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New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

ethicalsystems.org

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Re: New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

#31

Post by Causality1 »

olivermarks wrote: post #10

'For two-thirds of the population, talking politics sincerely, on the job, is uncomfortable. People who hold certain, commonplace views, stay silent believing that expressing those views will carry penalty not reward. ' This sounds like a recipe for disaster for any company. When I worked in the UK no part of my job description was about 'talking politics sincerely' or sharing my 'commonplace views'. I did that in th…

I love working in a place where using work resources for non-work tasks is strictly forbidden. It's been years since I got an email with even a scent of politics.

Re: New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

#32

Post by prince781 »

nanagojo wrote: post #24
prince781 wrote: post #16

The author conflates "viewpoint diversity" as it pertains to a workplace setting with political diversity. There are many benefits in a workplace to a diversity of views on how to approach the work and this kind of diversity improves the quality of the product the organization produces. But is this true for political diversity? Maybe, but the author doesn't explain why, and it's not clear what studies exist that supp…

The author links to https://hbr.org/2019/07/are-politically-diverse-teams-more-e...

So this is a study about political diversity where it's specifically relevant to the organization's work. In this case, Wikipedia. I'll admit that political diversity is necessary when the "product" is unbiased articles written on politically controversial topics. But how would this affect how a software company develops products, how a car manufacturer develops cars, etc, where political diversity is not relevant?

Re: New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

#33

Post by ajkjk »

anonytrary wrote: post #23
ajkjk wrote: post #3

I don't trust this article. The phrase "Losing viewpoint diversity" is of course crafted to make it sound like a chilling trend. Pretty clear what they want you to think about it. But if you drill into what that's referring to, whether you think it's a bad thing is entirely up to what you think of how the viewpoints are changing. "Fewer racists than ever" also maps to "less viewpoint diversity" but is totally a good…

I don't really care about the article, but I've noticed a very real trend of "unconditionally believe in the product, don't second-guess or ask why we're building what we're building". To me, that's what viewpoint diversity should be about. Businesses always suffer from "but we're already profitable" bias. I'm sure there's a Wikipedia article for this phenomenon -- where you are making profit and therefore lose the d…

(fyi! that quote is actually attributed to Upton Sinclair)

Re: New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

#37

Post by Causality1 »

axguscbklp wrote: post #18
ajkjk wrote: post #3

I don't trust this article. The phrase "Losing viewpoint diversity" is of course crafted to make it sound like a chilling trend. Pretty clear what they want you to think about it. But if you drill into what that's referring to, whether you think it's a bad thing is entirely up to what you think of how the viewpoints are changing. "Fewer racists than ever" also maps to "less viewpoint diversity" but is totally a good…

We are now at the point that any further attempt to eliminate racism by force comes at the cost of suppressing accurate perceptions of reality. At what point would it stop being worth it to you to get rid of some small additional number of racists if the cost is massive damage to free speech and rational investigation of reality? Also, are there really "fewer racists than ever" now? Anti-white racism has been on the…

I believe that in the US, racism itself is highly segregated and compartmentalized. You have academia where Asian people are discriminated against, law enforcement where black people are discriminated against. You have the ultra-woke collective culture that drives tech companies that are 80% white/Asian male to have all-hands meetings where they jerk themselves off about how great they think women and minorities are. It creates an atmosphere where absolutely everybody feels like they're discriminated against.

Re: New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

#38

Post by zxzax »

ineptech wrote: post #20
laurencerowe wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should companies cater to racists?

The presumption that the world can be divided in to "progressive activists" and "racists" probably has a lot to do with the reason people don't want to express diverse political opinions at work.

That's true... but so does the presumption that the world can be divided up into races based on the superiority of certain races over other races. And that expands beyond expressing political opinions. When management is labeling your entire being and your whole family as inferior, it sucks to even be at work.

Edit: I don't mean to oversimplify, it's not just an issue of casual racism, for some things it's life and death -- when the company lobbies for loopholes in the law and then dumps toxic waste that overflows into your backyard, would a fear someone felt to avoid expressing a political view in support of that loophole override the fear someone else might have for their kids getting cancer?

Re: New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

#39

Post by ajkjk »

axguscbklp wrote: post #18
ajkjk wrote: post #3

I don't trust this article. The phrase "Losing viewpoint diversity" is of course crafted to make it sound like a chilling trend. Pretty clear what they want you to think about it. But if you drill into what that's referring to, whether you think it's a bad thing is entirely up to what you think of how the viewpoints are changing. "Fewer racists than ever" also maps to "less viewpoint diversity" but is totally a good…

We are now at the point that any further attempt to eliminate racism by force comes at the cost of suppressing accurate perceptions of reality. At what point would it stop being worth it to you to get rid of some small additional number of racists if the cost is massive damage to free speech and rational investigation of reality? Also, are there really "fewer racists than ever" now? Anti-white racism has been on the…

> are there really "fewer racists than ever" now?

Yeah, probably. If you don't believe this you are probably not as aware as you could be of just how incredibly racist the world was a single generation ago. (Some would say it's still racist, sure, not the point here).

> Anti-white racism has been on the rise the last few years.

a little bit of it, but not really a fair comparison given the many-orders-of-magnitudes of difference. if it seems like it is comparable you are dealing with a very skewed version of reality.

> that progressive dogma now fuels racism more than it suppresses it

agree that the reactionary movements are in response to progressivism and so could sort have been said to have been 'caused' by it. But I think it's important to keep in mind that big, vocal 'thought movements' are exactly what changes in acceptability look like on the inside. I imagine that it's not really possible to go from (a very racist state) to (a less racist state) without a big reactionary clash in the middle. Better to let it get worse for a while so everything can play out, than not have the fight at all and let things stay bad.

Re: New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

#40

Post by monoideism »

anonytrary wrote: post #6

This happens in American workplaces, too. In my experience, most people at tech startups think the same, especially non-product people (anyone who isn't in engineering, design or product). If you want to unconditionally love the mission of your company, chances are you have to set aside your own personal opinions. It is statistically very unlikely that your personal viewpoints are exactly parallel to the company's. N…

> Having an outsider's viewpoint is going to be extremely valuable in the coming years, but it's currently out of fashion.

This is wishful thinking, and I've seen no indication that the current groupthink is going to do anything but grow more dominant.

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