Who cares about diversity? • Hacker News Board

Re: Who cares about diversity?

#511

Post by gnicholas » Tue, Sep 13, 2022, 3:54 PM UTC

gnicholas wrote: post #90

I recently watched an interesting discussion on the legality of diversity statement requirements. [1] There's a lot of nuance here, and the two speakers have different opinions on the matter. One believes that diversity statement requirements can be done properly and we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater by banning diversity statement requirements. The other speaker suggests these are analogous to requir…

I'm surprised and pleased to see that this link is the top comment. The original article was a bit dismissive/presumptive, and the submission rode the flagging/vouching rollercoaster as a result. Not a great start!

But it's a testament to the HN community that the most-upvoted comment on this thread is one with a link to a video that is long form (over an hour!) and truly presents both sides. It is also legally sophisticated — not something that most HNers can digest at 3x. Yet enough folks engaged with it that this rose up slowly to be the top comment.

Most communities aren't able to perform conversational alchemy — starting out with bronze and ending up with gold. HN doesn't always do this, but the fact that it can is much of the reason why I'm here.

Re: Who cares about diversity?

#512

Post by reportgunner » Tue, Sep 13, 2022, 3:55 PM UTC

ok_dad wrote: post #142

zozbot234 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't meaningfully enforce open-mindedness or tolerance. The very idea is an oxymoron. The whole notion of tolerance is based on the idea that we might sometimes find it expedient to work alongside people we don't agree with about everything.

Every single person I've met in my life that was racist or sexist or whatever-ist (including myself) has only become a better person and more open-minded when they were forced to work in close proximity to people of other races and cultures. As to myself, I was raised in a pretty racist place in the USA, and via the military I met so many other people that I finally realized that the stereotypes I was taught about ot…

> Every single person I've met in my life that was racist or sexist or whatever-ist (including myself) has only become a better person and more open-minded when they were forced to work in close proximity to people of other races and cultures.

Apart from this being anecdotal evidence, were they not forced to act as a better person and more open-minded in that environment ?

Re: Who cares about diversity?

#513

Post by throwaway894345 » Tue, Sep 13, 2022, 5:07 PM UTC

tootie wrote: post #509

throwaway894345 wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We live in the present so presentism seems pretty practical. Well, I live now. I’m very liberal , but am I more noble for doing fuck-all about civil rights (apart from voting) than the abolitionists who literally died to end slavery? Does the woke college student really deserve a statue more than MLK? > Besides, this isn't ancient history. Granted, but I don’t see the relevance. You should still judge people of the…

I mean you are moving the goal posts into the parking lot right now. The initial question was whether or not there was value in taking incremental steps to combat racism and you're saying we shouldn't build statues to the keyboard warriors of Twitter. Nobody ever suggested that. And while we can absolutely evaluate historical figures on their cultural context that doesn't mean we should lionize them on public propert…

I'm not moving goalposts, I think you've completely misunderstood the argument. Specifically, my point isn't that we shouldn't build statues for keyboard warriors, it's that the logic of presentism defies sensibility--presentists would say that woke college students are more moral because they adhere to the moral standards of the present than the imperfect-by-present-standards abolitionists of yesteryear.

> Nobody ever suggested that.

This is exactly what presentists believe.

> And while we can absolutely evaluate historical figures on their cultural context that doesn't mean we should lionize them on public property.

Well, if you believe that admirable people should be lionized on public property (about which presentism doesn't have an opinion), and if you believe that history has admirable figures (which presentism effectively denies), then it makes sense that you would lionize those figures on public property.

> Forrest was the Confederate general who founded the KKK and was honored with a ridiculous statue on public property in Nashville.

Right, but as he fails the moral standards of his own day as well as the present, he oughtn't be venerated either way.

Re: Who cares about diversity?

#514

Post by autokad » Tue, Sep 13, 2022, 5:12 PM UTC

zephrx1111 wrote: post #460

autokad wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

part of the problem with Asian Americans in the application process is that they are treated just as Asians. My Computer Science Program at University of Pennsylvania was about 74% Asian, 20% Indian, and 5% European. There was Problem is, the 74% Asian was almost entirely Chinese born Chinese, and I do feel it hurt the program. They did not want to join groups with non-Chinese people because they preferred speaking C…

I know you want to use AA as a weapon, to drive out these Chinese students you don't like out of school. Beware, someday, AA can also be weaponized against you. This was exactly what Nazi was using.

No. I am suggesting that races shouldn't be lumped together, such as Asian Americans should be in a different 'bucket' than people from China. For what its worth, I don't believe in race based diversity at all; I believe in geographic diversity.

Re: Who cares about diversity?

