Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

ethicalsystems.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 734 posts

Re: New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

#171

Post by iso1210 »

Thorentis wrote: post #70
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…

People with, shall we say, radically progressive views, are more than comfortable to share them openly in the staff rooms, kitchens, before and after meetings, etc. without anybody contending with them. Anybody with more centrist, or God forbid conservative views, saves them for the pub afterwards or for their private gatherings. The Overton window seems to shift weekly.

Could you point to some research on this, specifically ones that

account for the jobs where this happens (HN readers are likely in jobs that attract more middle class and higher education people, who are overwhelmingly left of the current UK median - go to a taxi driver mess room and compare conversations)

and

provide examples of the overton window shifting (yes, the rise of farage and ukip shifted it significantly in some aspects, but on the other hand civil unions and equal marriage has shifted it in others)

I'm willing to believe you that the overton window has shifted to the right significantly over the last 10 years on many aspects, but I'd like to see the evidence

Re: New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

#172

Post by visarga »

yerwhat01010 wrote: post #162
visarga wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bashing white people on company meetings Isn't that open racism? Or is it ok because it's compensating for historical racism?

> Isn't that open racism? Not by their new definition of the word. Which is exactly why they've redefined the word.

They say racism is something that happens between groups, so you are racist by definition if you're white. This makes huge assumptions - that individuals are nothing more than members of the group, that only groups matter, that white people are a single homogeneous group, and that young people bear the guilt of their parents and grandparents. There is no nuance here, it doesn't matter if you're hard working or not if you're white because they can explain away your accomplishments as privilege. Anti-racism at its finest, using reverse polarity racism to fix racism. How could that backfire? It's like going to war for peace or fucking for virginity.

Re: New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

#173

Post by yerwhat01010 »

visarga wrote: post #78
whoknowswhat11 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

racism = judging people / taking actions based on race. Reality in many workplaces is that the racists making decisions based on race are on the left these days - not the right. When you say exclude folks who practice racism you need to be very careful. I've no problem with affirmative action, but running around saying folks making judgements based on race should be excluded from the workplace will do a LOT of harm t…

Fixed that for you: > racism = judging people / taking actions based on race, but only if you are white It goes even further than that - anything that supports the dominant class - technology, science, logic, math and even common sense concepts in language - are considered racist. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5uXpwoq0_M

The latest manifestation of this absurdity is that things like "rational thinking" and "following schedules" are now considered "white culture" and thus it's racist to expect black people to think rationally or show up on time:

https://pyxis.nymag.com/v1/imgs/926/d5f/a334baf0d43cd480b3ea...

Re: New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

#174

Post by iso1210 »

crummy wrote: post #150
phroobster wrote: post #96

I am so tired of constantly hearing about politics at my workplace. Politics have already made their way into the tv shows, music, video games, and online forums that I enjoy. At least let me disconnect from that outrage-fuel at work. It also affects team cohesion. I can easily collaborate with just about anyone when I don’t know their political beliefs. As soon as I find out someone holds opposing views on a topic I…

Were your TV shows, video games, etc really lacking in politics before? Or was it just a different kind of politics? (Honest question.)

Many modern US "conservatives" complain that Star Trek is political, and when it was Kirk and Picard it wasn't. It's hilarious.

Re: New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

#175

Post by TomSwirly »

This empty article is very short on details.

"People who hold certain, commonplace views, stay silent believing that expressing those views will carry penalty not reward."

Certain _commonplace_ views, hmm? A lot of abhorrent beliefs about race and gender are commonplace - that doesn't make them acceptable.

"And yet, despite winning a landslide victory in 2019’s General Election, British Conservative voters are nine points more reticent to say what they believe than Labour voters. Why does the larger group fear judgement more than the smaller group?"

Could it be that in this _self-reported_ survey, one group would like to portray themselves as an embattled minority, when in fact they've been in complete control of the country for most of the last decade, and have made a series of appallingly bad decisions based on their "commonplace" but wildly false "views", decisions which have devastated the economy, with even worse yet to come?

Could it be - and I'm only spitballing here - that a lot of truly repugnant or even false beliefs are no longer acceptable in the workplace?

Re: New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

#176

Post by iso1210 »

sgift wrote: post #166
systemvoltage wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree and resonate with my personal observation. I've personally completely and utterly stopped following politics. I do follow local elections and things that affect me and my neighborhood (HOA, municipality decisions, etc.). What we're seeing is an emergence of anti-political movement that is directly in response to the echo-chambered, uncivilized and nauseating social media that's profited from this rage. Twitter…

> I predict that the anti-political movement is going to take off and pick up steam in the intellectual circles. Only in anti-intellectual circles could an anti-political movement take off. Anyone with even a shred of intellect understands how important politics is for everyday life and that being anti-political means "I will have to accept what others decide for me without any recourse." Politics may be an uncomfort…

I've just received an email asking me for more for a work permit application to work in the netherlands in a few months. More cost, more expense, less agility.

