[baddox]

> The coin has another side: privilege. Privilege is a simple concept.

Privilege is a bogus concept, at least in every manner it has been explained to me. Examine the example you provided. If most elite startup hackers are male, English speaking, 20-40, and white or Asian, then a person giving that characterization would be giving a reasonable one based on observation. What does this have to do with "privilege" or "fitting the mold"? And, more importantly, why should I feel guilty or have some additional responsibility simply because I, through no choice of my own other than refraining from suicide and sex reassignment surgery, fit into one of these "privileged" groups? You might as well claim that the winner of a paper rock scissors competition has privilege.

My questions are actually genuine and not rhetorical. I would appreciate responses, or perhaps corrections of my impression of the concept of privilege.

[shantanubala]

Privilege exists when the outward characteristics you describe are used as heuristics for filtering good coders from bad coders.

Unfortunately, most people are unaware of the heuristics they are using when performing such a task. LessWrong explains some of these errors in reasoning quite well [1][2]. When generalized to an entire population, these heuristics construct a "privilege" because anyone with characteristics that do not fit the heuristics will be unfairly disqualified.

Privilege is not an active act of oppression. By having privilege, you are not necessarily actively preventing someone from achieving success. However, the fact that someone has a harder time getting a job for no reason other than not satisfying heuristics for innate characteristics places you in a "privileged" position as a result.

[1]: http://lesswrong.com/lw/lg/the_affect_heuristic/ [2]: http://lesswrong.com/lw/lj/the_halo_effect/

EDIT: It is important to note that there are other sources of privilege. One example is the fact that females have a much higher probability of being victims of sexual assault. As a male, I spend less time worrying about my own safety (in general) - that is a privilege.

[Joeboy]

> As a male, I spend less time worrying about my own safety (in general) - that is a privilege.

You're far more likely to be assaulted, although your assault is less likely to be sexual in nature.

[baddox]

You're also more likely to be imprisoned, executed, and conscripted, and less likely to win a custody battle or get the first lifeboat from a sinking ship. But I think listing these things out is pointless in itself. We might as well list every disease we haven't acquired and every injury we haven't sustained.

[baddox]

Okay, so what should I do now that I recognize that I have privilege? Do I quit my job and forfeit my college degree, since I acquired both unfairly (I guess my own perception that I sometimes work hard and plan well is delusional)? Seriously, what is the end game of this concept of "privilege"? All anyone seems to say is to "check your privilege." Great, I accept that I have privilege according to your definition of it. What now?

[cokernel]

There is an excellent list of suggestions at http://blog.shrub.com/archives/tekanji/2006-03-08_146 . The short answer is, no, you don't quit your job and forfeit your college degree; you aren't bad for having privilege and "checking your privilege" isn't supposed to make you feel guilty for having it.

The post is a little long, but I think you would get more benefit out of reading it yourself than you would out of my poor attempts to summarize it.

[baddox]

That post is extremely long, and there's no way I'll make it far when it begins with things like:

> One of the greatest things we, as privileged people, can bring to a discussion being held by non-privileged groups is our closed mouths and open ears/minds. When you enter a minority space, you need to realize that this is their soapbox, not yours. Your privilege gives you many other soapboxes that you can take advantage of, so when participating in a discussion held by a non-privileged group or individual your primary goal is to pay attention to what they say about their issues, lives, and oppressions.

What rubbish. My views are worth less because of my privilege. In other words, any time there is a discussion or debate between two people, the person with less privilege is right, or at least has a greater right to express ideas. This idea of intellectual worth-asymmetry seems to always accompany claims regarding privilege, and I'll have nothing of it.

> Well, finding a balance between accepting your privilege and fighting against it is not easy. I still struggle with it on a daily basis. But, one way to start is to listen to and take feedback from non-privileged groups. They are a good judge of how your actions come across to them.

Of course, the best judge of an individual's reaction is that individual. That's a truism. But here we have another clear implication that the reactions of an individual with lower privilege are more proper or more valuable than the reactions of an individual with higher privilege.

> You Can Only Sympathize, Not Empathize...But, no matter how strong the link is, the facts remain that no two oppressions are the same. And it’s you, as the privileged party, who needs to be extra careful about when and how you draw links. While the intent may be to show solidarity, the result is all too often that you come off as defensive, trying to one-up the non-privileged groups and appropriate their oppression. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t ever try to make connections, but rather that you should think about how the connections you’re drawing will come off to others.

