Who cares about diversity? • Hacker News Board

Re: Who cares about diversity?

#421

Post by belorn » Mon, Sep 12, 2022, 10:31 PM UTC

kelseyfrog wrote: post #389

belorn wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sweden had an election yesterday, and I can't think of a single political subject where political opponents do not accuse the other side of being insincere. Environment, taxes, law and order, immigration, education, healthcare, elder care... "You say you want X, yet you still say/do/vote Y" would match the intended message in about 95% of every statement being made when a politician is describing an other politician…

At the very least giving a name to the phenomena (and logical fallacy experts, please chime in) gives people the power to identify and categorize such arguments as not being worthwhile pursuits and can castrate their power.

A more productive way for political discourse would be to analyze the expected result of different political strategies, especially when mirror opposite strategies has the same intended end goal.

Of course, when people are pulling and advocating for one direction, doing the opposite seems like an contradiction. Thus the political debates becomes about trust and sincerity. No longer is the discussion about the effectiveness of the strategy but rather about how trustworthy the strategy is.

One very common way polls measure political strategies is thus in voter trust. Do voters trust that party X has a good strategy to solve problem Y. It generally only experts and researchers that attempt to measure the actually effectiveness of a political strategy.

Re: Who cares about diversity?

#422

Post by tootie » Mon, Sep 12, 2022, 10:33 PM UTC

throwaway894345 wrote: post #392

tootie wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not wrong but really the whole problem is cyclical. It has to be broken down everywhere. Diversity and anti racism in education is getting raked over the coals right now. Housing discrimination is still pretty rampant. Racists are winning elections. There's an unfortunate tendency to force compliance on those who can best accommodate it rather than who is more in need of regulating.

I posit that "racists are winning elections" precisely because of the broken race ideology that was meant to combat racism in the first place (not just in admissions and hiring, but all over our discourse). The stuff we do in the name of fighting racism looks like exactly the sort of thing one would do if they wanted to create a thoroughly racist society--get everyone to hyper-identify with their race and create sepa…

I think that's a completely specious perspective and one that is peddled by conservative politicians as propaganda. Being antiracist is not about assigning blame or curing racism with HR policy and certainly not about curing all societal ills. It's about taking small steps to counteract injustice instead of just saying "I'm not racist" and washing your hands. Trying to teach kids accurate history of deplorable things done by some people's ancestors is just teaching accurate history. Out of control name-calling is happening in all quarters but all I'm saying that we are electing racists and we definitely are. The past president's response to the Charlottesville car attack was incredibly ambivalent and the perpetrator could be accurately described as a nazi.

Re: Who cares about diversity?

#423

Post by HereIGoAgain » Mon, Sep 12, 2022, 10:34 PM UTC

Well yeah, anyone with a functioning brain knew this for a long time.

Re: Who cares about diversity?

#424

Post by fsckboy » Mon, Sep 12, 2022, 10:42 PM UTC

revlolz wrote: post #346

registeredcorn wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. The worries over "Am I just a diversity hire?" are a real concern. :( I really wish that applicants were required to give less information, not more. I don't want to know your name, or how old you are, or where you're from. I just want to know what your credentials are. Personally, I feel like criminal records, outside of specific work like working with weapons, children/elderly, or law enforcement, should not b…

I've found that the only controllable practices are to force our hr to send anonimized resumes to my interview team and to zealously challenge bias through panel review questions to interviewers. Our reviews can't detail things like "not a culture fit" or "is unqualified." there has to be a specific quantifiable reason for decline or hire. We've never had anyone openly discriminate because I don't sincerely believe p…

equity is a word that has replaced equality or equal opportunity because it in used to mean "equivalent outcome". It doesn't matter what your process is, if it doesn't produce the "desired" diverse outcome, it is not equitable.

the dei crowd would not accept your formulation because it doesn't guarantee equitable outcomes.

pointing it out because when we don't use words the same way, we're not really communicating.

Re: Who cares about diversity?

#425

Post by x86_64Ubuntu » Mon, Sep 12, 2022, 10:46 PM UTC

ricardoplouis wrote: post #360

x86_64Ubuntu wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How come every time systemic or structural racism is brought up, the discussion instantly pivots to it being "divisive" and the real battle being class consciousness or something.

There is truth to the matter, but it's also because class conscious groups fail to recognize that they perpetuate the same racism, sexism, etc... that the elites do. Coincidentally, ignoring race as an issue is the one issue many people on both sides of the political spectrum can get down with even though economic equality does not guarantee racial equality.

No one on the Left is about ignoring race as an issue. That's pretty much a right-wing trope 100%.

Re: Who cares about diversity?

