Beware the Pretty People • Hacker News Board

Re: Beware the Pretty People

#61

Post by potatoyogurt » Sun, Mar 01, 2015, 6:35 AM UTC

sounds wrote: post #37

rpcope1 wrote: post #16

It's funny, this article seems to be rather full of irony. At the beginning of the article, I started miss when a lot of the tech scene was a little more grass roots, but maybe that's just rose colored glasses. Obviously, things have gotten more sophisticated since the days of simple computers like the TRS-80 and while it's not possible to totally grep everything in a modern OS, I do miss some of the hacker ethos tha…

That edit is the part I wish had been your thesis. (Because now I feel like I have to write the following:) There _is_ a unifying theme to the trends TechCrunch is writing about, but it's not what TechCrunch says it is. TechCrunch: "the establishment is flocking to the tech industry." That's just the eternal september, ad infinitum. Hate being pushed out? So did the people _you_ pushed out, when you were annoying and…

I agree with your general point, but the part about Arrow's Impossibility Theorem is kind of nonsense. Arrow's Impossibility Theorem is a really specific provable statement about voting systems based on ranked preferences. You can't just change the conditions around freely and and there are certainly many sets of criteria that a ranked voting system can satisfy.

Re: Beware the Pretty People

#62

Post by meric » Sun, Mar 01, 2015, 6:36 AM UTC

O____________O wrote: post #56

yummyfajitas wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an important thread connecting the two: In the context of diversity in tech, nerds are a subculture dominated by White males. This culture has a misogynistic dark side... This is a popular and powerful attack line used by "pretty people" seeking power in tech. It's used to demonize the old guard. When the old guard tries to intellectually dispute it, as is their custom, one can then attack their person direc…

objective and meritocratic nerd hiring practices (e.g. hire-by-github, death by brainteaser) That selects for adequately privileged (generally) white males with the spare time to create projects on github and a particular interest in brain-teasers. To my knowledge, hiring in all fields is an utter joke, with essentially zero research ever having been performed. It's entirely based on bias and guided by HR-fueled fear…

There are plenty of non-white people in github. If there are still too many white people on github, you're free to analyse other programmers from websites other than github, such as this Chinese one: https://code.csdn.net/dwzteam/dwz_jui

All "colours" of people have free time to create projects.

Re: Beware the Pretty People

#63

Post by moultano » Sun, Mar 01, 2015, 6:38 AM UTC

sago wrote: post #48

littletimmy wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you want to take this percentage game further? Let's talk about Jews. If a system is truly meritocratic, how is it that 0.2% of the population of a particular demographic has 20% of the Nobel prizes? Do you think, by your standards, there is some sort of a Jewish "discriminatory behavior" at play here? I'm sure you see by now that playing this percentage game quickly gets very discriminatory itself. I think a cert…

> Do you think, by your standards, there is some > sort of a Jewish "discriminatory behavior" at > play here? Yes. No doubt. Jewish men have certain forms of privilege, which makes it easier for some of them to access elite scientific institutions. They also have several axes in which they lack privilege. Those axes are less significant in the earning of a Nobel prize. You seem to think you've discovered intersection…

Do you honestly believe that all differences are due to privilege?

Re: Beware the Pretty People

#64

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Mar 01, 2015, 6:40 AM UTC

sago wrote: post #48

littletimmy wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you want to take this percentage game further? Let's talk about Jews. If a system is truly meritocratic, how is it that 0.2% of the population of a particular demographic has 20% of the Nobel prizes? Do you think, by your standards, there is some sort of a Jewish "discriminatory behavior" at play here? I'm sure you see by now that playing this percentage game quickly gets very discriminatory itself. I think a cert…

> Do you think, by your standards, there is some > sort of a Jewish "discriminatory behavior" at > play here? Yes. No doubt. Jewish men have certain forms of privilege, which makes it easier for some of them to access elite scientific institutions. They also have several axes in which they lack privilege. Those axes are less significant in the earning of a Nobel prize. You seem to think you've discovered intersection…

[deleted]

