Google Employee's Anti-Diversity Manifesto Goes 'Internally Viral'

It is the same problem because the argument invoked is that the proportion of people of color should match the one of the french population. So the women proportion in context X or Y should match the one of the population. That argument would be valid if people were chosen randomly, but that's obviously not the case. So this argument is really bogus and falling for it is the real problem.

That is absolutely good advice. Note that I only said it was harder to empathize with the unknown.

However, an obvious result of the Two Generals' Problem is that you can only communicate through common knowledge. Getting it takes more work than having it.

For instance, it is likely that when you first built the tool, you made its UI use a language you understand. Let's say there is suddenly a large amount of interest in having that tool from a country with a language and culture you do not know.

Learning the specifics of that culture takes more work than having someone with that knowledge in your company. They may know what keyboard those people have, how they expect their right-to-left language to be input, how they react to specific UIs.

A company that has this knowledge in-house is more likely to get that market than one which relies on surveys. For companies that target a large number of markets with shifting needs, it makes diversity a business requirement to outpace competitors.

That's my take too, having read the doc. Reminds me of The_Donald -- sometimes correctly identifies an issue, but misses the point entirely on so many levels and does more harm than good to whatever the author's goal was.

>you don't un-people people

And that's exactly how the doc started from the get-go. It decried anyone who dared disagree with it as shunning communication. That's really not the case -- people discussed it, and disagreed with it. It reminds me of those religious freedom laws, that guarantee people's freedom to discriminate to protect their own beliefs. The more layers you follow down, the more of a contradiction the laws become.

But without trying to devolve into the actual politics of it, a large portion of Americans (I'd wager it's the majority) believe that it's okay to exclude people for one reason or another. Americans have voted since Pres. GW Bush on protectionist principles, even President Obama was barely for extending rights until he was forced into it by VP Biden. America is in the middle of a massive demographic shift from the Baby Boomers who have ruined the economy, created massive public debt, destroyed worker protections, and shifted the political power from those in the middle to those at the very top. They did this by unpeopling people. This was an intentional thing done by the religious right starting in the late 70s and really gaining steam in the 80s. Their brand of us vs them found a receptive audience in America, because the Baby Boomers are afraid that what they've created will change, and for the moment there's more of them than other voting populations. Of course this is the natural outcome. Look at how many centrist politicians have left. So yes I personally disagree with what this guy said, but in a public sphere he has every right to say it. Inside of Google however they have the right to fire him for any reason, because there are no worker protections for free speech.