PSF has withdrawn $1.5M proposal to US Government grant program • Hacker News Board

Re: PSF has withdrawn $1.5M proposal to US Government grant program

#871

Post by quinnjh » Fri, Oct 31, 2025, 3:25 PM UTC

JuniperMesos wrote: post #866

acdha wrote: post #864

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> one piece of evidence I find very convincing is the observation that non-human primates exhibit the same sorts of gendered behavior with toys that human children do (females wanting to treat any kind of toy as a doll, males wanting to treat any kind of toy as a tool, etc.). This is actually why I don’t think the differences are mostly social: there’s a lot of evo-psych speculation which gets widely referenced in ca…

> This is actually why I don’t think the differences are mostly social: there’s a lot of evo-psych speculation which gets widely referenced in casual discussion but when you look at the details turns out to be much weaker. For example, that famous Hines 2002 study about vervet monkey toy preference relied on grouping toys into categories based on human leanings: a police car was masculine while a cooking pot feminine…

Not that you asked for a trans opinion here but

> I don't think there's a reason to assume that boys are encouraged to play with building toys and games, rather than innately choosing to do this to the exclusion of other types of play - certainly it's as likely to be innately biological as being good at 3-D rotation itself is.

Interesting take. I faced abusive repercussion in daycare for playing with the cooking set and dolls because “those aren’t my toys and it’s wrong”, so while I was inclined to think this was very much socially enforced dimorphism, your comment seems to suggest that I am in some way more “biologically feminine” than most skeptics would like to suggest. curious !

As for us being overrepresented in tech, for a lot of gals I know it’s a way for our merit to be judged over our appearance, similar to socially awkward guys preferring work that doesn’t take constant face-to-face.

Re: PSF has withdrawn $1.5M proposal to US Government grant program

#872

Post by asingo » Fri, Oct 31, 2025, 5:58 PM UTC

nxor wrote: post #868

asingo wrote: post #720

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed it's not really to do with violence per se, even though that is a concerning behavior amongst a small number of activists. People on both the right and the left, and in-between, are shying away from that movement more because of the demonstrably negative impact on women's rights.

TQ has damaged acceptance for LGB, and we pay the price while they move on to the next fun trend.

True, and even worse than that, their ideology is fundamentally homophobic.

Re: PSF has withdrawn $1.5M proposal to US Government grant program

#873

Post by sagarm » Sat, Nov 01, 2025, 8:30 AM UTC

Mars008 wrote: post #825

th wrote: post #341

It seems like a number of the "DEI is anti-merit discrimination" messages in this thread are overlooking how DEI work usually works. A relevant tweet from 2016 ( https://x.com/jessicamckellar/status/737299461563502595 ): > Hello from your @PyCon Diversity Chair. % PyCon talks by women: (2011: 1%), (2012: 7%), (2013: 15%), (2014/15: 33%), (2016: 40%). #pycon2016 Increased diversity in communities usually comes from ac…

> It seems like a number of the "DEI is anti-merit discrimination" messages in this thread are overlooking how DEI work usually works. It has two sides, one promoting, and one denying. Based on race. DEI activists are always talking about the first. How great it is. And never talks about second, to not to ruin the rosy picture. Just recently I visited a hospital in mostly white area. Inside it looked like african con…

Mostly white probably means rural. These are undesirable hospital jobs. There are incentives for doctors to work in underserved areas, like rural hospitals, and those incentives are disproportionately used by J1s.

I'd like to point out that this commenter assumed these doctors did not earn their positions purely based on skin color. I don't see how this is functionally different than classic racism. "DEI" complaints often seem to fit this fact pattern. In particular, I've never heard a white man described as a DEI hire.

Re: PSF has withdrawn $1.5M proposal to US Government grant program

#874

Post by JuniperMesos » Sat, Nov 01, 2025, 9:17 AM UTC

bilekas wrote: post #8

dang wrote: post #310

[stub for offtopicness / flamewarness / guideline-breakingness] (this is a rough cut - I know there are other posts left in the thread that arguably belong here, but this time I'm in a bit of a rush) (please, everyone, you can make substantive points thoughtfully but do so within the guardrails at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html - avoid the generic-indignant-flamey-snarky-namecalley-hardcore-battley…

This seems very un-American. The government dictating how you run your business ? > “do not, and will not during the term of this financial assistance award, operate any programs that advance or promote DEI, or discriminatory equity ideology in violation of Federal anti-discrimination laws.” Is that even legal to add such an arbitrary and opinionated reason to a government grant? I applaud them for taking a stand, it…

> This seems very un-American. The government dictating how you run your business ?