Re: Beware the Pretty People

#65

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Mar 01, 2015, 6:43 AM UTC

sago wrote: post #48

littletimmy wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you want to take this percentage game further? Let's talk about Jews. If a system is truly meritocratic, how is it that 0.2% of the population of a particular demographic has 20% of the Nobel prizes? Do you think, by your standards, there is some sort of a Jewish "discriminatory behavior" at play here? I'm sure you see by now that playing this percentage game quickly gets very discriminatory itself. I think a cert…

> Do you think, by your standards, there is some > sort of a Jewish "discriminatory behavior" at > play here? Yes. No doubt. Jewish men have certain forms of privilege, which makes it easier for some of them to access elite scientific institutions. They also have several axes in which they lack privilege. Those axes are less significant in the earning of a Nobel prize. You seem to think you've discovered intersection…

[deleted]

Re: Beware the Pretty People

#66

Post by zby » Sun, Mar 01, 2015, 6:44 AM UTC

hackuser wrote: post #26

yummyfajitas wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an important thread connecting the two: In the context of diversity in tech, nerds are a subculture dominated by White males. This culture has a misogynistic dark side... This is a popular and powerful attack line used by "pretty people" seeking power in tech. It's used to demonize the old guard. When the old guard tries to intellectually dispute it, as is their custom, one can then attack their person direc…

Discriminatory behavior (sexist, racist, etc.) often persists, in my experience, because the perpetrators don't realize what they are doing. It's not that they think, 'I want to exclude women from tech jobs'; they blindly follow old patterns of hiring and other behavior. Humans naturally are very egocentric and have to work to see things from others' perspectives. When they do, they change; most people don't want to…

Are you sure that all internal traits needed for "winning" (what ever that means for you) have identical distribution across every possible divide of the society (by sex, race, social class, etc)?

Consider this: "The differences in average IQ between men and women are small in magnitude and inconsistent in direction, although the variability of male scores has been found to be greater than that of females, resulting in more males than females in the top and bottom of the IQ distribution." (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_intelligence) We don't have any stats about the most failed business ideas - but I bet that males would also be overrepresented there - and this is because males are crazy risk takers.

As to the other part "And is it coincidence that the 38% group has controlled power, wealth, and privelege for hundreds of years, and still does in most other situations (governnment, non-tech business, etc.)?" - I believe that this might be a tautology in a capitalistic system - those that 'win the business race' are those that also gain power in this kind of society.

And I don't really mean that there is no discrimination - this is only to show that "why would 38% of a population[1] produce 90%[2] of the winners" can have answers other than discrimination. I do think there is discrimination and we should fight it, I even believe that even if there was no discrimination then still we would be better off if we had more diversity in many places - so it might make sense to do the 'reverse' discrimination (but you'd need to be very careful with that). I only want to say that to do anything positive you need to start with a good understanding of the mechanisms at play.

Re: Beware the Pretty People

#67

Post by sago » Sun, Mar 01, 2015, 6:44 AM UTC

kbenson wrote: post #53

sago wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But that's where the "pretty people" will just call me a racist/sexist Not at all. There is little doubt that 'merit' defined as an capability or skill of an individual is not uniform. The point is that 'merit' is systemically produced. It is a function of money, aspiration, parental ambition, education, culturation, in-group bias, and many other factors. Another way to phrase this is 'privilege', though that word…

The point is that 'merit' is systemically produced. It is a function of money, aspiration, parental ambition, education, culturation, and many other factors. Another way to phrase this is 'privilege', though that word is considered some kind of anathema by people who don't like to see their elevated status and capabilities as somehow a function of their environment. I don't think anyone is really arguing that privile…

Right. Be careful of making semantic arguments about what words 'really' mean. It isn't very useful for getting to the bottom of what is actually happening.

'Merit' has its own problems, because it connotes 'deserving', and it is a problem to suggest that a rich, Harvard educated white male deserves a job more than a poor, community college educated black female. So language has baggage.

But let's say we're talking about 'imminent capability (as opposed to potential capability) and qualifications', then yes, it is an undeniable short-term optimisation to fill roles with these people. The economic argument to take seriously is that, by doing so we propagate privilege, and that in doing so we miss bringing forward people with high potential capability but low social privilege, who would be, in the long term, a better optimised workforce. And that is irrespective of the moral argument, that an economic optimisation at the cost of the opportunity of all is perhaps too high a price to pay.

