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God's Lonely Programmer

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Re: God's Lonely Programmer

#271

Post by PhasmaFelis »

netstag wrote: post #264
DanBC wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens if you send two identical resumes to a gajillion different jobs - the resumes are identical except one has the name "James Smith" and the other has the name "Jamal Jackson". Luckily, other people have done this for us: http://www.povertyactionlab.org/evaluation/discrimination-jo...

Not to discredit your point, as I do believe it's still has some validity, but that study is 12 years old and I'd like to think there has been some progress since then... You know like maybe having a president with the name Barack Obama.

You figure a black person being elected President makes racists stop being racist?

'Cause I know some racists, and I can tell you that the opposite is true.

Re: God's Lonely Programmer

#272

Post by esaym »

I have never heard of this guy. His work and commentary are totally awesome! I have heard more original things and phrases from him in 30 minutes than in the last 2 years!

Re: God's Lonely Programmer

#273

Post by hueving »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #218
hueving wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"while non-white people struggle to find work in tech?", said nobody who has ever been in Silicon Valley.

The definition of "whiteness" in discrimination actually isn't very well correlated to skin color; e.g. Irish people until recently were considered to be "black", and in the UK, still kind of are. Some non-white people like Asians are often considered white in many contexts (like tech hiring in the USA). Try applying for a job in Beijing as a Uighur and even though your skin is whiter than Han, you are still going to…

If 'white' doesn't refer to skin color, then you are just babbling worthless information and making racism worse. You are essentially making 'white' mean 'qualified potential employees'.

Re: God's Lonely Programmer

#274

Post by hueving »

DanBC wrote: post #216
hueving wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"while non-white people struggle to find work in tech?", said nobody who has ever been in Silicon Valley.

What happens if you send two identical resumes to a gajillion different jobs - the resumes are identical except one has the name "James Smith" and the other has the name "Jamal Jackson". Luckily, other people have done this for us: http://www.povertyactionlab.org/evaluation/discrimination-jo...

Anyone qualified is not struggling to find tech work right now, especially in the bay area. My company is dominated by people from China and India. White makes up ~20%.

Re: God's Lonely Programmer

#275

Post by vidarh »

king_jester wrote: post #141
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time his story comes up, there are people who respond with answers along the lines of "what can we do for him? can we find him assisted employment? can we raise money for him?" etc. While these comments are surely well intentioned, they end up being mostly condescending and out of place, as if talking about a completely helpless being. He is openly racist. He can't find a job on his own, unless it's among other…

> His racism probably isn't his fault. It's probably a factor of his condition. I don't know if his racism is the result of or related to his condition. However, even if it is, so what? Why exactly does that behavior get to be overlooked as though it doesn't have a real effect on people who suffer from it? Why does he get assistance to find a job while non-white people struggle to find work in tech?

> However, even if it is, so what? Why exactly does that behavior get to be overlooked as though it doesn't have a real effect on people who suffer from it?

Many places employers are technically - though it's nearly impossible to police - in theory required to attempt to offer reasonable accommodation for physical or mental disabilities.

His behaviour does not "get to be overlooked", and certainly would pose substantial problems, but it is a reasonable question to ask if it is possible for someone to accommodate him in a way that does not put undue strain on other employees or clients.

As for your "while non-white people struggle to find work in tech", it is irrelevant to the question at hand: One injustice does not justify another.

In this case, furthermore, nobody is starting a campaign to get racist bigots jobs in tech, nor do I see any serious attempts at providing him assistance to find a job. People are exchanging a few messages expressing sympathy for a specific person with a known mental illness who has been a visible and at times admired part of the tech community for the last two decades.

Re: God's Lonely Programmer

#276

Post by esaym »

esaym wrote: post #272

I have never heard of this guy. His work and commentary are totally awesome! I have heard more original things and phrases from him in 30 minutes than in the last 2 years!

Down voted for praise? Well...

Re: God's Lonely Programmer

#277

Post by vidarh »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #271
netstag wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to discredit your point, as I do believe it's still has some validity, but that study is 12 years old and I'd like to think there has been some progress since then... You know like maybe having a president with the name Barack Obama.

You figure a black person being elected President makes racists stop being racist? 'Cause I know some racists, and I can tell you that the opposite is true.

To me, the best demonstration of continued racism, is that there's no way Obama - being half-black, half-white - would have been able to get away with self-identifying as white.

Re: God's Lonely Programmer

#278

Post by [deleted] »

anon4 wrote: post #154

Interesting that he says he talks to God through randomness. I heard an idea along these lines not long ago - the measure of entropy in the universe is constantly increasing. But entropy is also a measure of the amount of information stored in the system (if you take a file with low entropy, it will compress to a smaller file with higher entropy). So the weird world of quantum effects is basically caused by (or is th…

[deleted]

Re: God's Lonely Programmer

#280

Post by firebones »

netstag wrote: post #208
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time his story comes up, there are people who respond with answers along the lines of "what can we do for him? can we find him assisted employment? can we raise money for him?" etc. While these comments are surely well intentioned, they end up being mostly condescending and out of place, as if talking about a completely helpless being. He is openly racist. He can't find a job on his own, unless it's among other…

> find an open-minded employer who might listen to the situation and be willing to give Terry a shot? When you strip away the notion, or often the facade, that jobs are not a form of enslavement then you might be asking yourself the question I'm asking: Why would you want to do that to him? It's not like he hasn't been able to find a purpose in life to keep himself happy. Or do you really know anything about him or w…

That's an incredibly interesting take. Flipping the script, is it useful or ethical to find a way to help him monetize his purpose in life to his benefit?
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