In 2017 Idiocracy is a Documentary

[AndrewV69]

Guy who penned the Google doc on diversity travesty fired.
https://www.recode.net/2017/8/7/1611069 ... of-conduct

Anyone surprised?

[katamari Damassi]

Einstein wrote on this. I did a paper on it for an undergrad class. Einstein thought that coriolis forces were the cause, but was wrong.

[katamari Damassi]

Guy who penned the Google doc on diversity travesty fired.
https://www.recode.net/2017/8/7/1611069 ... of-conduct

Anyone surprised?

Now the SJW's will work on preventing anyone from hiring him.

[Hunt]

You should feel safe expressing your opinion, but....you're fired.

[Guest_936d3dec]

Now the SJW's will work on preventing anyone from hiring him.

That's for tomorrow. Tonight is for calling on Google to fire anyone that expressed any agreement.

[Guest_936d3dec]

...

The contentious internal discussion revived a concern dating back to 2015: An unknown number of Google managers maintain blacklists of fellow employees, evidently refusing to work with those people. The blacklists are based on personal experiences of others' behavior, including views expressed on politics, social justice issues, and Google's diversity efforts.

Inc. reviewed screenshots documenting several managers attesting to this practice, both in the past and currently, explicitly using the term "blacklist." The screenshots were shared by a Google employee who requested anonymity due to having signed an NDA. In additional screenshots, one Google employee declared his intent to quit if Damore were not fired, and another said that he would refuse to work with Damore in any capacity.

A Google spokesperson told Inc. that the practice of keeping blacklists is not condoned by upper management, and that Google employees who discriminate against members of protected classes will be terminated. It's not clear whether that principle applies in Damore's case. Although political affiliation is a protected class according to California labor law, the views expressed in the manifesto and echoed by others who oppose political correctness do not seem to merit legal protection.

Indeed, Google's decision to fire Damore suggests the company concluded they don't, although its slowness in acting suggests it was not an easy call. According to New York Times reporter Daisuke Wakabayashi‏, Damore "said he will likely take legal action against the company."

Damore's manifesto wasn't classic political speech, said Harmeet Kaur Dhillon, an experienced business and labor lawyer. Rather, it's what she called "controversial speech," not unlike any other opinion that might anger coworkers. She added, "These are not insane views that he's extolling here -- they're [just] out of the mainstream. He's entitled to hold views that are inconsistent with the mainstream."

As to whether Google had an obligation to fire Damore, "The question is whether he's acting on those views in a way that violates discrimination law," Dhillon said. She noted that although California has stronger labor protections than most other states, "The cases involving political speech are much more cut-and-dried," involving conventional political activities like voting for a candidate or running for office.

FWIW, motherboard has here one of the latest version of the document with all (most?) of the citations properly linked

motherboard.vice com/en_us/article/evzjww/here-are-the-citations-for-the-anti-diversity-manifesto-circulating-at-google

[MacGruberKnows]

I always knew there was some reason Willy Wonka creeped me out.

I guess we all know what was number one on his Bucket list.

I think you meant Fuckit list.

[deLurch]

Now the SJW's will work on preventing anyone from hiring him.

That's for tomorrow. Tonight is for calling on Google to fire anyone that expressed any agreement.

1. Any sympathies I had for Ellen Poa losing her job are now gone.
2. Google may be on the path to a steep decline.
3. We may need to fear google's self driving cars.

[Suet Cardigan]

1. Any sympathies I had for Ellen Poa losing her job are now gone.
2. Google may be on the path to a steep decline.
3. We may need to fear google's self driving cars.

Because they'll keep veering left?

More wrongthink:

http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google- ... s-respond/

[Guest_936d3dec]

Shits and giggles:

And then they came for wiki??

[deLurch]

1. Any sympathies I had for Ellen Poa losing her job are now gone.
2. Google may be on the path to a steep decline.
3. We may need to fear google's self driving cars.

Because they'll keep veering left?
More wrongthink:
http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google- ... s-respond/

Why do they keep on trying to run over white males?

