skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Putting a disclaimer at the beginning of a long misogynistic rant that we should "Treat people as individuals, not as just another member of their group," doesn't nullify the rest of the document.

If you say "People aren't going to like what I say" and then say something offensive about 50% of the population, well then sure, consider the author's point proven...

This person created a toxic work environment in which women and people of color will not feel comfortable working with him, being interviewed by him, have him as their tech lead or have him on their promotion committee.

Why the hysterical cries of virtue signaling and suppression? What is authoritarian dogma that this author dared to question?
> The author was trapped. He shared the document to the "skeptics" internal group asking for feedback. He didn't realize that the skeptics group had been infected by SJWs for years.

Sounds like a company sponsored honey pot, even more ammo for an unfair dismissal lawsuit.
The modern GOP has embraced some very misogynistic politicans and policies. And they pushed Trump into the White House. If you don't want to be labeled a misogynist, don't support a misogynistic party.

It's really that easy. Or have the courage of your convictions and try not to freak out when you live in a place where the majority do not share your views. I say this as a very lefty person in a very red state. I don't hide my views even though I know my neighbors and coworkers may be disapproving.
That's a mighty slippery slope. What if the memo was the opposite? Arguing for more diversity and calling out executives that were not diverse and he was fired for that? There is a strong taste of hypocrisy in my mouth.

In my opinion he should sue, and he should win.
Sorry, I had nothing to do with hiring while I worked there, so I can't comment on details of their hiring policies. I definitely didn't observe anything out of the ordinary or discriminatory against white men - I worked with plenty of them.
The world will do this for you if you let it. Drive less. Be on your phone less. Do anything else more.
Something lie this?

http://boingboing.net/2017/08/04/theyll-never-see-this-tiny-...
Check out my Daily Random playlist on Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/user/machinebrother/playlist/6p21dR...

It updates with 30 random songs every day.
I'd love for us to so some market-based reforms to the current system before we blow it up - I concede that Single Payer is likely the only workable answer in the end.

We need to do things like tort reform, the current system presumes that a doctor making a mistake is an extremely rare thing - its not, doctors are human like any other mechanic. Instead doctors over diagnose, and over treat out of fear of liability (which in most states is unlimited). we could limit liability to 2x the actuarial predicted lifetime earnings potential, and limit damages for pain and suffering to 1x that.

We need to allow insurers to pool together to purchase drugs to force the price down - medicare should also be unshackled and be allowed to negotiate pricing on drugs as well.

We should require cost transparency in healthcare - try asking how much a procedure is the next time you go to the doctor, you'll get a bunch of blank stares. People cant make reasonable choices if they cant perform a cost benefit analysis.

Those changes alone - while they may not reduce costs would stop the increases from occurring as quickly.
The site seems to be experiencing the 'hug of death' right now, Internet Archive link: https://web.archive.org/web/20170808013732/http://quillette....

Prof. Schmitt gets it right here: gender differences don't have any significant impact on women's capacity to perform any job--even physically strenuous jobs, with the right training. Certainly for information work, bringing up gender differences is just going down the wrong rabbit hole. It's like asking a job candidate if they're American when all you need to know is if they're legally authorised to work in the US.

The other scientists unfortunately go down this rabbit hole. Prof. Miller especially consistently asks the wrong questions throughout his piece. First, he establishes biological sex differences but doesn't ask if they have any significant impact on women's capacity to perform a job. Second, he goes off on a tangent about his pet 'paradox' theory about the American public, arguing that gender equality would make diversity moot from a business advantage perspective.

Let's just clarify why we want diversity in the workplace: it's not because minorities will bring different skills and traits to the table; it's because (a) excluding minorities is inhumane, and (b) because minorities will (hopefully) keep the organisation from making dumb mistakes like leaving out the main protagonist of their new film series from a major marketing campaign ( https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/12/15960372/hasbro-star-wars... ), sending Kylie Jenner out with a Pepsi to mend race relations ( http://time.com/4726500/pepsi-ad-kendall-jenner/ ), and pushing for a Game of Thrones-style show about a modern-day Confederate America which won the war and kept slavery intact ( https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/08/no... ). These are just three things that come immediately to mind, you can imagine how much shit there is out there that hasn't even reached national level yet.
Then why is he using the phrase "lower the bar"?

If he wants to argue that Google should lower the false negative rate for men too, I am totally on board with that! They should lower the false negative rate for everyone. They are bad at high-signal interviewing.

But the meaning of the phrase "lower the bar" is that less-qualified people are being let in, that people are being held to lower standards, etc. The entire point of the phrase "lower the bar" is to convey that the bar should have been be left where it was.