> Did you really just do that?

Yes. There's no problem with being ignorant of things we don't know. Every single article on HN is full of stuff that I'm ignorant of. The things I am ignorant of knows no bounds. The poster I responded to seemed unaware that the things he was bringing up have long histories of being discussed and wrestled with in more sophisticated terms. He seemed to think that discussions of such things were 'stopped' because they were not allowed in some way, where actually they are discussed in very great detail and sophisticated by hundreds perhaps thousands of writers.

I think it more likely he is ignorant of that, than racist or sexist, though since he bought up the question of being accused of those things, I thought it wise to include those options.

Re: Beware the Pretty People

#68

Post by sago » Sun, Mar 01, 2015, 6:46 AM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #50

sago wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But that's where the "pretty people" will just call me a racist/sexist Not at all. There is little doubt that 'merit' defined as an capability or skill of an individual is not uniform. The point is that 'merit' is systemically produced. It is a function of money, aspiration, parental ambition, education, culturation, in-group bias, and many other factors. Another way to phrase this is 'privilege', though that word…

If you want to define "privilege" as pretty much anything which causes merit to be non-uniformly distributed, then the fact that Asian males are overrepresented due to privilege is tautologically true. Similarly, water is wet. All you've really said is "I assign the word 'privilege' to whatever the cause is for Asian males performing well in tech." That's not really relevant to this discussion. [edit: Sago, I think y…

Nope, I've pointed out that the way you are using 'merit' overlaps with the way social scientists use the term 'privilege'.

Change the word 'privilege' for 'boondoggle', it doesn't matter, the point still stands. But as I pointed out, the use of the word 'privilege' is often such anathema that it prevents certain groups of people listening to the point, instead having them focus on the word.

Re: Beware the Pretty People

#69

Post by sago » Sun, Mar 01, 2015, 6:47 AM UTC

jqm wrote: post #59

sago wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you think, by your standards, there is some > sort of a Jewish "discriminatory behavior" at > play here? Yes. No doubt. Jewish men have certain forms of privilege, which makes it easier for some of them to access elite scientific institutions. They also have several axes in which they lack privilege. Those axes are less significant in the earning of a Nobel prize. You seem to think you've discovered intersection…

It could be less privilege and more a long cultural history of intellectual activity and thus, being raised in an environment that encourages these kind of endeavors.

When 'privilege' is used in these topics, it is often rather broadly defined to mean any feature of the accident of your birth that is beneficial compared to others who lack it. So yes, a long history of intellectual achievement is a privilege in that sense: the prevalence of expectation (you can do this), of value (it is worth doing this), of role-models (so and so, who is similar to you, did this), mentorship (so and so, who your uncle knows, knows people who do this), and so on.

So yes, a long history of achieving X in a group tends to act as a privilege for children born in to that group, because there is a well-worn and understood path to going in that direction.

I get why people hate the word 'privilege' so much, but that is basically the hegemonic term of art.

Re: Beware the Pretty People

#70

Post by sago » Sun, Mar 01, 2015, 6:48 AM UTC

moultano wrote: post #63

sago wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you think, by your standards, there is some > sort of a Jewish "discriminatory behavior" at > play here? Yes. No doubt. Jewish men have certain forms of privilege, which makes it easier for some of them to access elite scientific institutions. They also have several axes in which they lack privilege. Those axes are less significant in the earning of a Nobel prize. You seem to think you've discovered intersection…

Do you honestly believe that all differences are due to privilege?

No, not at all. I think a large amount of diversity among individuals has nothing to do with privilege. Privilege is an inherently probabilistic bias, it doesn't determine anything.

When you find achievement highly correlated with a cultural group, however, it is pretty likely to be a function of privilege (in the social science sense). The alternative hypothesis is that, for example, Jews are just innately better at science.

I think the research that has been done into racial differences in intellectual abilities has generally failed to find anything that suggests the latter is likely.