This is a direct result of retired people voting to leave the UK.

Politics matters, and votes have consequences. Sadly with many votes, the consequences are disproportionately felt by the ones that lose the vote.

Re: New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

#177

Post by yerwhat01010 »

pjc50 wrote: post #144
guythedudebro wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Replace interracial marriage with something like abolish the police. Is the ethical/sane choice still clear cut?

Reminder that the UK did have to abolish (and reconstitute) a police force in order to end its civil war in 2001, and still has ongoing litigation about the legality of troops shooting civilians in the streets.

That has absolutely nothing to do with modern "abolish the police" rhetoric.

"Abolish the police" is a utopian Marxist fantasy that holds that in some hypothetical perfected society we won't need police because everyone will just get along, and that the only reason we currently "need" police is because capitalism/patriarchy/white supremacy/imperialism drive people to commit crime and violence, therefore all we have to is burn the existing system to the ground (no need to specify its replacement it in any detail) and utopia will emerge from the rubble. (Nevermind that the politicians who advocate this nonsense spend tens of thousands of dollars on private security while pretending that police are unnecessary.)

It's no exaggeration to say that this is the same ideology ("society is imperfect, therefore burn everything to the ground with no plan to rebuild other than my being in charge") that got tens of millions of people killed in the twentieth century. It's insane, dangerous garbage and it should not be tolerated.

None of the orchestrators of the Northern Ireland peace process held political views that are remotely similar to this.

Re: New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

#178

Post by raffraffraff »

raffraffraff wrote: post #143
KMag wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More importantly, most of us hold moral judgements that our grandchildren will find horrifying, and it's a tautology that we're unable to see our moral blind spots (or have a good guess where they are). I'm happily in an interracial marriage, but I'm not sure that I would have been in favor of (or even neutral toward) interracial marriage had I been a product of the culture a century earlier. I'm very glad we've made…

I fheyly agree that we should have humility in our policies, but should also be aware that all "progress" is not positive. In fact, how is progress even defined in this case? Is all change progressive? Or is change that younger people agree with automatically positive? At some point before the Spanish Inquisition, one could have argued that this new idea of burning witches was "progress" because it reduced the evil i…

I love spotting predictive text mistakes after the edit timeout expires :/ WTF is "fheyly"?

Re: New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

#179

Post by twoslide »

jl6 wrote: post #124

Personal politics has absolutely no place in the workplace unless you’re working in politics. Nothing good can come of it. Leave it to the pub and Hacker News. My workplace is a wonderful bastion of big-P-Politics-free collaboration. It is an apolitical safe space. My colleagues and I absolutely do have political views, but there is just no reason whatsoever to share them at work. “Bring your whole self to work” is a…

I'm not sure there is such a thing as an "apolitical space" - it is kind of like trying to remain stationary on a moving train. Even if you don't discss contentious issues, political parties, etc, you are still part of social and economic systems premised on political views.

For example, one might say they don't talk about climate change/sexism/racism in the work place and therefore it is apolitical, but to another viewpoint not talking about these issues is political.

Re: New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

#180

Post by msg3 »

efaref wrote: post #151
msg3 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry but I have to disagree here. You want your speech to be free from consequences -- i.e if you were to call someone a liar / cheat, they can't change their opinion of you based on what you've said? How is that compatible with their freedom of thought? To me, freedom of speech means I shouldn't worry about legal repercussions for expressing wrongthink. There is perhaps a separate discussion to be had about the…

Limiting it to legal consequences is not enough. There are also physical and psychological safety consequences that are relevant. You're not, for example, free to speak your mind if expressing wrongthink will result in a punch to the face. In the context of a workplace (being the topic of this post, after all), one such consequence is the loss of your job. Something that is very real these days, with so-called activi…

Punching people in the face is illegal regardless of the reason - I don't really see how that's relevant?

Are you really saying that it should be impossible for someone to lose their job over what they say? If someone, for example, threatened to kill a co-worker, you don't think they should be fired? I appreciate that this is an extreme example, but when we talk about rights, don't we have to cover all examples of speech?

I'd agree that social media mobs trying to get people fired is a bad thing, that it's become too easy to whip up such mobs, and that as a society we should try to be more tolerant of other views. But I don't see somebody losing a job over something they've said as a rights issue - you don't have a right to a job.

Post reply on HN