Yes, and anyone who takes the Barry Goldwater libertarian position that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 constituted an un-American government dictate about how you can run your business with respect to discrimination based on demographic categories probably agrees with you. There's a real sense in which this administration is invoking the formally-neutral legal infrastructure that has been built up over many years by liberals with the intention of securing the civil rights of various marginalized groups, and ostentatiously using it as a weapon against groups that are discriminating against white people or white men in particular and feel like they are acting righteously in doing so.

More generally, there's all sorts of laws in every country including America that involve the government dictating how you run your business, or how you run your business if you want to be eligible for government grants. No one actually thinks that a law becomes illegitimate if it dictates how a person can run their business, unless they are such a radical anarchist that they entirely reject the legitimacy of any kind of government or law at all.

Re: PSF has withdrawn $1.5M proposal to US Government grant program

#875

Post by me-vs-cat » Sat, Nov 01, 2025, 5:12 PM UTC

jkelleyrtp wrote: post #320

In high school, I ran a robotics team that did lots of STEM outreach. We went to community centers, after school programs, and worked with other similar orgs like "girls who code." I think we played an important role in the community. In our mission we stated we wanted to help bring "equity to STEM education." In 2025, according to the current admin's stance on "DEI," my robotics team would not be able to receive gra…

> the line is ... arbitrarily placed so the govt can pick and choose the winners based on allegiance.

This is the real problem. They use vague statements to make decisions based on loyalty with just enough merit as distraction.

Everything will get much worse for everyone, and they will probably set back the progress of causes they use as vehicles in their loyalty crusade. I increasingly see other outcomes becoming less likely.

Re: PSF has withdrawn $1.5M proposal to US Government grant program

#876

Post by klipt » Sat, Nov 01, 2025, 8:55 PM UTC

rectang wrote: post #777

akimbostrawman wrote: post #709

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not only not benefitting you but actively putting you at a disadvantage because of the way you where born. Why do you think that? Because it makes you feel good or because there is an actual measurable benefit? And no you don't need to have a specific skin color or sexual orientation to be considered diverse/different. If you think "all white dudes are/think the same" maybe change white to black and say that in…

(Not gp but...) I believe it because diversity is not a zero sum game, where every gain for a demographic other than mine means a loss to my demographic which must be fought tooth and nail. First, we are all enriched by having a variety of experiences and perspectives available to draw upon. Second, I feel stronger bonds with historically marginalized humans than with humans who happen to belong to my own demographic…

> diversity is not a zero sum game

The moment HR rejects a candidate for being "insufficiently diverse" that's a zero sum game isn't it?

Re: PSF has withdrawn $1.5M proposal to US Government grant program

#877

Post by klipt » Sat, Nov 01, 2025, 9:19 PM UTC

acdha wrote: post #796

tstrimple wrote: post #742

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These people are very disconnected from reality. They make wild claims like groups for men are illegal and you’d never see a group dedicated to helping men in the nursing field. The feminists would destroy it! And yet… https://www.aamn.org/

It’s really telling how they’re just so confident about easily debunked claims. I’m reminded of a retired college admissions administrator whose theory was that some of the men in college gap was over-confidence: statistically the women who applied overall were far closer to the women who were accepted, whereas like a third of their male applicants had no chance so a roughly even balance of applicants turned 2:1 in f…

Are these studies easily debunked?

