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Google’s first all-hands after 2016 election [video]

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Re: Google’s first all-hands after 2016 election [video]

#151

Post by gizmo686 »

wyldfire wrote: post #139
gizmo686 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is literally what Google was founded on. Their core technology behind their initial success was pagerank, an algorithm whose sole purpose is to manipulate what people see. They have stayed dominant through a combination of market forces, and keeping their algorithm near (or, IMO at) the top of the market for generalized search [0], and have leveraged this competency in other markets (video, ads, etc). Beyond jus…

> That is literally what Google was founded on. Hooray! Pre-Google search sucked. It was really bad. > The alternative is to go back to human gatekeepers. I don't know what this means. Humans have never audited/controlled what gets indexed by crawlers. It's always automata unleashed on the data. It would be terribly unproductive to prune or tune the index with humans. However, using humans as a part of a feedback loo…

Digital computers aren't even 100 years old. Human civilization has existed for thousands of years. We have been able to curate and distribute information without computers, and it involved human gatekeepers.

Even in the early days of the internet, there were manually constructed listing of pages. Then, as the internet grew, there were manually curated listings. Then, these manually curated listings started to compete with crappy search engines. Eventually, as these search engines improved, the manual curation was delegated to a smaller niche of the information distribution market.

We could, in principle, go back to manual curation as the dominate method. That has been the status quo for almost all of human civilization. Doing so would destroy the internet as we know it (and would be politically impossible for that reason).

Re: Google’s first all-hands after 2016 election [video]

#152

Post by solipsism »

tinkerteller wrote: post #144
tcbawo wrote: post #6

Is it really surprising that a multinational company would have a preferred candidate? Although, I'm sure they lobbied extensively for all major candidates. It is interesting that both major parties seem to want to have their cake and eat it too when it comes to free speech, "common carrier", and antitrust issues.

It is surprising that those people put in charge to run business by stockholders are picking sides in front of employees who they have subordinate powers over them. This is big no no. Imagine being an employee who believes in conservatism and being forced in to group think, suppress your personal political speech and view. There is no difference in boss pitching himself as politically left vs boss pitching Christiani…

Imagine being an employee who believes in conservatism and being forced in to group think

Forced? No one is forced to work for any given company.

Companies are not mindless profit making machines. Not even public ones. They're composed of people. They have values. Some are very homogeneous culturally, some very heterogeneous.

Business should never take sides in politics

You are welcome to your opinion on that point. I don't agree, nor do many other people. As an employee and as a shareholder, I like companies with strong moral character. And that can include political action.

Re: Google’s first all-hands after 2016 election [video]

#153

Post by unsatchmo »

quotemstr wrote: post #126
crazygringo wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bacteria absolutely care -- or at least we humans care about how it affects bacteria. Political policy determines how the FDA regulates (or doesn't regulate) drugs, including antibiotics. Political policy determines if taxpayer dollars are spent getting antibiotics to those who need them, or on missiles instead. Political policy determines whether doctors are incentivized to minimize antibiotic prescriptions (and pre…

> Bacteria absolutely care Seriously? > Political policy determines how the FDA regulates... That's exactly what I mean when I talk about a tendentious excuse for putting activism where it doesn't belong. A drug company might have a lobbying arm that has to care about policy (and that, for pragmatic purposes, talks to all sides!), but a researcher looking at chromosomal recombination isn't going to do a better job of…

I don’t know if I agree with crazygringo, but I do believe everything is political to the degree that bad politics can take it all away in a heartbeat. There is some plateau where I think is fine to let politics play out, the place where you draw that line is of course also political. The issue in the past has been that by the time we cross what the vast majority consider to be the line, it’s too late to easily turn the boat around. That is what people you consider alarmists are worried about.

Re: Google’s first all-hands after 2016 election [video]

#154

Post by gizmo686 »

beachy wrote: post #145
gizmo686 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they are being genuine when they say their plan is to combat fake news with AI; their business is built around AI. It is one of their core competencies. I think they are going to fail, and quietly increase the human involvement once they realize that their AI isn't good enough. Then they will slowly scale back the humans as their AI improves, until the next controversy when they realize that they still need h…

That's a tragic view. How did we get to the state where the "truth" is such an elusive concept? Is it so hard to determine whether basic statements are true or false? And to build larger, higher constructs out of those building blocks? That's basically what science has been and is. It seems comically easy to identify fake news in most cases. Was this inauguration crowd larger than that one? That's a simple question t…

We got to that state when we started talking about so much information that it is impracticable to have a human read all of it, let alone provide a truth judgement for all of it. Even getting computers to read all of it is a significant engineering effort.

Simply getting computers to understand the statements is one of the holy grails of AI research; let alone determining if they are true.

Re: Google’s first all-hands after 2016 election [video]

#155

Post by rixed »

nodesocket wrote: post #84

I find it a bit absurd when I hear pundits and media types claim that liberal bias doesn't exists in silicon valley tech companies (top to bottom). As somebody who lived in San Francisco for five plus years, I can firmly attest it is more than bias. It's utter disdain, hatred, and prejudice. Just look at how James Damore was handled it should be clear that diversity of thought and individualism is not accepted. It's…

mob shamed by a Google employee?

