Why do you think that female participation in ham radio is ~13%. A number that is fairly consistent in all countries over all time?
It could be the same cultural factor, once a community becomes male enough it settles at about 90%, or guys could be predisposed to that kind of activity.
But I don't think CS as a profession shares the same characteristic, guys will probably dominate the online technical forums and open source community but I don't think that means they should dominate the profession.
I can't argue with what happened in your personal experience but from this paper I found your experience was the exception, not the rule:
for blacks, school desegregation significantly increased both educational and occupational attainments, college quality and adult earnings, reduced the probability of incarceration, and improved adult health status; desegregation had no effects on whites across each of these outcomes.
There needs to be more minorities because a society where certain minorities are largely absent from high end professions is not a healthy society. It's unfair to those minorities who become a lower class, unstable because those minorities are resentful and tend to cause crime, and under-performing because you're losing out on their economic potential.
You mean like displacing white and Asian software engineers for African Americans with a substandard GPA and IQ? I've been there son, and I've gotten more than a few of them fired. When I was in the army, we had a captain (legit O-3) who couldn't use there their and they're to save his fucking life, let alone not end a sentence in a preposition. All of us white folks (and a few Latinos) had to take up the slack for his semi-retarded ass. He was ineffective, incompetent, and could have easily gotten good men (yes, men are still the bulk of combat forces) killed. Instead, he got promoted because of quotas in the army (first mentioned in the Army Times in the early 1990s).
It's kind of ironic.
I claim we should fix the minority education situation so that they can actually compete at the same level. You completely misinterpret that as an argument in favour of affirmative action... then start criticizing black people's IQ. I'll give you the benefit of assuming this was a specific scenario instead of a claim about genetics but you should understand that it's a rightfully sensitive topic.
Imagine how much better the US would be if you could transform the ghettos into middle class communities.
How about you imagine reality, motherfucker. Native Africans from areas such as Nigeria have come to our universities and kicked the ever living hell out of African Americans because their culture supports learning and self development. Play social engineering games on your own dime, cock sucker.
So you admit that culture is the problem, yet you don't actually want to do anything to try and fix that culture.
As for females there needs to be females because an office that is 90% male sucks for both the 90% who are guys and the 10% who are girls.
Says who, you? Show me a peer reviewed top-10 journal with a citation. I have degrees in both engineering and industrial/organizational psychology and you're full of shit.
Why ask for citations on a topic where you know there's unlikely to be specific research?
You have a degree in organization psychology, why don't you supply the citation?
Because oft-times it's about excluding fully qualified white and Asian males in favor of widdle white gurls who want to milk the system for a year or two before deciding that they want a baby instead of an engineering career. Oh yeah, and then they want to come back off of six to nine months of maternity leave, while the aforementioned guys have been pulling her work load and expect not only to come back at the same level, but to be promoted as though she were there the whole time.
Wow, you again confuse recruiting with affirmative action then launch into an unrelated rant against maternity leave.
This is a rabbit hole I am not prepared to explore at this time. While the US outspends nearly every Western nation in per student spending I expect you'll have (valid) observations of investment disparities among communities and resource redistribution suggestions. That said, I don't expect we'd ultimately agree on root causes and long-term effects of various approaches. Agree to disagree.
The US might spend more but heavy minority districts might need a lot more to fix their problems. For instance enough school councillors and/or guidance councillors to give every student some serious regular 1-on-1 attention. It's extremely expensive but I could see something like that making a huge difference to a lot of kids.
That's why I suggested recruiting first years into CS as a solution.
Not seeing the solution in this.
Most first year CS students are starting from scratch so girl's skills are sufficient, and if you get a fairly balanced first year they create their own healthy culture. But if it's just a handful of girls they're surrounded by men and are more likely to switch programs.
No not knowing anything about your circumstance I'd say you had two distinct advantages over your black classmates:
1) Your parents had enough education to help educate you and create the expectation that you would be going to college.
2) Being of a different ethnicity you were a bit of an outsider never internalized the idea that you were part of the black community that ended up stuck in that poor neighbourhood.
I think expectations and roles play a much bigger role than we realize. Quite simply a kid who thinks their education finishes after HS might never try to do more than finish, one who is told they're going to University will put in the work to be near the top of the class because they know that's where they're supposed to be.
For reference consider how critical motivation is to your work in IT? I know I can sometimes spend an hour or two solving a problem I could do in 5-10 minutes if I were intensely motivated and I suspect most have experienced the same. Imagine that effect applied to your entire education and you could see how being permanently disnengaged would turn you into a moron.
How is it a false equivalence? IT is a high end profession and I don't see why it should be any different among high end professions with regard to race.
Because there are plenty of non-IT high-end professions that your target groups may actually want to engage in. So it becomes senseless to shoehorn people into IT as a social experiment.
With minorities, the main group in question, there's zero reason to think they'd be less interested than any other ethnicity. And I never proposed to "shoehorn people into IT as a social experiment", you're arguing against a position I didn't propose.
As for women it's possible there's some intrinsic differences between the male and female brains that make women less interested in programming. But from the women I've met in software I find this very dubious and think it's far more likely that young girls are simply realizing it's a male dominated profession and they're seeing some very unhealthy cultural segments so they're looking elsewhere.
It's not lack of interest, it's kids never getting the basic skills to where the have a chance to develop a proper interest.
But that's not strictly true, is it? Women have arguably a more favorable educational experience than their male counterparts. It's a lack of interest for this group.
