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David White
David White
12:39 PM
In my view, what happened to this thread is a real tragedy, and I think that's what Dylan was saying. We started with a concrete suggestion, and sharing research publications about best practices for increasing inclusivity. We found common ground where possible, began to define the parameters of the problem, and began to brainstorm the best way to nudge the mathematical community in the direction of increased inclusivity (whether by an ICM talk or another medium), which most agreed was a laudable goal.
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4 hours later…
quid
quid
4:24 PM
@DavidWhite I find this paraphrasing very unhelpful and also unfair.
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It is especially unhelpful as Harry more or less announced he wishes to leave the debate.
On the technical aspect, you cannot ban anyone long-term.
What you can do is: kick-mute a user to stop an immediate problem, you can also move messages away (to a "trash" room), which is an indirect way of deleting posts.
What you can also do is create a room where only authorized users can talk. This is called a "gallery" room. Everybody can read it, but there is a list of users that can write there.
 
quid
quid
4:45 PM
I don't think that raising flags will be a productive way to solve this. Flags alert all kinds of users around the SE network and this will just lead to confusion. If somebody uses a vulgar term this works well enough, but for more subtle things it just won't work.
 
AngelTC
AngelTC
FWIW I agree with David's assesment of the situation
 
Tim Campion
Tim Campion
5:05 PM
@ClarkBarwick For some perspective, I think Clark was right to point out that Harry was not the purveyor of the most shocking positions in this chat. But at some point the discussion here about the best ways to improve diversity, inclusivity, and equity in mathematics evolved into a debate about whether it was desirable to do so in the first place, which I think was unfortunate and ugly.
I think this happened because (i) some users turned the conversation in that direction (ii) other users (such as myself) took the bait.
 
quid
quid
A main problem as far as I am concerned is that various users try way too hard to find points of disagreement instead of trying to find some common ground. Part of some conflicts is really how exactly one understand some words exactly. It is likely and unfortunately true that some played on this specifically and intentionally, but this is not always the case. Even when it is to buy into it, is usually not a great strategy.
 
Tim Campion
Tim Campion
Perhaps in the future it might be helpful, when discussing issues where a lack of common ground between participants is anticipated, to try to more clearly delineate the scope of discussion from the beginning and more rigorously enforce it as we go.
 
Gjergji Zaimi
Gjergji Zaimi
I also agree with David's assessment of the situation. What makes me sad about this whole outcome, here and on meta, was that I had hopes it would give a voice to many people that desperately need it, but ended up mostly giving a voice to Harry and Patriot. Not that they shouldn't have a voice, everyone should, but I view this as a missed opportunity.
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Harry Gindi
Harry Gindi
Inclusivity is a trojan horse. It always entails excluding other people, mainly dissidents.
 
quid
quid
@TimCampion that too. I do think that it is reasonable to say this discussion if for those that think doing A in principle is a good idea and we want to talk about how to best do A. And everything that is said against doing A is then off-topic. But the way this room emerged it was not really this type of situation.
 
Harry Gindi
Harry Gindi
5:18 PM
I would like MO to remain an apolitical forum. If other people want a political forum, they should go to twitter or facebook or reddit.
I'm completely within my rights to argue against the incipient politicization of this website and to try to kill it in its tracks.
 
quid
quid
@HarryGindi if some users want to have a chat-room on something you are not in your right to impede that.
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Harry Gindi
Harry Gindi
I sure am, as long as it remains a public chatroom
 
quid
quid
Except maybe in egregious cases.
@HarryGindi no you are not.
 
Harry Gindi
Harry Gindi
I'm on topic
 
AngelTC
AngelTC
and yet again this turns into Harry's feelings about the topic
 
Harry Gindi
Harry Gindi
5:21 PM
That's right.
 
AngelTC
AngelTC
I dont know why you seem so selfaware but keep engaging
 
Harry Gindi
Harry Gindi
I left, and then I was the topic of a discussion.
 
AngelTC
AngelTC
Totally by coincidence, right
 
Harry Gindi
Harry Gindi
You'll notice that I left David's comment to stand all day
The other members of the chat made it about me again.
Anyway, I think that what you guys don't like is that someone has the temerity to disagree strongly.
 
user44191
user44191
@TimCampion I found this comment vindictive and unhelpful, personally.
 
Remy
Remy
5:26 PM
If we're analysing the development of the narrative here, I would like to add one thing to @DavidWhite's assessment: from a very early stage, there was a voice from various users (RP_, Harry Gindi, and Patriot, among others) that not everybody is on the same page about this. This is relevant to the original question in that it affects the appropriateness of this topic for a plenary lecture rather than e.g. a panel.

A complicating factor is that these statements were not elaborated very well, and what made matters much worse is that they got removed. I think a lot of this could have been av…
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Harry Gindi
Harry Gindi
But anyway,I'm happy to leave now, but I'd like to not be mentioned anymore either.
If I become the topic of discussion, I will probably wade back in.
 
