EPTUS Politics Mega-thread - Page 8377
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Read the rules in the OP before posting, please. In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up! NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action. | ||
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Nevuk
United States16280 Posts
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Falling
Canada11279 Posts
I have problems with crowd funding for anything attempting to be treated as academic. Especially through an entertainment medium like youtube. It pollutes the purity of academia, where peers are your audience and the people you are trying to convince. People equally educated, informed and read on the subject at hand. And this is well before we get to the fact that lectures are about culture and diversity. All his earliest stuff was just filming his UofT lectures and putting it online- he still does that, but it's the summer break now. I don't really see an issue with that- Yale Open does the same thing and it's allowed me to basically audit for free a great number of History and English courses. I don't see how that dilutes academia. Other lecturers have been frustrated how little a circle academia really is- print runs of less than a hundred that get buried in university libraries, never to be seen again and so have been experimenting with online lectures (Professor Corey Olsen, for instance who I have been following his different series for a number of years), so this process has been going for some time as academics are starting to experiment with what does and does not work online. This too, I don't see as a bad thing. The actual research funding, could be problematic, but that was thought up by him and so it's not like his research was marketed for online supporters (as it were). And he would still be going through the regular peer review process. That said, we are entering into some unknown territory, so it's fair to be concerned. | ||
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IyMoon
United States1249 Posts
On August 12 2017 08:17 Nevuk wrote: I never thought I'd see the day conservatives became outraged about at-will employment Only because it was not a liberal being fired | ||
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Gorsameth
Netherlands21368 Posts
On August 12 2017 08:17 Nevuk wrote: I never thought I'd see the day conservatives became outraged about at-will employment A result of the intense division in the country. Someone got attacked by the enemy, we have to fight the enemy so lets defend this person. | ||
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TheTenthDoc
United States9561 Posts
mozuko: Basically it looks like you skimmed the headers and came to conclusions that fit your pre-existing views on the issue. For the record, I did actually read the text of each suggestion. I just read into what the entire document instead of trying as hard as I could to find reasons he wasn't doing something stupid by sending a company-wide memo decrying policies in some bizarre attention grab. I'll try to respond to each of your responses. Hope I manage it without getting it too confusing/loopy. mozuko: He didn't call for "nuking diversity programs" in the memo, he called for a rational discussion of the cost and benefits. Which follows from his theme in the whole memo. One suggestion: "stop restricting programs and classes to certain genders or races." These are diversity programs. As for "Having an open and honest discussion about the costs and benefits of our diversity programs" I don't see how sending out a company-wide screed can possibly accomplish this, nor have I ever heard someone call for an open and honest discussion about the costs and benefits of something with no intention to curtail or eliminate it (be they conservative, liberal, or totally apolitical). mozuko: His claim on bias training is that it hasn't had any measurable effect, and thus is just a waste of time/money. Arguably a fair point. Ineffective diversity programs shouldn't be untouchable simply because they're diversity programs. Of course there's always arguments about the validity of studies. No, he actually says that the methods are likely useful but they should be removed because of politicalization and that they should explore alternate types of unconscious bias. That last part may be true, but the former part would obviously depend on the actual program and it sounds more like he got yelled at in the training. mozuko: The empathy thing is just a matter of you not reading the actual text and a bad choice of header on Damore's part. His point is that Google should be more rational and scientific in its approach, not rely on anecdotes and feelings. He says we should be "emotionally unengaged" on diversity issues rather than responding to calls for "increased empathy." Not only is there not much evidence of his argument that empathy leads to poor decisions, it's also easy to see what the problem with being "emotionally engaged" when the single most compelling reason to seek equal opportunity (at least in my mind) is that you want other people to be treated as you would be treated and have the same opportunities, which is inherently an emotional mechanism. The totally rational thing is to completely ignore diversity except as much as the government makes you and it drives your profits, because it's expensive. When you combine this with looking at "costs and benefits" of diversity programs, they will all but disappear. | ||
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Plansix
United States60190 Posts
