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Who cares about diversity?

fakenous.substack.com

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Re: Who cares about diversity?

#311

Post by petilon »

EarlKing wrote: post #304
petilon wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How does a white middle class male answer? Diversity doesn't only mean race. It can mean cultural backgrounds, experiences, values and viewpoints. It can mean creative vs. analytic thinkers, artistic vs. not, leadership, extroversion, unusual contributions to society, and so on. If you're a physics expert in a team of math experts, you add diversity.

> Diversity doesn't only mean race. Yes it does. It's an imperialist code-word for state sanctioned racism against the majority population of the proletariat in order to pit the proletariat against itself. Absolutely no one is fooled.

I don't think that's the case. Name a university where they ask for diversity essays in order to reduce the percentage of whites. The reverse is often true. For example, many universities use it to control asian population.

Re: Who cares about diversity?

#312

Post by deanCommie »

ElCheapo wrote: post #18

I think these institutions believe that more diversity ----> more inclusivity and less racism. How would a racist indian national deeply entrenched in caste culture help my company be less racist? How would an asian supremacist laotian increase the workplace's acceptance? If you want a place of tolerance then it should be populated by tolerant people. Throwing together males and females with a random sample of skin c…

Because context matters.

With some exception (specifically our industry), all the privilige of a high caste indian or Laotian supremacy goes away when you move to a Western/White dominated culture.

They are much more likely to encounter racism against THEIR race, than have the opportunity to promote their own racism.

Re: Who cares about diversity?

#313

Post by missingrib »

rad88 wrote: post #254
missingrib wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This tone is very common in academic philosophy. I would characterize it as being low in rhetoric and extremely blunt. I don't really see how it sounds like "a high school sophomore".

He starts with a "Webster's dictionary defines" kind of premise and most of the rest is rhetoric. Not one single "woke social justice warrior" values philosophy? That's not blunt, it's extremely lazy thinking expressed with name calling. I had no idea reading this that the author was nominally an intellectual and a philosopher.

>He starts with a "Webster's dictionary defines" kind of premise

We are talking about diversity in academia, so it's helpful to have some history of the word and how it started becoming used the way it's used today. Do you disagree with the history?

>Not one single "woke social justice warrior" values philosophy?

He didn't say this. He said that not one "woke social justice warrior" (this should have been expressed differently) values philosophical diversity within academia. That said, citing himself on this was a bit ridiculous.

>I had no idea reading this that the author was nominally an intellectual and a philosopher.

I admit to some bias, but Huemer has some good academic papers (which you can find here: https://www.owl232.net/papers.htm).

Re: Who cares about diversity?

#314

Post by _312m »

HideousKojima wrote: post #155
_312m wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the original book, Esmeralda is ethnically French I mean, I just think that no one seems to be aware of this. She's not French in the movie adaptation, which is what most of those kids would be familiar with. (And the musical does heavily draw from the movie – including leaving out her meeting her mother). Without the added context of the original book's description, since it seems no one was aware of it, do you…

>Without the added context of the original book's description, since it seems no one was aware of it, do you think the uproar was justified? No, I don't think willful ignorance justifies cancel culture.

> willful ignorance

I think it's just plain old fashioned ignorance, right?

Dunno, to me this just looks like kids who were excited to see a musical starring someone who looked like them for once, and were understandably upset when that didn't happen.

Looks like the students were targeted by alt-right publications for that, too: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/08/theater/hunchback-of-notr...

Re: Who cares about diversity?

#315

Post by tablespoon »

zozbot234 wrote: post #186
missingrib wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This tone is very common in academic philosophy. I would characterize it as being low in rhetoric and extremely blunt. I don't really see how it sounds like "a high school sophomore".

Well, academic philosophy is a rather sophomoric discipline. The non-sophomoric parts of it have long since moved to other departments - PG even has an essay about this http://www.paulgraham.com/philosophy.html

> Well, academic philosophy is a rather sophomoric discipline. The non-sophomoric parts of it have long since moved to other departments - PG even has an essay about this http://www.paulgraham.com/philosophy.html

Why would the opinion of a VC who dropped out of an undergrad philosophy program be an especially authoritative or notable on this topic? Some tech people have an annoying habit of shitting on anything that isn't tech or tech-adjacent, and if anything, that essay seems to play into those biases.

Re: Who cares about diversity?

#316

Post by tptacek »

missingrib wrote: post #313
rad88 wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He starts with a "Webster's dictionary defines" kind of premise and most of the rest is rhetoric. Not one single "woke social justice warrior" values philosophy? That's not blunt, it's extremely lazy thinking expressed with name calling. I had no idea reading this that the author was nominally an intellectual and a philosopher.

>He starts with a "Webster's dictionary defines" kind of premise We are talking about diversity in academia, so it's helpful to have some history of the word and how it started becoming used the way it's used today. Do you disagree with the history? >Not one single "woke social justice warrior" values philosophy? He didn't say this. He said that not one "woke social justice warrior" (this should have been expressed d…

Yes, it's easy to dispute the history he's trying to establish here, because he's fixated on one particular legal aspect of it which happens to support his (much broader) argument.

Re: Who cares about diversity?

#317

Post by petilon »

3qz wrote: post #287
petilon wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How does a white middle class male answer? Diversity doesn't only mean race. It can mean cultural backgrounds, experiences, values and viewpoints. It can mean creative vs. analytic thinkers, artistic vs. not, leadership, extroversion, unusual contributions to society, and so on. If you're a physics expert in a team of math experts, you add diversity.

That’s true but it’s not what they actually mean when they say “diversity” so all of this should be left out of the essay.

Not true.

Take University of Washington for example. They ask for a "diversity essay". They define diversity as "diverse in cultural backgrounds, experiences, values and viewpoints." [1]

[1] https://admit.washington.edu/apply/freshman/how-to-apply/wri...

Re: Who cares about diversity?

#318

Post by missingrib »

zozbot234 wrote: post #186
missingrib wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This tone is very common in academic philosophy. I would characterize it as being low in rhetoric and extremely blunt. I don't really see how it sounds like "a high school sophomore".

Well, academic philosophy is a rather sophomoric discipline. The non-sophomoric parts of it have long since moved to other departments - PG even has an essay about this http://www.paulgraham.com/philosophy.html

Dismissing academic philosophy as a whole with a link to a PG article is possibly the most HackerNews thing I've ever seen.

Re: Who cares about diversity?

#320

Post by notahacker »

colpabar wrote: post #113
kadoban wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've refused to hire an english major young woman on my development team even under extreme pressure from management because she's a women, but also because she's the CTO's wife's niece That's not "woke", that's just garden variety nepotism.

It's not "garden variety" nepotism, it's woke nepotism, and it's why so many people have issues with diversity initiatives.

It is garden variety nepotism. If it was the CTO's wife's nephew, the CTO's allies wouldn't have argued for a "woker" candidate instead, they'd have pushed very hard on some other basis like the "intellectual diversity" of his different experience or his solid-but-irrelevant academic track record or his supposed credentials as a self-taught programmer or his "leadership potential" or his "strong recommendation from a colleague".

The difference is that if the under qualified relative was justified for one of those reasons people would be less likely to insist the solution to this very obvious nepotism was not to broaden the hiring pool beyond the CTO's relatives, but to chuck all the company's initiatives aimed at attracting career changers, academic-high achievers, autodidacts, leaders or referrals in the bin...

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