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

Religious Discrimination at Google

cajundiscordian.medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 320 posts

Re: Religious Discrimination at Google

#191

Post by Tomte »

hackyhacky wrote: post #3

In this article, the author doesn't provide any concrete example of the religious discrimination that he's allegedly experienced, or how it's impacted him in any way. It seems that he's very eager to play the victim. A good example of his rush to victimhood is when he tells how he confronted leadership about why Google hasn't opened an engineering office in Louisiana. He seems to take the fact that Google doesn't hav…

He goes even further.

"My superiors said clearly discriminatory things, but I won't tell you what. I will tell you some other words which I believe they truly wanted to say — but didn't — and look how awful those invented utterances are. No, I really won't tell what they actually said."

Re: Religious Discrimination at Google

#192

Post by dvzk »

kaba0 wrote: post #82
k1ll3r wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The notion that humanity would be morally lost without the guidance of religious belief is laughable. For sake of gaining some perspective and widening one's thoughts I'd suggest reading the works of any of the number of major philosophers. And if you need to read in some book that oppression is bad, that murdering people is bad, that basic human rights are a good idea, etc. - if you need to read that in a book and h…

> And if you need to read in some book that oppression is bad, that murdering people is bad, that basic human rights are a good idea, etc I mean, you just called generations upon generations bad people.. Like, morals also evolve with society, and everyone is influenced by the society they grow up in. Just a very easy counterexample -- gladiator fights were perfectly acceptable in people in Rome. Were they bad people…

It’s rare to find any ethics professors who argue in favor of moral relativism in this manner. A vast majority are realists or constructivists who would easily claim that Romans were bad for practicing slavery and forced combat for fun.

Re: Religious Discrimination at Google

#193

Post by ekianjo »

eurasiantiger wrote: post #163
ekianjo wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m not sure whether Copernicus would agree with the sentiment. This shows your ignorance of History more than anything else.

Hmm. That is what I was taught, living in a Protestant country. And it would seem I was taught just fine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolaus_Copernicus#Tolosani

> It is worth noting, as Stanford University does, that the Catholic Church had no official stance on Copernican teachings. Pope Clement VII, who died about a decade before Copernicus, was said to have been receptive about the astronomer’s theories. While there was no recorded response from Pope Paul III, one of his advisors intended to condemn the book before dying.

> Phil Lawler, editor of Catholic World News, also says Copernicus was in good standing with the Church when he died. He notes that while heliocentric theory was controversial during Copernicus’ lifetime his work did not cause him any conflict with the Catholic Church.

https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/2013/0219/Copernicus-an...

The Catholic Church did not take action to ban Copernicus's book until long after he was dead (in 1616, more than 60 years after his death). The usual "Copernicus was fighting against the Church" narrative has no evidence at all.

Re: Religious Discrimination at Google

#194

Post by concinds »

danhau wrote: post #118

This probably isn’t going to get read, but the HN comments to this post really are off putting. They show Reddit levels of naivety. Just spewing further insults and discrimination with no attempt in putting yourself in the author’s position. And enough straw to feed a horse (as someone else said the other day). I came to HN to get away from this sort of thing, but the Zeitgeist here seems to be just the same. Or is t…

The most off-putting thing is when some commenters incoherently go from arguing religion is a private matter and should not be revealed even when asked, to arguing "belief in a dude in the sky" is a pathology or "crazy" (first, nobody asked. And you're not a doctor). Seems very narrow minded.

Re: Religious Discrimination at Google

#195

Post by orwin »

turing_complete wrote: post #157

Google engineers tend to overestimate how smart they are because they were able to solve a few medium-difficult Leetcode questions. And they just don't see the water that they are swimming in. They probably don't know any young, intelligent Christian. Of course, even talented software engineers, like most people today, tend to be ignorant about history, philosophy, and theology. They only heard a strawman caricature…

Deist != Christian. I respect deists as much as atheist. I just don't like the idea that your god is the only real one over the thousands of other gods

Re: Religious Discrimination at Google

#196

Post by InfamousRece »

HuwFulcher wrote: post #185
tasuki wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your equation of Santa Claus with God reveals your prejudice and stereotyping of religious people. The person you're replying to never equated Santa Claus with any kind god. It was just a question. Would you take an adult insisting Santa Claus is real seriously? Do you think people are entitled to their beliefs, whatever they may be?

They didn’t explicitly state it but it’s heavily implied based on the context. No, I wouldn’t take an adult believing in Santa Claus seriously. They’re entitled to their beliefs and if they do their job well then I have no reason to have an issue with them. The issue I take is with the equivocation they have made. Believing in Santa Claus and believing in a divine entity are two drastically different things.

In what way are they different? There is no evidence any divine entities are real just like there is no evidence that Santa is real.

Re: Religious Discrimination at Google

#197

Post by wrzuteczka »

kaba0 wrote: post #100
wrzuteczka wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any proof that the AI is anything else than a complex statistical model and actually has consciousness?

Well, it can be an emergent property. To be honest, if your belief is heavily science-based, then there is not much else to believe regarding our very own consciouscness -- it is an emergent property of billions of interconnected neurons. Though on the other hand, even the biggest AI systems are lightyears behind biological networks when we look at interconnectedness.

I wouldn’t call it science-based, it’s just materialism. There’s no science in believing that something that can be completely described by a set of logical rules, or mathematical formulae, or something similar, suddenly gains new features that cannot even be defined with math or logic. It’s pure belief, without too many arguments for it.

Re: Religious Discrimination at Google

#198

Post by wrzuteczka »

astrange wrote: post #108
wrzuteczka wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any proof that the AI is anything else than a complex statistical model and actually has consciousness?

Complex statistical models can be conscious. The reason AIs aren’t conscious is they’re not embodied beings and don’t have any need to develop it to stay alive.

So how being embodied helps consciousness emerge? If it’s just the statistical model that underpins the consciousness, then it doesn’t matter if it’s embodied or not. It doesn’t matter to the algorithm what hardware it runs on.

Re: Religious Discrimination at Google

#199

Post by MattPalmer1086 »

InfamousRece wrote: post #196
HuwFulcher wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn’t explicitly state it but it’s heavily implied based on the context. No, I wouldn’t take an adult believing in Santa Claus seriously. They’re entitled to their beliefs and if they do their job well then I have no reason to have an issue with them. The issue I take is with the equivocation they have made. Believing in Santa Claus and believing in a divine entity are two drastically different things.

In what way are they different? There is no evidence any divine entities are real just like there is no evidence that Santa is real.

There's more evidence for Santa! He brings presents and they always appear, just as we were told ;)

Re: Religious Discrimination at Google

#200

Post by kaba0 »

wrzuteczka wrote: post #197
kaba0 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it can be an emergent property. To be honest, if your belief is heavily science-based, then there is not much else to believe regarding our very own consciouscness -- it is an emergent property of billions of interconnected neurons. Though on the other hand, even the biggest AI systems are lightyears behind biological networks when we look at interconnectedness.

I wouldn’t call it science-based, it’s just materialism. There’s no science in believing that something that can be completely described by a set of logical rules, or mathematical formulae, or something similar, suddenly gains new features that cannot even be defined with math or logic. It’s pure belief, without too many arguments for it.

> suddenly gains new features that cannot even be defined with math or logic

It at most can not be defined due to its complexity. Also, emergent properties are everywhere, like you can assign properties to a fire you can’t assign to the chemical process of burning. For all we know, consciousness may just as well be an arbitrary threshold of complexity.

But I stand corrected that the correct term is indeed materialism.

Post reply on HN