skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I might very well have. So in the case that an employee is asked to give their opinion on a controversial topic, what would you suggest is the best course of action so that they will not be mocked, ostracized, and perceived as an unhinged idiot? My solution is always to just shut up. But then again, it doesn't really create a discussion around controversial topics, does it? Because the majority will mock, ostracize, and condemn you as an unhinged idiot. Is that a good thing for society? Or should we open our ears and listen? Maybe read before we speak? Maybe even debate with facts and counter facts? Before we go straight to the mocking, ostracizing, and condemning.

These are all hypothetical questions of course. But something to think about.

Edit: because my phone likes four letter words that sound like shut.
At work someone once spent hours trying to resolve a network issue. Turns out he didn't have a localhost entry in his /etc/hosts and some sadistic person had created a VM named 'localhost' that registered a DNS entry via DHCP.
Ah yes, let's group all progressives into agreeing to fire him. The comments on the internet have varied widely on that topic even on the "progressive" side, and it's not like we have any political parties calling for him to be fired. This post is just doubling down on the irony of using stereotypes for the stereotypical reaction to a piece filled with stereotypes.
> So another way to figure out which of our taboos future generations will laugh at is to start with the labels. Take a label—"sexist", for example—and try to think of some ideas that would be called that. Then for each ask, might this be true?

Might it be true that women are just naturally much less attracted to STEM than men?

For the record, I think even among men, being attracted to STEM or even good at it is rather rare. It's probably even rarer among women.

EDIT: I wonder if the downvotes are because I'm going offtopic or because I can't say that?
Tolerance is not a moral precept. As a liberal, I tolerate differences in opinion, but I do not falsely equate attempts to deny people fair civil rights (as the modern GOP does routinely, in terms of race, gender, gender identity, and so many other ways) as “opinion” so much as institutionalized violence.

Whether the transgender/nonbinary people I know have the right to exist or not is not subject to debate. If you say no, you are sanctioning violence against them. Whether women have the right to participate fully in the economy without facing harassment or discrimination just because they are women is not subject to debate. If you say no, you are sanctioning violence against them.

These are basic human rights and the party you have chosen to support thinks that they are subject to debate. You have chosen to support virulent bigots and misogynists…but don’t want to be called one yourself? Methinks you protest a little too much.
Sure... believing in something for which there is no evidence is a super informed view.
This is disappointing. I didn't really agree with his premise, and I think he was generally wrong honestly, but I don't think his views were so unrealistic or offensive that this was warranted. I think this was probably done mainly because there was negative media about it. Which sort of demonstrates that Google is just another corporation that doesn't really value its employees that much. Maybe as a collective, but not on an individual basis. I think it's important not to let their moral posturing about social issues cloud our judgement about that.
I'm not surprised. I'd be curious to know if he planned for this. What other outcome could he have expected?
This is the start of google become less technical and a less desirable place to work.

That might be okay for them. They had too many applications anyways
GoodRX coupons are a come-on. I've had one long out of patent drug jump from $14.77 to $100.58 this year. My doctor was amazed at this. (I just sent that info to the NYT; they have a form for this in the article.)
This is why I consciously avoid absolutely anything Ferris is involved with. You can immediately know that it will be something of no real substance designed to sell subscriptions to a monthly razor service.
The dude had to go - I mean, the heat he got was unworkable, to the point I wonder who'd ever want to work with him. It feels like even saying hello to him might have been social, political and career suicide.

What I'm interested in is Google's best response, i.e. he has to go, how is that deal structured? Do you offer him a crazy good settlement and an NDA? What is the risk/reward here of a lowball offer vs legal action? Is the NDA negotiable, e.g. you can do X interviews, but not on say Fox news? What is the internal risk of people finding out he was given 6 figures to walk? I'm really fascinated with the practicalities of the action after the decision was taken.

Does anyone with any sort of HR experience know what is the best practice here?
A fine proof that Paul Graham was a terrible human being even back in 2004.
It's the ongoing increase in partisanship. It makes it easier to form ideological bubbles even where they didn't exist before, because the ratio is so skewed to begin with, it's entirely possible to end up in a group of people selected by some unrelated criteria (e.g. a work team), and find out that there's a significant overlap ideologically. So issues that were not okay because of the potential to offend someone etc, gradually become acceptable, because (at one particular point) there was no-one in particular to be offended. Of course, once established as part of the culture, this becomes self-reinforcing...
These people are not liberals; they are leftists. I consider myself a liberal and find myself having more in common with centrist Republicans than I do with some members of my own party.
You can say whatever you want. You can be as loathsome or virtuous as you'd like on your own time and dime. But the moment what you say goes contrary to the shared expectations of the company you belong to or negatively impacts how business is done, you're finished.

