Rant – Page 6 – The Renegade Coder

Many of you have probably already heard about Jonathan Shewchuk's recent misogynistic comments, but I couldn't help but share my own take on the whole thing. As always, with anything this controversial, I like to keep it only for my handful of subscribers. Situation Overview Disclaimer: the article today is definitely outside of my comfort zone in terms of writing. That said, I spend so much time watching reaction content that I figured it wouldn't be a stretch to do some of my own. And considering the thread I'll be covering today has already been deleted—at least on Twitter—this seemed like a good place to archive it. To kick things off, I want to start by sharing how I came to find out about this situation. Specifically, I stumbled upon a thread on Twitter by @oliverjohansson, which has since been deleted. You can see the thread, or at least the initial tweet, archived here. In short, the thread starts with the following screenshot: See ALT text for transcription. If you're not aware, the individual who wrote this reply is Jonathan Shewchuk, and my understanding is that they're a professor at Berkeley in Computer Science. The original poster of this screenshot captioned it, "Berkeley ML professor contributing to the online discussion." Later, Oliver provided a few additional screenshots of context, which have unfortunately been deleted. However, a few screenshots were copied into a Reddit thread. The first of which is the original post, which had absolutely nothing to do with dating. See ALT text for transcription. Then, it looks like at least one peer responded, which started the dating debacle: In general, I am going to avoid commenting on this particular post because the student seems unwell. However, it seems Shewchuk was unable to exercise the same restraint because he followed up with the post you saw previously, which I will just repost here: See ALT text for transcription. Naturally, this led to all sorts of backlash, with some immediately following in the same thread: Perhaps unsurprisingly, Shewchuk's response received a lot of backlash. Perhaps I'll share some of my favorites later, but the point being that he was eventually forced to apologize: See ALT text for transcription. As of today, I don't know what the situation is, but I want to spend the rest of the article giving my commentary. Shewchuk's Reply Without context, Shewchuk's reply seems pretty gross. Why is a professor talking about how to get a girlfriend? Why is a professor talking about the "behavior of women"? Why is a professor using artillery to describe distance? I just ended up with so many questions. When reading through the original post and the first reply, I couldn't help but think about all of the challenges that Computer Science faces as a field. For instance, we have racist and sexist AI models, which is perhaps unsurprising because we fail to recruit and retain women and people of color. That's not to mention all of the challenges other marginalized identities face, such as folks in the LGBTQ community or folks with disabilities. That said, I tried to interpret his short post with as much charitability as possible. If we're being extremely charitable, we might think that his post is just pointing out the ratio of men to women in the area. In that case, it wouldn't be unreasonable for him to say, "look, there are a lot more men than women in this area; why not try looking further from here?" Of course, the statement would have to be true. Unfortunately, that's not what he said. Instead, he seems to imply that the issue isn't the number of women that are available but rather their behavior. For me, this majorly crosses the line because we move from a statistical observation to a generalization about an entire population of individuals. To make matters worse, he's not exactly upfront about what's wrong with women's behavior in the Bay Area. An extremely charitable interpretation might be that women are just more selective of partners because they have more choice. Of course, even in the most charitable interpretation, it frames women as some natural resource following supply and demand. Therefore, men should go to places where the women are "easier" to obtain, like some sort of prize. And when put in that light, it's a lot more gross. With the incel movement becoming all the more normal due to red pill weirdos like Andrew Tate polluting men's minds, it's particularly upsetting to see similar takes from a professor whose day-to-day should be spent exercising critical thinking. Though, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised about a professor who goes out with his students for "brews". See ALT text for transcription. Something I found really interesting about his online presence is his Rate My Professor. I was quite surprised to see a high rating of 4.6. Of course, when I scrolled down, 13 of his 54 ratings were from just this past week, which seems to have triggered a verification process. For context, he has reviews going back as far as 2004, so the new ratings definitely skew his perception. Most of the new ratings are just generic max scores with no real substance in the comments. At any rate, let's move on! Shewchuk's Apology In general, I'm not in favor of firing people from their jobs. People have a right to live, and unfortunately, living is tied to working. With that said, I am strongly in favor of rehabilitation, and I think Shewchuk needs to seriously work through his beliefs. In the short term, he probably shouldn't hold power over women until he's had a chance to reflect (meaning he shouldn't be teaching or mentoring any women). Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like he's had enough time to reflect given that his apology was mostly underwhelming: See ALT text for transcription. One thing I really don't love when it comes to this apology is the focus on intent (e.g., "... which caused bad feelings I did not intend", "I did not mean to convey ...", etc.). I do not care if you intended to cause harm or not; the damage is done. Yet, most of this apology is focused on how it was an accident or some form of negligence. All of it comes off as an unwillingness to take responsibility for his actions—or worse, as an attempt to make people second guess their feelings about the situation. What makes the apology worse, in my opinion, is the effort that Shewchuk makes to spin his actions as a positive (e.g., "my comment was motivated by sympathy for Anonymous and a desire to help students"). Framing the apology in this way allows Shewchuk to not have to feel bad about what he did. In his mind, he was doing the right thing, so the apology is really just damage control. Hell, even the last line is kind of gross (e.g., "it starts with empathy for each other"). It's like he's pleading for people to have some empathy for him, which I am certain most of us do. We've all made mistakes before. It's part of being human. But, the apology itself seems disingenuous when he pleads for empathy like this. It reminds me of every time a celebrity gets "cancelled." They cry about getting cancelled. They learn nothing. Then, most of them just lean into it more (I'm talking to you, Dave Chapelle). Ideally, you have two options: don't apologize or apologize for real. If he truly believes he was trying to help that student, then he doesn't need to apologize. He can stand on that principle. However, if he understands that what he did was wrong, then he has to apologize in a meaningful way. To do that, you have to acknowledge what you did was wrong, which does not happen at all in this apology. Any time he gets close, he dodges the actual apology by appealing to intent. After that, you have to discuss your plans to change. Apologies are meaningless if you don't plan to grow from it. Therefore, he should at least mention his plans to step away from work to better himself. Ideally, he would mention exactly how, such as through some trainings (which is like the bare minimum) or through some form of service. Personally, I subscribe to the to the theory of atonement: if you do something wrong, you should have to make up for it. On a side note, I have to bring up the "artillery distance" comment. It's just a very gross phrase to me, especially given the situation in Palestine (and the many other colonial efforts across the globe). Like how desensitized to violence do you have to be to start using language like that casually. Though, from what I've read, it might just be a Russian idiom. Shewchuk's Online Presence As you can probably imagine, I didn't know anything about Shewchuk prior to this incident. However, the controversy has already made it onto his wiki page, where I found this interesting quote from The College Fix: Shewchuk (pictured) also edited his bio after the controversy. It used to say he “identifies as a ‘Smith & Wesson 460XVR .45 caliber revolver’ and uses the pronouns ‘death/deathem/deathself,’” according to the student newspaper. The College Fix You can, of course, verify this quote yourself through the Wayback machine. The entire profile read as follows: I WAS BORN in Cranbrook, British Columbia, Canada. I am a Canadian citizen and a U.S. permanent resident. I identify as a Smith & Wesson 460XVR .45 caliber revolver. (death/deathem/deathself.) I obtained my B.Sc. in Physics and Computing Science from Simon Fraser University in 1990, and my M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University, the latter in 1997. I am trained to only sleep during national holidays. I joined the Computer Science Division of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at Berkeley in 1998. I am also an Adjunct Semi-Senior Pseudoscientist with Enhanced Library Privileges in the School of Information Repetition at Stanford–Berkeley Professors' Spouses' University. My favorite piano concertos are Brahms' Second, Medtner's Third, and Scharwenka's Fourth. Only I am allowed to talk about Fight Club. So naturally, I'm much less likely to treat Shewchuk charitably when he very obviously leans into transphobic rhetoric. And, of course, he's aware of the optics of such a statement, or he wouldn't have wiped it from his profile following the controversy. He has since placed a massive notice on his page crying about libel, which reads: I do not wish to be a public figure. I have not responded to requests for media contact, nor will I respond to any in the future. In libel cases, plaintiffs who are public figures have to meet a more stringent standard than do private citizens. According to the Digital Media Law Project, in California, “A limited-purpose public figure is a person who voluntarily injects herself or is drawn into a particular public controversy. It is not necessary to show that she actually achieves prominence in public debate; her attempts to thrust herself in front of the public is sufficient.” I hereby declare that I do not wish to be a limited-purpose public figure, I am acting to avoid that fate, and I do not intend and have never intended to be part of a public debate. I just want to quietly do beautiful mathematics. I have no clue why this was included. It reminds of those chain posts people would make on Facebook (e.g., "copy this text, so Facebook can't own your data"). Perhaps he felt the need to put this together because a new CS189 page has popped up on the internet to display a "Fire Shewchuk" title and a couple images of his conduct, including his profile, which I previously shared, and an email about the trucker's convoy, which I've shared below. Needless to say, there's more to this man than his apology would have you know. It seems like it may have only been a matter of time. Community Pushback Unfortunately, there are a significant number of folks backing up Shewchuk in the trenches. However, I'm not interested in amplifying those voices today. Instead, I want to share some comments from folks who were also grossed out by Shewchuk's comments. For example, I love this Twitter comment (with the author cropped out, so they don't get additional hate), which highlights the countless number of terrible experiences women have in STEM. See ALT text for transcription. Over on Reddit, I saw another excellent take, which highlights the lack of perspective of Shewchuk: See ALT text for transcription. One place I wouldn't recommend looking for a reasonable take on this controversy is HackerNews. My lord, the comments over there were absolutely horrid. Any time someone tried to provide a decent argument, it was voted down. Though, to be fair, Twitter wasn't much better. With that said, I've wasted like an entire workday putting this piece together. Seems going down the rabbit hole on this was a mistake. Perhaps I'll exercise more restraint in the future. Anyway, thanks for taking some time to read this. I know I don't have to convince you to stick around, but this post got me thinking about some of my older rants that you might enjoy: Recommended Reading: “Tech Bullshit Explained: Uncle Bob” by Melissa McEwen Can I Just Rant for a Minute? Grad School Applications Suck Why I’m a Certified AI Hater As always, take care! See you next time.