41–50 of 443 posts
The major elephant in the room here, which the memo doesn't seem to address, is that as late as the 1960's, computer programming was seen as a natural career for young women. Has biology changed that much in the last fifty years?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But is it okay to campaign towards the goal of firing someone for expressing an opinion they feel outraged about?
Let's be frank, here. This is not someone merely "expressing an opinion." This is someone rallying against diversity, using pseudoscience to back up claims that women and minorities are inferior, and thus shouldn't have been hired. On top of that, they ranted about how Google had not done enough to make conservatives feel they have a safe space, when the only thing Google has done on the subject is to make others fee…
I read the paper. I don't see at all how it relates to fascism, Trumpism, or whatever you want to call it.
I am against discrimination, and that includes positive discrimination.
If there were factual inaccuracies in what the author wrote, why not discuss them? Why not use high-quality sources to validate your argument? I wish it was the opposite, but I don't have the time to research the psychological/sociological perspectives on these issues. Human civilization has grown thanks to being able to specialize. I specialize and (hopefully) make contributions in one field, but I depend on others that have specialized elsewhere to provide knowledge and resources I can depend on.
What happens when the lone voice is in the right, and the mass of people are in the wrong, and all of the preponderance of current science and wisdom is against the lone voice? It's no great stretch to find examples through history of this in different social contexts.
If the preponderance of current science is against the lone voice, then it's highly likely that the lone voice is not in the right.
The history of science has a kind of survivorship bias toward good ideas, and most people who think they're the next Galileo are almost definitely wrong.
There are a hundred other male-dominated careers and I never, ever hear women complain about not being equally represented in them. Why? Because they're not attractive careers.
Maybe it's okay for people to be outraged about some things.
Sure it is. Lots of people get outraged and offended by any number of things. For instance, I'm outraged that anything related to Affirmative Action exists period -- as I believe codified, race-based laws are disgusting and an anathema to the construct of equality and equal-treatment under the law.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure is! People can be offended all they want. Where things get really iffy is when they want 'justice'. It often means that they try to get that person fired or lambasted in front of their peers. I don't see how that's at all constructive, let alone 'justice'. At the very least, it leads to even more divisiveness, instead of rational discussion. As a thought experiment: have you ever seen someone change their mind o…
My manager threatened one of my co-workers with termination if they didn't take a more proactive approach towards making the code he wrote more robust. He took out specific examples of shit code he wrote, and had us criticize it and the mindset that created it. It changed how he programmed for the better and his outlook towards his job.
Too many, all across the spectrum, have his mindset that people that do or think things they don't like should be destroyed and locked away from "civilized society." A common rebuttal I see from these sorts, after being questioned why they don't take it upon themselves to sit down and understand one another (I will concede there is a very very very small minority that this shouldn't be done with, but you're unlikely to ever interact with them), is that it's not their duty to help these people.
Unfortunately, this makes the issue worse when you start exiling certain groups and radicalized with hate.
Here's an interesting article (isolated incident) where those with extreme views were shown compassion and understanding, and ultimately disavowed their ideas:
Black Man Gets KKK Members To Disavow By Befriending Them: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/black-man-daryl-davis-be...
The thing is, the guy wrote what many people think - outside of tech. It just so happens that techies happen to be very open oftentimes. I mean, what this person wrote, I heard it on various occasions in different formulations from various people. Even a woman (a Psychologist student at that time) once told me she'd rather have a male dentist and a male president. I imagine tech industry to be brutal for woman, but s…
Sure, but tech is a field that requires intelligence, and Google a company that hires specifically for intelligence. The fact that people are stupid isn't news. The fact that a Google employee is, and that apparently a large fraction of the company agrees with his views, is definitely news.
The entire foundation of this essay is based on assumptions, anecdata, and debunked science. It is not an essay rooted in intelligent thought and an honest examination of the facts by any means. It is an ideological position and nothing else.
> He is one individual in a company that employs more than 72,000 people. Why has Silicon Valley spent the weekend talking about him Because we're not talking about a memo posted by one random engineer that got the reaction it deserved for declaring a large fraction of his co-workers sub-standard engineers (among the myriad broken things in that memo). That would have been a story for all of five minutes. Instead, we…
> I don’t think it made much sense, and what I did understand of it seemed very poorly argued. As someone who forms opinions, I care more about the argument than how poorly it was argued. Is it biased, or even racist or sexist, of me to have such a view? Edit: I wish the author of this piece sounded less frightened.