#426

Post by hpkuarg » Mon, Sep 12, 2022, 10:48 PM UTC

handoflixue wrote: post #391

jjslocum3 wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mainly agree with the OP. While they don't come out and say it, most on the DEI frontlines execute on the idea that the fix to the fact that "those people have been discriminated against, well, forever" is not to do away with discrimination completely, but rather to discriminate actively against races/genders/orientations that haven't been discriminated against in the same way. This strikes me as faulty thinking. R…

Giving alms to the poor isn't "revenge-driven justice against the rich" - it's helping out people in need. Refusing to give alms to the poor "because it would discriminate against the rich" seems obviously fallacious to me. Surely one can by analogy reason that there are ways to support historically disadvantaged groups that aren't "perpetuating discrimination"?

> Refusing to give alms to the poor "because it would discriminate against the rich" seems obviously fallacious to me.

In what way is this obviously fallacious? Alms have to come from somewhere, and if you take them from the rich then it is clearly discrimination against the rich. You could very well make the argument that this is justified, but fallacious it is not.

That aside, it doesn't take a lot of scanning through those who purportedly wish to give alms to the poor before you find some outright revenge-driven rhetoric.

Re: Who cares about diversity?

#427

Post by tptacek » Mon, Sep 12, 2022, 10:53 PM UTC

cxr wrote: post #415

tptacek wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You asked me upthread to come up with some strong arguments (to contrast with the really weak ones in the post) for the article's position. I'm asking you to do the same in the other direction.

That's not accurate. You said you knew of lots of good criticisms against a position, and I asked you what they were. I'm saying that I can't make out what it is about article's position that you're saying is bad. Since you mentioned opposition who are animated by the author's position, I'm asking: "Who are the opposition? What does animate them?"[1] The fact that I don't know and couldn't figure out what you're refe…

It's fine if we're just at a point where there's nothing for us to productively discuss.

Re: Who cares about diversity?

#428

Post by hpkuarg » Mon, Sep 12, 2022, 10:56 PM UTC

handoflixue wrote: post #400

colpabar wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And frankly I'd rather have the black woman on the team to offer that perspective, especially for product decisions, because they might have interesting things to say. Doesn't this seem like a weird thing to say? How do you know that? Isn't this the definition of stereotyping? Is every question going to be of the form "as a black woman, what do you think about X?" And why is it okay to assume that white people don'…

> why is it okay to assume that white people don't have interesting things to say? I mean, basic statistics: in a group of 20 white men and 1 black woman, all else being equal, the black woman is likely to have radically different experiences. > How do you know that? I think this because I routinely run into examples in the vein of "this cool facial recognition tech doesn't recognize black people". There's obviously…

It's more possible than you think for people who share the same ethnic background to have had radically different experiences from each other, and people who look very different from each other to have gone through very similar life stories.

I'm not just saying this in theory (which is trivially true) -- I lived in a stereotypically liberal cosmopolitan city where most people I encountered, despite the visible diversity in their ethnic backgrounds, all had four-year degrees, worked in high-paying knowledge-based jobs, and had no experience in military service or single motherhood; then in a much smaller city in a stereotypically conservative rural state where most people were of the same ethnic background, but had more variety in what they went through in life. My own habits did not change between the two cities as to put me in touch with such a different group of people between them.

This is just anecdata, but I question the premise you appear to take for granted.

Re: Who cares about diversity?

#429

Post by Empact » Mon, Sep 12, 2022, 11:02 PM UTC

PuppyTailWags wrote: post #272

Empact wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So the question is, where should the fix be applied? We could start by not forcing them into a school system that is highly correlated with outcomes of criminality[1]. Then we could stop subsidizing dependency and instead ease the paths work, education, and entrepreneurship, e.g. by reducing the cost of compliance by e.g. reducing scope and burdens of licensure requirements, instituting opportunity zones. I leave a…

Genuinely inquiring here, on the study you linked: The study is that high-risk youth are less likely to engage in criminal activity if they attend a first-choice school. Why not inquire why those schools are first choice & if those factors can be deployed to every other school? Similarly, what do you mean stop subsidizing dependency? What specific dependencies are being subsidized and what are the outcomes of no long…

> Why not inquire why those schools are first choice & if those factors can be deployed to every other school?

That's not an easy question to answer, but have you asked it yourself? Why don't public schools adopt the successful practices of charter schools that have the prospect of saving their youth from a life of crime? My explanation is that teacher's unions fight against the practices proven successful in other context, such as merit-based hiring and compensation.

Re: Who cares about diversity?

#430

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Sep 12, 2022, 11:03 PM UTC

mikkergp wrote: post #228

Empact wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So the question is, where should the fix be applied? We could start by not forcing them into a school system that is highly correlated with outcomes of criminality[1]. Then we could stop subsidizing dependency and instead ease the paths work, education, and entrepreneurship, e.g. by reducing the cost of compliance by e.g. reducing scope and burdens of licensure requirements, instituting opportunity zones. I leave a…

> I leave as an exercise to the reader considering why the Democrat party does not support the above policies, while the Republican party does. Simple, because these policies don’t threaten the status quo.

[deleted]