In other words, analogies are generally not allowed in discussions involving a privilege disparity. There goes one effective means of discourse.

> Revisiting “Politically Correct”...Part of engaging in a language of respect and equality is in recognizing the validity of a person’s choice to use language, and “politically correct” terms, even if you may not understand or agree with them.

Surely the irony of appealing to linguistic subjectivity to defend political correctness isn't lost on the author(s).

> The same power dynamics that create privilege have created a hierarchy of prejudice so that discrimination against a privileged group is not the same as discrimination against a non-priivleged group. This is because discrimination against a non-privileged group is backed up with institutionalized power, whereas discrimination against a privileged group is often a singular act and therefore easier to avoid.

Wow, let it never be said that arguments against this type of belief are straw man arguments, unless of course this article is satire. The notion that a male getting raped by a woman can in any way be seen as inherently different or less of an injustice than a woman getting raped by a man is, simply put, appalling.

> Intent Isn’t an Excuse...while malicious intent may add icing to the cake, it does not dictate whether or not an offense has been made. “That wasn’t my intent,” all too often translates into “your reactions to what I did are invalid because I didn’t mean any harm.”...It, in essense, privileges the sayer/doer’s opinion/feelings over that of the non-privileged person or group that they have offended.

And this article repeatedly makes it clear that the non-privileged person's opinions and feelings are more valuable.

> Make an Effort to Learn the Lingo...What’s not fine, however, is telling a non-privileged group that their terms are wrong. You, as the privileged participant, don’t get to define what is and is not appropriate usage in a minority space.

Well there goes linguistic relativity. Now it's clear that any terms used by less privileged people are correct, period.

That's as far as I made it. If there is eventually a reveal that the entire article is satire, then the joke is on me, although I wouldn't be surprised. There some serious Poe's law going on here.

[nollidge]

You say your questions are genuine, and then you obtusely interpret the answers you're given to suit the attitude you wish to project on your interlocutors. You could've saved everybody a lot of time if you didn't lie about your defensive intentions from the start.

[baddox]

My questions are genuine. That doesn't mean I can't point out ridiculous answers.

[aredridel]

You're really into protecting your rhetorical devices, aren't you?

[baddox]

Do you have any real responses to my arguments?

[jfarmer]

Did you read the first link, "A Primer on Privilege?" It's actually quite good: http://brown-betty.livejournal.com/305643.html

[jfarmer]

First, privilege is not a bogus concept. If you really believe that — about anything, not just privilege — you'll have a hard time learning it or amending your understanding of it because of things like confirmation bias.

Second, your probability is bad. You're confusing P(A|B) and P(B|A). This is understandable — lots of people do this all the time without realizing it, myself included.

Third, your understanding of privilege is confused. As a successful, white male who has started living in Silicon Valley, I acknowledge my privilege but do not feel guilty about it. That you've bound up the idea of shame in privilege might explain why you find it hard to understand — not because it makes the idea harder to understand but because your "body" is going to have a hard time swallowing an idea that tells you you're a bad person.

Here's one way to think of privilege. Privilege is the sum total of all the things big and small that you don't have to think about on a day to day basis but other people do.

For example, as an innocent white person being approached by a police officer, I never have to wonder whether this police officer is coming to help me or harass me. Indeed, I might even presume something like, "Oh, the officer must be coming to tell me something useful."

As a male, I never have to worry about getting raped while walking down a city street at night, or plan your evening so that I won't be in that situation.

As someone with means, I never have to think about whether you have enough money to buy food to last a week, or what it feels like to have to made a trade off between food or gas this week. Or the terror of being sick without insurance.

Now, you might know these things. I don't know and I'm not presuming. I don't even know whether you're white, male, or anything else. I'm just trying to paint a picture.

If you want reading, I recommend these two essays by John Scalzi: Being Poor (http://whatever.scalzi.com/2005/09/03/being-poor/) and Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is (http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/15/straight-white-male-th...).

[baddox]

I still don't understand what to do with the concept. Anyone would be a fool to think that you can group people by some attribute (like ethnicity) and show correlations with other attributes (like income). (Granted, we might want to do a bit of work to see if the correlations are stronger than would be expected in a purely random distribution of attributes, but we can assume this is the case.) And, given those correlations, anyone can recognize that they are statistically likely to follow those same correlations based on their own group memberships. If that's what privilege means, then so be it, but it's not much more meaningful than saying "I'm thankful that I'm statistically more likely to be successful than people who die as children. John Scalzi could just as easily write an article about how not being born with a terrible disease or deformity is the lowest difficulty setting there is.

