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This may be an unpopular opinion but I still don't understand why diversity even matters here - shouldn't it be the merit of the ideas and the presentation skills of the speakers?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A true meritocracy would mean anyone with intelligence, talent and creativity would rise to the top. Of course this is naive thinking. We live in a world that harshly discriminates based on gender, race, socio economic background, wealth etc. And its human nature that if you don't see people like you rising to the top that you will think there are legitimate reasons and potentially just give up.
> A true meritocracy would mean anyone with intelligence, talent and creativity would rise to the top. And that would be good why? See, every time there is a top there will be losers. Personally I think that's unavoidable but we could work a little harder to flatten out the landscape so that the various lotteries matter less.
It is really worth considering that this conference used a blind review process[1]. Subsequently, there is zero chance that the reviewer's decisions were influenced by racism or sexism. As a society, we need to consider the implications of what is going on here. In what way could this move possibly be said to be anti-racist/anti-sexist? It just isn't. If anything, abandoning your speakers because they are male/white…
They have an agenda and it hasn't got anything to do with code.
This may be an unpopular opinion but I still don't understand why diversity even matters here - shouldn't it be the merit of the ideas and the presentation skills of the speakers?
It's an effort to make the programming community more accessible to currently underrepresented groups. Expanding the base is one way to improve a meritocracy.
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If this is the underlying thought guiding GitHub -- yes I've read the other stuff about the company -- it might be time to start setting up my own git server.
"We're not releasing this killer new feature because too many white people worked on it."
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You seem to imply that being happy to be surrounded with a more gender/race diverse crowd than the typical 90s IT conference is either racist or sexist. I just don't understand that argument.
Because at the same time you're implying that being surrounded by a specific skin color or sex is undesirable. That's racism and sexism. That's like me going to Japan and getting upset because I went to a conference and everybody was Japanese and there wasn't any diversity.
[sarcasm] Glad to see the legacy of Dr King is alive and well. [/sarcasm] If this is the underlying thought guiding GitHub -- yes I've read the other stuff about the company -- it might be time to start setting up my own git server. "We're not releasing this killer new feature because too many white people worked on it."
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> All this without ... people that police every word you say. Is that a joke? There are literally laws, with actual prosecutions, in the Netherlands designed to police every word you say.
[citation needed]
https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-press/2016/netherlan...
This may be an unpopular opinion but I still don't understand why diversity even matters here - shouldn't it be the merit of the ideas and the presentation skills of the speakers?
It's an effort to make the programming community more accessible to currently underrepresented groups. Expanding the base is one way to improve a meritocracy.
As a European, I keep getting baffled about how out of hand these things seem to be in the USA. I live in the Netherlands, a very open-minded country with same-sex marriage, equal rights and were women seem to me to be even slightly more dominant over men (but this is just my perception). All this without safe spaces, forced quotas at conferences, codes of conduct and people that police every word you say. There are…
Come now. What would you say to an academic who didn't want to go to the whole of Europe, just because he saw some scary news about something that happened in Prague once? The US is a huge, multifaceted place, and like anywhere so large, you will find things both awful and wonderful. But life is a lot less chaotic than the news agencies claim. And the histrionic folks, while loud, are a lot fewer in number than the a…