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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

#551

Post by dbrueck »

sollewitt wrote: post #540
dbrueck wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Applying those labels to people who are objectively and overtly acting that way is not the problem. The problem is that way too often people are assuming it's there. It's a presumption of intent, "racism is one possible explanation for your viewpoint, therefore I somehow /just know/ that you are a racist person". Example: every recent white-cop-shot-a-black-person incident in the U.S. Not only is there widespread ass…

Data on lifetime likelihood of death by cop in the US by ethnicity. https://www.pnas.org/content/116/34/16793 It's very evident the US has strong implicit biases just from the Justice system. We could also look at incarceration rates, or sentencing disparities by ethnicity. At some point saying "hey, we can't just _assume_ this is racist" _appears_ less like good faith debate and more like bad faith denialism.

I'm all for looking at incarceration rates and sentencing disparities, etc. - if there are actual imbalances after controlling for relevant factors, then it makes sense to root them out and fix them.

That said, studies like the one you're citing appear to be flawed because they fail to account for rates of crime (especially violent crime) as well as socioeconomic factors. Correlation is not causation and all that.

(see e.g. https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-myth-of-systemic-police-rac...)

Re: New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

#552

Post by zozbot234 »

bitwize wrote: post #543
Loughla wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand what you're saying here. Please explain. Are the first sentence and the second sentence connected? If so, I am lost.

Take any marginalized group. Call it group A. It is almost always the case that there are prominent advocates for group A, who profess (at least at first) to be pushing for equality for group A, but what they really want is special pleading for group A. The libertarian position is that equality is desirable; special pleading is not. The people who advocate for special pleading, once having dropped the pretense of bei…

I'm actually more sympathetic than the average libertarian to marginalized groups, because social marginalization itself is a terrible thing and it seems hard to address without some sort of community-oriented focus that goes beyond conventional "libertarian" politics and its focus on mere individual equality.

However, I also thinking most advocacy is falling way short of acheving stronger community ties for marginalized groups. Indeed, a lot of such advocacy is clearly counterproductive, in pushing for "liberal" social atomization and further marginalization.

Re: New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

#553

Post by js8 »

bitwize wrote: post #543
Loughla wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand what you're saying here. Please explain. Are the first sentence and the second sentence connected? If so, I am lost.

Take any marginalized group. Call it group A. It is almost always the case that there are prominent advocates for group A, who profess (at least at first) to be pushing for equality for group A, but what they really want is special pleading for group A. The libertarian position is that equality is desirable; special pleading is not. The people who advocate for special pleading, once having dropped the pretense of bei…

That's not assuming good faith. Basically it's equivalent of saying that any complaints about discrimination are always dishonest, which is certainly not the case.

Re: New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

#554

Post by Loughla »

bitwize wrote: post #543
Loughla wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand what you're saying here. Please explain. Are the first sentence and the second sentence connected? If so, I am lost.

Take any marginalized group. Call it group A. It is almost always the case that there are prominent advocates for group A, who profess (at least at first) to be pushing for equality for group A, but what they really want is special pleading for group A. The libertarian position is that equality is desirable; special pleading is not. The people who advocate for special pleading, once having dropped the pretense of bei…

I see your viewpoint - but I also think that you're confusing equality for moving the goalposts in some cases.

Take racial disparity in the US for instance, and the history of racial segregation and racist policies in government institutions. How do we address the inequality present in the current system without first addressing the root causes of that inequality; some of which stem from hundreds of years ago?

By your definition, that would seem to be special pleading, but it is not, in reality. It is attempting to address current conditions that were caused by past conditions. Or am I way off base?