https://academic.oup.com/esr/article/38/3/337/6412759

> Gender discrimination is often regarded as an important driver of women’s disadvantage in the labour market, yet earlier studies show mixed results. However, because different studies employ different research designs, the estimates of discrimination cannot be compared across countries. By utilizing data from the first harmonized comparative field experiment on gender discrimination in hiring in six countries, we can directly compare employers’ callbacks to fictitious male and female applicants. The countries included vary in a number of key institutional, economic, and cultural dimensions, yet we found no sign of discrimination against women. This cross-national finding constitutes an important and robust piece of evidence. Second, we found discrimination against men in Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, and the UK, and no discrimination against men in Norway and the United States. However, in the pooled data the gender gradient hardly differs across countries. Our findings suggest that although employers operate in quite different institutional contexts, they regard female applicants as more suitable for jobs in female-dominated occupations, ceteris paribus, while we find no evidence that they regard male applicants as more suitable anywhere.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33513171/

> Male applicants were about half as likely as female applicants to receive a positive employer response in female-dominated occupations. For male-dominated and mixed occupations we found no significant differences in positive employer responses between male and female applicants.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S074959782...

> both scientists and laypeople overestimated the continuation of bias against female candidates. Instead, selection bias in favor of male over female candidates was eliminated and, if anything, slightly reversed in sign starting in 2009 for mixed-gender and male-stereotypical jobs in our sample. Forecasters further failed to anticipate that discrimination against male candidates for stereotypically female jobs would remain stable across the decades.

Re: PSF has withdrawn $1.5M proposal to US Government grant program

#878

Post by dctoedt » Sat, Nov 01, 2025, 10:45 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #705

gcanyon wrote: post #698

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a bad metaphor.

It’s a good metaphor. You can’t undo racial discrimination against someone who is now dead by discriminating against someone else who is now alive.

> You can’t undo racial discrimination against someone who is now dead by discriminating against someone else who is now alive.

A better way to look at it: We can and should try to mitigate the indirect, generational disadvantages of past racial discrimination. Some of those disadvantages are domino effects, manifested over many years. They're the evil twin of generational wealth.

Those generational disadvantages can be a drag on the descendants of the victims of the past discrimination. That gives a certain amount of comparative advantage to those of us whose ancestors didn't suffer racial discrimination — and who benefit from present-day white advantage even when our ancestors weren't among the racial oppressors.

Sure, my various immigrant grandparents, great-grandparents, and great-great-grandparents had to deal with a certain amount of ethnic discrimination. But it was nothing like that suffered by nonwhites.

The YouTube "head start in the race of life" video is spot on. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vvHWAjh3Ks

Some will say, it's not my job to mitigate today's effects of past discrimination. That seems ... uncitizenly, if you will.

Re: PSF has withdrawn $1.5M proposal to US Government grant program

#879

Post by machomaster » Sun, Nov 02, 2025, 9:41 PM UTC

dangus wrote: post #716

machomaster wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should check what constitutes the "right-wing terror attacks". You will be surprised to know that they include attacks made by Islamic radicals.

That doesn’t surprise me at all. Islamic radicals aren’t that different in belief system from a lot of Christian nationalists. We have all seen family portraits where people pose with American flags, bibles, and guns. American Christians talk about how the woman/wife is subservient to the husband, how women should stay at home and forego a career and perform traditional roles at home. Many denounce and try to restric…

It's the Left that: - is against Israel - supports Hamas - is against neocons and meddling in the Middle-East - is anti-free speech - is fanatically religious in their beliefs that have no base in reality and are cheering on the death (professional cancelling or real) of the people who dare to disagree with their delusion - are antiscience (antibiology, for one) - are for mutilation of children

The list can be continued.

My point is that classifying Islamists as right-wing is an attempt to gaslight people, to lie to them, is purposefully misleading. Context and public perception matter.

Re: PSF has withdrawn $1.5M proposal to US Government grant program

#880

Post by rectang » Sun, Nov 02, 2025, 11:48 PM UTC

klipt wrote: post #876

rectang wrote: post #777

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Not gp but...) I believe it because diversity is not a zero sum game, where every gain for a demographic other than mine means a loss to my demographic which must be fought tooth and nail. First, we are all enriched by having a variety of experiences and perspectives available to draw upon. Second, I feel stronger bonds with historically marginalized humans than with humans who happen to belong to my own demographic…

> diversity is not a zero sum game The moment HR rejects a candidate for being "insufficiently diverse" that's a zero sum game isn't it?

Considering how many of your posts are focused on purported overwhelming discrimination against men, I’m pretty sure that no matter what I say you will continue to see a workplace not dominated by men in only negative terms.