On August 12 2017 08:17 Nevuk wrote: I never thought I'd see the day conservatives became outraged about at-will employment It was cool before when everyone was getting fired for demanding diversity and trying to stop discrimination. It was the free market showing that left leaning ideas were made of clouds and ether. Ideals to pure for the gritty reality we call life. The echo chamber full of a single idea. But now there is research that diversity might be good and breed new ideas and perspectives. Suddenly diversity might be fine or even better, profitable. At will employment is now evil because it represses the ideas of those who think diversity is bad. | ||
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mozoku
United States708 Posts
Your wish will be granted in a month when I start at Amazon. Though I'd also like to point out that I haven't taken a position on the merits of Google's diversity policies. I've only argued that the memo is mostly (not entirely) reasonable, and the response to it from both Google and some posters here has been unfair and mostly incorrect. On August 12 2017 08:09 IgnE wrote: how do you think stereotypes function? poor oppressive SJW google with its diversity hiring where only 68% of the workforce is male. how can a white male stand working there? Why do you think stereotypes are necessarily bad? Stereotypes are normal and can be useful. You and I think in fundamentally different ways it sounds like. When I think of males and females in terms of eligibility for an engineer job, I think of two different distributions. Suppose (not necessarily the case) that men are more interested in programming than women for cultural reasons (the patriarchy we'll say). Because men are more interested, they spend more time programming and distribution of engineering skill gets shifted to the right (i.e. better). The "stereotype" may be that men are better programmers in this scenario because they, on average, are in this made-up scenario. However, that doesn't say anything about whether an individual male programmer is better than an individual female programmer. This especially true when you insert something like an interview process that acts as a filter, removing the bottom 90% of programmers or whatever. Is that stereotype offensive to you? The fact that males in this scenario are on average better programmers should not impact an interviewer's decision because the population averages tell you nothing about an individual. Discrimination is still harmful to the company's and the victims interest, and should consequently be minimized/punished. But the stereotype is merely an observation of the reality in this made-up scenario. I don't see the value in pretending that the distributions are exactly the same when they aren't. Doing so neglects information that is probably useful to figuring how to fix the gap, if women want it to be fixed. Which is essentially Damore's point. -------- The second part of your post is borderline trolling and not worthy of a response. On August 12 2017 08:17 Nevuk wrote: I never thought I'd see the day conservatives became outraged about at-will employment Nobody here is arguing against at-will employment or arguing Google did anything illegal. I'm arguing it's undesirable from a societal perspective and that it's questionable business. | ||
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Falling
Canada11279 Posts
On August 12 2017 08:18 IyMoon wrote: Only because it was not a liberal being fired I'd have to think about what I've argued in the past. I try to strive for consistency, but I'm still processing what I think about it. It's very possible I'm being inconsistent. In essence: I'm not sure if I have a problem with At Will legislation as it stands. That is, it is likely (though I'd have to think about how this actually plays out) that I don't contest At Will- in one sense it makes it very easy to fire someone that isn't working out in the company without making it a fight in court every time. I'd have to think about it more, but I don't think it's on the legal front that I object. Rather it's on the societal level. I do know I have consistently been dismayed by hardening idealogical battle lines here on Team Liquid and the US (and for that matter Canada) in general. I don't see this as a good sign if we cannot talk out differences- well, and it might not even be good for Google either. What if it turns out their anti-bias training isn't working (because there's no evidence that it does), if you knock out naysayers- sure you have the right, and maybe the company is more comfortable because you didn't have to deal with someone challenging the status quo, but ultimately, you need people that think outside company lines and say 'wait a minute, is this actually working the way it's supposed to be working.' And I think that's where my main contention is- not in legality, not in whether Google had 'the right' to do so- currently they have both- but was it the right thing to do? Was it the most beneficial? I don't think so. | ||
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IgnE
United States7681 Posts
On August 12 2017 08:31 mozoku wrote: @Plansix Your wish will be granted in a month when I start at Amazon. Why do you think stereotypes are necessarily bad? Stereotypes are normal and can be useful. You and I think in fundamentally different ways it sounds like. When I think of males and females in terms of eligibility for an engineer job, I think of two different distributions. Suppose (not necessarily the case) that men are more interested in programming than women for cultural reasons (the patriarchy we'll say). Because men are more interested, they spend more time programming and distribution of engineering skill gets shifted to the right (i.e. better). The "stereotype" may be that men are better programmers in this scenario because they, on average, are in this made-up scenario. However, that doesn't say anything about whether an individual male programmer is better than an individual female programmer. This especially true when you insert something like an interview process that acts as a filter, removing the bottom 90% of programmers or whatever. Is that