[Guest_936d3dec]

We may need to fear google's self driving cars.

I had thought "the trolley problem" was a philosophical wankfest because for ethical and business reasons you would always build a car that tried foremost to save the occupants because no one would buy a car that might intentionally kill the occupants.

Now I find that Google drinks male tears, and I wonder if they might indeed go around writing AI cars that in an accident preferentially try to kill the biggest oppressors first.

[deLurch]

At what point does the twitter "verified" flag become a red flag and a liability.

[Steersman]

We may need to fear google's self driving cars.

I had thought "the trolley problem" was a philosophical wankfest because for ethical and business reasons you would always build a car that tried foremost to save the occupants because no one would buy a car that might intentionally kill the occupants.

Now I find that Google drinks male tears, and I wonder if they might indeed go around writing AI cars that in an accident preferentially try to kill the biggest oppressors first.

:lol:

First woman in space:
"Houston, we have a problem."
What?
"Never mind."
What's the problem?
"Nothing."
Please tell us.
"I'm fine."

:rimshot: ;)

[CaptainFluffyBunny]

At what point does the twitter "verified" flag become a red flag and a liability.

At what point does we realize twitter is a money-losing means of demonizing people and providing a custom-built echo chamber that caterers to the regressive left? It encourages the worst in people, and isn't profitable. It provides lazy journalists with a perfect confirmation bias source for stories. If only it would MySpace itself to oblivion.

[Brive1987]

Googles head of diversity has a protected twitter account.

http://i.imgur.com/tE5Or1B.jpg

Nice one Danielle BROWN.

[Steersman]

Guy who penned the Google doc on diversity travesty fired.
https://www.recode.net/2017/8/7/1611069 ... of-conduct

Anyone surprised?

Somewhat apropos of which, seems WikiLeaks is commendably stepping up to the plate:

https://twitter.com/JulianAssange/statu ... 4189688832

[Steersman]

At what point does the twitter "verified" flag become a red flag and a liability.

At what point does we realize twitter is a money-losing means of demonizing people and providing a custom-built echo chamber that caterers to the regressive left? It encourages the worst in people, and isn't profitable. It provides lazy journalists with a perfect confirmation bias source for stories. If only it would MySpace itself to oblivion.

Seems Twitter is rather analogous to democracy - and in the original sense of the word where everyone gets to have a say. Bit noisy at times, and can be problematic, but seems rather better than most "social media" in many ways. Churchill on democracy springs to mind:

Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…’

Winston S Churchill, 11 November 1947

[Guest_936d3dec]

This Slate Star Codex is a gem

slatestarcodex com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exaggerated-differences/

CONTRA GRANT ON EXAGGERATED DIFFERENCES

I.

An article by Adam Grant called Differences Between Men And Women Are Vastly Exaggerated is going viral, thanks in part to a share by Facebook exec Sheryl Sandberg. It’s a response to an email by a Google employee saying that he thought Google’s low female representation wasn’t a result of sexism, but a result of men and women having different interests long before either gender thinks about joining Google. Grant says that gender differences are small and irrelevant to the current issue. I disagree.
...

[MarcusAu]

And in other news - here's your weekly catch-up of what's been happening in the world of Social Justice

[Steersman]

This Slate Star Codex is a gem

slatestarcodex com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exaggerated-differences/

CONTRA GRANT ON EXAGGERATED DIFFERENCES

I.

An article by Adam Grant called Differences Between Men And Women Are Vastly Exaggerated is going viral, thanks in part to a share by Facebook exec Sheryl Sandberg. It’s a response to an email by a Google employee saying that he thought Google’s low female representation wasn’t a result of sexism, but a result of men and women having different interests long before either gender thinks about joining Google. Grant says that gender differences are small and irrelevant to the current issue. I disagree.
...

Indeed. Haven't read it all yet but he sure seems to knock it out of the park. Archived here (some 18 already so others equally apprehensive about it disappearing), and the original here.

