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The Empathy Gap in Tech: Interview with a Software Engineer

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Re: The Empathy Gap in Tech: Interview with a Software Engineer

#241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didn't address my questions. You've given some instances where you don't believe you have enough information to draw a conclusion, but where you also admit you don't have all the information that the employer did. Is your claim that PBS, the New Yorker and the NYT did not investigate? In other words, why is your reaction to take Lizza or Smiley at their word when they say that their employer is lying, but not tak…

My exact point is that in these cases it seems like the employer in question announced that they believed the accuser before looking into both sides and the evidence. How do you think this does not illustrate that? How is one supposed to come back from your employer making these kind of statements while you are being investigated? ## Edit: @joshuamorton Can't reply to your comment below so doing it here. Honest quest…

Replying to your edit:

>If you have already made up your mind and are not willing to engage with any evidence that shows that you might be wrong, why do you engage in discourse at all?

This is a strong assumption, and one that is untrue. Just because I find your arguments uncompelling does not mean that I find all arguments uncompelling. I've handed out more than a few deltas on /r/changemyview, so I'm not saying this without some basis in reality.

It appears that you're making a veiled claim that I'm virtue signalling, and I object to that accusation.

Re: The Empathy Gap in Tech: Interview with a Software Engineer

#242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you think its a bit odd to try to compensate for implicit bias with explicit bias? To me it seems unlikely that bigotry, sexism and racism will be fixed by more of the same.

Not particularly. We do it all the time when the free market misses some context. I see no major difference between a carbon tax and an affirmative action policy. In both cases, the naively optimal action misses some important context, so the system is then tweaked to modify the outcome to take the external factors into account. Do you have any alternative that isn't isomorphic to affirmative action?

There is also general disagreement whether we build a system that dishes out equal opportunity regardless of outcome or wether we tweak inputs (opportunity) to achieve equal outcome.

Relating AA to carbon tax misses some nuance. Namely, we agree discrimination against fossil fuel is okay because burning too much of it is bad for everyone. Presumably you'd be okay (logically) taxing schools and businesses that have too many whites. But the message is very different. You have to show too many whites is bad for everyone and not simply a product of a more successful culture (for example).

Re: The Empathy Gap in Tech: Interview with a Software Engineer

#243
post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> my wife assumes that I am deliberately ignoring her when she interrupts me and storms off in a huff half the time If you are interested in tools to reduce this sort of thing, my wife and I developed protocols that help. I've rot13'd them in case you are the type of person who hates unsolicited advice and would prefer to skip it: - Jura bar bs hf vf qevivat n pne (NXN 2-gba-qrngu-znpuvar) naq jr ner pbairefvat, gur…

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V va snpg npghnyyl qb.

Re: The Empathy Gap in Tech: Interview with a Software Engineer

#244
post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not particularly. We do it all the time when the free market misses some context. I see no major difference between a carbon tax and an affirmative action policy. In both cases, the naively optimal action misses some important context, so the system is then tweaked to modify the outcome to take the external factors into account. Do you have any alternative that isn't isomorphic to affirmative action?

There is also general disagreement whether we build a system that dishes out equal opportunity regardless of outcome or wether we tweak inputs (opportunity) to achieve equal outcome. Relating AA to carbon tax misses some nuance. Namely, we agree discrimination against fossil fuel is okay because burning too much of it is bad for everyone. Presumably you'd be okay (logically) taxing schools and businesses that have to…

>Presumably you'd be okay (logically) taxing schools and businesses that have too many whites.

No, I think this is a slight misinterpretation. I personally don't support quotas. On the other hand, I might be in favor of a credit to schools that give a bonus to minority students who apply, but I think that that's a more palatable result in general.

Note that under that equation, you're no longer enforcing equality of outcome, but instead controlling for unequal opportunity.

Re: The Empathy Gap in Tech: Interview with a Software Engineer

#245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My exact point is that in these cases it seems like the employer in question announced that they believed the accuser before looking into both sides and the evidence. How do you think this does not illustrate that? How is one supposed to come back from your employer making these kind of statements while you are being investigated? ## Edit: @joshuamorton Can't reply to your comment below so doing it here. Honest quest…

Replying to your edit: >If you have already made up your mind and are not willing to engage with any evidence that shows that you might be wrong, why do you engage in discourse at all? This is a strong assumption, and one that is untrue. Just because I find your arguments uncompelling does not mean that I find all arguments uncompelling. I've handed out more than a few deltas on /r/changemyview, so I'm not saying thi…

> Just because I find your arguments uncompelling does not mean that I find all arguments uncompelling.