But really you're presenting an educational issue that, for multiple minority groups, transcends STEM and manifests across the curriculum. You touch on this more below.
The argument was better education for minorities, better undergrad recruitment for women.
I'm not proposing to fix racial inequality by giving minorities IT jobs. I'm proposing to improve racial inequality in primary and secondary schooling, thereby reducing inequality overall and as a side effect increasing the number of minorities in IT jobs.
And that's an admirable proposition, but altogether different from your assertion that we need a certain degree of diversity in IT to have a healthy society. You've drilled closer to a root cause of a problem and rendered your own post a side effect.
Diversity in IT is one characteristic of a healthy society, it's the characteristic we're talking about.
Look at it this way, the ghettos are a MASSIVE drain on public resources. If you throw a crapload of money at improving them, and fail almost completely, you've still probably won because it's such a big problem.
I don't think that's self-evident. Some helper programs degrade self-reliance.
You need smart money but if you just pump it into schools so you recruit better teachers (and either improve bad teachers or send them into other professions) that should be pretty safe.
If you do it properly you've got those kids for 5+ hours 5 days a week for 9-10 months for up to 12 years in an environment where you have almost complete control.
It's inexcusable for those schools to be underfunded.
The only reason your office works better without women is if you have a really dysfunctional culture, and in that case you're severely limiting your talent pool because there's a lot of guys who won't want to work in that environment either.
My experience is from equally dysfunctional offices prioritizing equality stats, not a frat boy club house. Some people won't work for an environment mired in the identity politics raffle for promotions. Sadly, some of the most talented will meekly sit by and take it year after year.
That's why I suggested recruiting first years into CS as a solution.
There needs to be more minorities because a society where certain minorities are largely absent from high end professions is not a healthy society.,
So that means every sort of insular culture in Europe (like Norway or Iceland) is not healthy?
If they're discriminating against minorities I'd say yes.
If it's simply the case there's not many minorities, or the ones who are there aren't disadvantaged but simply haven't had the generation or two it takes to integrate into the economy I'd say no.
Perhaps the unhealthy thing is propagating a society or ideology that allows for lower education standards for those of specific races and skin colors.
If you want to end racism, stop treating people differently by race... you'd think that would be pretty obvious but a lot of people have not yet figured that out.
I think that's part of it. The other part is a lot of US schools have effectively segregated schools, and since schools are locally funded the black schools end up being extremely low quality schools immersed in a culture of underachievement and underclass that's hard to break.
I think simply allowing school choice would help a lot in allowing parents to break up that culture.
There needs to be more minorities because a society where certain minorities are largely absent from high end professions is not a healthy society. It's unfair to those minorities who become a lower class, unstable because those minorities are resentful and tend to cause crime, and under-performing because you're losing out on their economic potential.
Disagree. That's a false equivalence between high end professions and IT, one being a subset of another.
How is it a false equivalence? IT is a high end profession and I don't see why it should be any different among high end professions with regard to race.
If the lack of interest is there, you'll never force anything beyond nominal professional success out of your target group.
It's not lack of interest, it's kids never getting the basic skills to where the have a chance to develop a proper interest. I never had an interest in being a rock star in part because I never got guitar lessons so I knew it was never an option. If I never got good math and science training I wouldn't have developed an interest in being a programmer either.
That's under-performing. Arguably, the lack of interest is widespread enough that it's patently obvious resentful minority groups aren't angry because they don't have IT jobs, but rather a host of other issues ongoing and historic.
I'm not proposing to fix racial inequality by giving minorities IT jobs. I'm proposing to improve racial inequality in primary and secondary schooling, thereby reducing inequality overall and as a side effect increasing the number of minorities in IT jobs.
Imagine how much better the US would be if you could transform the ghettos into middle class communities.
Imagine no possessions, it's easy if you try.
Look at it this way, the ghettos are a MASSIVE drain on public resources. If you throw a crapload of money at improving them, and fail almost completely, you've still probably won because it's such a big problem.
As for females there needs to be females because an office that is 90% male sucks for both the 90% who are guys and the 10% who are girls.
This depends on the office as much as anything. Or, dare I say, foxhole.
There are a small subset of jobs where there are legitimate sex differences in traits important to performance, the military is one of them.
But IT? The only reason your office works better without women is if you have a really dysfunctional culture, and in that case you're severely limiting your talent pool because there's a lot of guys who won't want to work in that environment either.
It's pretty obvious that all the tech companies are trying to increase diversity but the talent simply doesn't exist in the industry. There needs to be more minority and female students taking computing science in university, which means better recruitment for girls coming out of high school and better schools for minorities in general.
but why do there need to be more minorities and females in IT?
There needs to be more minorities because a society where certain minorities are largely absent from high end professions is not a healthy society. It's unfair to those minorities who become a lower class, unstable because those minorities are resentful and tend to cause crime, and under-performing because you're losing out on their economic potential.
Imagine how much better the US would be if you could transform the ghettos into middle class communities.
As for females there needs to be females because an office that is 90% male sucks for both the 90% who are guys and the 10% who are girls.
forced diversity is blatant prejudice.
How did you read "better recruitment for girls coming out of high school and better schools for minorities in general" and end up with "forced diversity"?
Apple has refused to make public the EEO-1 data that it routinely supplies to the U.S. Dept. of Labor on the demographics of their workers.
How is this even a thing? Why are these filings not required to be public? We can't figure out if the government is doing its job (in this case, tracking this information) without public disclosure so we can follow up.
