Political correctness run amok

Intended for constructive conversations. Exhibits of polarizing tribalism will be deleted.
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slowtraveler
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Re: Political correctness run amok

Post by slowtraveler »

I didn't find anything offensive in the article.

I also see the reverse discrimination as getting out of hand. I remember talking to a school counselor who told me to include how much more difficult being latino made my life in an application essay. But that's bs and it hasn't hurt me. I wanted to laugh, it sounded comical. How would that hurt me? Victimizing myself on the basis of race would cause far more harm. Cops are sweet to me most of the time since I'm respectful with them, look them in the eye, and answer/act calmly with a smile and open eyes-which tends to matter more than the color of my skin. Other friends tell me how much strife cops give them, blamed on their race, but it was their attitude.

In my family, women out earn men. I have friend's family's who are the same. The women work their asses off and get good pay as a result. These women are not speculating on whether they are victimized, they couldn't give any less fucks about that. They are giving too much focused energy to providing for their family to give a shit...and succeeding as a result.

There's no law saying women can't be this or that. But there are quasi-laws starting to form saying women or latinos or blacks must be X%, which is the same problem flipped. Reciprocal resentments build with discriminating like this.

I've experienced reverse discrimination (excluded for being male) many times and it does not feel good so I understand that women or anyone else whose group has experienced discrimination may carry a momentum against discrimination and take this too far while still carrying the old energies of themselves or their group. I am from California so someone from a midwest town may very well experience this discrimination and wonder how I experienced what I have. I live in the mentioned overly pc area that could benefit from less, but other areas will differ and I accept that reality. The world is not homogeneous and I have 0 idea of others' perspectives. When I visited Turkey, I felt bad for the way women were forced to live and, I'd pick California's reverse discrimination over that as it seems less off balance in the gender gaps. I couldn't imagine wearing a hi-jab all day in the hot sun and as ignorant as I am of their culture, it doesn't leave a good taste in the mouth to see what I perceive to be-actual discrimination.

As a side note, I still can't figure out what libertarian means or how it relates to any of this.

NPV
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Re: Political correctness run amok

Post by NPV »

Riggerjack wrote:
Tue Aug 08, 2017 12:28 pm

Followed by Scott Alexander demonstrating that there is no science in social science:

http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/co ... fferences/

Yes, we could do the "denial of sexism vs all inequality is proof of oppression" dance that the rest of the internet is doing, or we *could* look at the situation and try to interpret it as it is, rather than bending it to fit our worldview.

I think Scott has done a great job of the latter.
This is a really great analysis by Scott Alexander, thanks for sharing.

BRUTE
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Re: Political correctness run amok

Post by BRUTE »

Dragline wrote:
Tue Aug 08, 2017 9:00 pm
Source please
no

BRUTE
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Re: Political correctness run amok

Post by BRUTE »

scriptbunny wrote:
Tue Aug 08, 2017 10:50 pm
As someone who doesn't want to drag myself through that, I'd avoid him personally and probably his group entirely if I could manage it.
so scriptbunny would ostracize a co-worker based on his political views, and for citing (what several scientists have confirmed as) scientific facts? who's doing the discriminating here?

there is literally nothing sexist in that manifesto. he is explicitly pro diversity, pro integration, and pro women in tech. taking any action against him is literally taking the offense, and discriminating against this person because his political opinion is different.

brute is stunned by this line of thinking.

liberals don't seem to realize that they are in power (culturally) and are forcing their views (disputed by science, apparently) down the throats of others. liberals have become as bad as the Christian anti-gay, anti-women right used to be.

power corrupts.

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jennypenny
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Re: Political correctness run amok

Post by jennypenny »

What if Damore had written a manifesto saying that atheists made better programmers than christians because atheists are more rational thinkers? Would there have been the same public reaction? Would he have been fired?

If you think in that case it would not have gone viral and that most people would have ignored it or quietly nodded at some of what he said even though it was based in the same kind of hazy science, then it's not about whether what he said is factually correct ... he was fired and vilified because what he said isn't PC at the moment.

Regardless of whether I agree or disagree with Damore, I think these PC-driven internet lynchings are a much bigger threat to society than anything mentioned in his manifesto.

Spartan_Warrior
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Re: Political correctness run amok

Post by Spartan_Warrior »

This critiques the 10-page ragequit from slightly different angles, sort of touches on what @scriptbunny was saying.

https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/so-ab ... 3773ed1788

I must admit I didn't even attempt to put myself in the shoes of his coworkers. (Empathy--terrible, right?) Male or female, I wouldn't want to work with him at that point if only to avoid assumed guilt by association.

