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

Google fires employee who protested Israel tech event, shuts forum

cnbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 368 posts

Re: Google fires employee who protested Israel tech event, shuts forum

#301

Post by ignoramous »

tptacek wrote: post #282
pbiggar wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You twisted my words: I said "not entitled". Accidental civilian killings are not acceptable but yes of course they happen. Deliberate killing of civilians are war crimes. We must hold the IDF to the same standard as we hold Hamas. Neither is allowed kill civilians, neither is allowed starve a population, neither is allowed detain civilians (whether as "hostages" or "administrative detainees"), neither is allowed to…

There's all sorts of stuff in here I disagree with ("Hamas has by all accounts treated its detainees well"? There's video footage!) but it doesn't matter. We're not going to resolve Israel/Palestine on an HN thread. I have a very limited point to make here, which is that it can't possibly be the case that a party to a war can't kill civilians under any circumstances. If you agree with that, there's nothing for us to…

[flagged]

Re: Google fires employee who protested Israel tech event, shuts forum

#302

Post by tptacek »

ignoramous wrote: post #301
tptacek wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's all sorts of stuff in here I disagree with ("Hamas has by all accounts treated its detainees well"? There's video footage!) but it doesn't matter. We're not going to resolve Israel/Palestine on an HN thread. I have a very limited point to make here, which is that it can't possibly be the case that a party to a war can't kill civilians under any circumstances. If you agree with that, there's nothing for us to…

[flagged]

There's a reason this topic gets flagged off the front page relentlessly, and it has something to do with the fact that even a comment that begins with the sentiment "I largely agree with you" elicits a full-page response complete with citations to "isitgenocide.com" and the Wikipedia page for the Nakba. This isn't curious conversation; it isn't even conversation. Be introspective for a second: do you feel like you're trying to have a conversation with me?

Re: Google fires employee who protested Israel tech event, shuts forum

#303

Post by bestcoder69 »

tptacek wrote: post #299
bestcoder69 wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

How do you expect to have a curious conversation when you phrase questions that way? If that's not what you're after on this topic, fair enough! I don't like that people are trying to hash this out on HN either. But that's the rule for this place.

[flagged]

Re: Google fires employee who protested Israel tech event, shuts forum

#304

Post by sofysno »

pbiggar wrote: post #279
tptacek wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think much of what Israel has done in Gaza is justifiable, but "cannot kill civilians under any circumstances" can't possibly be the standard; if it was, the Nazis might still control most of Europe.

You twisted my words: I said "not entitled". Accidental civilian killings are not acceptable but yes of course they happen. Deliberate killing of civilians are war crimes. We must hold the IDF to the same standard as we hold Hamas. Neither is allowed kill civilians, neither is allowed starve a population, neither is allowed detain civilians (whether as "hostages" or "administrative detainees"), neither is allowed to…

[flagged]

Re: Google fires employee who protested Israel tech event, shuts forum

#305

Post by Qem »

pbiggar wrote: post #279
tptacek wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think much of what Israel has done in Gaza is justifiable, but "cannot kill civilians under any circumstances" can't possibly be the standard; if it was, the Nazis might still control most of Europe.

You twisted my words: I said "not entitled". Accidental civilian killings are not acceptable but yes of course they happen. Deliberate killing of civilians are war crimes. We must hold the IDF to the same standard as we hold Hamas. Neither is allowed kill civilians, neither is allowed starve a population, neither is allowed detain civilians (whether as "hostages" or "administrative detainees"), neither is allowed to…

> Israel has a much worse ratio of civilians to valid military targets (possibly between 5/1 and 8/1 ratio, while Hamas has 2/1 ratio during Hamas' attack, and it is believed many of those were killed by the IDF)

The IDF ratios are indeed atrocious. For journalists, for example, in another thread I tried to calculate some detailed estimates, and concluded that given the casualties up to 01/03, if one journalist and one Hamas militant were statistically put side by side, IDF is ~3x more likely to shoot the journalist. See:

Part I: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39603300

Part II: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39603311

Part III (Python source code): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39603322