So your argument is we should get to see a company's private information so we can tell if the government is doing a good job in obtaining the company's private information?
That strikes me as somewhat dubious.
I'll say that I do think there's a problem but I don't think it's Apple's fault and I don't like forcing them to reveal their demographic information for the purpose of a public round of shaming.
It's pretty obvious that all the tech companies are trying to increase diversity but the talent simply doesn't exist in the industry. There needs to be more minority and female students taking computing science in university, which means better recruitment for girls coming out of high school and better schools for minorities in general.
Depending upon how one reads the first commandment " take not life, which Allah hath made sacred, except by way of justice and law" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Wouldn't any Christian who believes in the death penalty and even military force also agree with that?
And I don't blame them, can't exactly tell good guys from the bad at a glance. I'd place the safety of my drivers ahead of his desire to pack heat any day.
My first thought was that wouldn't help since a bad guy would simply violate the no-gun policy, but I don't think that's quite right.
The bad-guy passenger is probably going to give off some signs. The no-gun policy gives the driver a legitimate pretext say something like "I was wondering about that bulge in your pocket, you know we have a no-guns policy" while he still has some control over the situation.
A more cynical reason line of thinking is that while an unarmed driver getting robbed and killed is tragic it only freaks out a few drivers, but if an armed driver kills a passenger it could potentially destroy the company.
That has to be one of the stupidest reasons to boycott a company that I've ever heard. Do you also boycott Disneyland because of their no selfie sick policy?
I'm very pro gun-control but to be fair to the OP if he's licensed to carry a gun and regularly does so then it's Uber boycotting him.
I think it would be a great service to the Tor community to release the text of what Boing Boing sent to the FBI as a shining example of how to handle such requests. It may need to be specifically tailored to the sender, but something to go off of might be of benefit to folks running a node who don't have the funds to see legal help outside of/r/legaladvice.
From the article:
We contacted our lawyer, the hard-fightin' cyber-lawyer Lauren Gelman, and she cooled us out. She sent the agent this note:
Special Agent XXXXXX.
I represent Boing Boing. I just received a Grand Jury Subpoena to Boing Boing dated June 12, 2015 (see attached).
The Subpoena requests subscriber records and user information related to an IP address. The IP address you cite is a TOR exit node hosted by Boing Boing (please see: http://tor-exit.boingboing.net...). As such, Boing Boing does not have any subscriber records, user information, or any records at all related to the use of that IP address at that time, and thus cannot produce any responsive records.
I would be happy to discuss this further with you if you have any questions.
it's maybe benign but also possibly extremely dangerous.
Which ultimately boils down to a fear of the unknown, and is therefore superstition.
Although it's worth mentioning, in fact, that the statement seems to be entirely true for any new technology.... and when talking about any new technology the real problem always boils down to not the technology itself, but how that technology is ultimately used.
Only if there isn't a rational basis for the fear, I've laid out plenty.
So perhaps you have no faith in mankind to use AI for the betterment of mankind? That, at least, might be a viewpoint that is substantiated by historical precedent far more than the notion that we should have anything to fear from AI, or anything else that may be invented by man, simply because it doesn't happen to have millions of years of evolution behind it.
I think weaponization of AI is a threat, though not necessarily a different threat than we typically deal with.
But there are extremely good reasons to be skeptical of our ability to safely control AI, including my other three points that you've completely ignored.
If another species on the planet had evolved to a similar intelligence of man, why would you suppose that one of them would extinguish the other short of either possessing warlike tendencies?
And while I won't argue that mankind has such tendencies, why would you think that AI would have any? And if they did not, why should we fear it any more than a naturally evolved AI?
It's a bit of a side-track but man has a well established record of trying to wipe out slightly different members of it's own species, and the situation you describe has already arisen with Neanderthals and although we don't know the full details of their extinction we know they're generally not around any more.
Regardless that suggests we have a lot to fear from AI even it's no different than human intelligence!
And why would you even think that AI would even have any so-called instinct to survive at all? It would be, as you put it, missing all of those millions of years of evolutionary pressures.
I don't necessarily think is would necessarily have a survival instinct, and I'm not sure if one would make it more or less dangerous.
And without the behavioral driving patterns of man, there is no basis to assume that an intelligent machine would behave like a man.
Suggesting we would have anything to fear from them as we might a psychopath who had similar ability is ultimately just anthropomorphizing.
There's a disconnect between your last two sentences. We have no idea how it will behave and it's a complete wildcard in possession of an extremely potent ability (intelligence), it's maybe benign but also possibly extremely dangerous.
Of course a psychopath with instant replication and extreme intelligence would also be extremely dangerous.
Once you do, being an asshole has no cost. I already am one. I am white, middle age, have a job, never been on welfare, never sucked another man's dick, never smoked crack, and never went to a hip-hop rave, I am not a fat ghetto hog with more children than rooms in my section 8 apartment.
I have NOTHING TO LOSE by being a asshole to some twat that comes oozing menstral thoughts onto slashdot berating me for being too white or too manly (a very preposterous thought on a NERD SITE.)
I was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt before the casual homophobia, go ahead and be an asshole, there's no excuse to toss in bigotry.
Meh, in some ways yes... but look at how it was done... with a midnight vote and tricks...
It couldn't have been done a week before or a week after...
That isn't bringing everyone together, that is divisive.
It also isn't very good health care reform, but that won't be clear and obvious to the masses until after Obama is out of office. Those of us who see it from the inside know it won't work long term.