It is a shame that these common sense reactions can be twisted to feed the persecution/martyr narrative that seems to be in vogue with such people (the whole concept of "political correctness" being part of that narrative). Poor snowflakes. #Sad.

Spartan_Warrior
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Re: Political correctness run amok

Post by Spartan_Warrior »

This keeps getting better and better. Mr. Right-Wing (and one-time video game) Champion is now suing and crying to the National Labor Board. And here I thought federal agencies were all useless wastes of tax money and labor/union rights were all a terrible hindrance to The Free Market © ...

http://www.dailywire.com/news/19474/bre ... nk-berrien

Luckily for him, his fellow Sad Pepes are amassing their forces at 4chan, waiting to strike fear into the hearts of the SJW cucks at Google:

http://gizmodo.com/alt-right-activists- ... 1797623429

Riggerjack
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Re: Political correctness run amok

Post by Riggerjack »

I will say for me personally, I found this guy's manifesto clueless at best and mildly offensive at worst. A lot of the content is flat wrong and clearly reads as him trying to solve the byproducts of sexism without admitting sexism (even, yes, in the form of unconscious bias) exists.
Yeah. I agree with this. The guy probably has sexism issues. But I have yet to meet anyone without some issues, so I let it slide. What he said was in short, " Google is trying to enforce an artificial quota system to force higher female hiring. Maybe, it would be better to make Google a more attractive place for women to work.”

And the world lost its freaking mind.

His science seemed off, but less so than Stahlman or Jean's. I can't speak to its validity. But Scott Alexander did a nice job of breaking that down in the article I linked.
What if Damore had written a manifesto saying that atheists made better programmers than christians because atheists are more rational thinkers?
But he didn't even say women make better/worse programmers. He said if you want more of X, rather than filtering out Y, maybe make the place more attractive to X.

Heresy. Burn him.

Riggerjack
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Re: Political correctness run amok

Post by Riggerjack »

It is not because I disagree with this guy that I wouldn't work with him. It's because his particular beliefs as laid out and the way he chooses to express them indicate to me he would be very difficult to work with.

I've worked with guys like this before. You'll be writing a report and in the middle of the day he'll send multi-page essays, not unlike this one, on how he's totally not sexist and wants diversity to be better but <insert lots of sexist stereotypes here>. And you'll be like, K, thanks, did you finish that report I asked you to write? and then he will send follow up links to pseudoscientific nonsense to back up his arguments and you'll still be like, I disagree but can we talk about that report now? In meetings, if he is dismissive of a woman's ideas without addressing it on the merits, she's going to be wondering to herself, Does he just not think the idea is a good one, or is it because he is biased against ideas coming from me? If he is on a hiring committee and he turns down a female candidate, the women will be wondering, Did she not actually know how to code or does he just think that because she's a woman and he thinks women are not built for coding? It's so many little things that just add up to be annoying and difficult to work with.
First, this is you reading into what he wrote, and projecting your preconceived ideas on him. He didn't, as far as we know, do or say any of that.

Second, I agree with you. I think he's probably a sexist, frustrated INTJ who is trying to resolve an internal conflict. But again, that is me projecting.

Third, your description of your theoretical sexist coworker. How is that not the easiest problem of your career to solve?

Step 1. Save all emails from coworker, reply to each as a request for next stage of project.

Step 2. Wait until project falls behind.

Step 3. Pull boss aside, explain the situation, and tell him you don't need him to solve anything, just be aware of where the delays are coming from.

Step 4, prepare for promotion, as someone who can handle adversity, delicately, and without a scene. Of course, this last part is dependent on outside factors.

Yeah, weak coworkers are super annoying as they kneel down to be stepped on... :roll:


Hmm... Rereading that, it seems I'm not as nice a person as I like to think I am.

Riggerjack
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Re: Political correctness run amok

Post by Riggerjack »

Do you disagree that 1950 is more accurate than 1850? Or do you need me to dissect the article in more detail before you agree its pretty crappy and a poorly supported exercise in confirmation bias all in all?
Well, yeah. That's what I was hoping for.

I find I agree with Scott Alexander on a lot of things. Which creates a Blindspot. I address that Blindspot by bringing in an outsider who disagrees with the source.

In this case, it is a strongly left brain dominant psychiatrist, dissecting the post of a social scientist, and the meta study he referenced. And you are some kind of humanities academic professional, who strongly disagrees with the premise.

So when Scott says:
Grant writes:

It’s always precarious to make claims about how one half of the population differs from the other half—especially on something as complicated as technical skills and interests. But I think it’s a travesty when discussions about data devolve into name-calling and threats. As a social scientist, I prefer to look at the evidence.

The gold standard is a meta-analysis: a study of studies, correcting for biases in particular samples and measures. Here’s what meta-analyses tell us about gender differences:

When it comes to abilities, attitudes, and actions, sex differences are few and small.