If when asking for proof of where employers declared that they believed the women before inspecting all evidence and hearing both sides some very prominent examples of that does not convince you, then I do not know what will.

> It appears that you're making a veiled claim that I'm virtue signalling, and I object to that accusation.

I am pretty straightforward and made that direct claim as I feel like I wasted my time, and I tried to understand where you come from or provoke you to think about it.

I rarely go to this step and I am not sure calling you out is the best course of action, but due to the denial of this direct evidence as well as other experiences in these threads I feel like this is justified and I think this kind of discourse deserve a rebuttal for what it is. I know no other way to call out these rhetorical tricks than brutal honesty. I might be wrong, I am not in your head.

Re: The Empathy Gap in Tech: Interview with a Software Engineer

#246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Replying to your edit: >If you have already made up your mind and are not willing to engage with any evidence that shows that you might be wrong, why do you engage in discourse at all? This is a strong assumption, and one that is untrue. Just because I find your arguments uncompelling does not mean that I find all arguments uncompelling. I've handed out more than a few deltas on /r/changemyview, so I'm not saying thi…

> Just because I find your arguments uncompelling does not mean that I find all arguments uncompelling. If when asking for proof of where employers declared that they believed the women before inspecting all evidence and hearing both sides some very prominent examples of that does not convince you, then I do not know what will. > It appears that you're making a veiled claim that I'm virtue signalling, and I object to…

>employers declared that they believed the women before inspecting all evidence

No, you gave examples of employees claiming that about their employers. In a discussion that started with you claiming we shouldn't treat accusations as facts, I would have expected that you could tell the difference.

Re: The Empathy Gap in Tech: Interview with a Software Engineer

#247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I can't keep pointing to the same quotes showing how you interpret what I say Pointing to quotes cannot do this. You need to explain how what I'm saying is a mischaracterization. To be clear, your suggestion is > hiring competent minorities into teams, where although they are a minority in general they will not be on their team. My claim is that is that (1). This means hire minorities solely into majority-minority t…

> I'm familiar with the research about the harms of being a minority and the impact it can have on performance, but as far as my claims about segregation go, those arguments are irrelevant. I strongly disagree. You have to respect the human in the equation if you want to facilitate inclusion, and make sure that you do everything to facilitate the change you desire. Otherwise you risk filtering for people that check t…

You've cherrypicked definitions of segregation and ghetto. I'll repeat the original definition that dictionary.com provided:

> put in or restrict to an isolated or segregated area or group

And here's a merriam webster definition of segregation:

> the separation or isolation of a race, class, or ethnic group by enforced or voluntary residence in a restricted area

Does, or does your proposal not put or restrict minorities to certain projects and teams?

Does, or does your proposal not separate or isolate minorities into restricted teams?

As for your cherrypicked definitions:

>which does not appropriately describe a team that is mixed and where some members come from one or more minorities

It does if those minorities are prevented from accessing other teams (or even if it is just more difficult).

>Which for the same reasons does not properly describe the proposal.

Replace the word 'city' with 'company' and it absolutely does!

>I strongly disagree. You have to respect the human in the equation if you want to facilitate inclusion, and make sure that you do everything to facilitate the change you desire. Otherwise you risk filtering for people that check the right boxes that happen to be similar to the people already working there.

This is irrelevant to whether or not your proposal is essentially segregation. Like I'd previously said, this may make it segregation that you feel is scientifically backed, and morally better than what we are doing now, but that doesn't make it not a form of segregation. You appear to believe that if something is better than the system we have now, it cannot be segregation, and that view just doesn't make any sense at all.

>It is a tool that should only be applied at discretion and when appropriate, and to make it work it needs support.

This is a cop out. It basically can basically be rephrased as "we should only use segregation when it makes sense". If you want to make that argument, that's fine, but its still segregation.

I made some clearer objections in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16092706, and you handwaved them away. In essence, when faced with objections to this proposal, your response has been either "I don't like your words" or "yes you have to be judicious and thoughtful when using this strategy", but that just handwaves any of the potential problems away behind magic "judicial and thoughtful"ness. Unless you can craft a strategy beyond the vague "judicious and thoughtful" one you've proposed that materially prevents this proposal from descending into a form of segregation and causing outcomes like the one I suggested previously and will repeat here:

> I'm sorry, we don't have any $minority teams working on $area_of_expertise right now, so I don't see a good fit for you.