Honestly even if he wrote something like "Hiring practices which are more likely to improve outcomes for individual 'diversity' candidates by decreasing the false negative rate" I'd have much less of a problem with it. (I called out this specific sentence on Twitter yesterday; it was one of the things that particularly bothered me about the document.) But he used words with a specific meaning.

If he used words by mistake that his colleagues reasonably interpreted to mean that he thinks they're unqualified, that's all the more reason he shouldn't have his job. At a company at the scale of Google, a huge portion of effective engineering is effective communication.
Diversity and gender issues are one of those sacred issues that for whatever reason are not allowed to be challenged
This is the second topic tagged with dupe and no one has linked to the original.
I'm referring to his comment "discriminating based on a protected status (which is illegal and I’ve seen it
done)".
Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14952787
Same thing for me. When I get refills I see whichever psych happens to be free that day and they always comment on how weird it is that my insurance requires the brand name. I always tell them that I assume the insurance company has cut a deal with Shire and it appears I was right.

But my copay for the name brand is only $20 so it never occurred to me to complain.
It seems like you're open to learning more about genetics (I think...) so I'll share some interesting findings that don't really fit with the popular conception of race.

It turns out that the most genetic variability lies between... black people who live in West Africa.

While we can use 'junk DNA' to classify people somewhat well, that doesn't tell us much about what makes a person a person.

This is not a controversial view - here's a discussion of it for example: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1893020/
> if you make some reasonable assumptions

Not everyone agrees on what is "reasonable". I have no problem giving up locality, but "true" randomness (i.e., information generated without an algorithm) seems like a philosophical cop out.

Note that something can also be globally deterministic but indeterministic from the perspective of a subsystem. In this sense, the universe would appear random as far as we're concerned, but not random to whoever is simulating the universe (this is often called superdeterminism, but I think that's a silly word—the universe is either deterministic or it isn't).
It depends. On the one hand you don't want to sow discord at the workplace, on the other hand you don't want to dismiss critical ideas because the majority don't agree with something.

There are other ways to combat illogical ideas.

As an atheist I would not fire people for being believers (even if it were lawful to fire on that basis) --just because "I know better". If one of them tried proselytizing, by law I can't do anything about it, but even if I could, there would be better ways to combat irrational appeals and sowing of fear.

That said, what if the engineer has "only" presented the ideas as a private person at a "men's club"? If that's not okay, then this infringes upon people's speech outside of work as a citizen --that's chilling. There are Walmarts out there.

I believe in making tech an attractive career path for women --as a society we underutilize them and don't extract the value we could --as the soviets did from their women. But at the same time, I am sensitive to kerbing speech.
The only people who will be receptive to working for someone who feels that way about them will only be those who have decided for themselves they are not capable of assessing people objectively either. A less charitable way to put it is these people have decided their own biases are beyond rehabilitation, so these are the people you are selecting for if you hold that view. (In reality, I think people who support these quotas agree with you but think they don't have biases, it's everyone else that can't be trusted. An equally toxic scenario.)
But there are things that are permissible and impermissible for companies to consider when making employment decisions. It's safer to fire someone for talking back to their manager than it is to fire someone for having dark skin.

Free speech isn't the right lens to view this. In the state of California, companies can't discriminate against employees on the basis of political views or political activities. I bet two things - one, that this guy can probably make the case that Google discriminated against him and two, google can afford the fine/judgement/settlement.

Is that the message we want to send? That companies can discriminate against protected classes to the extent they can afford the consequence.
Someone recently told me about ceramic compound which is said to be much better, and doesn't have this "issue".

Now, since other below tried and seem to be confident is that it's not conductive it seems that we both had too much fears.
I agree 100%, the only stake I have in this is the lack of argumentation paired with the amount of outrage and knee-jerk reactions being portrayed as normal by the media.

The only counter arguments I see around this is essentially "this is not a person I generally agree with so their opinion has zero value. They might be a doctor in psychology but my opinion is more correct."
Thanks for the ad hominem attack :)

If you look through my post history, you'll see that I made this account to talk about another article about a week ago.

EDIT:

I can't respond to you, unfortunately.

I'm sorry we've resorted to name-calling - however, I stand by my earlier statement. Irrespective of your identity, there has been a noticeable trend of discussions about 'reverse racism'.

