As a techie, I see think there's significant truth to PG's opinions. Surely it takes two to tango, the tech industry is keen to hire and encourage women entrepreneurs, but it's not like women are being turned away at the gates, by sexist VCs.
It sucks, because I want to help somehow, but I don't want to be misunderstood and have my name be raked through the coals either.
Votes/Flags are the silent voices of those who can't afford to get drawn into a battle with potentially severe consequences about an issue which they have personally relatively little to gain from.
Some people have oversimplified Paul Graham's perspective; doing the same to other people's perspectives will get no one anywhere.
The OP itself says that PG is saying "Crazy" things. How are they crazy? He doesn't point out how this is the case. Instead, he's made a final judgment and anyone that disagrees must also be crazy. There is no reasoning with those who shun reason and react to disagreement with accusations of craziness and bigotry.
The point I am making is, people (women, blacks, latinos etc. and that includes the rabble who whine about "greedy companies hiring foreign workers") should not expect things on a platter. There is no giant conspiracy to make things "uncomfortable" for women or minorities.
A case-in-point is the success of Indian-Americans & other Asians in tech. I recently read that nearly 1/2 of startups in the valley has an Asian co-founder. It's not like tech had welcome buffets & red carpets laid out for the Asians.
While I too find the absence of women and non-Asian minorities in tech troubling. That change can only be wrought by starting up (pun intended). Reminds me of the saying by Gandhi "Be the change you want".
Maybe it isnt a pervasive piece of EVERY conversation, but you can literally find hundreds of articles on this site about that very topic. Hey look, right now! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6975533
My favourite one is the article about one of the problems with women in tech being that Silicon Valley believes it's more meritocratic than it is, on which PG comments that it's really that meritocratic (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6795606)
I'm still curious if he spotted my last minute edit just as it was dropping off the front page while an interesting discussion was emerging.
It took me a while to realize that this is actually a feature and not a bug as HN exists as a promotional tool for YCombinator.
Having much needed discussions around sensitive topics might be good for the community as a whole; but is much too risky a proposition for YCombinator to take on.
That is taking a stance on how to approach discussions on sensitive topics and is exactly what I was talking about.
What would happen if that weren't the case is pure speculation; because for all we know a common consensus would quickly emerge if these discussions would be allowed to run their course.
From looking at it, PG describes how things are (YC applications, startup CEOs) and Catherine describes how things should be.
I myself get often argued with because people confuse when I describe things a I see them with I tell people how they should be.
That perhaps not everybody who holds an opinion different from his own is a homophobe, racist or misogynist.
He’s been saying crazy shit like this on the regular for a while now...
Crazy? Maybe he's just gleaming from observation and experience or hunches? Is that crazy?
No, he said that people whose accents make it hard for others to understand them will likely have a hard time.