It was also a Republican policy full of Republican amendments, it was divisive because they acted like it was.
It's possible, but to be honest what are his good ideas? All I've heard is general mud-slinging and policy proposals that have been all over the map.
He has said that he'll kick out the illegals and create jobs for the legal immigrants.
Deportation are up under Obama.
As for "creating legal jobs" that's a talking point not a policy, are you sure he didn't pledge to cut taxes, raise spending, and reduce the deficit at the same time?
He does know how to create jobs, unlike everyone else running.
He knows how to run a company, completely different than macroeconomics needed to create jobs.
BTW, if you actually did kick out most of the illegals, you'd also solve the min wage issue. Right now we have lots of supply of unskilled labor and not enough demand for it, which is why wages haven't moved. Get rid of some of the labor supply and the price of it will go up, wages rise.
I thought it was supposed to be because those marginal workers weren't productive enough, and the cheap labour was essential for the economy. Because I'm sure he'd use those arguments against the minimum wage hike.
Every intelligent human is going to have an operational system of instincts for dealing with other intelligent creatures simply because you can't take out that much basic functionality and still have a working mind.
So reversing that premise, why would you think that we could create a working mind that wouldn't effectively have its own "operational system of instincts for dealing with other creatures", as you put it? If it does not, then it would not be a working mind, and I would suggest that societal pressures have far more to do with a person's so-called ethical codes than evolution does.
It's not that it wouldn't have a system, it's that it would be a different system.
Think of it like genetics. We share a ton of genes with other life, 18% of our genes are shared with yeast, that means they're critical enough to our life that they've been preserved over billions of years. If you start screwing around with that 18% things probably break very very quickly so any life you're going to see on earth is likely going to have that 18% because they're a foundation on which everything else rests.
But that doesn't mean that 18% of genes is critical to life in principal. If you went to a different planet you could have a completely different set of foundational genes and a very different ecosystem.
I suspect our intelligence is the same, there's a lot of stuff in the comparable "18%" that every functional human is going to share just because it's so deep and essential. An artificial brain may not share that foundation.
They are all too old, vote for me, I'm 40... old enough to have some wisdom, young enough to be willing to change.
If there's one real legitimate criticism I'd have of Obama it's that he was elected too young.
If Hillary had won and he was just running now I think he'd be a far stronger President, I think his willingness to enact change was stymied by his lack of experience in dealing with the Republican counter response.
Trump is the kind of person who will follow through with an absolutely terrible idea because it's his idea and he won't let anyone deter him, he can cause real damage.
Perhaps, but what if it is a good idea?
Also, I pointed out that he wouldn't become King (despite what Obama has been trying), he has to deal with Congress and the SCOTUS.
It's possible, but to be honest what are his good ideas? All I've heard is general mud-slinging and policy proposals that have been all over the map.
Yes I have... I also have considered that a whole lot of Americans are tired of the same-old, same-old...
At some point, people get sick of it and want change... and not the "hope and change variety" which is what we got with Obama, and nothing changed.
Well Obama did achieve health care reform, but I think the lesson of Obama is the opposition can just decide en-mass to politicize everything, cooperate on nothing, and the President gets the blame.
CEO is a very different skillset than President.
So... leading a very large company of many diverse people... is very different than leading a very large nation of many diverse people?
I have to disagree, I think they are a very compatible skill set. Leadership is leadership, be it in the military, a company, or a nation...
No one can do it all themselves, you must be able to build groups of people up and get them to work together. This is true in the military, in companies, and in nations.
Right now we're a nation divided, nothing Obama says is anything but dividing in nature.
Trump may well kick out half the illegals, then put the other half to work.
I don't know what Obama you're listening to but he doesn't actually do much that's divisive. As evidence a lot of the major political complaints (easy on illegals, easy on terror, anti-Christian, etc) are demonstrably false.
Either way even Obama does offend he does it as a side effect, Trump offends on purpose, that's not a healthy characteristic for a leader.
As for the CEO, they've got a lot more unilateral power, they aren't fighting factions in the company the same way a President would be. I think that's a lot of Trump's flaw, he's used to saying "I'm the boss, so do it my way" and when that doesn't work he basically throws a tantrum. But a President can't run government that way, a Trump presidency would just be a stream of tantrums.
And back to Trump, have you considered the possibility that his behaviour is just some early manifestation of senile dementia?
It is a fair point... No, it isn't insulting, it is a real concern. Of course, it would also be real for Hillary and Biden as well.
---
Possibly, but neither are acting erratic (at least no more than when they were younger). Trump is, I think there's a substantial probability that within 5 years he'll be in steep cognitive decline.
The prospect of having him in power scares me more than Sarah Palin.
Now THAT scares me... that you'd rather have her than him.
She is an idiot who doesn't know anything about anything, at least Trump knows about business.
Yes, he is a walking ego trip, perhaps a blowhard and a PITA...
At the end of the day I'd expect a Palin Whitehouse to be a bit of chaos quickly taken over by bureaucrats as she realizes that being President is a) confusing, and b) a lot of hard work. It would be incompetent and shoddily run but the kind of damage people can work around.
Trump is the kind of person who will follow through with an absolutely terrible idea because it's his idea and he won't let anyone deter him, he can cause real damage.
Have you stopped to consider that some of his comments of the past few months are actually quite carefully considered? He would not be getting anything close to the media attention without them, he is leading the republican polls, so clearly he is doing something right.
