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Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

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Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#411

Post by humanrebar »

vasilipupkin wrote: post #406
jernfrost wrote: post #400

Great perspective. As a Northern European having dealt with American company ownership I don't think the main problem in Google's case was political correctness but rather a general American problem with how free speech is defined in the US. Freedom in America is always about government NOT doing something, while in Europe government is defined as a protector of these freedoms. This shows up clearly with respect to s…

To be clear, a private company in the US cannot stop you from discussing anything at work but reserves the right to fire you at will, including for discussions it deems unproductive. Discussing politics in polite company in the US is indeed discouraged by culture. I personally think that's a good thing as people on opposite sides of the spectrum often can't agree on a basic set of facts, which makes discussions point…

Sometimes the point of the conversations is reminding each other that we're decent and intelligent humans. Giving up on engaging because you haven't converted people is giving up too soon. Sometimes the changed mind is in how we value political opponents, not whether we agree with them.

Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#412

Post by baby »

dandare wrote: post #216

Disagreeing with Damore’s arguments is perfectly ok. Not liking the style of his memo is perfectly ok. Calling Damore young and clueless is useless ad hominem. Chances are he is smarter than you and me and the memo is actually well sourced. Calling him a WHITE MAN is an essentialism that reveals the author's bias.

> Calling him a WHITE MAN is an essentialism that reveals the author's bias.

I admit that I guessed the same, it's often when you're not in an apparent minority that you don't seem to take these issues at heart (and that you end up hurting a lot of people in the way). Which is an easy way to conclude that the author is a white male in his thirties working at a decent job.

Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#413

Post by batushka »

The most intolerant wins. Society is sinking. "We can answer these points using the minority rule. Yes, an intolerant minority can control and destroy democracy. Actually, as we saw, it will eventually destroy our world." https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...

Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#414

Post by chasd00 »

I hate to just turn a blind eye to the issue but, man, I'm glad I work at a place where only getting shit done, done right, and done on time matters. My team is about 60% men 40% women and pretty much evenly distributed across Asian, Russian, White American, and Central American races. No one cares in the least about diversity, only the project(s) matter. I feel very fortunate.

Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#415

Post by [deleted] »

syshum wrote: post #318
timgrahamtech wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would he have been fired if he had instead expressed these views to his manager in a room with closed door? I'm not aware of any executives of large institutions that are perfectly happy with leaks. They just usually aren't dumb enough to pretend that a rant like this wouldn't get leaked.

You have a vastly different definition of rant than I do, aside from that why do you believe this should only be discussed behind closed doors, that is infact one of the points the author was attempting to explorer the idea that with in google anyone that did not have left political leaning felt they were not allowed to express those positions with in the company. You seem to agree

[deleted]

Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#416

Post by _b8r0 »

nowo wrote: post #378
_b8r0 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I made the grave mistake of trying to express that point on Twitter. Twitter seems to be a poor vehicle for nuanced debate at the best of time, but it's a dumpster fire right now full of raging people who don't understand what you've just said. I was in SV last year for a couple of months during the election, and everyone I met were all paid up members of the church of political correctness up front, but when you spo…

You realize his paper was posted to a list at google called "pc-considered-harmful"?

Can you indulge me in a thought experiment. You seem like a reasonable human being but I think your question shows that you may have fallen into a moral trap.

Can you explain to me the point I've made that you're arguing for or against with your question. Show me how your question has any impact on that point.

If you're taking a side and saying "But did you know this person was literally Hitler" then you may have fallen prey to the manufactured outrage surrounding the issue. Take a step back and ask yourself if it matters if the list was called pc-considered-harmful, woodchipping-kittens or fluffy-bunnies? What is the impact on the list's name on the situation?

If you're associating any questioning of the situation with the other side then it's worth spending a moment to see if you might have tied your beliefs to identity. When we tie our beliefs to our identity, we associate questioning of those beliefs with attacks on our identity. This is being exploited at the cost of completely polarizing your view.

