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VR Tested by NFL To Confront Sexism and Racism (usatoday.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the Super-Bowl-of-hype dept.

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."

4 of 178 comments (clear)

  1. Sexism and Racism by craigminah · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Sexism and Racism by khallow · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Singling out "the left" is inaccurate.

      Ok, who else calls opponents sexist or racist? Or uses that behavior as a means of ostracism? I just don't see the inaccuracy myself.

      The problems of the real world exist and are caused by history and economics which position classes at a disadvantage.

      The reason people die at 70 years of age instead of 1,000 is not because they were in the wrong class of people or economically disadvantaged. Sure, some of our biggest problems, particularly poverty and overpopulation, can be not too inaccurated viewed through the lens of class warfare, but a lot of other problems can't.

      Adjusting to eliminate that disadvantage requires changing biases in how individuals are judged for job placements and promotions.

      Changing biases to what? What I see here is replacing one set of biases with another (and the latter set may be more biased and more of a problem than the former).

    2. Re:Sexism and Racism by Okian+Warrior · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

      As a clear example of the OP's point, one need only look to how the media covers the Trump campaign.

      Trump notes that a portion (a subset) of illegal (intersect another subset) immigrants (intersect yet another subset) as rapists and murderers, and this is somehow interpreted to mean that he's a racist.

      He fails to remember who David Duke is (temporarily, I might add), and suddenly he's a KKK member.

      He insults a man and a woman in one breath, and since one of them was a woman, he's suddenly got a "war on women".

      He insults individuals he doesn't like. The women insults are selected, distilled, and made into a campaign ad.

      A quick google of "Donald Trump's war on *" shows he has a:
      . war on women
      . war on Megyn Kelley
      . war on the media
      . war on Chivalry (wtf?)
      . war on people with disabilities
      . war on comedy (wtf?)
      . war on Muslims
      . war on anchor babies

      And these are only the first 2 pages! The list is endless!

      Googling "Donald Trump is *" shows that he is:
      . Satan
      . Hitler
      . crazier than April Fools' Day
      . the most dangerous man in the world
      . the next Barack Obama (wtf?)
      . Stalin
      . Mussolini

      ...the list goes on.

      All this completely ridiculous rhetoric, people are falling over themselves to paint Trump in the most possible bad way.

      (After writing that last line, I had a thought and... yep, Cthulhu supports Donald Trump. And this came from the Washington Post! WTF?)

      And the worst part of all is this: I don't have the first idea how well Trumps position stacks up against those of Cruz, Clinton, or Sanders.

      In fact, I don't know even *what* the other candidates even stand for.

      Trump: We'll bomb the shit out of ISIS and torture their families

      Clinton: "Today’s attacks will only strengthen our resolve to stand together as allies and defeat terrorism and radical jihadism around the world"

      What will Clinton do if elected? I haven't the first idea. ...all I know is that she doesn't have a war on women.

  2. The first step for combating racism.. by Z80a · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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".