Across 128 domains of the mind and behavior, “78% of gender differences are small or close to zero.” A recent addition to that list is leadership, where men feel more confident but women are rated as more competent.

There are only a handful of areas with large sex differences: men are physically stronger and more physically aggressive, masturbate more, and are more positive on casual sex. So you can make a case for having more men than women… if you’re fielding a sports team or collecting semen.

The meta-analysis Grant cites is Hyde’s, available here. I’ve looked into it before, and I don’t think it shows what he wants it to show.

Suppose I wanted to convince you that men and women had physically identical bodies. I run studies on things like number of arms, number of kidneys, size of the pancreas, caliber of the aorta, whether the brain is in the head or the chest, et cetera. 90% of these come back identical – in fact, the only ones that don’t are a few outliers like “breast size” or “number of penises”. I conclude that men and women are mostly physically similar. I can even make a statistic like “men and women are physically the same in 78% of traits”.

Then I go back to the person who says women have larger breasts and men are more likely to have penises, and I say “Ha, actually studies prove men and women are mostly physically identical! I sure showed you, you sexist!”

I worry that Hyde’s analysis plays the same trick. She does a wonderful job finding that men and women have minimal differences in eg “likelihood of smiling when not being observed”, “interpersonal leadership style”, et cetera. But if you ask the man on the street “Are men and women different?”, he’s likely to say something like “Yeah, men are more aggressive and women are more sensitive”. And in fact, Hyde found that men were indeed definitely more aggressive, and women indeed definitely more sensitive. But throw in a hundred other effects nobody cares about like “likelihood of smiling when not observed”, and you can report that “78% of gender differences are small or zero”.

Hyde found moderate or large gender differences in (and here I’m paraphrasing very scientific-sounding constructs into more understandable terms) aggressiveness, horniness, language abilities, mechanical abilities, visuospatial skills, mechanical ability, tendermindness, assertiveness, comfort with body, various physical abilities, and computer skills.

Perhaps some peeople might think that finding moderate-to-large-differences in mechanical abilities, computer skills, etc supports the idea that gender differences might play a role in gender balance in the tech industry. But because Hyde’s meta-analysis drowns all of this out with stuff about smiling-when-not-observed, Grant is able to make it sound like Hyde proves his point.

It’s actually worse than this, because Grant misreports the study findings in various ways. For example, he states that the sex differences in physical aggression and physical strength are “large”. The study very specifically says the opposite of this. Its three different numbers for physical aggression (from three different studies) are 0.4, 0.59, and 0.6, and it sets a cutoff for “large” effects at 0.66 or more.

On the other hand, Grant fails to report an effect that actually is large: mechanical reasoning ability (in the paper as Feingold 1998 DAT mechanical reasoning). There is a large gender difference on this, d = 0.76.

And although Hyde doesn’t look into it in her meta-analysis, other meta-analyses like this one find a large effect size (d = 1.18) for thing-oriented vs. people-oriented interest, the very claim that the argument that Grant is trying to argue against centers around.

So Grant tries to argue against large thing-oriented vs. people-oriented differences by citing a meta-analysis that doesn’t look into them at all. He then misreports the findings of that meta-analysis, exaggerating effects that fit his thesis and failing to report the ones that don’t. Finally, he cites a “summary statistic” that averages away the variation we’re looking for out by combining it with a bunch of noise, and claims the noise proves his point even though the variation is as big as ever.
And you read the whole post (that was just the first part) and come back here, and tell us that he got the date wrong in his hypothetical sexist in an analogy. Well, color me disappointed.

BRUTE
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Re: Political correctness run amok

Post by BRUTE »

Spartan_Warrior wrote:
Wed Aug 09, 2017 8:17 am
This keeps getting better and better. Mr. Right-Wing (and one-time video game) Champion is now suing and crying to the National Labor Board.
the callousness and casualness with which Spartan_Warrior is throwing the original author under the bus just because he's a Jew is astonishing to brute.

BRUTE
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Re: Political correctness run amok

Post by BRUTE »

scriptbunny wrote:
Wed Aug 09, 2017 8:29 am
Did she not actually know how to code or does he just think that because she's a woman and he thinks women are not built for coding?
but he didn't even write that.
scriptbunny wrote:
Wed Aug 09, 2017 8:29 am
On the point of scientific validation, I am underwhelmed. Does not meet burden of proof.
specialists in the field disagree. out of 5 brute's seen so far, 3 said "correct", 1 said "false", 1 said "it's complicated".