Re: New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

#555

Post by tomatocracy »

Tycho wrote: post #310
livinginfear wrote: post #80

I consider myself a very politically informed person. I'm not a politically active person however, largely for the reasons mentioned in the article. I considered myself a liberal by the standards of the time I grew up in. My views on some social issues, particularly 'free speech', are considered a conservative now. I am one of the people the article is concerning who will not publicly voice their political opinions i…

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…

My take on these management aphorisms is that they are rarely actually meant literally. They're usually a form of signalling about how much you're supposed to love the Company/job. Worse, they are often adopted because management copy them from other firms they see as "successful" or "leaders" in a particular area.

If I were being more cynical, I'd say that managers or leaders love to talk about "Company culture" or "Company values" points like this because it allows them to mark their own work when they define success (although this may be unconscious). "We changed our company culture" isn't a statement that's easy to check or measure (it won't show up in eg engagement surveys), unlike "we grew earnings by x%", yet it also sounds much more "difficult".

A lot of the time it's effectively all an elaborate social game.

Re: New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

#556

Post by js8 »

Loughla wrote: post #472
zozbot234 wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to answer because I'm not sure what you're asking, or why you are confused. The first and second sentence are describing libertarians' understanding of freedom as a value, and how this connects with "preserving existing values" to use GP's phrasing. It's quite wrong to say that sexual orientation "was not part of our culture in the past", as GP contends (unless you mean a quite remote past). If anything, it…

So, maybe I'm overthinking. Those two sentences read as if personal liberty is important, but LGBT marriage somehow impact others' personal freedoms. This is based on my knowledge that conservatives tend to be anti-lgbt marriage rights. Maybe it's the grouping of conservatives and libertarians together. Maybe that's where my head gets lost.

Libertarians are complicated.. in my experience they have mix of liberal and conservative values.

Take private property as a canonical example. Private property is good from both liberal and conservative perspective, but for different reasons. Liberals like private property because it confers more freedom to individuals, while conservatives like it because of its hereditary nature, as a reward for being good manager. These are two different values. (Oh and BTW, Marx was one of the first people who pointed out this contradiction, if you reward capitalists with property for doing good, eventually you're gonna run out of it..)

Re: New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

#557

Post by BitwiseFool »

neither_color wrote: post #505
varispeed wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Even seemingly non-controversial posts can become radioactive a few short years later.

Re: New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

#558

Post by dbrueck »

tstrimple wrote: post #480
dbrueck wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Applying those labels to people who are objectively and overtly acting that way is not the problem. The problem is that way too often people are assuming it's there. It's a presumption of intent, "racism is one possible explanation for your viewpoint, therefore I somehow /just know/ that you are a racist person". Example: every recent white-cop-shot-a-black-person incident in the U.S. Not only is there widespread ass…

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…

Can you double check the link? You might have mistakenly posted the wrong one. Thanks!

(I read it and the accompanying PDF and neither seem to support your point of "statistical evidence says racism" - this is a study about how sharing data showing a correlation between race and policing affects people's attitude towards policing)

Re: New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

#559

Post by Dma54rhs »

mmmmmbop wrote: post #426
mrec wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> liberal (as in right-wing) What the hell? These terms are in no way synonyms. You seem to be fairly extreme left, which is fine, but then labelling everyone to the right of you as "right-wing" is not a useful classification. "Left" and "right" are relative to the political centre, not to wherever you yourself happen to be.

Please consider the possibility that GP is from a different country than you are and that liberal may mean something different there. For example in Sweden, the Liberals are a party that "historically was positioned in the centre" but has since "positioned itself more towards the right". [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberals_(Sweden)

Liberals in Europe in general are more right wing. Conservatives like big handouts like your liberals in America to stay in power.

Re: New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

#560

Post by tolbish »

krageon wrote: post #478
tolbish wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you say it is also your job to not question things like diversity initiatives?

Yes, if you want to keep your job then you don't question your employers' politics. If you're annoying to your manager (or their manager, etc), they will fabricate reasons to fire you. It might take a while (in countries with employee protection), but they'll get there.

That sounds like a dreadful work environment you've got there. Some workplaces encourage communication with management, provided it's done respectfully.
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