I have not referred to you with a pronoun nor made any mention of your race/sex/anything else. I apologize if you feel that I did this.
Start with Halpern's "Sex Differences in Cognitive Abilities" and follow the bibliography where it takes you (I really would like to provide the references, but just I don't have the patience to copy them now). For something rigorous that's digitally available, start with sapinker's slides from his 2005 debate [1]. Modern understanding is quite similar, only with new evidence and insights from evolutionary psychology and neurobiology.

[1] https://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/debate05/pinker.slides.html
Response by Scott Alexander: http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagger...
Different skin color, unlike gender, has nothing to do with the level of testosterone one is exposed to in the womb :

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3166361/

Abstract :
"There is considerable interest in understanding women’s underrepresentation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics careers. Career choices have been shown to be driven in part by interests, and gender differences in those interests have generally been considered to result from socialization. We explored the contribution of sex hormones to career-related interests, in particular studying whether prenatal androgens affect interests through psychological orientation to Things versus People. We examined this question in individuals with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), who have atypical exposure to androgens early in development, and their unaffected siblings (total N = 125 aged 9 to 26 years). Females with CAH had more interest in Things versus People than did unaffected females, and variations among females with CAH reflected variations in their degree of androgen exposure.

Results provide strong support for hormonal influences on interest in occupations characterized by working with Things versus People."

(emphasis mine)

This is completely in line with the memo. I am so disappointed by Google.
It's crazy to see such overtly anti free speech arguments in the discussion around this memo, even on Hacker News.

"Well actually, the first amendment only protects against government intruding on free speech, it doesn't apply to the rest of us!"

Free speech used to be the thing everyone agreed on. It's like a fundamental tenant of Western, liberal democracy has gone out of vogue.
This is the real reason for all of these problems. It's political. The fares don't come close to covering the operating and capital cost of the system. It's not user-pays, it requires constant government subsidies (as an implementation detail, the required government subsidies form a convenient way for the state and city to hold each other hostage, but that's another story).

Any talk of use pays is met with outrage about how low income people out in the boroughs couldn't afford it, so the whole system continues to operate as a horribly inefficient welfare system for poor people to get to underpaid jobs in the city, instead of a transit system. It would help a lot to double (triple?) the fares overnight, and give the poor people out in the boroughs a free metrocard - at least that way you're capturing the value provided to the rich people and tourists all the way through manhattan and brooklyn.
> Right to exist? Is someone saying they should all be rounded up and persecuted?

A lot of opinions around trans people are centered around it being a mental delusion that shouldn't be accommodated. That leaves them unable to transition and live in society without mental harm. If that isn't persecution, not sure what is!
1) why is it a moral imperative to have 50/50 gender balance in a company?

2) why is it wrong to have a non-diverse company?
Freedom of speech is only relevant to government and public spaces, shareholders of google may impose restrictions they deem appropriate.

EDIT: Wtf is wrong with people on HN today? I merely stated the law, it isn't even my opinion. It demonstrably passed Google's legal team, so it's unlikely that I'm wrong.
> At the risk of repeating myself, the memo's author did in fact say that "Google has created several discriminatory practices", which include "hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for 'diversity' candidates".

Please take care not to deceptively quote the author in question. This is the full sentence:

> Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidates by decreasing the false negative rate.

The author deliberately crafted this statement to make it clear that he is referring to qualified, non-diverse, candidates being rejected at greater rates than qualified and diverse candidates - not that unqualified diverse candidates are accepted at a higher rate.
> This is by far my highest upvoted post in this thread, even higher than ones that exhibit much stronger "virtue-signaling"

argumentum ad populum [1]

> In it effort to save myself some time (seriously, you're asking me for about 20 minutes worth of work)

Making a worthwhile, intellectual contribution to a public forum should take more than 20min of work/preparation. Being familiar enough with the contents of the paper to make an informed arguement should mean that you could easily pull quotes (maybe with ctrl+f to save time) in less than a minute. Especially when your comments have the potential to destroy someone's reputation/career.

> Also, do the other replies to you make things a little clearer? Please keep in mind I'm not trying to be passive-aggressive

Congratulations, you can make fallacy ridden, condecending, and harmful comments without even trying!

> I come from similiar intellectual stock to you.

Irrelavant and you most likely do not.

> That's why I'm in disbelief that you need pullquotes and an explanation to tie them together, I'm sure it'll click for you without that.

argumentum ad hominem [2]

I know it's easy to write off when someone pulls up latin fallacy names, but please do read those wiki articles. Formal arguementation is important. Your reply to me was disrespectful and added absolutely no value to this thread.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem
Absolutely. Google's reaction may have been rational. The situation in the US is that a few groups have been empowered to use their outrage to get whatever they want. Google is a business about making money, which may be hindered by not bending to the demands of those outraged group.
Here is the document if interested: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586-Googles-Ideo...
There should be one of those awesome-* Github repos with a list of lightweight, readable implementations of various protocols/technologies.
Neither is well-posed.

