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New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

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Re: New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

#501

Post by TechBro8615 »

bjourne wrote: post #394
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…

Politics has a tendency to seep in. For example, at a job a long while ago a colleague made a "joke" about a gang rape that had recently been in the news. He started humming the Batman song and sang "Na, na, na, na, GANGRAPE, na, na, na, na, GANGRAPE, ...." I told him his joke was tasteless and offensive. He said it was "just a joke" and our colleagues mostly sided with him. Was he bringing politics into the workplac…

That just sounds like bad parenting and poor social adjustment. Actually, most of the problems in this entire thread could probably be tracked to bad parenting.

Re: New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

#502

Post by baobabKoodaa »

cycomanic wrote: post #242
baobabKoodaa wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The commenter picked racism as an example, because they think viewpoint diversity is bad, and racism is a good example of a "bad" viewpoint.

No the commenter picked racism as an example, because they think viewpoint diversity is not necessarily good. Big difference to your statement.

I'd say that's a rather charitable interpretation. "Not necessarily good"? Come on, this is the comment we are talking about:

> 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 thing.

Re: New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

#503

Post by thrwyoilarticle »

krageon wrote: post #490
thrwyoilarticle wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds a lot like you restricting the viewpoint diversity of your social circle.

Sure, but then again viewpoint diversity isn't a universal good to be chased at the expense of everything else :)

But by the standards set down by their post at the top of this tree, callamdelaney wouldn't hire them.

Re: New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

#505

Post by neither_color »

varispeed wrote: post #400
Tycho wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lot of advice floating about the workplace these days along the lines of be candid, join the conversation, bring your whole self to work, etc. The people giving this advice seem to have no conception that not everyone actively engaged in these topics is acting in 100% good faith. Being too open could so easily backfire. Encouraging this is borderline negligent. Indeed there’s entire branches of activism that rest on…

> join the conversation, bring your whole self to work, etc. This is a classic honeypot. They want to weed out people who have views that do not align with current PC status quo. One of the reasons is that no company wants to be associates with an employee who has views that could damage company image and lose money. They want your whole self, so they can discard you if they think you are a liability.

There is no social setting besides close friends and family(and therapy I suppose) where you should ever "be yourself." I never caught on to the trend that started with social media of blurting or tweeting out whatever you're thinking and for good reason. Now people are going back years scrubbing candid thoughts they had when they were teenagers while the naturally reticent have nothing to worry about.

Re: New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

#506

Post by tstrimple »

jimmygrapes wrote: post #491
tstrimple wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're missing the point w.r.t. BLM and racist policing. The assumption isn't racism. The statistical evidence says racism. And the argument was never that all of these white cops are independently racist in their heart of hearts. It's that they participate in and support a system with explicitly racist outcomes. There is simply no question that the criminal justice system in the US has racist outcomes. https…

Are there not many potential explanations other than a nebulous concept of "racism" for these statistics?

Are there many potential explanations as to why our justice system has racist outcomes? Absolutely. Does that change whether the outcomes are racist or not? Absolutely not.

There seems to be a lot of confusion over racism where one group seems to think racism only exists when it involves white hoods and hurling racial epitaphs and the other group is more concerned about large societal trends and documented evidence of disparities in outcomes based on race.

Machine learning algorithms are a perfect example. If you build an ML algorithm for approving home loans using historical data, the outcomes of that algorithm will likely have a strong racial bias due to the history of housing segregation. If a company were to use that algorithm, they would be participating in systemic racism even if not a single person in that company was racist. It's racist because the outcomes are, not because of individual racists within the system trying to explicitly hurt black folk.

Re: New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

#507

Post by giantg2 »

SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #481
nostromo wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it points to a theory that societal norms serve to re-enforce the expectation of taking jobs in lower paying fields on women versus men. That’s one theory. Another is that women and men in the aggregate don’t choose the same careers in exactly even proportions.

But then why do those careers earn less money? Why is it that it just so happens that every job that is more likely for women to work also is paid less?

Many of those jobs produce fewer tangible outputs, are government jobs, non-profit, or otherwise do not focus on maximizing profit. Positions like teachers, social workers, etc are seen as cost centers, not revenue centers. They are necessary jobs and perform valuable societal functions, but they are supported through other revenues which were not a direct product of their job. As for why one gender chooses those jobs more than others, there are a variety of factors. One of the leading ones is that some people are more likely to choose work that is meaningful over just a dollar amount. Studies show that isn't just based on gender, but also in the some minority groups.

Re: New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

#508

Post by JohnWhigham »

nostromo wrote: post #441
datavirtue wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free to Choose is absolute gold if you want to see rational debate among diametrically opposed groups about modern political and economic topics. Compared to what we see today it looks like something from another planet.

I watched Ayn Rand interviewed by Donahue in 1979 recently. I was shocked that this was daytime TV 40 years ago. Give it a watch sometime and compare it what you see on TV today. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jv0zTiv-i7s

Yup, Donahue was great. He does another interview with Milton Friedman as well.

Re: New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

#509

Post by Digory »

amalcon wrote: post #321
secondcoming wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Political debate used to have rules. Take this [0] debate between William F Buckley and Noam Chomsky about the Vietman War, for example. The two clearly detested each other but the debate was mostly civil. Christopher Hitchens' debate are others worth watching. Does these even happen any more in MSM? [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DvmLMUfGss

Western society seems to have gotten the idea that "debate" is either talking heads trying to shout over each other, presenting prepared arguments to random unprepared people and claiming victory when it takes time to respond, or simply presenting opinions back and forth without trying to justify them. This is tied to the (independent but both incorrect) notions that whoever has the last word in a debate is the winne…

Unfortunately, structured competitive debate these days has gone off the rails. At least, college debate in the US has become ridiculous.

Moot court and mock trial retain some semblance of argumentation. But you would have to reinvent the kind of formal debate you’re imagining.

Re: New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

#510

Post by baobabKoodaa »

thrwyoilarticle wrote: post #341
baobabKoodaa wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The commenter picked racism as an example, because they think viewpoint diversity is bad, and racism is a good example of a "bad" viewpoint.

I interpreted it as them picking an example that most people would agree is bad. Taking something to its logical extremes is a natural part of exploring its consequences. Fewer people thinking that the Earth is flat would also be a reduction in viewpoint diversity. OP has tried to make one point about the poor logic of the headline & you shut them down & refused to deal with the argument because you inferred the posi…

> OP has tried to make one point about the poor logic of the headline & you shut them down & refused to deal with the argument because you inferred the posit that racism is bad as them calling people who disagree with them racist. That's not you engaging with diverse viewpoints.

First of all, you are confusing me with Neil44. I did not say "You’ve gone straight to the implication that everyone who doesn’t want to hear politics from the noisy few is racist". Neil44 said that. Not me. At no point did I infer that OP would be calling people who disagree with them as racist.

Secondly, how am I "not engaging with diverse viewpoints"? I'm literally on the internet right now engaging with people who express viewpoints that I disagree with. Like, what is your expectation of what "engaging with diverse viewpoints" is supposed to look like? If I'm fawning over an internet comment like "yes, well said, comrade, I agree 100%", then I'm not engaging with diverse viewpoints, am I? If everybody in the conversation agrees with each other, where is the diversity in their views? It's only when people _disagree_ with each other, and still engage one another, that you might say people are "engaging with diverse viewpoints".

Thirdly, I didn't even "shut down" their arguments. I simply acknowledged that this person thinks negatively of viewpoint diversity, and that they provided an example of a viewpoint where diversity is indeed bad (racism). That's me acknowledging their argument (in a snarky way, but still).

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