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Oh, you’re with them? (2016)

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Re: Oh, you’re with them? (2016)

#21

Post by throwaway399 »

charles-salvia wrote: post #10

If you trained a neural network to recognize "high powered tech executives", it will likely start picking up on features associated with 30 to 40 year old (mostly white) males wearing sweaters or "business casual" attire. It probably would report a low value if you showed it a minority female. (Google "tech executive" on Google images to test this out.) Human beings are really advanced neural networks, trained on yea…

I think treating (1) by lowering requirements is bad because now people will stereotype that that person got there on ez mode.

(2) is bad because people will inevitably make accidental genuine mistakes and it perpetuates the whole hostile PC culture where people are afraid of talking about anything and everything. If there is no social punishment then enforcing is impossible.

I think the solution is in changing culture. I.E.: make it like China or former USSR. People got jobs in in-demand fields, not in what they were interested in.

Most qualified people rose to the top primarily based on aptitude alone. That way there would be no need for thought police.

Re: Oh, you’re with them? (2016)

#22

Post by bhntr3 »

charles-salvia wrote: post #10

If you trained a neural network to recognize "high powered tech executives", it will likely start picking up on features associated with 30 to 40 year old (mostly white) males wearing sweaters or "business casual" attire. It probably would report a low value if you showed it a minority female. (Google "tech executive" on Google images to test this out.) Human beings are really advanced neural networks, trained on yea…

Option 3 is to re-train. Every time we see a woman of color think to ourselves "She's probably a powerful executive" and every time we see a white man in a suit we think "he's probably an executive assistant." Like a visualization technique.

The reality is that we're all biased but we're also malleable. If we understand how our biases manifest, we also understand that biases are pretty resilient to reason and goals. They need to be re-trained or manipulated (like through priming and other bias inducing mechanisms.)

This is what bothers me about unconscious bias training. They show that everyone is biased. But the solutions fail to acknowledge that the system can't change just through positive intention.

Re: Oh, you’re with them? (2016)

#23

Post by aaron-lebo »

throwaway399 wrote: post #21
charles-salvia wrote: post #10

If you trained a neural network to recognize "high powered tech executives", it will likely start picking up on features associated with 30 to 40 year old (mostly white) males wearing sweaters or "business casual" attire. It probably would report a low value if you showed it a minority female. (Google "tech executive" on Google images to test this out.) Human beings are really advanced neural networks, trained on yea…

I think treating (1) by lowering requirements is bad because now people will stereotype that that person got there on ez mode. (2) is bad because people will inevitably make accidental genuine mistakes and it perpetuates the whole hostile PC culture where people are afraid of talking about anything and everything. If there is no social punishment then enforcing is impossible. I think the solution is in changing cultu…

I think the solution is in changing culture. I.E.: make it like China or former USSR. People got jobs in in-demand fields, not in what they were interested in.

That sounds like a totalitarian state that nobody wants to live in. That might get rid of the thought police but you then you have job police, yeah?

Re: Oh, you’re with them? (2016)

#24

Post by Archio »

This incident looks horrible, and it's sad how terrifically disrespectful the administrative assistant was towards the department head.

Events like this often serve (understandably) as explanations for why the tech industry's gender ratio is so heavily skewed. The data, while empirical, seems to be there as well:

>Kieran Snyder interviewed over 700 women who left the tech industry. Almost all of them said that they enjoyed the work itself. It was the work environment that drove them out. And six out of seven have no plans to return.

There's one thing I am genuinely confused by though. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand why a woman might want to leave an industry after being treated this way. However, _why is it_ that the tech industry _specifically_ has not evolved like other high paying, high knowledge, and high value fields (principally: medicine and law)?

Medicine and law were both fields traditionally dominated by old white men, that's a simple fact. Another fact is that gender discrimination, harassment, and all of the issues attributed to the tech industry today were also rampant in medicine and law while the gender ratio was so skewed. Yet for some reason, these fields were able to move towards parity, and the gender issues they experience now are a shadow of what they were previously. By gender, roughly equal numbers of women enter medicine as men, for example [0]. If I were to walk into the office of a doctor or lawyer today, I honestly would not be surprised to see a man or woman of any race/background.

What is it about technology, or the tech industry, that is not like medicine or law? While incidents of harassment and discrimination are terrible and deserve the strongest condemnation, I don't think they are the answer for our gender ratio problem. Why is it that while women outnumber men (a lead which grows every year) in graduation rates from colleges, the ratio of CS students in those same colleges is extraordinarily skewed towards men?

[0] http://kff.org/other/state-indicator/medical-school-graduate...

Re: Oh, you’re with them? (2016)

#25

Post by throwaway399 »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #23
throwaway399 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think treating (1) by lowering requirements is bad because now people will stereotype that that person got there on ez mode. (2) is bad because people will inevitably make accidental genuine mistakes and it perpetuates the whole hostile PC culture where people are afraid of talking about anything and everything. If there is no social punishment then enforcing is impossible. I think the solution is in changing cultu…

I think the solution is in changing culture. I.E.: make it like China or former USSR. People got jobs in in-demand fields, not in what they were interested in. That sounds like a totalitarian state that nobody wants to live in. That might get rid of the thought police but you then you have job police, yeah?