Kind of the money shot, the essential take-home:

Adam Grant seems like a good person. He is superficially doing everything right. He’s not demanding people feel afraid, or saying that everyone who disagrees with him is a fascist. He’s just trying to argue the science.

But I think he’s very wrong about the science. I think Hyde’s article is a gimmick which buries very real differences under a heap of meaningless similarities. I think that it’s inappropriate to cite it to respond to claims of specific differences that it didn’t investigate. I think that claims of a gender-equitable-society-effect in a different domain are inappropriate given the clear opposite effect in the domain being talked about it. I think it’s wrong to privilege likely-selection-biased evidence from a single college over all the evidence from the country as a whole. I think it’s wrong to suppose unique stereotypes in tech and engineering domains with no theory of how they got there, when there are non-stereotype-based theories that better explain the evidence. And I think it’s wrong to ignore all the studies about congenital adrenal hyperplasia.

And I think that, in being wrong about the science, he’s (probably unintentionally) giving aid and comfort to the people who have admitted that turning tech into a climate of constant fear and violence is the end goal.

Grant is one of the few people doing the virtuous thing and trying to debate this without calling for other people’s deaths. I’m trying to do the virtuous thing and respond to him. But I worry that lots of people on Grant’s side aren’t as virtuous as he is, and I don’t know how to protect anybody from that except by begging people to please look at the science and try to get it right.

[Sunder]

I wish more people on the anti-SJW side could keep a level head like this.

The current buzz with Youtube instituting its retarded "limited state" automation BS has people contorting themselves into pretzels over fear that Big Brother is gonna come down on their channel. After all, if it happened to Jordan Peterson (for less than a day) it can happen to you.

People reasonably ask "hey, since it seems like raising a public stink always seems to get these decisions reversed is it possible that this wasn't a targeted attack by Google and just a lazy automated system registering a false positive?" You think someone would bother to target Peterson and not think "hm, this guy's got a big following; might some of them complain?" Real totalitarians don't care about complaints from the proles anyway.

[Hunt]

You know, one small thing I'd like to at least get out of the google thing is this: A number of high profile people and articles are using the word "dude" a lot, and it's really time to call them on it. It's really nothing more than a sexist epithet, no different than "chick" or "broad" or "dame" (archaic). I don't give a crap if people use it informally. I don't want to erase it from the language or anything like that, which would be a dick move, but it shouldn't appear in high profile pieces without some kind of challenge. It's the principle of the thing.

[Kirbmarc]

Politely articulating a nuanced criticism of identity politics is "violence":

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DGsUHNqVwAArrOe.jpg:large

[Sunder]

I fucking hate anyone working in an office or attending a cloistered school campus who says they "fear for their safety" in some of the safest fucking environments on the planet.

You are fucking liars. Not a one of you honestly thinks there's any chance you'll be accosted by fellow employees or students. Eat shit.

[Shatterface]

Politely articulating a nuanced criticism of identity politics is "violence":

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DGsUHNqVwAArrOe.jpg:large

I hope anybody who anybody who took time off over this is treated with the sympathy they deserve.

[shoutinghorse]

The BBC news have just done a piece on this with a matter of fact report that the fellow had been sacked as if to say "of course he has .. derr"

No mention of his freedom of speech at all, the whole report was geared toward some kind of systemic problem within tech to hold women back, "not enough being done" ... "more needed to encourage girls" yadda yadd yadda.

Ironically the 'expert' colleague in the studio was an old white geezer.

[screwtape]

Peezus' own lawyer agrees with much of the Google engineer's opinion:

http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/07/opinions/ ... index.html

[MarcusAu]

There are not enough flowers and puppies in the world...

[deLurch]

I wish more people on the anti-SJW side could keep a level head like this.

The current buzz with Youtube instituting its retarded "limited state" automation BS has people contorting themselves into pretzels over fear that Big Brother is gonna come down on their channel. After all, if it happened to Jordan Peterson (for less than a day) it can happen to you.