Is this a difficult or arguable point?
In their article Gizmodo said they removed links. So no, not just plaintext.
Google officials immediately called for his firing.
> You have chosen to support virulent bigots and misogynists…but don’t want to be called one yourself? Methinks you protest a little too much.

I support bigots and misogynists speaking their opinions because its a right enumerated by the US constitution. I don't mind being called a bigot or misogynists myself if that's what is required to defend inalienable rights.

You have no right not to be outraged or offended by someone's opinion. And it is disgusting to see someone's livelihood jeopardized because of political correctness. The backlash started in November, and this is only going to dump gasoline on the raging dumpster fire.
Did you actually read the article I linked?
I think you skipped about 2 Reichs there.
Please stop peddling this science denialism. There is great consensus outside the intellectually-bankrupt fields of sociology and gender studies.
This comment, forgive the pun, makes me very sad. I’m all for doing something to fight the ideas in this guy’s paper, but to advocate for personal censorship as apparently some sort of ideal is beyond my support.
Since when? The github transgender controversy a few years ago was about posts one of the contributors made in a different forum. Brendan Eich was pushed out because of his personal views. If this person posted it on his facebook page the result would likely be the same.
i absolutely hate the situation that we have found ourselves in. gender and race politics have become totally divorced from the issues of gender and race. firing people who speak their mind is not going to help women in tech and it wont help black kids from being shot in the street in chicago or oakland. not a single person i have ever known who played the politically correct game has ever lifted a single finger to help black people or a little girls interested in tech. the sad truth is that gender politics is now a game of virtue signalling -- a status game among liberal people to see who is the most virtuous, the kindest and most thoughtful. meanwhile, any person who does not fit into a beneficiary position in this game (for example the entire middle section of the united states) is treated with savage cruelty. it is astonishing to see my ultra liberal friends whine endlessly about how unfair life is, how painful life is for certain people, and then turn around and in the same breath condemn and disparage millions of people for absolutely no reason. the truth is that a truly kind person reserves kindness for everyone, and even someone who might be mean or unpleasant at first -- i have found that kindness is much more effective at changing peoples perspective than anything else, so if you want mid-westerners to stop being racist, remember that being horrible and mean to them probably wont make them see things from your perspective.

i think there is some kind of effect where people who are really good at solving complicated puzzles that are right in front of their faces are not so good at solving logical issues that are less tangible or more long term. thats one of my theories, because a lot of people i know that arent dumb at all seem to totally buy into the gender politics thing, even though their beliefs totally fly in the face of logic. maybe its me who is wrong, and there is some subtle aspect of this whole thing that i am not grasping. either way, we are all in this together. its important to be patient with each other and to never allow ourselves to descend into savagery and hatred. and if you do find yourself behaving like that, its ok. we all make mistakes, dust yourself off and try again. i know i have.
Ask HN: What do you wish you did when you moved to a new city?
I don't think you read your own link well enough:

> "Sex researchers recognize that these differences are not inherently supportive of sexism or stratifying opportunities based on sex. It is only because a group of individuals have chosen to interpret them that way, and to subsequently deny the science around them, that we have to have this conversation at a public level." -- Dr. Debra W Soh

The problem is the author is repeating a pattern common in these discussions, where some kernels of empirically supported science are used to justify opinions unsupported by them. That we can measure some differences in MRI in no way establishes that under-representation of women in tech is a result of biological inevitability. We know for certain this isn't the case due to history itself, as well as variation in representation by location and culture.
"Discrimination to reach equal representation is unfair, divisive, and bad for business." -- is asserted as an absolute but never substantiated and was his downfall I believe.

If he had instead said that Google should focus on addressing these biases that hurt minorities and women and as they take affect and demonstrate their effectiveness allow the affirmative action style discrimination to be reduced. He would have gotten a much better reception.
You reposted your comment, so I'll repost my reply:

What are these well known and scientifically established differences in the distribution of traits between men and women?

The research linked in the the document are based on The Big Five Personality Traits: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits

These traits are measured with self-report surveys. I.e. personality quizzes. Not to malign the field of psychology, but this isn't the gold standard of science, IMHO.

Having read Mr. Damore's document, I can find very little in it of substance. It deals with politics and gender in only the very broadest of terms. It does not delve deeply into the scientific issues at hand, instead sprinkling his platitudes with wikipedia links to give them weight.

