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ElectronConf postponed until a “more diverse slate of speakers” can be delivered

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Re: ElectronConf postponed until a “more diverse slate of speakers” can be delivered

#301

Post by mst »

selllikesybok wrote: post #236
mst wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's equality of outcome though, which is often terrible. I want a society where everybody gets an even shot, at which point I find it highly unlikely we'd end up at 50/50 - given programming has been both male-majority and female-majority over time I'm damned if I know in which direction it'd fall, but 50/50 usually means "you have forced people to be here who would've been better/happier somewhere else" and my fe…

Why is equality of outcome terrible, per se?

Equality of outcome as a goal is terrible because it's the enemy of equality of opportunity. "Everybody is denied their agency" would be equal, perhaps, but isn't part of any feminist vision I choose to align myself with.

Re: ElectronConf postponed until a “more diverse slate of speakers” can be delivered

#302

Post by PrimHelios »

zzalpha wrote: post #229
cc81 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In life in general sure but in cases like these a blind review process (that I think they used) should be good enough. I mean it is pretty odd that you would do a call for papers and pick out those you liked the most without knowing race or gender but then replace some just because it turns out they had the wrong gender/skin color/whatever.

I mean it is pretty odd that you would do a call for papers and pick out those you liked the most without knowing race or gender but then replace some just because it turns out they had the wrong gender/skin color/whatever. It's actually totally understandable. Let me explain. The conference organizers clearly have diversity as a goal. In their naivete, they thought to themselves "we want equality for everyone! I kno…

The issue is that diversity shouldn't be a goal. If you want more diverse speakers, then the only proper thing to do is let the conf continue, and then you'll start creating more people who have the knowledge to give talks, and you'll build a better divers background that way.

There's no reason to require diversity for a conference talk.

Re: ElectronConf postponed until a “more diverse slate of speakers” can be delivered

#303

Post by zzalpha »

PrimHelios wrote: post #302
zzalpha wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean it is pretty odd that you would do a call for papers and pick out those you liked the most without knowing race or gender but then replace some just because it turns out they had the wrong gender/skin color/whatever. It's actually totally understandable. Let me explain. The conference organizers clearly have diversity as a goal. In their naivete, they thought to themselves "we want equality for everyone! I kno…

The issue is that diversity shouldn't be a goal. If you want more diverse speakers, then the only proper thing to do is let the conf continue, and then you'll start creating more people who have the knowledge to give talks, and you'll build a better divers background that way. There's no reason to require diversity for a conference talk.

The issue is that diversity shouldn't be a goal.

In your opinion.

Feel free to run your own conference adhering to your own values, and feel free to skip this one.

But the breathless, hysterical overreaction to this by some in the tech community is simply juvenile and absurd.

Re: ElectronConf postponed until a “more diverse slate of speakers” can be delivered

#304

Post by newdayrising »

rayiner wrote: post #245
mst wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's equality of outcome though, which is often terrible. I want a society where everybody gets an even shot, at which point I find it highly unlikely we'd end up at 50/50 - given programming has been both male-majority and female-majority over time I'm damned if I know in which direction it'd fall, but 50/50 usually means "you have forced people to be here who would've been better/happier somewhere else" and my fe…

The equality of outcome versus equality of opportunity distinction is a cop-out. If you have real equality of opportunity then you should expect equality of outcome,[1] unless there is biological reason why women/black people/etc want to be left out of well-paying secure careers, or can't hack it in those careers. Maybe that's true, but it's an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary proof. The fact that prog…

Please tell me how society "pushes women out" of programming. I've only seen women being pushed toward programming. It's up to the individual woman to choose programming - just like it's up to the individual man to want a degree in, say, clinical psychology. The only pressure I've seen is that of the gender majority. Men and women tend to overlook careers where there is a majority consisting of the opposite sex. It's not society's job to equalize gender ratios and yes there are real differences between men and women. It's not true that if there's a majority gender in a field it must be because of discrimination.

Re: ElectronConf postponed until a “more diverse slate of speakers” can be delivered

#306

Post by pseudalopex »

concede_pluto wrote: post #254
boomboomsubban wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>A system based on something other than merit. If the people in charge aren't the people with the most merit, they aren't really qualified. Merit isn't an absolute, there's no test that shows what your merit would be to a company. Diversity adds to your merit, both through positive PR and through having a range of experiences to draw from when dealing with a problem.