Re: Google’s first all-hands after 2016 election [video]

#156

Post by wyldfire »

gizmo686 wrote: post #151
wyldfire wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That is literally what Google was founded on. Hooray! Pre-Google search sucked. It was really bad. > The alternative is to go back to human gatekeepers. I don't know what this means. Humans have never audited/controlled what gets indexed by crawlers. It's always automata unleashed on the data. It would be terribly unproductive to prune or tune the index with humans. However, using humans as a part of a feedback loo…

Digital computers aren't even 100 years old. Human civilization has existed for thousands of years. We have been able to curate and distribute information without computers, and it involved human gatekeepers. Even in the early days of the internet, there were manually constructed listing of pages. Then, as the internet grew, there were manually curated listings. Then, these manually curated listings started to compet…

Yes, I misunderstood the point.

> Doing so would destroy the internet as we know it (and would be politically impossible for that reason).

IMO this is what renders this part of the discussion moot. Given this conclusion, it's not a valuable thread to pursue.

Re: Google’s first all-hands after 2016 election [video]

#157

Post by spangry »

jayd16 wrote: post #99
nodesocket wrote: post #84

I find it a bit absurd when I hear pundits and media types claim that liberal bias doesn't exists in silicon valley tech companies (top to bottom). As somebody who lived in San Francisco for five plus years, I can firmly attest it is more than bias. It's utter disdain, hatred, and prejudice. Just look at how James Damore was handled it should be clear that diversity of thought and individualism is not accepted. It's…

I don't think anyone claims Californians working in SF aren't liberal. What you really mean is you want to be a mildly bigoted in peace and/or demand attention because historically disadvantaged groups are getting attention without any backlash while simultaneously telling others to get over their own insecurities. When people say you have a persecution complex you think its a liberal agenda. Case in point, no one th…

It's not just a simple case of 'update the wiki'. You've actually got to modify the code and potentially break already established APIs (and break scripts that parse redis logs).

But putting aside the fact that it's not costless to make these sorts of changes, it's also pointless. These people will never be satisfied. They're not offended; they're bullies who want to control other people and virtue signal to their bully friends. Giving in to their 'little change' just encourages more bullying, more salami-slicing, more 'little changes' (e.g. removing any reference to the word 'whitelist', instituting a code of conduct etc.).

Redis is open-source: if their political sensibilities are so offended, they can fork the project (like ayojs for example, https://github.com/ayojs/ayo).

Re: Google’s first all-hands after 2016 election [video]

#158

Post by [deleted] »

quotemstr wrote: post #126
crazygringo wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bacteria absolutely care -- or at least we humans care about how it affects bacteria. Political policy determines how the FDA regulates (or doesn't regulate) drugs, including antibiotics. Political policy determines if taxpayer dollars are spent getting antibiotics to those who need them, or on missiles instead. Political policy determines whether doctors are incentivized to minimize antibiotic prescriptions (and pre…

> Bacteria absolutely care Seriously? > Political policy determines how the FDA regulates... That's exactly what I mean when I talk about a tendentious excuse for putting activism where it doesn't belong. A drug company might have a lobbying arm that has to care about policy (and that, for pragmatic purposes, talks to all sides!), but a researcher looking at chromosomal recombination isn't going to do a better job of…

[deleted]

Re: Google’s first all-hands after 2016 election [video]

#159

Post by nkurz »

nodesocket wrote: post #127
nkurz wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that fair to employees at Google that are conservative? What obligation do you think that a company should have to respect the political leanings of its employees? While it might be in a company's self-interest not to alienate talented employees with minority political beliefs, do you believe it should be forbidden for the company to "choose sides"?

Just as liberals like to promote social justice, I think it's not fair to conservatives that are harassed, outed, and unfairly represented. Since when is it ok for a company to hold a political rally?

Since when is it ok for a company to hold a political rally?

There are at least two separate angles, legal and moral.

I'm certainly not aware of all the laws, but I think 'jayd16' in the sibling is right that it's been definitely legal under federal law for a company to express support for a particular party or candidate at least since the Citizen's United decision. California state law may override this with regard to a "rally" with it's "hostile workplace" laws, but I don't think there is clear precedent. This seems like reasonable overview article on the legal situation: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-leadership/wp/2016/10...

Morally, I personally view it mostly from the angle of "free association". For me, if a group of people who run a company want to express their support for a candidate, they should be allowed to do so even if not all the employees agree. If the group's goal is primarily monetary, I'd expect that they'd avoid alienating employees because of their political beliefs, but I don't think it should be forbidden for them to have other priorities, even if it causes certain employees to feel unwelcome. This isn't great, but it's better (in my mind) than the alternative of forcing the larger group to silence themselves.

I was asking you what your thoughts were on it, because currently the usual pairing is "conservative" and "pro-Citizen's United". You seem to be pro-conservative (or at least concerned about the treatment of conservative employees) but against allowing corporations to express political preference. Thus I was wondering where the lines are for you.

Re: Google’s first all-hands after 2016 election [video]

#160

Post by tinkerteller »

This is great stuff and chance to see Google’s famous TGIFs. Also rare chance to hear Larry Page’s changed voice. It’s beyond shocking however that leaders of search engine business so openly preaching their political views. Given this is at the highest level, one cannot have confidence that things would remain bias free. I would have expected these leaders to make sure they keep their political views to themselves just to be fair to conservative employees who are ironically minority at Google.
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