People reasonably ask "hey, since it seems like raising a public stink always seems to get these decisions reversed is it possible that this wasn't a targeted attack by Google and just a lazy automated system registering a false positive?" You think someone would bother to target Peterson and not think "hm, this guy's got a big following; might some of them complain?" Real totalitarians don't care about complaints from the proles anyway.

The counter perspective on that.

[Kirbmarc]

I fucking hate anyone working in an office or attending a cloistered school campus who says they "fear for their safety" in some of the safest fucking environments on the planet.

You are fucking liars. Not a one of you honestly thinks there's any chance you'll be accosted by fellow employees or students. Eat shit.

Memos are important.

[Hunt]

I wish more people on the anti-SJW side could keep a level head like this.

The current buzz with Youtube instituting its retarded "limited state" automation BS has people contorting themselves into pretzels over fear that Big Brother is gonna come down on their channel. After all, if it happened to Jordan Peterson (for less than a day) it can happen to you.

People reasonably ask "hey, since it seems like raising a public stink always seems to get these decisions reversed is it possible that this wasn't a targeted attack by Google and just a lazy automated system registering a false positive?" You think someone would bother to target Peterson and not think "hm, this guy's got a big following; might some of them complain?" Real totalitarians don't care about complaints from the proles anyway.

Minor quibble, the red scare was over long before the hippies. Hippies came on the scene in the mid 60s, really the late 60s. McCarthy went down in flames at the Army Hearings in 1954, and the red scare was pretty much over by the mid 50s.

[CommanderTuvok]

Guy who penned the Google doc on diversity travesty fired.
https://www.recode.net/2017/8/7/1611069 ... of-conduct

Anyone surprised?

Somewhat apropos of which, seems WikiLeaks is commendably stepping up to the plate:

https://twitter.com/JulianAssange/statu ... 4189688832

There was a time, a looooooonnnnngggg time ago, when the SocJus crowd liked Julian Assange. :lol:

[CommanderTuvok]

Anyway, another dream update....

Thanks to the people who posted about those fucking jellyfish things. I had a dream last night where some bearded creepy fucker was swimming in the ocean, and suddenly, he's attacked by about 15 of the slimy things. The screams were incredible!

Fantastic dream!

[Brive1987]

http://i.imgur.com/SxvJLTe.jpg

[Lsuoma]

Guy who penned the Google doc on diversity travesty fired.
https://www.recode.net/2017/8/7/1611069 ... of-conduct

Anyone surprised?

Only that it took so long.

[deLurch]

Speaking of creepy Australian Steven King Sea Fleas, I stumbled across this fastinating little youtube genre where Russian vloggers, claim to be creating Homunculus (Human/Animal hybrids) from mixing human sperm into a chicken egg).



Obviously fake. And some seem to be playing the game along the spirit of intentional fake ghost stories around a camp fire.


(Some of obviously fake, yet somewhat creepy as throwing a shrimp in an egg).


(And some are really fake B-roll croninbergs. But the creativity is still fascinating.

[Sunder]

The counter perspective on that.

I disagree. The right-alarmist position that sees Big Brother everywhere is counter to the left-alarmist position that sees Nazis and white supremacists everywhere. The non-alarmist/realist position is a sidestep.

[jet_lagg]

Guy who penned the Google doc on diversity travesty fired.
https://www.recode.net/2017/8/7/1611069 ... of-conduct

Anyone surprised?

I am Jack's complete lack of surprise. It's like when someone goes into a bad neighborhood and gets jumped. I'm angry at the muggers, sure, but also sort of annoyed the person was dumb enough to go there to begin with. Working at Google he would have known how to cover his tracks. His mistake was assuming anything resembling good faith.

[Sunder]

There was a time, a looooooonnnnngggg time ago, when the SocJus crowd liked Julian Assange. :lol:

The left liked Assange when he tattled on Bush. The right was mixed when he tattled on Clinton, as while they love anything that makes Clinton and Dems look bad, they still would probably prefer to lock him up and throw away the key for being "disloyal" to American interests as a whole.

[deLurch]

OK. A counter perspective.