Have you stopped to consider he's only polling so high because he has huge name recognition and he's essentially a sideshow. The Republican primaries have been a gong-show since 2012 and I'm doubtful that most of the people indicating him would be actually do so if they thought he had a chance of winning.
Why does everyone want to hire a lawyer or professional lifetime politician to be President, instead of a CEO?
Another example, Steve Jobs was a PITA to work for, he'd yell, scream, tell you were you a moron, yet he clearly knew something.
Some of the nicest people in the world would make for crappy leaders.
CEO is a very different skillset than President. I don't have any objection to CEOs as Presidents in general though I think Trump would be terrible. Jobs too, I don't think he'd have been bad, but the things that made him special as a CEO wouldn't translate to being a President.
And back to Trump, have you considered the possibility that his behaviour is just some early manifestation of senile dementia? I don't want to focus on it because it sounds very insulting, but at the same time his behaviour and seeming obliviousness is downright bizarre. He wouldn't be the first politician past retirement age to start acting erratically and be diagnosed with dementia a few years later, if you're considering him for President I think it's a possibility you have to take seriously.
Slashdot Mirror
Why do you think that female participation in ham radio is ~13%. A number that is fairly consistent in all countries over all time?
It could be the same cultural factor, once a community becomes male enough it settles at about 90%, or guys could be predisposed to that kind of activity.
But I don't think CS as a profession shares the same characteristic, guys will probably dominate the online technical forums and open source community but I don't think that means they should dominate the profession.
I can't argue with what happened in your personal experience but from this paper I found your experience was the exception, not the rule:
for blacks, school desegregation significantly increased both educational and occupational attainments, college quality and adult earnings, reduced the probability of incarceration, and improved adult health status; desegregation had no effects on whites across each of these outcomes.
You mean like displacing white and Asian software engineers for African Americans with a substandard GPA and IQ? I've been there son, and I've gotten more than a few of them fired. When I was in the army, we had a captain (legit O-3) who couldn't use there their and they're to save his fucking life, let alone not end a sentence in a preposition. All of us white folks (and a few Latinos) had to take up the slack for his semi-retarded ass. He was ineffective, incompetent, and could have easily gotten good men (yes, men are still the bulk of combat forces) killed. Instead, he got promoted because of quotas in the army (first mentioned in the Army Times in the early 1990s).
It's kind of ironic.
I claim we should fix the minority education situation so that they can actually compete at the same level. You completely misinterpret that as an argument in favour of affirmative action... then start criticizing black people's IQ. I'll give you the benefit of assuming this was a specific scenario instead of a claim about genetics but you should understand that it's a rightfully sensitive topic.
So you admit that culture is the problem, yet you don't actually want to do anything to try and fix that culture.
This is a rabbit hole I am not prepared to explore at this time. While the US outspends nearly every Western nation in per student spending I expect you'll have (valid) observations of investment disparities among communities and resource redistribution suggestions. That said, I don't expect we'd ultimately agree on root causes and long-term effects of various approaches. Agree to disagree.
The US might spend more but heavy minority districts might need a lot more to fix their problems. For instance enough school councillors and/or guidance councillors to give every student some serious regular 1-on-1 attention. It's extremely expensive but I could see something like that making a huge difference to a lot of kids.
That's why I suggested recruiting first years into CS as a solution.
Not seeing the solution in this.
Most first year CS students are starting from scratch so girl's skills are sufficient, and if you get a fairly balanced first year they create their own healthy culture. But if it's just a handful of girls they're surrounded by men and are more likely to switch programs.
No not knowing anything about your circumstance I'd say you had two distinct advantages over your black classmates:
1) Your parents had enough education to help educate you and create the expectation that you would be going to college.
2) Being of a different ethnicity you were a bit of an outsider never internalized the idea that you were part of the black community that ended up stuck in that poor neighbourhood.
I think expectations and roles play a much bigger role than we realize. Quite simply a kid who thinks their education finishes after HS might never try to do more than finish, one who is told they're going to University will put in the work to be near the top of the class because they know that's where they're supposed to be.
For reference consider how critical motivation is to your work in IT? I know I can sometimes spend an hour or two solving a problem I could do in 5-10 minutes if I were intensely motivated and I suspect most have experienced the same. Imagine that effect applied to your entire education and you could see how being permanently disnengaged would turn you into a moron.
How is it a false equivalence? IT is a high end profession and I don't see why it should be any different among high end professions with regard to race.
Because there are plenty of non-IT high-end professions that your target groups may actually want to engage in. So it becomes senseless to shoehorn people into IT as a social experiment.
With minorities, the main group in question, there's zero reason to think they'd be less interested than any other ethnicity. And I never proposed to "shoehorn people into IT as a social experiment", you're arguing against a position I didn't propose.
As for women it's possible there's some intrinsic differences between the male and female brains that make women less interested in programming. But from the women I've met in software I find this very dubious and think it's far more likely that young girls are simply realizing it's a male dominated profession and they're seeing some very unhealthy cultural segments so they're looking elsewhere.
It's not lack of interest, it's kids never getting the basic skills to where the have a chance to develop a proper interest.
But that's not strictly true, is it? Women have arguably a more favorable educational experience than their male counterparts. It's a lack of interest for this group.
But really you're presenting an educational issue that, for multiple minority groups, transcends STEM and manifests across the curriculum. You touch on this more below.
The argument was better education for minorities, better undergrad recruitment for women.
