[RangerScience]

Okay. Well, first, I'd just ask: in the discussion here, do you think I've been inconsistently applying kindness, or, more directly, being unkind to those who disagree with me?

Second, I really don't understand how this should be applied to my assertion that tone matters. Can you walk me through that? Or, am I mistaken in thinking that you're saying you disagree that tone matters?

[Wolfenstein98k]

You're now several layers away from the point.

No one disagrees that "tone matters", but issues of social censorship - rapidly adopted taboos - are only dealt with by frank conversation, and tone policing serves only to preclude that.

Yes "tone matters", but that is never pointed out by the side that isn't protecting its hegemony in doing so.

Damore wasn't quite as gentle as he could've been, but the context did not clearly ask for gentleness and invited critique, which he gave.

It's a bit rough expecting engineers to have expert kid gloves on delicate social matters, especially when a large group of people on side are sitting poised and ready to pounce on any disagreement - at which point "tone" is going to be evidence of malice.

[RangerScience]

IMO, you don't need expert kid gloves when you can have lazy gloves instead.

Sure, someone still needs to be taught (or miraculously realize on their own) the basic rules, but once known them, I don't think the rules really require any skill to use, even if applying them can take time and effort.

Realizing when to use them, comes back around to OP and K-complicity; "if I'm worried this'll get me in trouble, use the kid gloves.". Or, perhaps: "If this is a sensitive topic, use the kid gloves". Which to me seems pretty straightforward - do you know anyone who doesn't think diversity/etc issues are sensitive?

Here's a few of my "rules":

1. Don't make statements about other people - only ask questions.

2. Say less. Say less than that.

3. Look for opportunities to hand off the "microphone"

Are there rules you've noticed, that are easy to apply, that make talking about hard things easier, or less fraught, for you?

[ALittleLight]

I think Damore's memo is an illustration that there is no "conversation" on diversity. You are allowed to not discuss the topic or to have the approved opinion, but, ironically enough, if you share a diverse opinion on diversity, you will be fired and publicly condemned in national media as a sexist bigot.