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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

#641

Post by wpietri »

slibhb wrote: post #568
wpietri wrote: post #13

Funny that they don't mention what "certain, commonplace views" people "stay silent" about. That might put a different spin on things. As I mentioned [1] about the Basecamp debacle, you can't get full "viewpoint diversity" and full "identity diversity" because some viewpoints are hostile to some identities. Given our society's long history of those viewpoints being endemic, and given the slow movement away from ident…

In your tweet, you immediately go to "well off white guys". The fact that you feel comfortable and proud to write like this in public, under your real name, perfectly encapsulates how far off the reservation you are.

I am a well-off white guy. Please explain why you think I can't talk openly about a group I'm in, one that was favored by law and custom starting right at the beginning of my country.

Re: New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

#642

Post by wpietri »

eyko wrote: post #358
wpietri wrote: post #13

Funny that they don't mention what "certain, commonplace views" people "stay silent" about. That might put a different spin on things. As I mentioned [1] about the Basecamp debacle, you can't get full "viewpoint diversity" and full "identity diversity" because some viewpoints are hostile to some identities. Given our society's long history of those viewpoints being endemic, and given the slow movement away from ident…

> you can't get full "viewpoint diversity" and full "identity diversity" because some viewpoints are hostile to some identities. I've heard variations of this idea and I personally disagree. Yes, some ideas are hostile to some identities, including mine (black), but hostility we can live with. It's disheartening to see society devolve to a state where being offensive is considered being harmful. If you believe that,…

You seem to think the only kind of harm is violence. I find that might hard to fathom. There is rich individual and statistical evidence that hate and bias cause lasting harm.

Re: New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

#643

Post by mentalpiracy »

lucasverra wrote: post #631
beaconstudios wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does only allowing yes or no answers increase nuance?

Because everyone gets to see a Yes followed than a No video. Also, besides the classical "like button", there is a Respect button that signals that you are willing to open the door to the other side. Hence, the nuancing and approaching instead of flame wars

Why does your approach presuppose that there are only two sides to any given question?

Re: New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

#644

Post by wpietri »

tdeck wrote: post #109
jollybean wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most newly contentious formerly 'commonplace view' is the position that 'we should treat people for who they are, not for their race, gender' etc.. This is actually the fault line between classical progressives and newer groups. CRT hinges on the notion that groups are marginalized in a million unseen ways, in which case, one simply cannot ignore anothers race, rather one must make assumptions about that person's…

Somehow the legacy of MLK has been reduced to just that one quote, even though he wrote a a book ("Why We Can't Wait") that advocated for affirmative action programs for black people. His legacy has effectively been sanitized and "abridged" to be less challenging to persistent and harmful power structures.

Agreed. He was very clear that solving the existing problems involved directly confronting them. "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" makes very clear that however uncomfortable white people are with being forced to look at what's going on, that discomfort is a necessary precondition to progress: "Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word 'tension.' I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth."

Re: New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

#645

Post by HaggardFinical »

fidesomnes wrote: post #517
tstrimple wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why everyone keeps scoffing at the idea of calling some of these folks Nazis or racists. It's not hyperbole or an exaggeration. We did have a rally with a bunch of white nationalists exercising their "free speech" to chant "The Jews will not replace us" and they ended up murdering someone there. We had a National Security Advisor to the President of the United States promoting replacement theory. There a…

> I'm not sure why everyone keeps scoffing at the idea of calling some of these folks Nazis or racists. Except you call everyone Nazis or racists including Jews, blacks, and others (J. K. Rowling for a recent example) who would be considered disqualified from white ethno-nationalist movements.

Can you point to an example of anyone calling Just Kidding Rowling a nazi or a racist?

Re: New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

#646

Post by wpietri »

notsureaboutpg wrote: post #17
wpietri wrote: post #13

Funny that they don't mention what "certain, commonplace views" people "stay silent" about. That might put a different spin on things. As I mentioned [1] about the Basecamp debacle, you can't get full "viewpoint diversity" and full "identity diversity" because some viewpoints are hostile to some identities. Given our society's long history of those viewpoints being endemic, and given the slow movement away from ident…

But many conservative viewpoints are not hostile to identities. If I don't agree with Affirmative Action, am I hostile to someone's identity? A majority of Californians at the ballot box will disagree with AA but none of them will say it out loud at the workplace. It's the misconception that identities are "opposed" by certain viewpoints that leads to this.

Some are, some aren't. I have not noticed conservative colleaguess being afraid to say they're in favor of a tax cut, for example.

But consider Buckley's definition: "A conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop [...]". I think that's fine; as an engineer, I'm dispositionally conservative. But in each case, it's worth asking what capital-C Conservatives are actually trying to conserve. Given how ripe America's history is with oppression of everybody who wasn't a well-off white man, it is extremely easy to conserve that oppression.