That being said, I completely agree that the US's nasty brand of liberalism is in a sad state. Our response to this manifesto should have been a cold critique of its many flaws, not the blind hysteria we've apparently opted for instead.
I had a very similar problem recently with docker + nginx. Best I could figure out was the randomness of the problem was being caused by keep alive connection limits. If the connection was opened as IPv4 it would work until it hit the keep alive limit but the new connection might run into the IPv4/IPv6 lookup problem and fail. Never really figured it out for sure. It's definitely thrown some cold water on my plans to go dual stack everywhere all the time. Not sure it's worth the risk of running into these stupid bugs.
Dare I say, but people should be employed for their abilities not their gender, race or value to some checklist.

Those who develop greater abilities through study should find greater opportunities in work, regardless of their gender, race, sexual orientation or negative score on some diversity checklist.
There is no evidence that Google "lowers the bar," and this is a common misconception about diversity-focused hiring practices. The idea isn't to lower the bar to hire more candidates for the mere sake of their ethic or gender diversity. The idea is to ensure that the hiring manager at least looks at some qualified, diverse candidates in his or her process.

The "lowering the bar" argument assumes there are not enough women or people of color in the population at large who are qualified for any given job. Google's approach probably assumes there are, and puts a burden on the hiring manager and recruiter to find and consider those candidates.

I don't work at Google and am wholly unfamiliar with their internal hiring practices. But in order to prove the author's specific "lowering the bar" claim, we'd need to see data not just on hiring numbers, but on success of the hired cohorts over time. (I'm willing to guess that Google does not try to hire unqualified candidates, period.)

"Lowering the bar" is a dangerous claim that offends the dignity and qualifications of every diverse employee at the company or ever hired by the company. A claim that bold would demand extraordinary evidence, which the author does not convincingly supply, and which I am taking a wild guess does not exist.
I don't remember but between hunters, hippies, logging, blm, and forest service it can be a real bureaucratic nightmare. Irony is that they actually all want the same thing.
Again, is that all progressives?
Which makes me all the happier, personally, to work in one of those states. At Will employment is such an employee hostile asymmetrical contract.
I'm a far leftist and I don't subscribe to PCism.

You can ghettoize yourselves all you want but it will do you no favors.

If you truly believe in what you say you do you would live your life despite the travails, not wail and bemoan them.
It's outrageous for him to be fired for being wrong given the stereotypes perpetuated daily on public social media by Google employees.
Aren't those effectively the same claim? If we take his non-bias cause to be true, that directly means that women have biological disadvantages to becoming programmers. He is in fact saying that's why the gap exists.
The views in the article represent the scientific consensus.

Scott Alexander covers some of the most salient points here:

http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagger...

See Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate for a book-length treatment.

(all male, all white) scientists

This is both ad hominem and wrong (the fourth scientist featured, Dr. Debra W. Soh, is an East Asian woman).
Does anyone have any insight on the legal status of this project? It’s licensed as BSD 2 Clause, but looks to be heavily derived from Clojure which is EPL. AFAIK the EPL is copyleft and doesn’t permit relicensing without the copyright holders’ permission.
This doesn't belong anywhere, let alone HN.
It works both ways. You can also quit any time you want.
Link me the part where he said anything like that.
He was in no way advocating for that though. Not supporting some diversity programs isn't the same thing as thinking women ought to be harassed or discriminated against. We should be studying programs like this and explaining why they work, not just silencing all criticism with blanket accusations of bigotry. The current culture around this sort of thing is counter productive in actually achieving a more diverse and equitable workforce, in my opinion.
It was surprisingly hard to figure out the problem with these two articles.I mean it all makes sense, I couldn't stop nodding. And dont get me started with the picture from the stairs where the fighting couple stands below the lamentable single person. I mean: yes! And if that is not enough, our reading efforts are rewarded with a handy checklist for choosing the right partner.

I know the author might not happy about this, but I have an odd feeling (ha, shoot me). And the intensions they where, as they always are , the intentions where good. Nobody was hurt, no potential was spoiled, no time was lost. Everyone is happy. Sure there are conflicts and stumbling blocks, but with solid work and communication you disolve them into harmless bumps while sailing away on your Loveboat. Ready for the next chapture. Buying a house. Having kids. Growing older together. Die with a smile on your face surrounded by caring people.

If anything is overly romantic, than this. Completely ignoring the context you live in and reduce everything to a handfull of personal traits and skills is overly simplicistic (stupid) and naive, because:

- you cannot create love by communication, or transform friendship or nice feeling into love

- It is reasonable if you seek for true love and believe in fate (But only until you're 30)

- If you have been hurt, betrayed, used and left, take it as a sign to loath yourself less (and not others more)

- Life can be bitter. Love can vanish. Dreams can be shattered.