stereotype offensive to you? The fact that males in this scenario are on average better programmers should not impact an interviewer's decision because the population averages tell you nothing about an individual. Discrimination is still harmful to the company's and the victims interest, and should consequently be minimized/punished. But the stereotype is merely an observation of the reality in this made-up scenario. I don't see the value in pretending that the distributions are exactly the same when they aren't. Doing so neglects information that is probably useful to figuring how to fix the gap, if women want it to be fixed. Which is essentially Damore's point. -------- The second part of your post is borderline trolling and not worthy of a response. Nobody here is arguing against at-will employment or arguing Google did anything illegal. I'm arguing it's undesirable from a societal perspective and that it's questionable business. you'll have to back up a bit and tell me where google's policies talk about programming skill distributions | ||
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IgnE
United States7681 Posts
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Nyxisto
Germany6287 Posts
On August 12 2017 08:31 mozoku wrote: Doing so neglects information that is probably useful to figuring how to fix the gap, if women want it to be fixed. Which is essentially Damore's point. It's actually not helpful at all, at least if we are so generous to take women's responses to the manifesto into account. Given that you've rightfully identified that distributions like this allow not to draw conclusions about any given individual, the choice of focussing the whole manifesto on them clearly shows what the point of it is. | ||
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mozoku
United States708 Posts
It was an argument about the morality of stereotypes. The argument rests on nothing taken from Google's policies. On August 12 2017 08:41 Nyxisto wrote: It's actually not helpful at all, at least if we are so generous to take women's responses to the manifesto into account. Given that you've rightfully identified that distributions like this allow not to draw conclusions about any given individual, the choice of focussing the whole manifesto on them clearly shows what the point of it is. No, because when you start ignoring reality for ideological reasons you start to weaken your power to actually solve problems. That's the larger point being made. You shouldn't be doing that at all. I don't think you understood my point. If the distributional differences means more men than women are eligible programmers, it would result in a gender gap like the one seen--without the presence of any discrimination. Therefore, the bias training, diversity queues, etc. would be useless. The focus on women was to demonstrate the possibility (probability, if we're being honest because nobody believes the gap is wholly due to interviewer discrimination) that such a distributional gap exists. Note: I'm going to the gym. I may or may not respond to any posts later. | ||
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Plansix
United States60190 Posts
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IgnE
United States7681 Posts
but backing up even further what evidence do we have that 1) Google is hiring women who are not as "good" at their jobs as men who applied and 2) that even if that were the case in a very narrow sense (for which there is zero evidence), like say perhaps some timed coding challenge, that the benefits of its current hiring practices for the ecosystem as a whole don't outweigh failing to optimize 100% in this narrow sliver of competence? imagine if you will that there are at least some women who are highly competent and who would benefit google disproportionately to a similarly "qualified" male applicant (always taking into account that qualifications are always already too circumscribed). now imagine that googles chances of attracting these super-producing women leaders are much much higher if google has a culture of promoting women in a field dominated by men. isn't it possible that the "inefficiencies" of hiring the 98th percentile woman vs the 99th percentile man in the grunt coding jobs would be outweighed by the benefit of being able to attract, retain, and let flourish these super-competent women? is this not even more true in an industry that, perhaps more than others, is responsible for constituting and being constituted by (the desires of) its own consumers? | ||
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m4ini
4215 Posts
Allegedly the WH hasn't gotten any orders in that direction (they were quick to react on that one) - i find it interesting though that it was constantly brought up that Hillary is the warmongering hawk, and Trump less so. Starting to wonder now. | ||
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farvacola
United States18818 Posts
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m4ini
4215 Posts
On August 12 2017 08:56 farvacola wrote: Trump has a pretty bad case of "start a war" blue balls and by God, he intends to finish what he started! It does feel a bit like that. What's the connections between his staff and weapon manufacturers? He comes a little bit off like someone who really, really would like to blow shit up somewhere. Of course, that can have many reasons, his tiny hands could be one - or, and that wouldn't be the first time, people whispering in his ear for profits. | ||
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OuchyDathurts
United States4588 Posts