[jfarmer]

I have a hard time believing you're genuinely interested in understanding the concept since you're putting up resistance at every step. I'm not here to make you want to learn — I was presuming you already did.

If not, my mistake for engaging.

[baddox]

I'm putting up resistance because there is still very little I have heard that makes sense. I do consider myself a skeptic, and I think skepticism is a requirement for critical thinking rather than an obstacle to it.

[jfarmer]

A person willing to learn says, "That's interesting and it doesn't make sense to me for X, Y, and Z reasons. I'm obviously not getting something and am probably confused about something important." That is not what you're saying.

Being a skeptic is orthogonal to having that attitude.

Anyhow, fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, ...

I'll just end it here and you can reply however you'd like or not at all. :)

[pwang]

> That is not what you're saying.

That's very much what baddox is saying, but with less self-deprecation. He/she is continuing to ask questions and indicating that the concept does not make sense to him/her. Asking critical questions about the utility of the concept, etc. are all very well in line with skeptical approaches towards anything.

[baddox]

I said:

> My questions are actually genuine and not rhetorical. I would appreciate responses, or perhaps corrections of my impression of the concept of privilege.

Whether or not I was lying then, I am unable to express any more clearly or convincingly that I am willing to learn.

And I believe I have explained what doesn't make sense to me.

[hajile]

While the first article describes poor rather well, the second article is meaningless. I grew up in one of those poor families. I know (unlike him apparently) that the biggest problem with escaping is the good'ol boy system that exists in many fields (but is far less prevalent in technology in my experience and doesn't discriminate on gender or even race so much as it discriminates against the unknown)

That said, technology is FAIR. My first interactions with programming were through a throw-away book on IBM BASIC at around age 10. Despite not having the computer access to program for real (much less of a problem today), I wrote many programs before getting my hands a book on a "real" programming language (my apologies and thanks to the author as it was pirated onto a school computer). A few years and an engineering degree later (courtesy of government loans), I have been able to break out moreso than I believe I could have in any other profession.

You see, for those who can understand technology, the barrier of entry is lower than it has ever been. Quite literally, all you need to know to start toward a job is to study any one of the hundreds of free resources available.

I do not believe that the poor must be at the mercy of Lady Serendipity. Despite all the problems, the person willing to expend the energy and (most importantly) learn continually may rise above their earlier standard of living as have I and many others. The issue is the will to take action -- the intent to rise above the status quo no matter what obstacles exist.

Jfarmer, were you ever that poor person? Are you that minority? If not, then the privilege argument indicates that no matter the article, it is impossible for you to understand (and for the record, I believe that anybody can understand if they desire). If so, then you stand with me as proof that there exists a way out. You should also recognize that the victimhood endorsed by the that privilege argument discourages and de-incentivizes people from taking action.

What is the solution to "privilege"? Does being aware of privilege change the way business is conducted? Will an employer suddenly hire an inferior candidate because that candidate is unprivileged? In the reverse, will the employer hire an inferior privileged candidate because that employer wishes to "keep the better candidate from becoming privileged"?

Those persons with money don't continue to make money because they fail to recognize and utilize talent wherever they find it. I've worked with people who complained about working 70+ hours during crunch time because they don't have my perspective (the one with two full-time jobs that aren't behind a keyboard), but that doesn't mean they don't recognize and utilize talent when they see it.

Finally, women (the group of discussion) are decidedly privileged compared to men. A poor woman still works indoors and often has people willing to assist (plus significant government aid). If she becomes the victim of violence, she has places to go. If she has no home, she will be able to find shelter.

In contrast, a poor man works dangerous jobs (I remember stitching up injuries because I couldn't afford going to a doctor) in bad working conditions (93% of workplace deaths are men in the US). He cannot rely on anybody as noone wants to help a man. If he is the victim of violence (76% of homicide victims in the US are men, his only source of "help" is incarceration (According to a major CDC study in 2010, the number of men raped (including those overlooked as "forced to penetrate" where they were raped by a woman, but the system labels it different) was almost equal to the number of women. When you account for all the men who go to prison for non-violent crime and are raped repeatedly for years, the number of male rape victims FAR outweigh female victims).