So in practice, quite a number of Conservative viewpoints are hostile to certain identities. That's obviously true with LGBT+ folks, who in my lifetime have had to fight to get the same rights as anybody else and have faced deep Conservative opposition every step of the way. It is less obviously true for other identity groups, and I'm willing to credit the notion that many Conservative individuals are not as consciously focused on oppressing some minority in the way they were with LGBT+ people. But conscious intent doesn't matter a ton to the people facing the sharp end of oppressive systems.

Re: New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

#647

Post by Nasrudith »

scruple wrote: post #601
ex_amazon_sde wrote: post #579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Political polarization is older than social media Yes, it was widely reported in debates in ancient Athens and the Roman empire. But I wrote "Social media did a lot to foster outrage and destroy nuanced thinking.", which is different. Humanity has never seen before a billion-dollar industry generating user engagement by fueling online altercation. Instant gratification, dopamine cycle addiction and all of that.

Maybe there should be IRB-style oversight for Twitter, etc..., to tweak their algorithms. They are, after all, experimenting on humans here.

Literally any change would count as "an experiment". Not just for algorithims but for "do people like to buy this new product". Saying there should be limited changes of algorithms is a popular "hot take" but it fundamentally doesn't make any goddamned sense.

Human experiments being activities defined by the subject instead of the object make more sense. Can you have the human-involved experiment with just the objects occur naturally?

You cannot just leave the props lying around a college campus and get a Milgram's experiment replication attempt. You cannot just have a freezing chamber or scalpels to repeat the horrors of nazi Germany and Unit 731.

Re: New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

#648

Post by Nasrudith »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #118
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…

I would say that this is a failure of philosophy in political leadership. Not that philosophy was ever paramount in politics, but it was at least expected in the highest classes. Everything devolves into tribalism without philosophy. It looks like people are discoursing, but they are really just signalling.

What makes you think that tribalism isn't in philosophy? It is no pancaea or vaccine and has a history of basis of tribalism - the Great Schism for one. If there is a lack of tribalism in niche philosophies well, it isn't important enough to have a tribe.

Re: New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

#649

Post by intergalplan »

stickfigure wrote: post #621
rovolo wrote: post #588

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are: 55k "Locomotive engineers and operators" (90% male) 1.7m "Chief executives" (70% male) 1.9m "Software developers" (80% male) 3.2m "Architecture and engineering occupations" (85% male) Maybe there is a lot of handwringing within the locomotive industry, but it really doesn't seem important enough for the rest of us to care about.

Sure. And there are fewer full-blown autistic people than there are people "on the spectrum". But it's a lot easier to study autism by looking at severe cases than it is to try to figure out what's biologically different about people who are "a little aspy". 92% of veterinarians are female 98.8% (!) of preschool and kindergarten teachers are female If you want to understand gender imbalance in employment, these are t…

> 98.8% (!) of preschool and kindergarten teachers are female

I'm fairly sure a big part of the driver for the imbalance in education is that being a teacher is one of the only ways, other than being a full-time employee (not contractor) some place like Google, to access European-like levels of parental leave, plus European-like levels of time-off, generally, which is also hugely valuable when you have kids, while also being a career in which leaving multiple times for months at a time to have kids (if you time it well with Summer, or hit up FMLA time) is minimally disruptive to one's career growth, which is unusual for non-very-rare-and-hard-to-get jobs. Plus, and this isn't to be under-appreciated, teachers are in demand everywhere, so one can gain all the above and move to (for example) let your spouse chase higher wages at a less-family-friendly job (nursing is similarly friendly in that demanded-everywhere way, and go figure, nursing is dominated by women, too).

Relatedly, teaching is also one of the most single-parenting-friendly jobs around. The pay may not be great, but you're off (more or less) when your kids are, it's stable, and it comes with benefits. Retirement, even! It may also let you do things like get a job in a good school district, while living in a worse district (cheaper housing), but send your kids to the better district you work in, which can make a huge difference if you're on a single income.

For younger grades in particular, I think it's all of the above, plus a combination of simple interest-factor, and of men fearing (not unjustly) that any interest in or affinity for young kids (who aren't relatives) will make them look extremely creepy.

Re: New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

#650

Post by slibhb »

wpietri wrote: post #641
slibhb wrote: post #568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In your tweet, you immediately go to "well off white guys". The fact that you feel comfortable and proud to write like this in public, under your real name, perfectly encapsulates how far off the reservation you are.

I am a well-off white guy. Please explain why you think I can't talk openly about a group I'm in, one that was favored by law and custom starting right at the beginning of my country.

Your skin color and socioeconomic status are irrelevant.

You can talk openly about whatever you like. The fact that you don't understand how awful it is to talk about a "well-off white male mentality" is an indictment of you as a person. You've lost the plot completely and your worldview is characterized by comic levels of intolerance.

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