I'm not proposing to fix racial inequality by giving minorities IT jobs. I'm proposing to improve racial inequality in primary and secondary schooling, thereby reducing inequality overall and as a side effect increasing the number of minorities in IT jobs.
And that's an admirable proposition, but altogether different from your assertion that we need a certain degree of diversity in IT to have a healthy society. You've drilled closer to a root cause of a problem and rendered your own post a side effect.
Diversity in IT is one characteristic of a healthy society, it's the characteristic we're talking about.
Look at it this way, the ghettos are a MASSIVE drain on public resources. If you throw a crapload of money at improving them, and fail almost completely, you've still probably won because it's such a big problem.
I don't think that's self-evident. Some helper programs degrade self-reliance.
You need smart money but if you just pump it into schools so you recruit better teachers (and either improve bad teachers or send them into other professions) that should be pretty safe.
If you do it properly you've got those kids for 5+ hours 5 days a week for 9-10 months for up to 12 years in an environment where you have almost complete control.
It's inexcusable for those schools to be underfunded.
The only reason your office works better without women is if you have a really dysfunctional culture, and in that case you're severely limiting your talent pool because there's a lot of guys who won't want to work in that environment either.
My experience is from equally dysfunctional offices prioritizing equality stats, not a frat boy club house. Some people won't work for an environment mired in the identity politics raffle for promotions. Sadly, some of the most talented will meekly sit by and take it year after year.
That's why I suggested recruiting first years into CS as a solution.
There needs to be more minorities because a society where certain minorities are largely absent from high end professions is not a healthy society.,
So that means every sort of insular culture in Europe (like Norway or Iceland) is not healthy?
If they're discriminating against minorities I'd say yes.
If it's simply the case there's not many minorities, or the ones who are there aren't disadvantaged but simply haven't had the generation or two it takes to integrate into the economy I'd say no.
Perhaps the unhealthy thing is propagating a society or ideology that allows for lower education standards for those of specific races and skin colors.
If you want to end racism, stop treating people differently by race... you'd think that would be pretty obvious but a lot of people have not yet figured that out.
I think that's part of it. The other part is a lot of US schools have effectively segregated schools, and since schools are locally funded the black schools end up being extremely low quality schools immersed in a culture of underachievement and underclass that's hard to break.
I think simply allowing school choice would help a lot in allowing parents to break up that culture.
There needs to be more minorities because a society where certain minorities are largely absent from high end professions is not a healthy society. It's unfair to those minorities who become a lower class, unstable because those minorities are resentful and tend to cause crime, and under-performing because you're losing out on their economic potential.
Disagree. That's a false equivalence between high end professions and IT, one being a subset of another.
How is it a false equivalence? IT is a high end profession and I don't see why it should be any different among high end professions with regard to race.
If the lack of interest is there, you'll never force anything beyond nominal professional success out of your target group.
It's not lack of interest, it's kids never getting the basic skills to where the have a chance to develop a proper interest. I never had an interest in being a rock star in part because I never got guitar lessons so I knew it was never an option. If I never got good math and science training I wouldn't have developed an interest in being a programmer either.
That's under-performing. Arguably, the lack of interest is widespread enough that it's patently obvious resentful minority groups aren't angry because they don't have IT jobs, but rather a host of other issues ongoing and historic.
I'm not proposing to fix racial inequality by giving minorities IT jobs. I'm proposing to improve racial inequality in primary and secondary schooling, thereby reducing inequality overall and as a side effect increasing the number of minorities in IT jobs.
Imagine how much better the US would be if you could transform the ghettos into middle class communities.
Imagine no possessions, it's easy if you try.
Look at it this way, the ghettos are a MASSIVE drain on public resources. If you throw a crapload of money at improving them, and fail almost completely, you've still probably won because it's such a big problem.
As for females there needs to be females because an office that is 90% male sucks for both the 90% who are guys and the 10% who are girls.
This depends on the office as much as anything. Or, dare I say, foxhole.
There are a small subset of jobs where there are legitimate sex differences in traits important to performance, the military is one of them.
But IT? The only reason your office works better without women is if you have a really dysfunctional culture, and in that case you're severely limiting your talent pool because there's a lot of guys who won't want to work in that environment either.
It's pretty obvious that all the tech companies are trying to increase diversity but the talent simply doesn't exist in the industry. There needs to be more minority and female students taking computing science in university, which means better recruitment for girls coming out of high school and better schools for minorities in general.
but why do there need to be more minorities and females in IT?
There needs to be more minorities because a society where certain minorities are largely absent from high end professions is not a healthy society. It's unfair to those minorities who become a lower class, unstable because those minorities are resentful and tend to cause crime, and under-performing because you're losing out on their economic potential.
Imagine how much better the US would be if you could transform the ghettos into middle class communities.
As for females there needs to be females because an office that is 90% male sucks for both the 90% who are guys and the 10% who are girls.
forced diversity is blatant prejudice.
How did you read "better recruitment for girls coming out of high school and better schools for minorities in general" and end up with "forced diversity"?
Apple has refused to make public the EEO-1 data that it routinely supplies to the U.S. Dept. of Labor on the demographics of their workers.
How is this even a thing? Why are these filings not required to be public? We can't figure out if the government is doing its job (in this case, tracking this information) without public disclosure so we can follow up.
So your argument is we should get to see a company's private information so we can tell if the government is doing a good job in obtaining the company's private information?
That strikes me as somewhat dubious.
I'll say that I do think there's a problem but I don't think it's Apple's fault and I don't like forcing them to reveal their demographic information for the purpose of a public round of shaming.