#515

Post by gnull » Tue, Sep 13, 2022, 6:29 PM UTC

beej71 wrote: post #462

gnull wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But that will take decades. What do we do until then? We wait. I don't understand why people want these issues to be resolved here and now. Society and culture take decades to change, that's natural, and shortcuts—however tempting they might be—often come at a cost of something else. The conditions of these oppressed groups are not terribly bad, compared to what was going on with people in general throughout histor…

At least in the US, things don't tend to simply improve with time. It's a decades- or centuries-long fight, tooth and nail. And things are much better now in terms of university diversity than they were even 30 years ago. But people have been fighting that fight this entire time. This right here is the level of urgency that will reach its goal in 2-4 generations, if we're lucky.

I didn't mean we shouldn't be doing anything. I said that we need to accept that it's going to take those centuries and plan accordingly. The "here and now" people are the ones who need to realize this the most.

> This right here is the level of urgency that will reach its goal in 2-4 generations

"2-4 generations from now" is the exact level of urgency to reach the goal in 2-4 generations. Inflating the urgency of things spends the precious trust people have in you, and harms our decisions by making us miss some things that actually are more urgent. To list a few global things that are more urgent than this discrimination issue of rich Western countries: global warming, sustainability, poverty in other countries, war in Ukraine and other military conflicts, poor education (yes, I'm looking at you, US), autocratic dictatorships all over the world.

Re: Who cares about diversity?

#516

Post by throwaway894345 » Tue, Sep 13, 2022, 6:36 PM UTC

tootie wrote: post #510

zozbot234 wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steven Pinker makes a way better argument in his latest two books than I could in a HN comment about why this stuff is nowhere near "completely irrelevant" if you genuinely care about bettering the world and resolving secular wrongs. By and large, squabbling about what this or that minority ethnicity might have suffered at some time in the past is very much part of the problem, not the solution.

The argument is not about righting historical wrongs. It's about righting present wrongs. DEI is not slavery reparations.

The parent is responding to context that you set yourself:

> Trying to teach kids accurate history of deplorable things done by some people's ancestors is just teaching accurate history.

Specifically, the parent is noting that “the DEI folks” (or whatever descriptor you might prefer) are only interested in teaching about the dark history of “some people”, but there are atrocities committed among every sufficiently large people group.

Re: Who cares about diversity?

#517

Post by koonsolo » Tue, Sep 13, 2022, 6:44 PM UTC

michaelwww wrote: post #503

koonsolo wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, another problem a software engineer could encounter then?

If you have a point why don't you make it?

You made a generic claim that different cultures bring different ideas and skills. I have a hard time understanding what that means in practice at the workplace. That's why I'm asking for an example.

I still don't see how it would work in practice, and you fail to give an example.

Re: Who cares about diversity?

#518

Post by tootie » Tue, Sep 13, 2022, 8:36 PM UTC

throwaway894345 wrote: post #516

tootie wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument is not about righting historical wrongs. It's about righting present wrongs. DEI is not slavery reparations.

The parent is responding to context that you set yourself: > Trying to teach kids accurate history of deplorable things done by some people's ancestors is just teaching accurate history. Specifically, the parent is noting that “the DEI folks” (or whatever descriptor you might prefer) are only interested in teaching about the dark history of “some people”, but there are atrocities committed among every sufficiently la…

That's not true and and it's not relevant. Teaching history is teaching history. The DEI camp want to improve the world in which we currently live. That it's due to historical injustice is beside the point. The two things are unrelated.

Re: Who cares about diversity?

#519

Post by int_19h » Wed, Sep 14, 2022, 3:09 AM UTC

opmelogy wrote: post #117

stewx wrote: post #63

For an example of this, see this story about Canadian professor and laser scientist Patanjali Kambhampati who was denied for grants because his avowed commitment to mere non-discrimination and merit-based hiring was deemed insufficient. https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/minority-professor-deni...

I don't see a problem with this, especially if part of the mission of the folks giving the grant is to create opportunities for under-represented people. "If I want to focus on merit, fairness and equality, then you get called out as racist or sexist." I'm still waiting for an example where someone can actually vet people based on merit, fairness and equality without any of their own unconscious biases being a factor…

You deliberately withhold any irrelevant information, like their race or gender, from people making the decision.

But, well, we've seen what happened when ElectronConf tried that.

Re: Who cares about diversity?

#520

Post by handoflixue » Wed, Sep 14, 2022, 6:12 AM UTC

jjslocum3 wrote: post #469

handoflixue wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"?

Hold on, that's a misquote. "revenge driven justice" does quote me. "Against the rich" doesn't; you added it. That's a pretty big leap away from my point. Do you believe that is "anybody who isn't rich?"

It's an analogy: you said that DEI supporters want to "discriminate actively against races/genders/orientations that haven't been discriminated against in the same way." (Let's call this "reverse discrimination" just for brevity)

I figured if you can understand that "alms for the poor" isn't an example of "reverse discrimination", then you can also understand that there are also ways to support historically-discriminated-against groups without reverse discrimination.

If you can make that leap, there's a whole dialog on whether current methods are reverse-discrimination or something else. If you can't make that leap, then there's not really a conversation to be had - our perspectives diverge too much to be mutually comprehensible.