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VR Tested by NFL To Confront Sexism and Racism (usatoday.com)
More than $8 billion a year is spent on diversity training which a Harvard professor believes is largely ineffective. So later this year the NFL will also try using new VR scenarios from Stanford's Virtual Human Interaction Lab. "We want to be known as the best place to work," says NFL vice president Troy Vincent," while Dropbox's head of diversity says she's also had conversations about eliminating bias in job interviews by conducting "blind" interviews using avatars. The Stanford lab's scenarios place users in unsettling situations -- for example, angry harassment by white avatars while the user's avatar is black. "I'm not saying, 'Put on a VR goggle and you've solved racism'," says the Stanford lab's director. "But I'm optimistic it can help."
You must be programmed.
"I'm not saying, 'Find a topic that's fashionable if you want a lot of grant money'," says the Stanford lab's director. "But I'm optimistic it can help."
The NFL is using new tech to do the same training that they've always tried, which fails. Making it better looking isn't going to alter the personality of an individual trained to be on-alert and aggressive to order to win. Good luck with your new PR stunt.
Calling an opponent a sexist or a racist are sure fire ways to ostracize them and shut them up. Ironic the left is so opposed to bullying then bullies people it disagrees with and calls them names. We're not all the same but deserve the same opportunities, nothing more, nothing less. Stop with the name-calling.
More of the senseless struggle and pr from the Politically Correct bullshit party ...
VR Researcher: We need money to carry on making pretty 3D environments.
Other VR Researcher: If only we could find a big organization with lots of money.
All together: THE NFL!! Yeaaaahhhh!
Judge: You evil NFL guys are racist.
NFL: No we're not, we're spending a ton of money to combat racism using cutting edge VR technology.
Judge: Oh - OK then. Carry on.
Nobody actually knows whether this approach will work in actually combating racism - but nobody involved cares about that part.
IMHO, putting on VR goggles and seeing the person you're interacting with in 3D graphics is no better than seeing it on a 2D screen - and decidedly inferior to doing role-play with an actor. Which do you think is cheaper? VR research or a bunch of unemployed actors?
www.sjbaker.org
They still haven't figured out that "racism" is a lot more about behavior than just skin color? The skin color is often incidental. The behavior is usually stereotyped but many people insist on behaving just like their stereotype...and there are plenty of white people who "act black", for example. I judge a man by his behavior, his attitude, his intelligence and his ethics. Skin color has nothing to do with any of that. So "getting rid" of skin color won't stop people from acting the way they do.
Who manage the diversity of diversity managers?
Here comes the micro aggressions and perceived feminist slights. Any luck we'll get a white guy being beat with a hammer at a BLM riot? Not implying racism can't or isn't a thing, but it's certainly a bigger tent these days and usually is fed from an angle of political and personal motive as opposed to actual discrimination, which discredits the real occurrences.
Is not being racist yourself, which you are if you support the so called "social justice", given the fact the thing basically make you segregate the general population by gender, race and sexuality, instead of taking care of actual individual problems like poverty, lack of education and oppression by governments and big corporations etc..
There is no such thing as "positive racism".
if you are seeking to have diversity occur then you are actively discriminating based on a prejudice which results in racism, sexism, ageism, etc. everyone needs to stop this "diversity" bullshit and hire people based on their qualifications.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
There has been some research into having people exist in a virtual body that is opposite their own gender, and it has led to those people identifying better with the opposite sex. The technology could reasonably be used to help different races identify with one another. However, that's not what the NFL is trying to do, what they're doing is more insidious. They're giving a new coach or staff "interviews" where they're in a virtual reality scenario in which they are suddenly yelled at by a minority. Then, if they react badly, they are rejected from the hiring process. Thereby preventing potential racism in the future by weeding out those prone to it. It is a form of thought crime or pre-crime.
does anyone spend over 8 billion dollars on diversity training. Let me see the bills. Someone is lying through their fucking teeth. And if they DID spend that much then whoever authorized it is a scam artist. Someone in charge of finances and laws need to investigate this group.
