51–60 of 138 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I was a child, I was taught that two wrongs don't make a right.
so you're saying it's wrong to shame/shun/undermine those at work because you disagree with their opinions on public policy?
"John: If I walked into work with a "Make America Great Again" hat, there would be repercussions. Quite a few people would take it as a personal affront, and I would expect to be out of the company within weeks, if not a month." If someone walked in with a young earth creationist hat I would similarly question their ability to think critically (and have a hard time not just categorizing them as stupid). Is this reall…
I think it is reasonable to question their competency. I think we all do it to an extent with coworkers. The mistake is concluding it based on this type of scant information. You treat it like any other unknown. You investigate deeper. If you work with the person for a while, you'll know his reasoning abilities far better than the information you gleaned from that hat. >If someone walked in with a young earth creatio…
People in the past did believe stupid things, but it's also a mixture of what information was available to them at the time to reason about. Some ideas that may have been the best option at the time should be discarded today given that we know more. I'd think if you brought those people from the past to today they may discard some of their ideas (though changing your mind is hard).
It's not that a creationist can't be a good programmer - people seem to be able to apply their reasoning abilities selectively and I've met smart religious people that jump through crazy hoops to justify why they're religious. It is a data point against them though and it would reduce my impression of their intelligence.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>The MAGA platform is associated with explicitly barring some of them from the country. That's essentially saying that people have to agree with the whole platform or none of it. As an example, there are many liberals who voted for Obama and did not agree with all aspects of the platform (healthcare reform or military policies). Would wearing a "Yes, we can" shirt/hat be offensive, then? That kind of argument seems v…
False equivalence. (There's a lot of that in the Trump age.) Obama never explicitly ran on a platform of implementing a policy which would immediately destroy the livelihood of upstanding individuals based on their identity or associations. (See: Muslim ban, immigration policy, transgender ban.)
He did, however, run on a platform that was about escalating a conflict in another part of the world, and did implement it, and many people did end up being killed, which is a lot more than what Trump did.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>The MAGA platform is associated with explicitly barring some of them from the country. That's essentially saying that people have to agree with the whole platform or none of it. As an example, there are many liberals who voted for Obama and did not agree with all aspects of the platform (healthcare reform or military policies). Would wearing a "Yes, we can" shirt/hat be offensive, then? That kind of argument seems v…
Your elected officials own the messaging on your political brand. You don't actually get a choice on this one. If I have to get a read on someone before I directly interact with them, their wearing of a MAGA hat will give me a bunch of useful going-in assumptions, just like any other political insignia worn as clothing.
Where we disagree is this:
1. You don't have to get a read on someone before interacting with them. That path is the path to stereotyping.
2. We disagree on whether those going-in assumptions are useful.
As someone who is in no way a part of Silicon Valley: does anyone really care how fiscally conservative or liberal you are? I always thought it was the social issues that caused the problem. Whether it's misrepresenting statistics to justify sexism or saying that some people deserve less rights because of their sexual orientation.
President Obama was quite fiscally conservative.
I've worked places (not in tech) where I was not allowed to talk about my support for Barack Obama for fear of being shouted down, mocked, or forced to listen to racist diatribes about his history. I have been on the other side of this kind of bullshit. I moved from the small, Midwestern town that harbored these people and their insane beliefs to a liberal, coastal city that "gets" me a little more. I'm happier for i…
I've worked places (not in tech) where I was not allowed to talk about my support for Barack Obama for fear of being shouted down, mocked, or forced to listen to racist diatribes about his history. I have been on the other side of this kind of bullshit. I moved from the small, Midwestern town that harbored these people and their insane beliefs to a liberal, coastal city that "gets" me a little more. I'm happier for i…
"John: If I walked into work with a "Make America Great Again" hat, there would be repercussions. Quite a few people would take it as a personal affront, and I would expect to be out of the company within weeks, if not a month." If someone walked in with a young earth creationist hat I would similarly question their ability to think critically (and have a hard time not just categorizing them as stupid). Is this reall…
"It's not because of politics, it's because my political opponents are objectively dumb."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
so you're saying it's wrong to shame/shun/undermine those at work because you disagree with their opinions on public policy?
I am saying that it's wrong to shame people at work for their political opinions and I can't fucking believe that this stance is controversial. I will go further and say that politics doesn't belong at work.
I guess you are talking about big issue politics when you say they don't belong at work, because it is absurd to say that people shouldn't consider the political consequences of the things they create or actions they take on behalf of their jobs.