There is this song "Hello" from Adele, which is fairly popular. It describes somehow a state of love and connection after it is long gone. Something I'm not sure this author would even understand.
The people in NY/NJ area have no choice but to endure the mess of NJ transit and MTA. Politicians lack vision and will to build a modern transportation system that accounts for growing number of riders through these systems. Somebody must have told try these folks to keep the "lights on" and forgot to mention that it also includes getting riders on time.
research suggests that “greater nation-level gender equality leads to psychological dissimilarity in men’s and women’s personality traits.”

That's a quote from this study: https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&h.... You can argue that even in more egalitarian countries the differences are entirely due to social pressures; you can't say they don't exist.

"the lack of women in tech is fine becuase that's just what happens when women, who are biologically worse at programming, don't go into tech"

"biologically worse at programming" is a total fabrication. The accurate claim is "less interested", although I suppose that's not as effective for your Two Minutes Hate.
I found this to be a pretty good rebuttal to that

https://medium.com/@silverstrike/i-like-how-you-portray-the-...

The summary at the end of

"Get over yourself. You are not as special as you believe yourself to be.

At that point, I gave up on your pathetic and emotional diatribe. Your piece is devoid of any logic, reason, or sense and serves as a way for you to virtue-signal to the rest of the world how much of a “stand-up guy” you are."

Is spot on how I read that Medium post.

I found nothing of value in the Ex Googler's commentary.
If diverse companies perform better, this would surely mean that there is some sort of difference between the sexes? How else could diversity have an impact on the bottom line of a company?
That was the opening point.

Everything beyond that was wrong and wandered into the realm of offensive, and creating a hostile environment.
I didn't say he was infallible. He could be wrong. I'm talking about academic credibility—and he has it.

a STEM degree

A STEM PhD from Harvard. FTFY. And comparing James Damore to Ben Carson is, frankly, absurd. James Damore is not a politician, he's a scientist. He's not some yahoo in a comment thread, arguing with academics and professionals in their field from his parent's basement.
It would be great to see a manufacturer with scale to pick up the Solo base and build a real competitor to DJI's drones.
His argument seems to boil down to "men and women are different, maybe that's why there are fewer women in tech".
That's not an argument, it's speculation that there's an argument. The bulk of the manifesto is a repetition of tropes about men vs women.
It would be simply out of survival instinct. Sufficiently strong leftist political views seem to correlate very strongly with the desire for people to mandate others fall in line with their views. Or else.... how many examples do moderate/conservative people need to see before they should worry? Or simply.. go elsewhere.

Openness, or simply indifference to personal or political beliefs I thought was the DEFAULT position of most people.

It is sadly not that way anymore... this and many many other examples have shown us all.

Just search twitter for hundreds of tech-industry employees railing against this guy for trying to present a statistical argument against conventional wisdom. They are no doubt celebrating at this moment that he was fired.

Anyone on the fence just needs to ask themselves... what would happen if these same people knew what was in your head? If they heard you speak about your own views? Would they have mercy? Of course not. Who's next?
You're literally active on his website :P
Affirmative action policies by definition change hiring in order to increase the number of minority candidates. That's why we progressives support them!

Are you saying he's wrong for pointing out that Google has affirmative action policies? Or that the policies themselves are bad? I don't understand.
I think I've figured out what Damore needs: a daughter. Something tells me that he'd do a 180 in 2 seconds if he had a daughter.
The best explanation of why he was going to be fired and why that was the right thing to do (that I read) came from Yonatan Zunger, who had recently left a Human Resources position at Google; especially his third point, in the following post on Medium:

https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/so-about-this-googlers-man...

In many way, it was not an unfamiliar sort of rant for the internet, and I was struck by the author's earnestness and apparent sincerity. It's possible that I make too many allowances for behaviour, and it's possible that I'm easily mislead.

I thought his ideas were not in any way useful, or actionable, even had he been correct;

That the ideas were poorly expressed, and full of such fringe 'truths' as are derived, insincerely, from cherry-picked science in order to be sold as snake-oil cures for the cognitive dissonance of the conservative and vulnerable;

That the expression of these ideas was immensely foolish, especially appearing in the context of what I took to have been his initial intent, an appeal of tolerance of diverse viewpoints at Google.

However, I'm always most disturbed by vitriol online when it's in service of beliefs that I share. It makes me deeply uneasy.
His qualifications _should_ be invisible. An argument should stand on its own merits.
“what you can't say?”
That's an argument for digging into the inner workings of the hiring process more than an argument for looking at aggregate effect. If you're just looking at aggregate group statistics about candidate pools and hiring decisions, how would you ever know the difference between your hiring screen preferring a group and the candidate pool genuinely having more strong candidates in that group?

It seems more than a little quixotic if fixing every known flaw in the hiring process isn't enough - that the process must get a certain hiring outcome in order to be "fair".