If he is homeless (80% of homeless are men in the US), he has nobody to go to. Men are discriminated against in school where female teachers grade them lower, penalize them for not acting like the girls in their class. Men drop make most of the failing grades and account for the vast majority of the dropouts. Men are then the minority in going to college and obtaining a degree (at all levels from an associates to a doctorate). It's little wonder that 80% of suicides in the US are men.

While these numbers are skewed away from white males toward minority males, the white males (by percentage and by total count) still vastly outnumber white females (and outnumber females of other races by a smaller margin). I wonder if we shouldn't be asking women (especially the upper-middle class white women who make the majority of such complainers) to "check their privilege".

Perhaps technology doesn't discriminate against women. Perhaps there's a reason why the countries considered the most egalitarian have FEWER women in STEM fields than other countries. Perhaps men having 6.8x more gray matter (while women have 10x more white matter) or mens brains being better at communicating from anterior to posterior (while womens brains are better at communicating laterally across hemispheres) isn't just for show. Perhaps studies showing that male and female children as young as one HOUR old already act different (male children preferring objects and female children preferring faces) shows that the brains of men and women are different. Perhaps there is a biological reason that when given the choice, the jobs that men and women appear to prefer are different.

If indeed there are biological preferences, then men (specifically Paul Graham) are not discriminating against women so much as privileged women are enjoying their freedom to do whatever job they want. Another factor that applies to startups is risk. Women tend to be much more risk-averse than men (it makes sense biologically as risk would not only kill them, but their children as well). If we consider that very few tech people create startups and relatively few women are in the technology fields related to those same startups (there are fewer women in these areas than there are overall women in tech) and we know that these women are far less likely to take such huge risks, then it stands to reason that extremely few women would even ask (with even fewer having marketable ideas). Once again, this is far closer to self-selection than bias.

[aredridel]

From the study abstract:

"Men and women apparently achieve similar IQ results with different brain regions, suggesting that there is no singular underlying neuroanatomical structure to general intelligence and that different types of brain designs may manifest equivalent intellectual performance."

So as always, MUCH more research needed before drawing that conclusion

[hajile]

You are correct, the IQ results are similar, but it is the differing biology and how it may affect career choice that is of interest (I am in no way implying that these differences make one gender intellectually superior to the other any more than I would argue for the superiority of Turing or Church).ther, some algorithms are more desirably expressed in one or the other.

I supplied information (without sources, but you appear to know google well enough) that there exist differences in human biology and hypothesize that these differences may offer explanation for observations of human behaviour. If a lack of absolutely irrefutable causal data is your only objection, then I suspect that the realm of psychology is not for you as such evidence is practically non-existent in that field.

[jfarmer]

Look, the most important thing here is to make sure that study can be used to confirm hajile's prior beliefs, ok? Let's keep our eye on the prize.

[hajile]

What prior beliefs? That observed behaviour may have a reason beyond "privilege" which cannot be disproved? (for proof I refer you to the mantra that "privileged people cannot realize they are privileged" which makes an accusation of privilege indistinguishable from a self-serving accusation from the perspective of the accused)

[jfarmer]

I am privileged and realize I am privileged. What are you talking about? Mantra?

[andrewliebchen]

Great definition of privilege in this context, thank you.

[HCIdivision17]

My impression is that it's an implication of arbitrary social momentum. Where a hacker immediately brings to mind a twenty-something white male, other groups would need to expend more effort to be associated with it. Say a brilliantly clever black woman joined a discussion, she shouldn't stand out, but likely would; that's the social imbalance in play: brilliant and clever may not be the foremost and outstanding characteristics noticed.

The bad part is primarily the "arbitrary" bit, as there seems to be bias for characteristics that have nothing to do with personal traits we have control over, like learned skill. The "privilege" is the label for the background that seems to prime a person for easy access to this social group. Without such privilege, a person won't naturally be able to flow into the social group.

I don't think you're supposed to feel guilty, for the same reason lacking privilege shouldn't imply shame. I think it is by definition out of your control. But it can be mitigated over time. So only feel guilt if you help reinforce the imbalance (like commenting on a girl programming, which carries an implication of noteworthiness (since it was noted) and thus perhaps surprise (which could imply by extension social wrongness)). Such complaints may sound small and petty, but if pervasive can easily stack up and amplify into real pressure.