[deLurch]

My brother wanted Assange tried for treason (Manning leaks). It didn't seem to matter to my brother that Assange is Australian, and not a US citizen. That fact did not budge him from his position.

[Kirbmarc]

My brother wanted Assange tried for treason (Manning leaks). It didn't seem to matter to my brother that Assange is Australian, and not a US citizen. That fact did not budge him from his position.

[Hunt]

My brother wanted Assange tried for treason (Manning leaks). It didn't seem to matter to my brother that Assange is Australian, and not a US citizen. That fact did not budge him from his position.

Proof the moon landings were faked.

[Hunt]

I wonder if Dave Rubin is sorry he's going off grid for Aug, considering how the Ctrl-left issue seems to suddenly be coming to a head.

[jet_lagg]

Counter to appearances, this is from NPR and not The Onion.

[deLurch]

Counter to appearances, this is from NPR and not The Onion.

Now let's not jump to conclusions. They may have just been on their period. /Muscato

[MarcusAu]

Here - just in case anyone thought their Shitlord Quotient needed a bit of boost:

[Suet Cardigan]

Guy who penned the Google doc on diversity travesty fired.
https://www.recode.net/2017/8/7/1611069 ... of-conduct

Anyone surprised?

Only that it took so long.

The guy's name is out now, and he's apparently going to sue Google.

[MacGruberKnows]

This Slate Star Codex is a gem

slatestarcodex com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exaggerated-differences/

CONTRA GRANT ON EXAGGERATED DIFFERENCES

I.

An article by Adam Grant called Differences Between Men And Women Are Vastly Exaggerated is going viral, thanks in part to a share by Facebook exec Sheryl Sandberg. It’s a response to an email by a Google employee saying that he thought Google’s low female representation wasn’t a result of sexism, but a result of men and women having different interests long before either gender thinks about joining Google. Grant says that gender differences are small and irrelevant to the current issue. I disagree.
...

Indeed. Haven't read it all yet but he sure seems to knock it out of the park. Archived here (some 18 already so others equally apprehensive about it disappearing), and the original here.

Kind of the money shot, the essential take-home:

Adam Grant seems like a good person. He is superficially doing everything right. He’s not demanding people feel afraid, or saying that everyone who disagrees with him is a fascist. He’s just trying to argue the science.

But I think he’s very wrong about the science. I think Hyde’s article is a gimmick which buries very real differences under a heap of meaningless similarities. I think that it’s inappropriate to cite it to respond to claims of specific differences that it didn’t investigate. I think that claims of a gender-equitable-society-effect in a different domain are inappropriate given the clear opposite effect in the domain being talked about it. I think it’s wrong to privilege likely-selection-biased evidence from a single college over all the evidence from the country as a whole. I think it’s wrong to suppose unique stereotypes in tech and engineering domains with no theory of how they got there, when there are non-stereotype-based theories that better explain the evidence. And I think it’s wrong to ignore all the studies about congenital adrenal hyperplasia.

And I think that, in being wrong about the science, he’s (probably unintentionally) giving aid and comfort to the people who have admitted that turning tech into a climate of constant fear and violence is the end goal.

Grant is one of the few people doing the virtuous thing and trying to debate this without calling for other people’s deaths. I’m trying to do the virtuous thing and respond to him. But I worry that lots of people on Grant’s side aren’t as virtuous as he is, and I don’t know how to protect anybody from that except by begging people to please look at the science and try to get it right.

And chimps and humans are 98% the same DNA wise. A few years ago PZ put up a chart showing two bell curves that overlapped. The two curves were a set of some kind of metrics, one being for Neandertals and the other for Homo Sapeins. There was a large amount of overlap, but PZ said the chart showed without a doubt that these two curves proved that the two were completely different species.

A trick that the crazy new left does is represent everything as a 'spectrum'. Fuck you. The spectrum has a curve to it. A bell curve. That is really really really fat in the middle and quickly - really quickly - tails off into the 0.3% of the area made up of transgenders.

[HunnyBunny]

Guy who penned the Google doc on diversity travesty fired.
https://www.recode.net/2017/8/7/1611069 ... of-conduct

Anyone surprised?