AngelTC
AngelTC
I feel it is really unproductive to engage with Harry here, he will keep baiting people into having arguments that noone, even him, are casting, so it is a lost battle from the start. I really command people to not take the bait if you are honestly interested in the topic at large
 
Harry Gindi
Harry Gindi
You can't help yourself, Angel.
 
AngelTC
AngelTC
Im ignoring you
 
Harry Gindi
Harry Gindi
I just said i'm prepared to walk away if people stop making me the topic of discussion
and you immediately started talking about me
I've made all of the points that I'd like to make.
 
AngelTC
AngelTC
5:29 PM
Engaging is different than referencing you, jsyk
 
Harry Gindi
Harry Gindi
Thank you everyone for your patience
 
dhy
dhy
6:11 PM
I disagree with David's assessment: I think this thread was seriously flawed from the start. There was a bit of conversation on the actual idea of an ICM talk, and a lot of conversation of the form "convince me that lack of diversity is a problem we should try to solve." The latter is valuable but in my opinion should have taken place in private messages and not here (i.e. this room should have been heavily moderated from the start) or else chat inevitably devolves into its current state
Also, a few points I haven't seen mentioned:
1. This chat room was more or less the single most visible thread on mathoverflow the past few days. (I never saw the ICM talk thread, but one day I logged on and saw this chatroom at the top of my page with 20 users in it)
2. There are a lot of young students (say high schoolers) who don't get to interact with the mathematical community in person and whose only impressions of it come from mathoverflow. (I say this because I was one of them, and I know of several others personally.)
(I got distracted by the US Census Bureau but the point that I'm trying to make is that I don't think this thread was necessarily a good representation of opinions of mathematicians)
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AngelTC
AngelTC
7:15 PM
In response to the previous comment, id like to disclose Im not amercan and I have very little relationship with academia over there
 
quid
quid
7:40 PM
@dhy it is not clear what type of private messages you envision (even on a technical level).
 
Yemon Choi
Yemon Choi
8:33 PM
@DavidWhite @DavidWhite While I sympathise with your frustration, and in certain respects probably have views closer to yours than to Harry's, I am not very comfortable with the "we" in your account of the story. I will refrain from echoing Tonto's line in the old joke.
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@DavidWhite @DavidWhite BTW, derailing a soi-disant productive conversation about diversity can certainly hinder combating racism and sexism, but I am uncomfortable about the tacit type-identfication in your line "Derailing a productive conversation about diversity is the opposite of anti-racist and anti-sexist work".
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I will add, more in sorrow than in vindictiveness, that despite my previous two comments I am dismayed to see that Harry's tendency to derail discussions has not improved since my early years on MO. I will add for newer participants that in my impression, this was in some sense a universal tendency, as likely to happen in infinity-categorical matters or discussion of how best to teach integration to undergraduates, as in political matters.
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Harry Gindi
Harry Gindi
9:24 PM
=\ I never ever mentioned category theory in the context of analysis
@YemonChoi
There was somehow one thing I once asked as a question and didn't leave as a comment about trying to think about smooth manifolds by a functor of points, to try to see if one could try to cheat calculus out of the picture, but I was a baby then. (Interestingly, Clausen and Scholze do now have a way to do this, up to some epsilon)
I still maintain to the present day that the best way to teach things beyond the basics is using the most modern possible technology.
For example, that there is no reason to read Grothendieck's Tohoku paper nowadays unless you want some kind of emotional experience. It is obsolete.
Oh, I misread =X
 
quid
quid
@YemonChoi almost I get nostalgic and recall the time spent on the old, the real, MO meta. :-) Then, the current episode was a very good reminder of the things that made me leave, so the nostalgia stays within reasonable limits.
@HarryGindi tangentially do you mean "condensed mathematics" or something else?
 
Harry Gindi
Harry Gindi
10:10 PM
@quid It's more than condensed mathematics. It's the second set of notes on liquid analytic modules and rings.
There are some current complications that still need to be worked out that I discussed with Peter by e-mail, mainly related to the formalism of analytic rings.
it's not clear why the 'underlying locale' is small right now
 
quid
quid
Thanks. Maybe I'll try to have a look.
 
Harry Gindi
Harry Gindi
@quid it's in the notes called 'analytic geometry'
by Scholze
This thing I said about the 'underlying locale' being small doesn't come into play until the very very end, lecture 13
it's sort of important (in order to e.g. get a functor from smooth manifolds into liquid analytic schemes)
 
quid
quid
Found it.
 
Harry Gindi
Harry Gindi
Enjoy! I'm thinking of organizing an online seminar following.the notes in October.
I'll let you know when I have more info
 
quid
quid
Thanks. You can find me easily on math.se. I have a shared office with the other mods and my own room.
 

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