Humans, contrary to what they may tell themselves, are not effective, impartial judges of "merit". Diversity initiatives correct for this deficiency.
Eh. Edge lording and trying to gaslight people with BS like this "screed" only works if you're on reddit anonymously.

Companies have a right to get rid of toxic employees like this guy. He can enjoy his new position in the Trump administration as head of diversity in STEM. ;)
We're not talking social stigma; we're talking about someone being fired, having their financial situation put in jeopardy because of inadequate worker protections.

If you think that's okay because of the views this engineer holds, you're a terrible human being.
I've been looking for a language which provides Software-Transactional-Memory with persistent data structures which fits in 2KB RAM on a microcontroller.
It's not "just a label," it's a political viewpoint. Liberal/conservative aren't just funny sounding words we made up to describe different "teams." They actually have meaning behind them and describe a general set of held principles. It's perfectly normal to want a different word for a different set of beliefs.

I also didn't make any value judgments. I didn't say that my views were "much better," I just said that I don't identify with leftist political views.
> then do everyone else who prefers that outcome a favor and keep your trap shut

Your comment comes off as far more vitriolic than his.

He raises a good point; that this "problem" of not being happy with a life that already has safety, security, and many things guaranteed that others might die never having, is not exactly the pinnacle of "being in-touch" the article makes it out to be - on reading that the guy is making apps/etc to let others do this I'm already anyicipating the fad coming and going, and people like you spitting contempt once it reaches the passé phase without really thinking about how it came about - whereas your comment raises none and is more outwardly hateful -

> I just want you to cut the bullshit attitude

- than his much more reasonably presented one.
I think everyone is looking for the offense in the wrong places. The reason he got so many angry responses is because he didn't explicitly celebrate the left wing tenants of equity. He questioned the tenants in very reasonable places and that was all that it took. Scary times, these.
Against code of conduct is a pretty clear case. More companies should take this hard line with their employees, and I'm surprised this didn't happen 2 days ago.
That's definitely something we need to do a better job at, and that's not just the companies responsibility. We all have a role to play in that. But I actually think affirmative action policies could work against this goal.
It creates some amount of tension that wouldn't otherwise exist.
> shareholders of google may impose restrictions they deem appropriate.

As may the government through statute. This is simply a matter of the constitution not going far enough, and additional law needed to prevent employment termination from expression not deemed "in fashion".
Political affiliation is a protected class under California law.
You at least agree that there are different types of diversity programs. (From his claims) Google's approach to diversity are hamfisted and end up achieving a level of diversity that looks good on internal reports but ends up alienating people because it's more important what you are than who you are.
Dude... no one thinks this guy is brave. Nor are human rights open for debate.

This sort of "reframing" doesn't really work as well as you think it does.
Peru’s glaciers make it a test case for adapting to climate change
He'll be alright I would assume. I have worked for many places in 'the Rest of America' where my leftist views were looked at askance or even caused me problems in employment because they made right-wing or libertarian-leaning individuals personally uncomfortable.

Really it's just intellectualism versus a discomfort examining and considering ideas. Even though I have my personal politics, I don't expect many or most to share them and I don't seek to install them over others.

But I do agitate my viewpoint in ways I attempt to be persuasive with. Often I fail, but it's not about 'winning' as some would have it but integrating and synthesizing.
Not having a go at you personally, but saying it's not possible to be racist against whites is an obvious tell that you want to make policies that discriminate against whites, and therefore you are probably racist.

(I'm not even white).
This is a sad moment. While I didn't agree with a lot of the memo, I can't say that it was full with hyperbole or vitriol that so plagues this age.

Would we all be cheering if the folks who raised the memo about Tony Fadell abusing Nest employees were fired? How about the Exxon-Mobil employees that fight internally to acknowledge climate change?

Dissent is good. Even if its wrong. It helps us clarify and crystallize our thinking.
You're missing the point. Your flaw is a semantic glitch with the word "value". You're saying in this post that bitcoin has "value" in the sense of exchange, that you can trade it for other stuff. But in the previous post you were describing the "value" of natural resources, which are being created when they are produced and cause economic activity, thus making us all wealthier.

Not the same kind of value. You can mine a billion coins tomorrow and society will still be stuck with the same junk it has today. You could mine a billion tons of cobalt tomorrow and give us all nearly free batteries in perpetuity.