Not Brianna Woo

Also, you are all KKk if you defend this memo

[Kirbmarc]

And chimps and humans are 98% the same DNA wise. A few years ago PZ put up a chart showing two bell curves that overlapped. The two curves were a set of some kind of metrics, one being for Neandertals and the other for Homo Sapeins. There was a large amount of overlap, but PZ said the chart showed without a doubt that these two curves proved that the two were completely different species.

A trick that the crazy new left does is represent everything as a 'spectrum'. Fuck you. The spectrum has a curve to it. A bell curve. That is really really really fat in the middle and quickly - really quickly - tails off into the 0.3% of the area made up of transgenders.

Polydactyly and oligodactyly prove that there's a finger spectrum :bjarte:

[Kirbmarc]

A female neuroscientist thinks that the Google memo isn't "sexist" or "offensive" but actually accurate:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DGt4hlJUAAEvHvp.jpg

[Kirbmarc]

A female neuroscientist thinks that the Google memo isn't "sexist" or "offensive" but actually accurate:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DGt4hlJUAAEvHvp.jpg

[Tigzy]

Dunno if it's been posted here already, but here the Damore memo in full: https://assets.documentcloud.org/docume ... hamber.pdf

I think he's right on many specific points - De-emphasise empathy, for example, looks like a pretty sound idea to me - but the author does appear to treat biological determinism (as per men vs women) as settled science, whereas I'm pretty sure it's far from settled. However, it seems a fairly sober and genuine article - no more, IMO, than a presentation of a set of ideas a opposed to some horrible anti-women screed that the REEEE'ers are making it out to be.

Assuming Google are genuine in their claim to be pro-free speech, their sacking of Damore makes that claim...well, highly dubious. It's pretty much as sober a document as can be.

[Kirbmarc]

Dunno if it's been posted here already, but here the Damore memo in full: https://assets.documentcloud.org/docume ... hamber.pdf

I think he's right on many specific points - De-emphasise empathy, for example, looks like a pretty sound idea to me - but the author does appear to treat biological determinism (as per men vs women) as settled science, whereas I'm pretty sure it's far from settled. However, it seems a fairly sober and genuine article - no more, IMO, than a presentation of a set of ideas a opposed to some horrible anti-women screed that the REEEE'ers are making it out to be.

Assuming Google are genuine in their claim to be pro-free speech, their sacking of Damore makes that claim...well, highly dubious. It's pretty much as sober a document as can be.

What I understand from the articles I've read is that a certain degree of biological differences between men and women in matters of average psychology/cognition is far from controversial. What's less certain is the role played by biological differences vs. the amplification of those differences through social forces, but (correct me if I'm wrong) the author of the memo didn't completely rule out social influences, only argue that practices at Google seemed to assume "social constructionist" explanations as the default.

[Sunder]

Part of a comment over at Jerry's:

"Even if you grant that the disparities in position, pay, and advancement are rooted in biology, it doesn’t follow that a company should not put resources into cultivating the group that’s lagging."

Technically true but we know this only goes one way: If it's a high paying job and there's more men than women, Something Must Be Done. But nobody's pushing for gender parity in low-paying, unglamorous jobs. Or in any fields where women already outnumber men.

[Sunder]

Part of a comment over at Jerry's:

"Even if you grant that the disparities in position, pay, and advancement are rooted in biology, it doesn’t follow that a company should not put resources into cultivating the group that’s lagging."

Technically true but we know this only goes one way: If it's a high paying job and there's more men than women, Something Must Be Done. But nobody's pushing for gender parity in low-paying, unglamorous jobs. Or in any fields where women already outnumber men.

[jet_lagg]

Whether or not the disparity is a problem is more a question of philosophy than science. What's rich is the Google memo explicitly takes the position that it IS a problem amd only argues for better understanding of the science on the grounds that you need to understand how something works to make changes to it.

[Phil_Giordana_FCD]

So, we should hire rocket scientists with Down Syndrome for the sake of diversity?