Perhaps this is one reason anonymity is important. The joke "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog" can be interpreted to show that there are ways to balance the effect of privilege by just taking it [0]. But in practice, you still need the basics like a computer, which is still outside the monetary ability or gumption for many (like going to a library and programming in 20 minute spurts). Normal levels of dedication wouldn't be enough for such individuals, though it likely is for the group privileged with a background like a white male (which usually has higher resources and better starting conditions). Notably not all who seem privileged are, but that's a similar problem, but in reverse; large flame wars happen when people attempt to qualify which is of a larger magnitude (I have no opinion other than it seems to exist sometimes).

There also seems to be pressure to not appear to be pushing into a privileged group. The individual may be ridiculed for their interest in hacking and such. But I don't really understand that kind of pettiness, other than it exists and I have no idea how to fix it.

Disclaimer: my opinions aren't likely valid, as I'm not really sure where my privilege starts and ends. I think I have a lot to start with, but I also worked hard to overcome some negative things, too. To me that's just life, but I suspect the ease with which I can say that without bitterness is perhaps a good indicator of what "privilege" is in the meta sense. I also am by no means a qualified feminist, merely someone confused and vaguely concerned that I may be doing wrong by someone else for some thoughtless, inconsiderate reason.

[0] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_you're_a_dog

[baddox]

> So only feel guilt if you help reinforce the imbalance (like commenting on a girl programming, which carries an implication of noteworthiness (since it was noted) and thus perhaps surprise (which could imply by extension social wrongness)).

Why is it wrong to consider a girl programming to be noteworthy or surprising? If it's true that females are underrepresented in programming or technology careers, which is the whole point of most of this thread, then this reaction seems completely appropriate.

[esperluette]

It's okay to be privately surprised, as long as you think about WHY you're surprised (e.g. "girls don't code" vs. "there aren't as many women coders as you might expect given the # of women in the US"). The dick move is to belabor the point and treat the programming woman as a performing dog instead of a person.

Think of it this way: you meet a woman at a meetup about a technical topic, and you find you have projects/interests in common. If you spend the whole conversation interrogating her about how/why she learned to code, asking her questions about what her boyfriend/significant other/husband does or what he thinks about her coding, or asking for her "feminine opinion" on your consumer startup, you are a dick.

If you treat her as a PERSON, not a novelty, and talk about those interests that are relevant to the meetup, that's decent behavior.

It's about the coding, not the gender (stupid).

[baddox]

> The dick move is to belabor the point and treat the programming woman as a performing dog instead of a person.

Sure, but that's basically saying that "being a dick is being a dick." You could also be a dick by treating a world-class athlete as a performing dog. You can be a dick about anything, regardless of how unoffensive that thing is on its own. But that's not what the original statement was talking about. It explicitly said that considering it noteworthy or surprising is inherently bad.

[HCIdivision17]

Yeah, I was wrong in the severity of the statement. What I can say that it could offend, since it has (at least for me). As always, you may be sufficiently tactful in person to avoid the whole issue.

[aredridel]

Yeah. unfortunately, people are DICKS a lot. That's what we're trying to fix.

[aredridel]

THIS.

[HCIdivision17]

Hey, turns out there's a much better written sub-thread above started by jfarmer (which is a lifesaver, as I'm not socially sophisticated enough to go deeper).

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6977836

My example you quoted was an example of how a comment could unintentionally go sour; I think the term is triggering. But you're right - there's nothing wrong with noticing. Making an uncomfortable point of it is wrong-ish; making an encouraging point of it could very well be good.

Many of the suggestions cover helping clandestinely: the article notes providing effort to help move along applications to YC for women. I would assume pains would be taken to not make the women applying feel like they are being given application assistance due to incompetence, but rather simply as a way of accelerating their application out of eagerness and support, merely greasing the bureaucracy's wheels, if you will. (Though I should note that it's likely impolite to even mention misconstruing it that way - but I prefer games of perfect information and I don't think it should be offensive to talk about failure modes of social plans.) Hackers generally don't like creating special cases, so this may seem inelegant, but life's pretty inelegant socially, so such a suggestion is likely a pragmatic concession as a positive means to an end.

Given my lack of many social graces, I err on the side of hastily qualified awkward corrections. YMMV!

[jacalata]

There's nothing wrong with noticing. However, pulling from some personal experiences: you should refrain from highlighting that you noticed by saying "oh, you're not a guy!" or "are you really x?" or "I was expecting a guy!"