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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

#311

Post by programmernews3 »

rayiner wrote: post #265
macspoofing wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it is ambiguous goal which under any reasonable interpretation has massive consequences and major unintended side-effects. My favorite sport is basketball. What is the 'equality of outcome' in the context of the NBA? Is it that players are evenly distributed across gender lines? Across economic lines? Across national lines? Across racial or ethnic or religious lines? In our society, it would probably be under…

> So you should see 70% white players, 15% hispanic players, 12% black players, 5% asian players. Is that the right solution? But is the fact that black Americans dominate the league actually a problem? And what the heck are you supposed to do to fix it? Arguably yes. The NBA itself is an irrelevantly tiny portion of the economy. But it creates a huge pressure on African American kids to focus on being successful thr…

Would you support 50% gender equality of speakers at a conference?

Would you support limiting professional teams from hiring black people to allow for a certain number of Asians?

Would you support universities reducing their intake of Jewish students to stop over-representation?

Would you support hospitals hiring a maximum 5% Asian doctors?

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

#312

Post by macspoofing »

rayiner wrote: post #291
macspoofing wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What is your explanation for the underrepresentation of black people and women in engineering besides structural racism and sexism? Null hypothesis. YOU are making an unsubstantiated claim. What is YOUR proof of this structural racism. And feel free to define your terms, because I have no effin clue what 'structural racism' is. Here's an alternative explanation, people are influenced by the sub-cultures they are in…

We known several things as fact. We know overt and open oppression of black people happened as recently as the 1970s and 1980s. (I'd say it's still happening, but the fact that it did happen in the recent past is indisputable.) And we know that black households make only 60% as much at the median as white households. All I'm doing is suggesting a causal relationship between the two. Since you reject my hypothesis, I'…

>Since you reject my hypothesis

I reject your hypothesis on the basis that you have provided no evidence.

>I'm asking you to suggest an alternative

An alternative to what? Why there are less black people and women in tech than there are Asians and whites? I don't know. It could be any number of reasons and none of them may have to do anything with racism or misogyny. You can't just prove your assertion by saying "well i can't think of anything else it could be therefore racism must be the cause".

>And your alternative appears to be, "I don't know why, but for some reason black people just don't like money."

Your paraphrasing of a position I put forward is disgusting. It isn't at all what I said. At all.

You also missed my point. I'm not saying I believe my alternative. I have no evidence for it just like you don't have any for yours. I put it out there to demonstrate that there are potential alternatives that would need to be taken into account.

>Sure individuals are different, but why would we expect groups of people to have such distinct preferences

That's a good question. A type of question that one could study and get a Masters for or a PhD. Certainly there is plenty of precedent at least when it comes to tastes in movies, music and food. So why would you just dismiss it out of hand and blame racism?

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

#313

Post by nobi »

snovv_crash wrote: post #219
nobi wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"a very open-minded country" cough Geert Wilders is the most popular politician in the Netherlands cough

He's also the most unpopular politician. What's your point?

That the Netherlands isn't as tolerant and open-minded as it seems to have fooled the rest of the world into thinking so. The man walks around calling Moroccans scum, even in Brexit Britain this would _never_ be tolerated.

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

#315

Post by nathanasmith »

robspychala wrote: post #59
tjpnz wrote: post #18

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?

on face value you can't argue with your logic but if you want to play the long game and help create and contribute to an industry that includes people from all demographics than this is a very smart move. and more people included in your sample, more chance of finding amazing A++ engineers that can help the industry, your dev platform, etc...

>and more people included in your sample, more chance of finding amazing A++ engineers that can help the industry, your dev platform, etc...

Well, whatever. Myself, I was just about to look into Electron having heard so much about it lately. But if this is how they run things, I think I'll just look elsewhere to satisfy my cross-platform development curiosities.

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

#316

Post by thekevan »

DeusExMachina wrote: post #45

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…

As an American, I keep getting baffeled how opinions like GH's in this are so prevalent on the internet but rarely seem to occur in the real world. Please don't judge us on the acts of a few.

Gender equality in IT is a realistic important issue, but this is just taking it to a crazy level.

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

#317

Post by pseudalopex »

naasking wrote: post #184
ubernostrum wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Meritocracy" isn't. It's a sham, a veneer layered on over an ugly and disgusting history of bigotry and oppression, to cover up the underlying biases which still exist and are perpetuated every day. Assuming that any attempt to change the system necessarily involves hiring/promoting "unqualified" people shows one of those biases: the bias to believe that anyone who does not resemble the existing majority must be "un…

> Assuming that any attempt to change the system necessarily involves hiring/promoting "unqualified" people shows one of those biases: the bias to believe that anyone who does not resemble the existing majority must be "unqualified" or else they'd already have succeeded You're not describing meritocracy, which has literally nothing to do with majority conformity, but literally reduces to ability. It's the most unbias…

They're describing what Michael Young coined the term "meritocracy" to warn about.

The closest thing to a consensus on programmer productivity is that it's impossible to quantify. How can we objectively predict ability when we don't know how to objectively measure outcomes?

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

#318

Post by TylerH »

DeusExMachina wrote: post #45

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…

The issue is that here in the US we have an entitlement problem. Everyone feels entitled to everything. Even poor people feel like temporarily inconvenienced rich people, as the famous saying sort-of goes. We are also still obsessed with might making right, even at an individual level. America means guns and freedom and kicking everyone else's ass. It doesn't help that recentlyish our politicians feed this narrative by creating the worst us-vs-them chasm our nation has ever seen.

I think this is problematic, but I also think it's inherent in a society that truly wants to allow freedom of expression. Why do we still have the KKK in America? Why do we let things like Breitbart exist? In Germany they have restrictions on Nazi-related things and discussions, and they seem to have turned out pretty well. We need to hold the right people accountable when bad things happen, and pretty much up and down the whole chain, that doesn't happen, because freedom. Hell, we even have judges who have allowed "affluenza" to be used as a legal defense for things as heinous as rape.

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

#319

Post by naasking »

pseudalopex wrote: post #317
naasking wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Assuming that any attempt to change the system necessarily involves hiring/promoting "unqualified" people shows one of those biases: the bias to believe that anyone who does not resemble the existing majority must be "unqualified" or else they'd already have succeeded You're not describing meritocracy, which has literally nothing to do with majority conformity, but literally reduces to ability. It's the most unbias…

They're describing what Michael Young coined the term "meritocracy" to warn about. The closest thing to a consensus on programmer productivity is that it's impossible to quantify. How can we objectively predict ability when we don't know how to objectively measure outcomes?

You can't measure productivity in an interview, so I don't see how this is relevant. At best, you can test for knowledge and understanding, which is exactly what people do. I don't see how this entails some kind cultural homogeneity.

> The closest thing to a consensus on programmer productivity is that it's impossible to quantify

Precision isn't as important as accuracy, and this is achievable. It's difficult, but not impossible.

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

#320

Post by whitemale »

We need to start compiling list of these conferences so that people know what to boycott. When I go to an event like this I want to see the best, I don't care if all of the speakers are white males or gender fluid apache helicopters.
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