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

Google parts with Cloud VP over his manifesto renouncing his antisemitism

cnbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 111 posts

Re: Google parts with Cloud VP over his manifesto renouncing his antisemitism

#71

Post by stale2002 »

dogorman wrote: post #15

"When you surround an army, leave an outlet free. Do not press a desperate foe too hard." -Sun Tzu You should allow your opposition to at least believe they have an alternative to digging in and fighting you to the bitter end. Even if you have no intention of allowing them to escape or surrender, you should let them believe it's still possible.

> they have an alternative to digging in and fighting you to the bitter end

There was an alternative though. The alternative was for this guy to not make a cringy blog post about his past anti-semitism, and simply not talk about it.

The solution to people having horrible ideas in the past, is not for them to make giant, public renouncements.

Instead, the solution is for those people to be ashamed enough about their past positions, that they won't even admit that they held them.

That is a really good solution for most people, as most people are not going to have every little detail of their past interrogated. It is very much possible for people with these bad ideas, to merely stop having those bad ideas, pretend like they never had them, and join productive society.

Re: Google parts with Cloud VP over his manifesto renouncing his antisemitism

#72

Post by ramesh31 »

Simulacra wrote: post #24

My takeaway from this if you've ever done or said something bad in the past, bury it. Don't ever bring it up again. Don't confess to it, don't talk about how you've changed, just bury it. Your past is an empty black hole, because otherwise it seems, you're damned if you do, damned if you don't. This guy should be applauded for recognizing his own hatred, and how he's changed and left that hate behind. Instead, he los…

>Is forgiveness and growing from our mistakes completely dead now?

Yes. And you nailed it; there can be no explanation of anything anymore. Nuance is irrelevant. Best to keep all conversation strictly professional, maybe talk about sports teams or the weather but that's it. Your personal thoughts must now be either kept completely internal or published anonymously if you wish to take part in our progressive society.

Re: Google parts with Cloud VP over his manifesto renouncing his antisemitism

#73

Post by josh_today »

JohnHaugeland wrote: post #7
josh_today wrote: post #3

This is the type of change we need to celebrate in people not further scrutinize! As a Jew I would love to create dialogue with a person who realized the past hate was unjust, to hear why the hate existed and more importantly to understand what opened their eyes. It is that process that will help eliminate hate across the board. Today as a society we approach discrimination through censorship and cancel culture which…

Read what he said and then say this again with a straight face

It’s a long read, so far I have skimmed through it and find his points honest and not hurtful.

Anything in specific you saw?

Re: Google parts with Cloud VP over his manifesto renouncing his antisemitism

#74

Post by ramesh31 »

Antisemitism is a lot like pedophilia; if you find yourself even mentioning its' existence, you're immediately suspect yourself. Best to never let the words even come out of your mouth regardless of context. Deny, suppress, gaslight, and ignore anything that even remotely touches the subject. No one ever got brownie points for profoundly exclaiming their lack of hatred for jewish people.

(And you see I'll be downvoted here for even mentioning it. Q.E.D.)

Re: Google parts with Cloud VP over his manifesto renouncing his antisemitism

#75

Post by xrd »

mattzito wrote: post #56
mfer wrote: post #13

If we look at things in terms of positive and negative reinforcement this has some interesting consequences. So, he admitted to antisemitism in the past and shared how he has grown or is growing past it. This kind of admission by him has the ability to challenge other and positively reinforce others who are in a similar situation to him. That _positive_ reinforcement for change away from antisemitism. He was pushed o…

So, I'll start off by saying - I work at google, in cloud, but not for this person, I don't know anything about him, and this is my own opinion. I think if someone had asked him at an all hands for his position on the israel palestine conflict, and he said something like: "I grew up in a strict Egyptian Muslim household, indoctrinated to hate Israel and Jews, and it wasn't until I was exposed to jewish people and bec…

Thank you for posting this. I learned a lot. You've added a lot of context that wasn't there for me before.

Re: Google parts with Cloud VP over his manifesto renouncing his antisemitism

#76

Post by jonfw »

VikingCoder wrote: post #6
websites2023 wrote: post #2

Awadallah will land on his feet, but what signal does this send to other holders of hateful ideologies? To me, the signal is: “You can’t change. Not really. If you ever held a heterodox view, ever expressed that view in any medium at any time in you life, or were caught in our surveillance capitalist nightmare systems doing so, you’re dead to us.” How does that inspire anyone to change their view?

I think we're going to get to the point where people only share their views on sensitive manners in anonymous / pseudo-anonymous forums, so they can't be linked to you. That's not necessarily terrible.

Opinions without identities are meaningless. We are increasingly living in a society where the only opinions we can attach to a human are from our families or talking heads on TV and social media.

Re: Google parts with Cloud VP over his manifesto renouncing his antisemitism

#77

Post by underseacables »

xrd wrote: post #5

As awkward is his note was, this is a public admission that he had bigoted views and grew and is still trying to grow out of them. I wish I was a fly on the wall at Google to understand why that's not acceptable. Growing and learning is necessary and the only hope.

Maybe Google is taking the view that anything even remotely controversial which could cause someone to look negatively upon the company, is a cancer that must be removed immediately.

Re: Google parts with Cloud VP over his manifesto renouncing his antisemitism

#78

Post by underseacables »

CivBase wrote: post #60

I complemented Google for how they handled a similar situation in the comments of a HN article from a few weeks ago[0]. In that case, they reassigned their head of diversity in light of his former antisemitic statements which had been recently uncovered. Just like their "VP of developer relations for Google Cloud" Amr Awadallah, their "head of diversity" Kamau Bobb had publicly renounced their old ways but, given the…

It’s possible they saw firing their head of diversity (which I think they should have) as politically messy. Easier to fire some people of color than others. In the situation you pointed out, Google may have feared BLM more than they fear the Arab world. It really feels like there’s an algorithm at work here, not rational sense.

Re: Google parts with Cloud VP over his manifesto renouncing his antisemitism

#79

Post by flockonus »

mattzito wrote: post #56
mfer wrote: post #13

If we look at things in terms of positive and negative reinforcement this has some interesting consequences. So, he admitted to antisemitism in the past and shared how he has grown or is growing past it. This kind of admission by him has the ability to challenge other and positively reinforce others who are in a similar situation to him. That _positive_ reinforcement for change away from antisemitism. He was pushed o…

So, I'll start off by saying - I work at google, in cloud, but not for this person, I don't know anything about him, and this is my own opinion. I think if someone had asked him at an all hands for his position on the israel palestine conflict, and he said something like: "I grew up in a strict Egyptian Muslim household, indoctrinated to hate Israel and Jews, and it wasn't until I was exposed to jewish people and bec…

Perfect quote paragraph you have there, it would have been ideal indeed. However i agree he's not there yet, but trying to make the transition in public, while boosting his ego = recipe for disaster.

Another way i was thinking about it, is someone on such a high position can't be such a dummy, therefore he might have unconsciously chose to spend some of his accumulated status/power to stoke some awareness to some factor that he believes it should be more spread; and managed to do a terrible job a communication whatever was his thorn.

Re: Google parts with Cloud VP over his manifesto renouncing his antisemitism

#80

Post by ryan93 »

websites2023 wrote: post #2

Awadallah will land on his feet, but what signal does this send to other holders of hateful ideologies? To me, the signal is: “You can’t change. Not really. If you ever held a heterodox view, ever expressed that view in any medium at any time in you life, or were caught in our surveillance capitalist nightmare systems doing so, you’re dead to us.” How does that inspire anyone to change their view?

You can literally can change, you dont have to write a linkedin post about it.
Post reply on HN