On August 12 2017 08:55 m4ini wrote: So by the looks Trump is now "threatening" military actions in Venezuela as well? Allegedly the WH hasn't gotten any orders in that direction (they were quick to react on that one) - i find it interesting though that it was constantly brought up that Hillary is the warmongering hawk, and Trump less so. Starting to wonder now. Anyone who thought Trump was less of a warmonger than Hillary is either crazy or a fool. Trump had us going to war with like 9 countries during the Republican Primary debates. All the candidates, Trump included, were clamoring over each other to see who could star the most wars with the most people to prove some sort of machismo. "Bomb the shit out of them" Trump was the peaceful one? On August 12 2017 08:02 Falling wrote: @Ouchy I mean, I guess. But I think that'll lead to even stronger ideological divides: the hollowing out of the middle and the hardening into left-right camps. There are few jobs where political beliefs matter (a left wing or right wing talk show, probably wants to hire people from their respective camps). But for most jobs, a healthy society ought to be able to express very different political beliefs, have courteous disagreements, and still do their job. What is legally allowable isn't the same thing as what is beneficial for society. Work is not the place, end of. There are forums to discuss things, doing it at work is how you get people to hate your guts. I wouldn't expect anything good to come of making a 10 page manifesto and posting it if I worked at Chic-fil-a or Hobby Lobby. Their politics are known and I don't for a second think I'm going to change management's practices by spreading a memo. Talk to HR if you feel so strongly. You're not going to get a drop of sympathy from me for bringing up politics or religion at work. There's nothing to benefit from it, it's a powder keg of resentment and that's it. | ||
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m4ini
4215 Posts
On August 12 2017 09:04 OuchyDathurts wrote: Anyone who thought Trump was less of a warmonger than Hillary is either crazy or a fool. Trump had us going to war with like 9 countries during the Republican Primary debates. All the candidates, Trump included, were clamoring over each other to see who could star the most wars with the most people to prove some sort of machismo. "Bomb the shit out of them" Trump was the peaceful one? Oh that wasn't my opinion, while i do agree that Hillary is a hawk, Trump would start wars based on his ego alone - we had many people here, including most of the usual suspects, arguing that Trump would in fact not be as bad in that regard. | ||
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Falling
Canada11279 Posts
On August 12 2017 08:50 Plansix wrote: Falling: I don't think anyone is happy with the divisions in our country or that it is so hard to talk about these issues. But we confuse talking at people with talking to people. People treat these discussions like battles, including here. The manifesto said "fight me and my views" to a lot of people, even if that wasn't the intent. But we can't even put that single point to bed. That it might have had the wrong tone and delivery. And if we can't be critical of the tone and how a message delivered, we are not prepared for the deeper discussions. Do you have a problem with the tone? Because to me, he was trying really, really hard not go all in on one side- there's a portion talking about right wing biases, there's a portion looking at how the right can be anti-science, etc. To me, it seemed a fairly carefully worded document that at least an attempt to support it's claims. And then delivery- as far as I can tell, the method of delivery was actually taken out of his hands. Peterson: "So you went to this diversity meeting and you weren't happy with the sorts of things you were being told and with the practices. Is that both correct?" My note: (A meeting, which unlike all the other ones, which are open and recorded- no recordings were allowed. "They don't want any paper trail for these things" Damore from just earlier.) ... Peterson: "It's certainly also distressing to hear that there is acceptance to the idea that diversity is can be mapped onto race and gender, especially with regards to performance because there's no evidence for that whatsoever. So okay, you went to this meeting and you decided to write this document, and how long had you been working on it before you released it?" Damore: "I had been working on it on my free time. I wanted to clarify my thoughts on this. I really just wanted to be proven wrong because if what I was saying was right then something bad was happening. And so about a month ago, I submitted to feedback, to that program and I saw that people had looked at it, but no one actually said anything. ... It was only after it got viral and then leaked to the news that Google started caring" Peterson: So how did it go viral and do you know how it was leaked. Damore: So yeah, so there was a group at Google called Skeptics. And so I thought maybe they'd be able to prove me wrong, like they're skeptical about things, right? I was naive, I guess. I sent them a message, like okay, what do you think about this? Is Google in some sort of echo chamber or am I in an echo chamber? And then it just exploded after that. And you know and our internal- it was spread throughout all of Google. Peterson: Do you know was it the Skeptics group that started to spread it around? Damore: Yeah and then there was a lot of upper management that specifically called it out, saying how harmful it is and how it is unacceptable. That this sort of viewpoint is not allowed at Google. + Show Spoiler + So then it seems like it was intended for a fairly small audience- there was some poll where there was actually a decent number that was supportive of his views, but then someone else blasted it much farther than he had intended. I mean, maybe he didn't go through exactly the right channel, but it seems that this wasn't intended to be blasted out as ultimatum to all of google, but to see if a certain group within Google felt the same way. | ||
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