This is such a strange view - you don't care about Pao's side of the story because she's not a complete paragon of virtue? You also seem to be basing that on her time at Reddit, during which, as the article mentions, she was being smeared by Kleiner?
This is still a widespread idea. See how many people look at a shoplifter who was killed by cops, and resolve that the killing was appropriate because the kid committed a crime.
I haven't fully processed it yet. There's a common trope in horror movies where someone commits a minor infraction... say, cheating on their boyfriend, and then they get murdered and the audience shrugs because they were obviously not one of the good guys.
I think the general idea is, we only want people around who have a fundamental allergy to wrongdoing. If you'd commit some small infraction, how can we trust you to not commit a big one in a crucial moment when we are relying on you in the future?
The alternative is to view minor infractions as a normal part of life, and to see them as an opportunity to rehabilitate someone. This approach only works in a somewhat... for lack of a better term, "wealthier" community, where you have some insurance against harm. If you can afford to have kids doing some bad stuff, you can be more forgiving. My perspective is that we're currently in a time of surplus, and so we can afford to live that way, (he says from his apartment in the Bay Area) but I think much of culture is still operating in a scarcity mode.
The other relevant concern is surveillance. If you can't surveil your community, you need to rely on them having an internal model of correct action. If you can rely on surveillance you can allow people to play more fast and loose with rules, with the assumption that you'll be able to correct for it in moderation.
But again, we're not fully into the surveillance age yet, so many people want to rely on the stricter mode of social organization.
> Yes, but it was also clear that this view is unsupported and irrelevant to the point of the story.
Why is it irrelevant? I think it's entirely relevant, Pao showed she was pretty deceitful in her suit... how is such an individuals personal case of discrimination not tainted by that?
Pfft yeah I can just swing "In your opinion (and also rather unsupported)" around too... Pao is as deceitful as her employer, they are a perfect match.