If my code sucks, I have exactly the same experience fixing it that a black woman would have, because the arbiter of correctness is a computer without any opinions about the author. Diversity in skill comes from having worked in different kinds of software and languages and frameworks, not going out and collecting fifty shades of node hipster.

Sometimes code sucks because the programmer doesn't realize names work differently in other cultures.[1] Sometimes it sucks because it outs LGBT kids.[2] Sometimes it sucks because nobody noticed what the team called something was also a racial slur.

[1] https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-...

[2] https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/ne...

Re: ElectronConf postponed until a “more diverse slate of speakers” can be delivered

#307

Post by JCharante »

nojvek wrote: post #235
TeMPOraL wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally. Were I accepted and later dumped like this, I'd feel I was subject to actual gender/race discrimination. The whole thing is ridiculous. To fight perceived discrimination, those people are doing even more direct and overt discrimination.

I see this from another point of view. Suppose a female new grad goes to Electronconf and sees all male speakers. Suppose she goes to other conferences and it's the same story. She feels there's no way she'll be able to break ground and be recognized as successful. She slowly drops out and leaves the industry and goes somewhere where she can make friends like her. Now suppose she sees plenty of female speakers and sh…

`Dweck, like many adults, had learned to hide her frustration and anger, to politely say “I’m not sure I want to play this anymore” instead of knocking over the board. She figured the successful kids would be the same — they’d have tactics for coping with failure instead of getting beaten down by it.

But what she found was radically different. The successful kids didn’t just live with failure, they loved it! When the going got tough, they didn’t start blaming themselves; they licked their lips and said “I love a challenge.” They’d say stuff like “The harder it gets the harder I need to try.”

Instead of complaining it wasn’t fun when the puzzles got harder, they’d psych themselves up, saying “I’ve almost got it now” or “I did it before, I can do it again.” One kid, upon being a given a really hard puzzle, one that was supposed to be obviously impossible to solve, just looked up at the experimenter with a smile and said, “You know, I was hoping this would be informative.”` - Aaron Swartz, http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/dweck

Another way to look at the scenario is to go "Oh cool I'll get to be the first woman presenter, instead of the millionth."

Re: ElectronConf postponed until a “more diverse slate of speakers” can be delivered

#308

Post by kybernetikos »

voice_of_reason wrote: post #80
threeseed wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a) I never said anything about advocating for unqualified people. b) Almost all Fortune 1000+ companies are doing this today. And it's been conclusively shown to be improving the quality and strength of the board and encouraging more diverse people to join the SLTs. c) Not sure what that rant at the end has to do with anything.

Your virtue signaling feat has apparently failed

This is a low effort comment that adds nothing to the conversation.

The most generously I can interpret this is that you are claiming that the poster you are responding to does not authentically hold the views you disagree with. Please correct me if I'm wrong here, because if that's all you've got, it's a horrible way to argue and poisons debate.

Apply it to yourself - a quick overview of these threads show that there are a lot of people who share your viewpoint, do you think that me claiming that you don't authentically hold those views and are only arguing them in order to get people to like you would be a good addition to the debate?

Claiming that nobody could possibly have a genuine different opinion to you says more about you than about them.

Re: ElectronConf postponed until a “more diverse slate of speakers” can be delivered

#310

Post by MagnumOpus »

rayiner wrote: post #287
smsm42 wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it reduces people to a set of identity classes that fill respective identity checkboxes. I.e. if it happens that on conference there is 10 good presentation submitted from class X but only 2 from class Y, and the quota is half-half, you would either reject 8 good presentations or add 8 crappy ones, just to fill identity checkboxes and achieve equality of outcome. Or cancel the conference altogether. The true…

If green eyed people had been systematically oppressed until recently and still made a fraction of the money brown eyed people do as a result, you'd see statistics about eye color at conference presentations.

Define "recently. Neither women nor blacks nor catholics nor jews have been systematically oppressed in the US in my lifetime, or yours, or most of the potential presenters. If you are conservative about it you can claim discrimination up until the 1960s - which is 50 years ago, hardly "recently".
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