It's pretty obvious that all the tech companies are trying to increase diversity but the talent simply doesn't exist in the industry. There needs to be more minority and female students taking computing science in university, which means better recruitment for girls coming out of high school and better schools for minorities in general.
Depending upon how one reads the first commandment " take not life, which Allah hath made sacred, except by way of justice and law"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Wouldn't any Christian who believes in the death penalty and even military force also agree with that?
The Left loves Islam
Only in the sense that they think it's unfairly demonized.
(atheism is really just the name for their hate of christians)
Rather the only reason an atheist ever becomes visible is when they're resisting the influence of the pre-dominant religion of their culture.
and they love blogging their useless opinions to find people with similar views.
Which is somehow inferior to posting your useless opinion to troll people with different views?
They must feel confused about who to cheer for in these murderous events.
Nah, I think your opinions are the ones with a monopoly on confusion.
And I don't blame them, can't exactly tell good guys from the bad at a glance. I'd place the safety of my drivers ahead of his desire to pack heat any day.
My first thought was that wouldn't help since a bad guy would simply violate the no-gun policy, but I don't think that's quite right.
The bad-guy passenger is probably going to give off some signs. The no-gun policy gives the driver a legitimate pretext say something like "I was wondering about that bulge in your pocket, you know we have a no-guns policy" while he still has some control over the situation.
A more cynical reason line of thinking is that while an unarmed driver getting robbed and killed is tragic it only freaks out a few drivers, but if an armed driver kills a passenger it could potentially destroy the company.
That has to be one of the stupidest reasons to boycott a company that I've ever heard. Do you also boycott Disneyland because of their no selfie sick policy?
I'm very pro gun-control but to be fair to the OP if he's licensed to carry a gun and regularly does so then it's Uber boycotting him.
I'm not sure I'd agree but it's certainly life imitating Ayn Rand.
I think it would be a great service to the Tor community to release the text of what Boing Boing sent to the FBI as a shining example of how to handle such requests. It may need to be specifically tailored to the sender, but something to go off of might be of benefit to folks running a node who don't have the funds to see legal help outside of /r/legaladvice.
From the article:
We contacted our lawyer, the hard-fightin' cyber-lawyer Lauren Gelman, and she cooled us out. She sent the agent this note:
Special Agent XXXXXX.
I represent Boing Boing. I just received a Grand Jury Subpoena to Boing Boing dated June 12, 2015 (see attached).
The Subpoena requests subscriber records and user information related to an IP address. The IP address you cite is a TOR exit node hosted by Boing Boing (please see: http://tor-exit.boingboing.net...). As such, Boing Boing does not have any subscriber records, user information, or any records at all related to the use of that IP address at that time, and thus cannot produce any responsive records.
I would be happy to discuss this further with you if you have any questions.
And that was it.
Which ultimately boils down to a fear of the unknown, and is therefore superstition.
Although it's worth mentioning, in fact, that the statement seems to be entirely true for any new technology.... and when talking about any new technology the real problem always boils down to not the technology itself, but how that technology is ultimately used.
Only if there isn't a rational basis for the fear, I've laid out plenty.
So perhaps you have no faith in mankind to use AI for the betterment of mankind? That, at least, might be a viewpoint that is substantiated by historical precedent far more than the notion that we should have anything to fear from AI, or anything else that may be invented by man, simply because it doesn't happen to have millions of years of evolution behind it.
I think weaponization of AI is a threat, though not necessarily a different threat than we typically deal with.
But there are extremely good reasons to be skeptical of our ability to safely control AI, including my other three points that you've completely ignored.
If another species on the planet had evolved to a similar intelligence of man, why would you suppose that one of them would extinguish the other short of either possessing warlike tendencies?
And while I won't argue that mankind has such tendencies, why would you think that AI would have any? And if they did not, why should we fear it any more than a naturally evolved AI?
It's a bit of a side-track but man has a well established record of trying to wipe out slightly different members of it's own species, and the situation you describe has already arisen with Neanderthals and although we don't know the full details of their extinction we know they're generally not around any more.
Regardless that suggests we have a lot to fear from AI even it's no different than human intelligence!
And why would you even think that AI would even have any so-called instinct to survive at all? It would be, as you put it, missing all of those millions of years of evolutionary pressures.
I don't necessarily think is would necessarily have a survival instinct, and I'm not sure if one would make it more or less dangerous.
And without the behavioral driving patterns of man, there is no basis to assume that an intelligent machine would behave like a man.
Suggesting we would have anything to fear from them as we might a psychopath who had similar ability is ultimately just anthropomorphizing.
There's a disconnect between your last two sentences. We have no idea how it will behave and it's a complete wildcard in possession of an extremely potent ability (intelligence), it's maybe benign but also possibly extremely dangerous.
Of course a psychopath with instant replication and extreme intelligence would also be extremely dangerous.
Once you do, being an asshole has no cost. I already am one. I am white, middle age, have a job, never been on welfare, never sucked another man's dick, never smoked crack, and never went to a hip-hop rave, I am not a fat ghetto hog with more children than rooms in my section 8 apartment.
I have NOTHING TO LOSE by being a asshole to some twat that comes oozing menstral thoughts onto slashdot berating me for being too white or too manly (a very preposterous thought on a NERD SITE.)
I was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt before the casual homophobia, go ahead and be an asshole, there's no excuse to toss in bigotry.
