111–120 of 227 posts
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That's an ad hominem attack of the exact kind that (I'm guessing) jonesb6 would argue against. If you have some concrete non-racist criticism of jonesb6's post let's hear it. Ideas should be judged on their own merits not the skin color of the originator ... much like Twitter VPs.
Wasn't Beat agreeing with Jonesb6? Did you forget a /sarcasm tag?
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>In point of fact, an African-American guy and a white guy from the same neighborhood and school will have had different experiences growing up. The differences between their experiences is smaller than the differences between that black individual (sidenote: I was recently told by a black guy that African American is worse than black when used as an identifier) and someone of the same race who grew up in a significa…
How is someone who was more likely to be harassed by LEO's going to have a different outlook on the engineering/programming of an internet-based social media service? Not buying it. Is it more diverse? Sure. Does it matter at all for the task they are performing? I don't see how it does. >(sidenote: I was recently told by a black guy that African American is worse than black when used as an identifier) For some - it'…
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Yes - I'm treated very differently from most of my coworkers on account of race. I could give lots of mildly interesting examples - it certainly means my dating life is very different. But how does it affect me on the job? I write quantitative software, and spend lots of time thinking about bayesian hierarchical models and multiple comparisons. You are suggesting I have some unique power. I'd really like to know how…
I do not understand the latter half of your 2nd paragraph as I do not see the parent was suggesting you have unique powers. It seemed to me he was just acknowledging that race plays a part in professional America. As far as how it affects you on the job.... well, in the subject under discussion, they candidates are not even considered for the job because of their race. We have not got to the point where they are even…
The article and the comments here don't even begin to support the claim "candidates are not even considered for the job because of their race".
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In point of fact, an African-American guy and a white guy from the same neighborhood and school will have had different experiences growing up. For example, the white guy probably never had the cops called on him for wandering down a dark street wearing a hoodie. He probably also got more job interviews, if his name sounds white and his friend's doesn't. These experiences will have shaped the two men differently. Tha…
> These experiences will have shaped the two men differently. You are implying that those negative experiences are a product of racism and not of simple statistics. Maybe, only maybe, people _dont have_ as many problems with white guys wandering down a dark street wearing a hoodie as they have with black guys wandering down a dark street wearing a hoodie, so they dont call the cops on the former and call the cops on…
1. The system is unjust due to institutional racism. 2. Blacks are inherently more violent and criminal than whites.
You seem to be arguing the latter.
The one thing that he never explains is exactly what "diversity" he is looking for at Twitter. It seems that the only thing that matters to him is the color of the person's skin. In other words, an African-American MIT CS grad that grew up in Iowa is somehow going to come at problems differently than a white guy from the same town and school and with the same background. I wouldn't really call that diversity, that's…
In point of fact, an African-American guy and a white guy from the same neighborhood and school will have had different experiences growing up. For example, the white guy probably never had the cops called on him for wandering down a dark street wearing a hoodie. He probably also got more job interviews, if his name sounds white and his friend's doesn't. These experiences will have shaped the two men differently. Tha…
However, none of this would help the white person build a content moderation feature or prevent abuse or protect freedom of expression better than the black person.
May I ask specifically how a person's belief that their name was the cause of failing to get a job leads them to create a better content moderation feature?
HN moderators: It would probably be best if you buried my post. I idiotically misread the chart posted in the post. I originally thought the chart under ( https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*F9MLGQLTU2HZD4In6o... ) wasn't normalized to anything; but upon rereading i found that the top row is the comparison row and represents the percentages of working force age us citizens in the tech industry, which Twitter wi…
Based on my own cursory observations of the population flux in the Bay Area, I believe your analysis and thus conclusion is based on a false premise. That analysis assumes that the hiring base is predominately drawn from local people. Speaking anecdotally, I know many people who graduated from college and headed to the Bay Area to look for a job. I myself moved to Mountain View for a job, then later moved away. A mor…
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I quoted your use of "not unexpected" because it suggests that you have some expectation. I would call the the basis for that expectation part of a presumption that you know.
Yeah, i can see how it could be interpreted like that. I didn't have any strong expectation of how it should be. Merely a number of guesses as where that number could end up. To me it seems reasonable that the number would end up somewhere between half of the local percentage and 1.5x of the us percentage (assuming foreigners are not statistically significant), which would put it somewhere between 2.5% and 25%. To me…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes - I'm treated very differently from most of my coworkers on account of race. I could give lots of mildly interesting examples - it certainly means my dating life is very different. But how does it affect me on the job? I write quantitative software, and spend lots of time thinking about bayesian hierarchical models and multiple comparisons. You are suggesting I have some unique power. I'd really like to know how…
If you're in the (to me, enviable) position of never building a user-facing feature in a piece of software -- if you purely get to think algorithms all day, and you never draw on any knowledge or experience you've gained outside a classroom or a book -- then who knows. Maybe it doesn't matter what life experiences you've had. I personally have never had a job like that. My interests, personality, experience, and wisd…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's an ad hominem attack of the exact kind that (I'm guessing) jonesb6 would argue against. If you have some concrete non-racist criticism of jonesb6's post let's hear it. Ideas should be judged on their own merits not the skin color of the originator ... much like Twitter VPs.
Is it ad hominem if it's true? "articles like this are detrimental to equal rights movements" (phrased as a question, not as a statement, but that's a cheap rhetorical trick) is a position taken almost exclusively by the beneficiaries of racial and gender privilege. And jonesb6 did not address the substance of the article, but rather the tone . What it really boils down to is this: "As a beneficiary of privilege, it…
For what it's worth (i.e. not much) I didn't get the same sense from jonesb6's comment that you did. It would have been nice if jonesb6 went into a little more detail about the supposed misrepresentations, but talking about misrepresentations of facts and statistics (should they actually exist) is a far cry from complaining of tone.
Finally:
> Is it ad hominem if it's true?
Definitely. Most ad hominem arguments are true -- that's not what's wrong with them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>In point of fact, an African-American guy and a white guy from the same neighborhood and school will have had different experiences growing up. The differences between their experiences is smaller than the differences between that black individual (sidenote: I was recently told by a black guy that African American is worse than black when used as an identifier) and someone of the same race who grew up in a significa…
How is someone who was more likely to be harassed by LEO's going to have a different outlook on the engineering/programming of an internet-based social media service? Not buying it. Is it more diverse? Sure. Does it matter at all for the task they are performing? I don't see how it does. >(sidenote: I was recently told by a black guy that African American is worse than black when used as an identifier) For some - it'…
One potential example would be that someone who has unfairly been targeted by the police may have higher privacy concerns and also be more aware of possibilities for the government to abuse information and even violate rights; things that can happen with regards to social media profiles.
For a more concrete example, a gay individual who grew up somewhere where being gay was punished (either codified in law or where the law turns a blind eye to the discrimination) is likely to be far more concerned about systems that can leak sexual orientation, for example an eye tracker/pupil measurer that makes an attempt to determine who a subject finds attractive or not. The average heterosexual may understand that leaking this information could be embarrassing for some, but they may not be as aware it could be life threatening.
Yes, an aware individual not of that background could develop the same concerns after thinking long enough, but they will not have the same immediate concern about any system that interrupts a person's ability to 'pass'.