META: Neanderthal attitudes

Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Sun, 29 Aug 1999 01:07:41 -0500

Kathryn Aegis wrote:

 >

> The basic, repeated, complaint is that dynamic, intelligent women who have
> careers in the real world subscribe to these lists and get slammed with
> neanderthal attitudes: An assumption that they came here looking for
> dates. Having to read blatently ignorant threads like the one on female
> genetics and longevity. Having their postings and questions ignored or
> overly criticized.

Well, I personally didn't have to read that thread, having a real mailreader and all, so I don't know whether or not it was blatantly ignorant. But if we've got blatantly ignorant offensive posts, then I say send 'em up the river. Ban the topic for two weeks. Kick the offenders off the list for a month. Understand, I don't approve of censoring intelligent discussion no matter who it offends, but I also happen to believe that this list is for smart posts and that dumb posts should be summarily dealt with if they become systematic, annoying, or start having a detrimental effect on list quality.

If Neanderthal posts on this list are driving away female Extropians, then maybe we should ban discussion of dating. And maybe we should even create a set of "easily-abused" topics like gender differentials, in which posting on the subject makes you liable to summary judgement of scientific illiteracy, resulting in one warning followed by unsubscription.

Oh, who am I kidding. The list moderators are never going to do this. But I've already written the message and deleting it would be a waste, so...

--
            sentience@pobox.com          Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
         http://pobox.com/~sentience/tmol-faq/meaningoflife.html
Running on BeOS           Typing in Dvorak          Programming with Patterns
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