If VR can cure anything as ingrained as Sexsim then why settle for that. We need mandatory worldwide mind programming to instill world peace. Facebook can do this for us using a combination of their Oculus and their walled internet garden of eden, while turning a profit on subliminal advertisements.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
My apologies, I just went back and re-read. They're doing the opposite. The white interviewee is being placed in a black man's body and then having white avatars racially harass him so he can identify. It's more akin to the gender swapping I mentioned before. Still stretching the limits of what might be socially acceptable to do human beings during a hiring process, though.
If that is not discrimination I don't know what is...
That's something that was never brought up - what if the person who is getting this training just doesn't believe it or doesn't care?
It's this attitude that everyone can be trained. It's unrealistic.
You're not going to convince me that someone who was brought up since birth to consider black people or women as inferior is going to change their tune with some training.
And there's the other side of the coin: there is some truth in stereotypes. It's up to us to get to know the person, but stereotypes is a thought process that we evolved with to navigate among our fellow humans. And to think that a few hours of sensitivity training will override millions of years of evolution is just moronic.
And there are the folks who are the stereotypes that are just impossible to work with. I have worked with some wonderful and brilliant African Americans but every once in a while, you get a black person with this inner city attitude and it makes everyone's life miserable - and all the decent African Americans' lives all that much harder.
I sure wish this was a wonderful world where everyone is judged by their character right off the bat, but it isn't. That's just a fact of life and it sucks.
So, what do we need to do? Is worry about ourselves and how we act. Stop trying to force everyone else into a mold. Because by forcing everyone to one's particular world view is no better than the bigots and racists.
We must simulate it.
We must have many simulations where people put on an experience suit and experience white people harassing them over and over.
Ok, so by using avatars you manage to hire someone completely unaware of their physical identity. How does that solve racism/sexism in the workplace when that person shows up for work? You can't eliminate bias by pretending everyone is identical. For that matter, what do you use as an avatar to "prevent" bias without inherently adding bias. Is the avatar a gender neutral panda?
A researcher has previously investigated controller-avatar interactions, specifically, if the player (this is video-games related) identifies with their avatar:
"Players do not automatically take on the role of characters/avatars. Playing as a character that is ostensibly “other” to you (in terms of gender, race, or sexuality) is not necessarily transgressive or perspective-altering. Playing as a character that is like you (in terms of demographic categories) does not necessarily engender identification."
"This calls into question both the educative benefits and the marketing benefits of playing as a main video game character that is a member of a marginalized group."
Limitations: Note that the sample for this paper did not involve what the researcher describes as "White male gamer", the researcher draws conclusions from a small sample. Also note that the paper does not seem to be peer reviewed.
Source: http://www.digra.org/wp-conten...
It's not *proof* of anything but it may suggest that VR interactions, like games, do not guarantee any identification between the subject and their avatar. In fact, it may be counter-productive; those who are asked to take part in the intervention/training may ask why it is that they're assumed to be racist.
You can already experience 10 Hours of Walking in NYC as a Man ("Hey, Harvard, wanna network?"), Walking in NYC as a Homosexual! ("Pants a little too tight homie"), 10 HRS Walking While Black in NYC ("Call me Cruella, I like my black on white."), and 10 Hours of Walking in NYC as a Puppy ("Come back to my house, I got some good meat for you."). FYI, the puppy experienced by far the most numerous and most vile forms of verbal harassment, plus "numerous winks, unsolicited tummy rubs, and non-consensual tug-of-war games."
My company is having sensitivity training this week. As I told my manager, I haven't taken a sensitivity class in the 1990's.
Projects like this are misguided at best and dangerous and worst. When minorities make up minority of the population, and tend to be less educated, and often times less driven to be successful (Due to not being in environments that foster achievement, and push children to be all that they can be), is it any wonder that they make up so little of the high paying jobs in any field? Their may be some bias, but the biggest issue is a lack of skilled applicants, with "go get-em" attitudes. That is where we should be focused: on making sure that minorities are becoming integrated, getting educated, bringing real money back to their neighborhoods and families, and that parents are pushing their kids to be successful.
Racism is the easy boogeyman. It isn't the answer to the problem. Besides, people who are actually racist aren't going to suddenly change when they are badgered constantly about it, like our society currently does. People who aren't racist are going become more and more angry and workplaces constantly implying that they are inherently racist. The biggest lie of this whole line of reasoning is the idea that you can harbor deep seated racism and not know it. People who are racist tend to know it and revel in it (these assholes frankly build clubs around it). The rest of us, hate being called racist all the fucking time.