Re: Google fires employee who protested Israel tech event, shuts forum

#306

Post by wwweston »

weatherlite wrote: post #294
wwweston wrote: post #81

Israel is an inherently inequitable and therefore likely terminally conflict-ridden ethnostate. Israel is a reasonable reaction to a long and terrible history of ethnic persecution. What's going on in Gaza is an unacceptable humanitarian tragedy that is a reaction to an unacceptable attack. There are players on both "sides" of this conflict that are driving it because they actually want the conflict, people who never…

> Israel is an inherently inequitable and therefore likely terminally conflict-ridden ethnostate. Israel is a reasonable reaction to a long and terrible history of ethnic persecution How can these two thoughts go together? Either its a horrible "ethnostate" or its a reasonable construct due to Jews special history.

The same way any number of understandable or even reasonable reactions can end up being suboptimal or even counterproductive. See the prisoner's dilemma.

Any history of ethnic suffering creates a situation where it's natural to suspect outgroup society can't be trusted to reliably treat the ingroup adequately well. So in response, they might create institutions that privilege the ingroup and prioritize its security and prosperity. Outgroup rights & dignity may even become negotiable or disposable in the name of ingroup priorities, sometimes even basic rights like property, freedom of movement, or life.

This of course guarantees the outgroup will have legitimate and serious grievances (along with any less legitimate ones they may or may not have), which will eventually mean they too may feel justified in approaching the problem from a never-again ingroup-first perspective, probably eventually including organized violence and whatever system oriented around these values that they can.

Voilà: self-sustaining conflict dynamic. And everything seemed at least locally justifiable all along the way. After all, what's wrong with providing ingroup security, and punishing outgroup aggression?

Or is there something wrong with it?

Re: Google fires employee who protested Israel tech event, shuts forum

#307

Post by sam_goody »

Whether you feel the employee should have been fired or not, whether you feel Israel is right or wrong - That article could have been written much more fairly.

Sometimes I get so frustrated by the one-sidedness of so much of our news. I try to read at least one article a day which opposes my worldview with an open mind, just to keep myself balanced.

Lately I feel like it's color war, with more details omitted on both sides than are written. I feel like I'm standing in the supermarket isle reading the tabloids, and that is all there is to read.

/endrant

Could anyone point me to a site that offers relatively short articles, lots of facts and minimal hyperbole, and which represents all sides of an issue - not necessarily the middle [since I don't think it is possible to truly be impartial], but something that will give fair representation to both sides [you could have a staff that includes, say, liberals and conservatives]?

Re: Google fires employee who protested Israel tech event, shuts forum

#308

Post by CyberDildonics »

tptacek wrote: post #296
pbiggar wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I addressed that in the first line! To restate: why is Hamas' attack on Oct 7 bad? It's because they killed civilians. If we condemn that, then we must condemn all the IDF killings of civilians. If we do not, what basis do we have to condemn Hamas? Israel's killing of civilians is a horrendous war crime. No we are not doing a carve-out because they really want to kill Hamas fighters. Absurd and horrific to suggest th…

Hamas has an objective of killing civilians. You will of course argue that Israel does as well, but that will be an argument, not a plain statement of fact.

There have been 29,000 deaths and all aid has been cut off along with cement poured in their plumbing so they have no fresh water.

https://time.com/6696507/palestinian-death-toll-gaza-israel-...

1 in 100 people have been killed in gaza since october 7th.

Entire neighborhoods have been leveled by bombs and bulldozed.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/10/07/world/middlee...

All this and you are saying it's up for debate that that they are trying to kill civilians.

Re: Google fires employee who protested Israel tech event, shuts forum

#309

Post by peddling-brink »

C6JEsQeQa5fCjE wrote: post #238

From the article: > One employee asked about Gemini's bias. Specifically, the person wrote that when asking Gemini, "Do women in Gaza deserve human rights?" the chatbot didn't have a response and directed the user to try Google search. But when the employee asked the same question of women in France, Gemini answered "Absolutely," followed by multiple bullet points backing up the assertion. > CNBC replicated the searc…

Probably because the chat bot has been instructed to avoid topics surrounding Gaza because it’s such a hot button issue.
Post reply on HN