The next step would be to see how upset you are. If you're very upset or wound up, or maybe you're not but you've commented a zillion times about this elsewhere, why are you doing so about this matter and not other things? What is it about this issue that gets you so riled up and why? Why would you care about some guy you don't know getting fired more than the President's involvement with Russia, or the killing of innocent civilians in the Yemen? What is it about this subject that gets to you in a way other's don't, and why?

You might find some serious answers, but probably more questions here: https://medium.com/the-mission/the-enemy-in-our-feeds-e86511...

Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#417

Post by humanrebar »

memedtodeath wrote: post #180
jancsika wrote: post #121

> And let us be clear that, yes, such policies mean every once in a while you will not hire the most skilled person for a job. Therefore, a value judgement must be made here, not a logical deduction from data. Is diversity important enough for you to temporarily tolerate an increased risk of not hiring the most qualified person? That’s the trade-off nobody seems willing to spell out. Perhaps because it's not a necess…

When the Australian public service experimented with blinding demographic data on resumes, fewer women and minorities were hired: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-tria... A blind recruiting process only increases diversity if there exists significant bias against diverse candidates. I wouldn't be surprised if Silicon Valley has a bias in favor of diverse candidates, like Australia's public serv…

You have an excellent point, but your use of the phrase "diverse candidates" misses the concern that the most important diversity is in thought and culture, not just predetermined demographics. A "diverse candidate" in reality may not look like an official "diversity candidate".

Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#418

Post by _b8r0 »

jondubois wrote: post #405
_b8r0 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I made the grave mistake of trying to express that point on Twitter. Twitter seems to be a poor vehicle for nuanced debate at the best of time, but it's a dumpster fire right now full of raging people who don't understand what you've just said. I was in SV last year for a couple of months during the election, and everyone I met were all paid up members of the church of political correctness up front, but when you spo…

Whenever you have a discussion about a topic in which people feel personally invested, their reasoning skills drop and their sentiment analysis ability goes up.

I've noticed that. But it does appear that for a lot of normally rational people this personal investment is at least amplified, if not manufactured almost entirely through the media.

Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#419

Post by GVIrish »

rtx wrote: post #367
GVIrish wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't see how this is an unreasonable argument to make. There is a dearth of male kindergarten teachers, for instance. This doesn't mean the school is being "sexist". It might just mean that certain genders tend to be attracted to certain types of professions. If that's all the manifesto said, this wouldn't be a story. I am a minority in tech and I certainly didn't see a lot of people like me in my Computer Scien…

Was he making a statement or trying to find an answer?

I don't know how much he was trying to find an answer but he does leave a good amount of qualifiers in there like, 'this may be the cause' or 'this could explain'. I could be wrong, but it seems like he was trying to put forth a argument in good faith that was not divisive, yet he got into dodgy territory with how he constructed and executed his argument.

Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#420

Post by thesmallestcat »

nippples wrote: post #140
thesmallestcat wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a penalty in society and your career for being an asshole. If you do something to make yourself wildly unpopular at work, even if it's well within the lines technically, you might be out of a job. The issue is that most people at Google don't want to work with this guy. That makes for a distraction, not to mention the obvious legal risk if the engineer ever interacts with a woman or minority at Google again.…

> There's a penalty in society and your career for being an asshole. Partially true, Gawker staff thrived on being assholes until they got the Hogan Leg Drop. Are you implying that Damore was an asshole, though? How so? > That makes for a distraction, not to mention the obvious legal risk if the engineer ever interacts with a woman or minority at Google again. What about the legal risk of institutionalized discrimina…

You sure got me, I said I would be upset if a document like this started circulating at my workplace because of what it would indicate about the author's priorities, and because it would be grossly inappropriate.

So, you sent me a link! Like a toddler, you saw the words "I would be livid if I got a link to a doc like this," and you finger painted that daggone wall.

That one smarts, and you are a force to be reckoned with. Never underestimate the quote-for-quote reply that discards all context with each quote.

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