Well Obama did achieve health care reform
Meh, in some ways yes... but look at how it was done... with a midnight vote and tricks...
It couldn't have been done a week before or a week after...
That isn't bringing everyone together, that is divisive.
It also isn't very good health care reform, but that won't be clear and obvious to the masses until after Obama is out of office. Those of us who see it from the inside know it won't work long term.
It was also a Republican policy full of Republican amendments, it was divisive because they acted like it was.
Deportation are up under Obama.
As for "creating legal jobs" that's a talking point not a policy, are you sure he didn't pledge to cut taxes, raise spending, and reduce the deficit at the same time?
He does know how to create jobs, unlike everyone else running.
He knows how to run a company, completely different than macroeconomics needed to create jobs.
BTW, if you actually did kick out most of the illegals, you'd also solve the min wage issue. Right now we have lots of supply of unskilled labor and not enough demand for it, which is why wages haven't moved. Get rid of some of the labor supply and the price of it will go up, wages rise.
I thought it was supposed to be because those marginal workers weren't productive enough, and the cheap labour was essential for the economy. Because I'm sure he'd use those arguments against the minimum wage hike.
So reversing that premise, why would you think that we could create a working mind that wouldn't effectively have its own "operational system of instincts for dealing with other creatures", as you put it? If it does not, then it would not be a working mind, and I would suggest that societal pressures have far more to do with a person's so-called ethical codes than evolution does.
It's not that it wouldn't have a system, it's that it would be a different system.
Think of it like genetics. We share a ton of genes with other life, 18% of our genes are shared with yeast, that means they're critical enough to our life that they've been preserved over billions of years. If you start screwing around with that 18% things probably break very very quickly so any life you're going to see on earth is likely going to have that 18% because they're a foundation on which everything else rests.
But that doesn't mean that 18% of genes is critical to life in principal. If you went to a different planet you could have a completely different set of foundational genes and a very different ecosystem.
I suspect our intelligence is the same, there's a lot of stuff in the comparable "18%" that every functional human is going to share just because it's so deep and essential. An artificial brain may not share that foundation.
They are all too old, vote for me, I'm 40... old enough to have some wisdom, young enough to be willing to change.
If there's one real legitimate criticism I'd have of Obama it's that he was elected too young.
If Hillary had won and he was just running now I think he'd be a far stronger President, I think his willingness to enact change was stymied by his lack of experience in dealing with the Republican counter response.
It's possible, but to be honest what are his good ideas? All I've heard is general mud-slinging and policy proposals that have been all over the map.
Yes I have... I also have considered that a whole lot of Americans are tired of the same-old, same-old...
At some point, people get sick of it and want change... and not the "hope and change variety" which is what we got with Obama, and nothing changed.
Well Obama did achieve health care reform, but I think the lesson of Obama is the opposition can just decide en-mass to politicize everything, cooperate on nothing, and the President gets the blame.
I don't know what Obama you're listening to but he doesn't actually do much that's divisive. As evidence a lot of the major political complaints (easy on illegals, easy on terror, anti-Christian, etc) are demonstrably false.
Either way even Obama does offend he does it as a side effect, Trump offends on purpose, that's not a healthy characteristic for a leader.
As for the CEO, they've got a lot more unilateral power, they aren't fighting factions in the company the same way a President would be. I think that's a lot of Trump's flaw, he's used to saying "I'm the boss, so do it my way" and when that doesn't work he basically throws a tantrum. But a President can't run government that way, a Trump presidency would just be a stream of tantrums.
And back to Trump, have you considered the possibility that his behaviour is just some early manifestation of senile dementia?
It is a fair point... No, it isn't insulting, it is a real concern. Of course, it would also be real for Hillary and Biden as well.
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Possibly, but neither are acting erratic (at least no more than when they were younger). Trump is, I think there's a substantial probability that within 5 years he'll be in steep cognitive decline.
At the end of the day I'd expect a Palin Whitehouse to be a bit of chaos quickly taken over by bureaucrats as she realizes that being President is a) confusing, and b) a lot of hard work. It would be incompetent and shoddily run but the kind of damage people can work around.
Trump is the kind of person who will follow through with an absolutely terrible idea because it's his idea and he won't let anyone deter him, he can cause real damage.
Have you stopped to consider that some of his comments of the past few months are actually quite carefully considered? He would not be getting anything close to the media attention without them, he is leading the republican polls, so clearly he is doing something right.
Have you stopped to consider he's only polling so high because he has huge name recognition and he's essentially a sideshow. The Republican primaries have been a gong-show since 2012 and I'm doubtful that most of the people indicating him would be actually do so if they thought he had a chance of winning.
Why does everyone want to hire a lawyer or professional lifetime politician to be President, instead of a CEO?
Another example, Steve Jobs was a PITA to work for, he'd yell, scream, tell you were you a moron, yet he clearly knew something.
Some of the nicest people in the world would make for crappy leaders.
CEO is a very different skillset than President. I don't have any objection to CEOs as Presidents in general though I think Trump would be terrible. Jobs too, I don't think he'd have been bad, but the things that made him special as a CEO wouldn't translate to being a President.
And back to Trump, have you considered the possibility that his behaviour is just some early manifestation of senile dementia? I don't want to focus on it because it sounds very insulting, but at the same time his behaviour and seeming obliviousness is downright bizarre. He wouldn't be the first politician past retirement age to start acting erratically and be diagnosed with dementia a few years later, if you're considering him for President I think it's a possibility you have to take seriously.