[edit]

brute will try to explain what he finds so disturbing about this by counter example, somewhat like jennypenny did.

what if scriptbunny worked at Google, and one day decided to write a feminist manifesto in the company internally. upon finding this out, some male co-workers decided that they "have worked with women like her in the past" and to stop cooperating with her, imagining the terrible things she'll think or say while working with them, and how she'll spend all her time writing manifestos and other stuff they "know to be untrue". they ostracize her, demanding the company fire her because they don't want to work with humans holding feminist opinions. some threaten physical violence (like Googlers on Twitter towards the author), some call for blacklisting her with other employers (an illegal practice), and managers reveal that they've long kept internal blacklists of known feminists to keep them out of their teams.

would this not be a blatant abuse of power, even sexist?
Last edited by BRUTE on Wed Aug 09, 2017 12:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.

BRUTE
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Re: Political correctness run amok

Post by BRUTE »

Dragline wrote:
Tue Aug 08, 2017 10:34 pm
Don't know why you would defend it -- not your circus, not your monkeys.
first they came for the..

IlliniDave
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Re: Political correctness run amok

Post by IlliniDave »

ffj wrote:
Wed Aug 09, 2017 12:12 pm
Anybody find this dude getting shitcanned disturbing and a touch hypocritical? I guess diversity only goes so far. Being mildly sarcastic here but I would be curious on what grounds they fired him.
A company I interact with regularly (but am not employed by) actually had a mandatory training program for "including white males as diversity partners". They had to sit every employee down and explain to them that white men are indeed people too after things started going off the rails from an over-exuberant diversity program. So while certainly disturbing, what happened at Google it is not surprising.

slowtraveler
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Re: Political correctness run amok

Post by slowtraveler »

@ScriptBunny
"As someone in the tech field, cis-, and with two X chromosomes"
Woah, PC police on the scene. To mention this once, as if it has any relevancy whatsoever, is a transphobic micro-aggression. To mention it twice like this, is downright hate speech.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wo7CgWH8jX4

On a more serious note: Political correctness originated in fascist regimes so this is an interesting time when they got Americans focused on disregard facts, obsess with politically correct.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the ... 3c75685400

It appears the current administration wants to make "climate change" a word to avoid in favor of "weather extremes". Social justice warriors saving the world yet again.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... hip-emails

@ IlliniDave
It's nice knowing there's some balance. Black, white, asian, latin, male, female, agendered, gender-fluids, and all other nationalities/genders deserve an equal shot based on merit.
Last edited by slowtraveler on Wed Aug 09, 2017 1:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Spartan_Warrior
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Re: Political correctness run amok

Post by Spartan_Warrior »

@Brute: "Accuse your adversary of that which you are guilty of"...?

@FFJ: Disobeying sexual harassment policies? Creating a textbook hostile working environment? Creating a PR disaster for Google? Pick one.

BRUTE
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Re: Political correctness run amok

Post by BRUTE »

Spartan_Warrior wrote:
Wed Aug 09, 2017 1:34 pm
@Brute: "Accuse your adversary of that which you are guilty of"...?
yes, because it's true?
Spartan_Warrior wrote:
Wed Aug 09, 2017 1:34 pm
@FFJ: Disobeying sexual harassment policies? Creating a textbook hostile working environment? Creating a PR disaster for Google? Pick one.
quoting science truthfully, starting a discussion about illegal work practices?
Last edited by BRUTE on Wed Aug 09, 2017 1:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.

slowtraveler
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Re: Political correctness run amok

Post by slowtraveler »

In honor of political correctness. Here are the new lingual requirements for the USDA.

Avoid → use instead
Climate change → weather extremes
Climate change adaptation → resilience to weather extremes/intense weather events: drought, heavy rain, spring ponding
Reduce greenhouse gases → build soil organic matter, increase nutrient use efficiency
Sequester carbon → build soil organic matter

Spartan_Warrior
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Re: Political correctness run amok

Post by Spartan_Warrior »

@FFJ: BTW I definitely think it's a touch hypocritical for right-wingers (like the author and his supporters) to be upset over a corporation ending a voluntary employment arrangement in a right-to-work state. Is that the hypocrisy you meant?

@Felipe: I like your article about the origins of "political correctness" and found this portion particularly salient:

"It's evolved into something of a catch-all for the right, used to decry any number of things for any number of reasons.

The evolution, then, went like this. Political correctness was a standard of correctness applied by political institutions, which then became a dismissive way of referring to language-policing by non-political institutions, which then became a way of referring to disputes with political opponents. "Political correctness" is now largely a synonym for "the way the left does it." "

That is indeed how I usually see it used and how I think of the term: just a partisan dog-whistle in most instances.

BRUTE
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Re: Political correctness run amok

Post by BRUTE »

interview with the author of the Google Manifesto:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEDuVF7kiPU

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