81–90 of 128 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did school desegregation work?
I don’t know, was a law ever passed that mandated at least one black student in every school? Or just that thay had the right to compete for a spot? So then why still allow all white boards? All Christian boards? All binary gender boards? Unless maybe it’s just a shrewd political move.
Honestly surprised at how many people are posting comments about this. You know you'll end up on some list, right? Maybe you think it's ok to debate this kind of measure now, but the line will keep moving. In three years you may have people scouring your internet history for past wrongthink to deny you that promotion, or to get rid of you. In five years, machine learning algorithms may take your comments as input for…
We don't care about your ideology, but we do care about not letting a minority of users ruin this site for everyone else by turning it into a political tire fire—especially given what's happening on the rest of the internet, which people come here for refuge from. The rest of the comments in this thread are bad enough as it is.
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This reads to me as "don't say things that leave you on the wrong side of history" - a solid recommendation for life in general.
Predicting the future is your solid life advice? Would you recommend a crystal ball, a ouija board or a magic 8 ball? Should I only concern myself with the long term history or do I have to worry about regressions mixed in? A lot of people thought they were on the right side of history with gay rights in Leninist Russia, it didn't turn out well.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t know, was a law ever passed that mandated at least one black student in every school? Or just that thay had the right to compete for a spot? So then why still allow all white boards? All Christian boards? All binary gender boards? Unless maybe it’s just a shrewd political move.
Yeah, they bussed kids in in the South.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A slippery slope argument seems really justified here as this legislation applies to boards that are quite small in size. If women need this special advantage, we only have to find a few other deserving minorities (race, religion and age seem like reasonable choices) before it is illegal to use merit as the first criteria for making up a corporate board. There is also a real concern with regulation like this is that…
> If women need this special advantage, we only have to find a few other deserving minorities (race, religion and age seem like reasonable choices) before it is illegal to use merit as the first criteria for making up a corporate board. Adding other categories is actually worse than that, because it creates the need to specifically appoint an asian catholic female age 35-49. An asian catholic female in the 50-74 age…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did school desegregation work?
This isn't desegregation. This is a law requiring employers to discriminate based on gender.
The advocates of this law would probably argue that everyone discriminates all the time, including by gender.
I am on the fence. When I was younger I would have been firmly on the hands off libertarian side. Then I saw what a sham meritocracy can actually be and how much success is based on who you know. The more I saw of the high corporate and financial world the more liberal I became. Do some business consulting work and meritocracy starts to looks like survivorship bias.
Why isn't the excuse of "representing the public" used to require certain members have a particular religion or race as well? What about income? Board members are about as far from representing society as you can get (and that's not the purpose of a board anyway) so I don't understand why this is being mandated. Seems like a strategy for cheap political points rather than any kind of well-reasoned reform.
Fascinating to see all comments against this at the moment. Some level of mandatory female board presence seems to work OK in plenty of places elsewhere in the world without a great backlash. No visible campaigns to repeal because of the great damage or tokenism that's resulted.
This outlaws freedom of association. If I am a woman creating a company for women’s products and want an all woman board, why should that be a problem or any business of the government? If the shareholders don’t like it, they can vote in/out whomever they want. And if an all woman board is okay, then what hypocrisy is this new law?
Honestly surprised at how many people are posting comments about this. You know you'll end up on some list, right? Maybe you think it's ok to debate this kind of measure now, but the line will keep moving. In three years you may have people scouring your internet history for past wrongthink to deny you that promotion, or to get rid of you. In five years, machine learning algorithms may take your comments as input for…
It's an abuse of this site to use HN primarily for ideological battle, which this account has been doing for a long time. Would you please stop? We don't care about your ideology, but we do care about not letting a minority of users ruin this site for everyone else by turning it into a political tire fire—especially given what's happening on the rest of the internet, which people come here for refuge from. The rest o…
However, I disagree with the assertion that my comment was about ideology or politics. My comment was about the very concrete conditions of life of someone working in the tech industry in California, which is why I thought it may be of interest to the readers of HN.
The situation I mentioned is not about following this or that political faction. It is a threat to free discourse, to the ability to have an intellectual life, and to folks' actual livelihood. And it is certainly relevant to many people who visit this site or comment on this article.
The only connection to a particular political side was the work "against" in the first sentence. I regret that, and I have replaced it with "about". If, with that change, you feel that it is still possible to identify a particular political or ideological faction which is responsible for the danger I mentioned, that is not something I can control. I can only say that the boot may be on the other shoe someday, and I would still be speaking up against it.
As for the rule against using HN primarily for ideological battles, I was not aware of it, and I apologize. Would it be better if I started posting more technical comments as well?
Also, how does your interpretation of the rules affect users that use "throwaway" accounts? If a user makes a throwaway to talk about a controversial issue, that account may only have one post, meaning that 100% of its posts are controversial. Would that not prevent people from discussing controversial issues at all? Which, in the end, is the same as the advice I was offering.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's an abuse of this site to use HN primarily for ideological battle, which this account has been doing for a long time. Would you please stop? We don't care about your ideology, but we do care about not letting a minority of users ruin this site for everyone else by turning it into a political tire fire—especially given what's happening on the rest of the internet, which people come here for refuge from. The rest o…
I will obey your decisions as a mod. However, I disagree with the assertion that my comment was about ideology or politics. My comment was about the very concrete conditions of life of someone working in the tech industry in California, which is why I thought it may be of interest to the readers of HN. The situation I mentioned is not about following this or that political faction. It is a threat to free discourse, t…
"Throwaway accounts are ok for sensitive information, but please don't create them routinely. On HN, users should have an identity that others can relate to."
I honestly think there's a good chance your decision in this case goes against the spirit of the rules, dang.