The whole point is changing it in such a way that everyone "wants" to do these in-demand jobs. Chinese students aren't unhappy with their job choices.

Edit:

I think the easiest way is to simply not force people to self-answer an abstract question of "What are you interested in?" First of all, it's almost impossible to answer it correctly because there is no way you can sample all possible career paths. Secondly, if they don't ask themselves this question, they'll find interesting things in the general job area they're given.

Re: Oh, you’re with them? (2016)

#26

Post by aaron-lebo »

throwaway399 wrote: post #25
aaron-lebo wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the solution is in changing culture. I.E.: make it like China or former USSR. People got jobs in in-demand fields, not in what they were interested in. That sounds like a totalitarian state that nobody wants to live in. That might get rid of the thought police but you then you have job police, yeah?

The whole point is changing it in such a way that everyone "wants" to do these in-demand jobs. Chinese students aren't unhappy with their job choices. Edit: I think the easiest way is to simply not force people to self-answer an abstract question of "What are you interested in?" First of all, it's almost impossible to answer it correctly because there is no way you can sample all possible career paths. Secondly, if t…

We could similarly restrict all food production to rice and people would get used to it and even enjoy it, but that doesn't mean it is a solution towards a more diverse diet.

You are fundamentally talking about increasing diversity in one area by reducing choice in another. Isn't that antithetical?

edit: your edit makes more sense :)

Re: Oh, you’re with them? (2016)

#27

Post by throwaway399 »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #26
throwaway399 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole point is changing it in such a way that everyone "wants" to do these in-demand jobs. Chinese students aren't unhappy with their job choices. Edit: I think the easiest way is to simply not force people to self-answer an abstract question of "What are you interested in?" First of all, it's almost impossible to answer it correctly because there is no way you can sample all possible career paths. Secondly, if t…

We could similarly restrict all food production to rice and people would get used to it and even enjoy it, but that doesn't mean it is a solution towards a more diverse diet. You are fundamentally talking about increasing diversity in one area by reducing choice in another. Isn't that antithetical? edit: your edit makes more sense :)

Thanks!

Regarding food vs jobs, I think it's not a very good analogy because

a) almost every job has a lot to it that could be interesting for anyone

We are not limiting all jobs to "Wordpress site template maintainer for small e-commerce sites" or "MySQL DB engineer specializing in scaling and indexing databases with mostly JSON-based tables". If you are a front-end web dev, you could choose to end up specializing in front-end driven analytics or SVG drawing or something higher-level like d3 plotting or anything in HTML5 games or photoshop-to-code conversion or migrate to photoshop-based design etc etc

B) The goal is not to maximize diversity of food or diversity of jobs. I am not implying avoiding increasing specialization.

Re: Oh, you’re with them? (2016)

#28

Post by tedunangst »

Archio wrote: post #24

This incident looks horrible, and it's sad how terrifically disrespectful the administrative assistant was towards the department head. Events like this often serve (understandably) as explanations for why the tech industry's gender ratio is so heavily skewed. The data, while empirical, seems to be there as well: >Kieran Snyder interviewed over 700 women who left the tech industry. Almost all of them said that they e…

Well, read any HN thread on the topic. "There's no problem in the tech industry. Women just don't like computers."

Re: Oh, you’re with them? (2016)

#29

Post by tedunangst »

fjert wrote: post #13
sdflkd wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because women should not have to "forgive, forget, move on" when it comes to being disrespected and having their career held back.

But this sounds like a real mistake someone can make... how do you know which groups of people are together? If they're spaced apart enough it's not hard mistake them as separate groups. Not to mention you don't know what the assistant's tone was or whether or not the author was misinterpreting the situation. Honestly, that blog post feels like bait for a forced debate based on an anecdote with little to no informati…

I find it illuminating that there are comments alternately explaining that his happened because she wasn't standing close enough to the group or that it's just simple Bayesian probability that black women aren't important.

I'd really like to see a debate between these two groups. Like both agree that nothing wrong happened, but who has the best explanation why it's all ok?

Re: Oh, you’re with them? (2016)

#30

Post by Archio »

tedunangst wrote: post #28
Archio wrote: post #24

This incident looks horrible, and it's sad how terrifically disrespectful the administrative assistant was towards the department head. Events like this often serve (understandably) as explanations for why the tech industry's gender ratio is so heavily skewed. The data, while empirical, seems to be there as well: >Kieran Snyder interviewed over 700 women who left the tech industry. Almost all of them said that they e…

Well, read any HN thread on the topic. "There's no problem in the tech industry. Women just don't like computers."

Are you being sarcastic? I repeated multiple times in my analysis that I think there most definitely is a problem with the tech industry, and I don't believe the answer is "women just don't like computers".

I think the question I'm positing here is very reasonable, given how other fields have been able to improve their situations dramatically. I don't know the answer to my question, that's why I asked it.

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