I will continue to call your proposal exactly what it is: a strategy of segregating minorities into minority-majority teams in an effort to reduce some of the negative effects of being a minority.

Now to change gears a bit: note that I've never said that this strategy is morally wrong, only that it is a form segregation. You appear to resist that characterization, my goal here has been to show why there are flaws in alternative approaches to affirmative action, and why any such policy is going to be easy to characterize in an unpalatable way.

In other words, while I do personally disagree with your proposal, I was taking on a bit of a devil's advocate stance. In the same way that you find it very easy to attack affirmative action policies as a form of "reverse racism", its pretty easy to similarly attack your majority-minority team proposal as segregation. You seemed to take this very personally, and I apologize for that.

And to be clear, I actually think that a slightly less extreme, but similar proposal to yours is a good idea. Namely, softly enforcing teams with minorities having >1 minority to at least alleviate some of the minority threat you get. However this too is flawed, both from the perspective of it doesn't help minorities as much as some proposals, and because it can be easily characterized as a racial quota.

As an aside, there's another flaw in both of these proposals that isn't simply an issue of branding: they don't address the sourcing issue that affirmative action attempts to. Its very hard to have competent minority teams if you have difficulty sourcing competent minorities (and I should clarify that this is not because they can't or don't exist). A lot of the common AA policies try to reduce false negatives or do creative things to source more minority talent, and are still objected to for various reasons.

Edit: It also appears that you're downvoting my comments, since all of my comments deep in threads responding to you are at 0, and most of my others in these threads are positive. If that's not the case, do let me know, but it makes me uninterested in continuing this discussion with you.

Re: The Empathy Gap in Tech: Interview with a Software Engineer

#248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason is because you really can't change hearts. "Metoo" is the sort of thing that is slowly changing attitudes around sexual assault, but such movements aren't easy to enact. Changing hearts is hard. Black slaves were liberated at the end of the civil war, but after the reconstruction, we had to wait almost 100 years before the civil rights movement ended Jim Crow, and even today, there are persistent racial is…

Those two are different on very relevant aspects, though. Practically no one supports sexual assault. We abhor it, that's why the legal punishment for rape is so severe, why many lynchings of black men were about rape accusations, etc. Sexual assault has thrived in some places - like parts of Hollywood - despite that, not because of it. Equality for black people was completely different from that: 100 years ago, very…

I disagree with "practically no one supports sexual assault", because otherwise, it wouldn't be so prevalent in society. They may not "support" it, but they definitely perpetuate it and turn a blind eye to it. That, and they don't treat it as a serious issue. For example, people have used the promiscuity of people as a way to minimize the rape of individuals, they don't believe women, etc. The fact is society's attitude towards rape and sexual assault is all hush-hush and gives passes to people who commit it. That's the whole point the movement is making.

MeToo isn't just Harvey Weinstein. He is just one creep who is representative of a larger problem in society.

Re: The Empathy Gap in Tech: Interview with a Software Engineer

#249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect there might be a middle ground between the libertarian/individualist "people are competent, rational agents and you're on your own" and treating people as children. We might, for example, recognize that many people, even competent adults, can be quite bad at dealing with awkward or hostile social situations, and can use help.

I don't think you can have it both ways. You can't teach your kid to walk without risking that they occasionally fall and hurt themselves, and as we grow further these kind of small falls is a natural byproduct of taking risks that leads to growth. It really sucks when your kid runs in front of a car, but thankfully that is quite rare and there are some simple heuristics that seems to ameliorate most such potential s…

Okay, so how do you decide whether to have hire school crossing guards or not? Or to put in a stop sign or not? Or to require seatbelts?

We can and do make decisions as a society to change the environment we live in for the better. You can't eliminate all risk and not every proposed solution is going to make sense, but that doesn't mean you just say "hey, they're adults" and shrug.

Re: The Empathy Gap in Tech: Interview with a Software Engineer

#250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your score was 34 out of a possible 50. Scores in the 33-50 range indicate significant Austistic traits (Autism).

Sweet, I got 34 as well. I'm going to sub that for my ACT score now :-)

Isn't there bias with self-diagnosing yourself though?
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