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

Who cares about diversity?

fakenous.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 536 posts

Re: Who cares about diversity?

#141

Post by tptacek »

joshcsimmons wrote: post #136
tptacek wrote: post #89

The whole blog is like this; it's all sort of comically smug "everybody else in the entire world is wrong, and here is a 7-point axiomatic derivation proving it"†, much of it depending on specific definitions of specific words. Check-mate, atheists! There are lots of good, sharp, critical things to say about the DEI movement, most especially "institutional" DEI, but you can't meaningfully say them when you write with…

>> You know, writing like a high school sophomore on a message board. Ad-hominem, man in the arena, etc.

"This argument is written and reasoned like that of a high school sophomore" is, believe it or not, not an ad-hominem argument.

Re: Who cares about diversity?

#142

Post by ok_dad »

zozbot234 wrote: post #74
bheadmaster wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How would a racist indian national deeply entrenched in caste culture help my company be less racist? To be fair, there are many people from traditionally chauvinistic groups who despise the very chauvinism they live in. Many of them may be intelligent and productive people. Dismissing each and every individual because of the group is the root of discrimination. Some attempts at diversity may go too far - toleratin…

You can't meaningfully enforce open-mindedness or tolerance. The very idea is an oxymoron. The whole notion of tolerance is based on the idea that we might sometimes find it expedient to work alongside people we don't agree with about everything.

Every single person I've met in my life that was racist or sexist or whatever-ist (including myself) has only become a better person and more open-minded when they were forced to work in close proximity to people of other races and cultures. As to myself, I was raised in a pretty racist place in the USA, and via the military I met so many other people that I finally realized that the stereotypes I was taught about others were incorrect, or at least if they were correct there was some cultural context to why that stereotype had been warped from the original context. I think it's better to randomly throw people of different races, sexes, and cultures together than not, personally, even if it makes business a bit less productive or the person hired is slightly less optimal for that position. We're not machines, after all, and shouldn't be treated like only our output matters.

Re: Who cares about diversity?

#144

Post by zwieback »

Some data to back any of these feelings up would be helpful. Academics are well aware of the difficulties associated with wokeism and are actively working on finding practical solutions. This post feels very 2018.

Re: Who cares about diversity?

#145

Post by matthewrobertso »

tptacek wrote: post #141
joshcsimmons wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> You know, writing like a high school sophomore on a message board. Ad-hominem, man in the arena, etc.

"This argument is written and reasoned like that of a high school sophomore" is, believe it or not, not an ad-hominem argument.

"sort of comically smug"

Re: Who cares about diversity?

#146

Post by colpabar »

tptacek wrote: post #122
colpabar wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another reason people don't like diversity initiatives is that whenever you try to have an honest conversation about its problems, you get accused of ridiculous things, like being racist/sexist/etc or thinking nepotism is good.

Nobody thinks nepotism is good (or at least, nobody on this thread does). But there are more- and less- threatening versions of it.

I don't understand what your point is. A company hiring a woman with no relevant experience because she's the niece of the CTO is bad. A company hiring a woman with no relevant experience because she's the niece of the CTO but it's ok this time because she's a woman also seems bad. The former is "garden variety" nepotism, and we all agree it's bad. The latter is the new "woke" nepotism, but it's really the same as the former, with the "woke" part being used as an excuse.

How does that benefit anyone other than the people doing the nepotism?

Re: Who cares about diversity?

#147

Post by [deleted] »

pwinnski wrote: post #2

It could be that the people do care about the values listed, but don't know an effective way to guarantee them, and that existing diversity statements are a stopgap measure until something better is figured out. But no, let's jump directly to "Conclusion: By and large, they don’t care about diversity. They’re just lying, in a really transparent way, because they think it gives them a patina of legal legitimacy." Or..…

[deleted]

Re: Who cares about diversity?

#148

Post by tptacek »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #125
tptacek wrote: post #89

The whole blog is like this; it's all sort of comically smug "everybody else in the entire world is wrong, and here is a 7-point axiomatic derivation proving it"†, much of it depending on specific definitions of specific words. Check-mate, atheists! There are lots of good, sharp, critical things to say about the DEI movement, most especially "institutional" DEI, but you can't meaningfully say them when you write with…

I read the full piece and didn't encounter any phrasing like that. A few things were pushing the envelope, maybe? Haven't been at Uni for a long time, but after reading about the Oberlin case my eyes/ears are open. Suppose it is problematic if the author does indulge in that, but am not going searching for it. Found this piece reasonable on the whole. It does have an opinion on intolerance, and not everyone is going…

It's not hard to come up with valid critiques of institutional DEI. But the blog post we're reading here is conclusory and derives almost entirely from a tendentious definition of a single word.

Re: Who cares about diversity?

#149

Post by stuckinhell »

kadoban wrote: post #114
stuckinhell wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the point, "woke" gives garden variety nepotism a nice shiny ESG approved cover.

If we get rid of everything that some asshole can use as cover, there's not going to be a lot left.

"Woke" is very different that other types of cover. "Woke" gets celebrated and praised, and people have to pretend that hire wasn't hired due to nepotism.

As a manager whose been thru this rodeo, let me tell you what happens.

1. We have to have a mini celebration for "woke but really nepotistic" hire at big corporation.

2. We can never mention that persons skill or the "real" reason they got hired.

3. It gives the "elites" far more power to harass people via HR if they don't like the nepotism

4. The non-nepotism hires can become bitter and resentful, even more so when they have to pickup extra work for no department praise or celebrations if the "woke" hire is bad. I also have to give cover for the "woke" hire.

5. My team starts to collapse, and I have to negotiate all sorts of shit to keep my talented hires.

It's just an absolute nightmare when managing a high performance results required teams.

Re: Who cares about diversity?

#150

Post by pcwalton »

tptacek wrote: post #89

The whole blog is like this; it's all sort of comically smug "everybody else in the entire world is wrong, and here is a 7-point axiomatic derivation proving it"†, much of it depending on specific definitions of specific words. Check-mate, atheists! There are lots of good, sharp, critical things to say about the DEI movement, most especially "institutional" DEI, but you can't meaningfully say them when you write with…

> The author isn't a rando! This is a tenured professor of philosophy at a major university. You know, writing like a high school sophomore on a message board.

Man, that's disappointing. I like Prof. Huemer's writings on free will and philosophy of mind [1] a lot ("Existence Is Evidence of Immortality" is a fun one). I was unaware of his blog up until now—reading it makes me think significantly less of him.

[1]: https://spot.colorado.edu/~huemer/papers.htm

Post reply on HN