Back to my original point about a small pool of qualified applicants. I have several black friends who grew up in Africa, and immigrated to the US for education and job opportunities. None of them have had any trouble getting jobs, getting promoted, or moving up in their respective careers. In fact, one of them, who is an engineer, said that he sometimes feels guilty because he thinks he gets disproportionate advancement do to things like affirmative action and wanting specific minority quotas.
Bottomline: We can come back to the all white people are racist hypothesis once there are a plethora of minority candidates beating down the doors for these skilled labor jobs. In the meantime, lets focus on actually getting these minorities the skills and desire to get to the interview in the first place.
The concept of approving the right mixture of racism, sexism and bigotry to gain moral superiority.
The NFL's business is football, not cultural training. Why the fuck are they spending money on this?
> People who do that are just going by probability.
That's the same thing that racists who assume some poor minority person is a criminal or something would say.
Even if they could sometimes be right by chance, hopefully you can understand how harmful an ugly prejudice like that is, when it gives people no chance to be individuals in their own right, instead forcing all sorts of assumptions onto a person that they have no control over and deciding their identity for them without actually knowing a single damned thing about them.
So am i to assume that VR is going to put me in place of a woman facing an Air Conditioning unit in order to feel what sexism is?
Because Air Conditioning is sexist according to some Feminist that's been on various news channels.
Trump says thing that are textbook misogyny and racism. It's as if he is literally getting them form a textbook somewhere, in order to build up his anti-establishment anti-political-correctness platform.
Textbook racism is saying that some race is inferior. It's saying that Blacks have to use separate drinking fountains, have to ride the back of the bus, and can't join the country club.
Textbook mysogyny is saying that women are inferior to men. It's saying they shouldn't go to college, shouldn't vote, and should be kept barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen.
Trump has made no such pronouncements, doesn't align with *any* of the textbook norms, and his lifes history shows the exact *opposite* of the textbook examples.
In other words, he's normal.
But you are a clear example of what masquerades as political discourse. You are writing as knowledgeable about racism and mysogyny, knowing that people won't think critically about what you write.
People are trained from birth to take in information without regard to accuracy, and you are abusing that weakness to your own ends.
You are a textbook example of a shill: You're trying to fool people to promote your hidden agenda.
When the players thought it was a dating Sim.
You select people based on their level of aggression, and then you are surprised when they act within their nature, and behave aggressively?
Now, you want to try to change their nature?
And where are the Geek Stadiums?
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
If an NFL employee has a problem with that, they should switch to hockey.
I suppose the NFL might be racist in that it has very few Asian or Latin players. Maybe the NFL should a Harvard-like admissions system that ensures Asians are accepted.
"More than $8 billion a year is spent on diversity training which a Harvard professor believes is largely ineffective"
I'm sure the solution to this "problem" is to spend even more money.
You should give it to the people telling you that you have a problem, and that they can fix if you give them more money.
"In one scenario, a user is represented by an African-American female avatar who is being angrily harassed by a white avatar." ref
How would Stanford University’s diversity department deal with this scenario: link
Do not talk to women on non-work issues.
Do not look at women on non-work issues.
Do not touch anyone even if their life is in danger.
Do not have any pictures of women, even cadavers on the walls.
Enjoy the times when only men are present to enjoy yourself.
Nowhere are complaints about lack of "diversity" more ridiculous than in professional sports. Organizations which consistently assemble teams that are overwhelmingly black suddenly turn "racist" when it comes to hiring the rest of their staff? Seriously? If these organizations are such evil "racists", why don't they hire majority white teams? Obviously because they want to win, and thus draft and hire the most talented (mostly black) athletes. Why would they not be hiring coaches and staff based on the same criteria?
And I suppose that ALL franchises exercise these same "racist" practices as a collective, so that they are all equally disadvantaged? That's utterly absurd. If there was any real talent out there being overlooked due to racial and gender bias, someone would be scooping it up to improve their competitiveness.
Seriously, they need VR to find racism in the NFL? That is hilarious considering they support racism as an organization. R*dskin much?