Duuude. Your near-religious faith in a concept called "market," your blanket disavowal of academia, and your guarantee that every instance of statistical finding and academic theory will prove to be "biased bullshit" is so amazing to me I wish I could go delete the second part of my original comment and replace it with what you've written here. Good show!
Welp, I guess you just totally 100% proved that no macro-level knowledge can ever really be known, and is probably wrong!
I'm imagining a patternless world, in which every trend is resisted by nature itself, as if reality were alive and conscious and completely devoted to arbitrariness. Because you've convinced me: no fucking way can it be ever possible that any organization in the past or future histories of this world could devalue women's work.
I feel so awed by your encyclopedic literary knowledge, and daunted (yet excited; bursting!) to dare approach collections of words people have written--these objects you deem "books." Thanks, pal. You really gave me a gift here.
SLASHDOT USER: Science, logic, and math are the only valuable forms of human endeavor, and those that employ them are elevated above the teeming, irrational masses.
ALSO SLASHDOT USER: If statistics say that women have it bad, statistics is wrong! Understand, you've got to look at all these other factors about specific women's specific circumstances, and anyways, there is no chance a single company has a culture that would undervalue them! Plus, I knew a woman once and she was a bitch and made mistakes!!
Haha, well I'm not claiming I'm never guilty of this, or it's not a valid choice on how you want to live your life. Just pointing out that for a large number of engineers--a group that usually prides itself on problem-solving--the confusion exhibited in posts about how workplace culture is un-navigable shows a lack of investigative rigor probably worth looking into.
How can so many engineers get the same error message over and over--"People have a problem with you using gendered insults"--and not try just modifying their code just a little?
Like I want to shake them and say, "It's really okay for you to keep being a self-important dick if you really want to! Just be the same self-important dick to everybody!!"
"Some American Workers Try to Live Their Ethical Values"
Regardless of whether or not you agree with those values--and from the modding it looks like a lot of people hovering around this article don't--it is newsworthy that some engineers are willing to turn down lucrative, prestigious jobs because the work they'd be doing, or the company they'd be doing it for, doesn't mesh with their sense of right and wrong.
Of course, in a better world, this wouldn't be newsworthy at all.
Don't pretend to be all offended about somebody noticing you're racist while you're claiming there's some moral imperative to keep a particular racial majority in the US. Like, if you're going to be a white nationalist don't be a whiny, pedantic, pearl-clutching bitch about it.
This Stalin-Illuminatus figure(s) that wants to turn America less white by importing thousands of Catholics who all buy into the basic tenants of the dominant economic system, and who trend socially conservative... is that Step 1?
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Profit!!
But also, do you see how the fear of changing demographics is, like, totally obviously literally dictionary-definition racist?
Well, if we're talking in purely capitalistic terms, the price of white guys walking on eggshells is less than the benefit of having a diverse work environment. Like, "There's a surplus of white guys and we know how to get more." What a bummer it'd be if this economic truth were Truth.
If we're talking more broadly, this sense of "walking on eggshells" is exactly what it has always felt like when one has to modify an unexamined belief out of consideration for the someone else. It's what it felt like as people phased out racial epithets over the last sixty years, and it's what it feels like when homophobic slurs popular in my childhood are now rightfully verboten in their pejorative uses. In this case, it means the work of having to learn new standards of professional behavior and put new thought into workplace communication. As far as the indignities of history go, it's not a bad deal.
What could this person do for a company that makes him or her worth this amount of money?
How about create a more inclusive environment to compete for the top-notch tech talent which feels marginalized by current tech culture?
The companies I've worked for that have really seen me have earned from me--and for the most part, unconsciously--harder work, more loyalty, and more involvement with my co-workers (which helps morale). These things are easy for anyone to qualify, but a number of productivity studies have quantified the effects of diverse and happy environments.
If it's just goodhearted concern you have for these people who can't seem to grasp the realities of capitalism, well worry not! By applying pressure to create these jobs, they are following the rich tradition of making yourself necessary in a freely competitive marketplace. The very thing you bemoan--them expecting to get jobs--is the reality: there are jobs for this now!
Hurray!, right? Proof's in the pudding.
"But these aren't necessary jobs!" someone might say.
But someone couldn't say this actually objectively; only at the mercy of their own subjective understanding of value could someone make such a claim. And if one's own subjective system of value is biased against certain concerns, or doesn't account for some people's experience (as certainly all our systems of value fail in some ways to do), is it possible, even likely, that a strongly felt opinion about a company's decision that 1) isn't this person's call, 2) doesn't endanger this person, and 3) is seen as efficacious by the company itself, is itself an expression of this subjective bias?
There are plenty of jobs that aren't strictly necessary, for instance, Greeters at Walmart. Sure, one can think of some reasons for that job's existence (just as one might generously think of reasons to hire someone tasked with creating a welcoming company culture at a tech firm), but this particular critique is not applied to these jobs.
Is it because, in making this critique, you KNOW that people studying gender and sexuality are smart enough to succeed in other, better-renumerated fields? But if you know how smart they are, and you realize that your own biases might occasionally blind you to particular cultural phenomena, why not trust they know what they're doing?
I don't generally reply to ACs, but there are SO MANY recent Slashdot stories about women's gender and sexuality becoming large factors of their success in the tech world, I figured I'd leave a few here for posterity:
If you're propagating a system which consistently and systemically returns lower results for non-members of one group, you might be supporting a prejudiced system.
If you're changing subjects halfway through your comment to assert something both totally unrelated and based on (really, really confusing) anecdotal evidence (i.e. "the liberals keep saying things that go without saying"--wha..?), you might not be making a rhetorical argument. You might be parroting a "talking point" to affirm in-group status.
If you're parroting a "talking point" to affirm in-group status, you might benefit from an examination of the systems of power your subscribe to.
I don't really have an opinion on most of this, and I don't really have a horse in this race either, but you do get that your blanket assertion about the worthlessness of an entire field of study, and your assumption that market value == actual value, well, make you seem kind of pridefully ignorant and tragically naive?
I think there's a lot of bullshit in many discussions about gender, and I think there's a lot of bullshit in many discussions about economics. Meanwhile, I'm going to keep my mouth shut until I'm actually qualified to speak on something. In this case, a short textural analytical report on your comment. That I'm not even charging you for it means you just got a great deal. Enjoy!
There's NK and China, which are a lot more focused on this area and do a lot more damage.
Well, it'd kind of trump everything NK & China have allegedly done (lots of secret stealing on China's part, and, um, leaking of the Seth Rogan vehicle The Interview by NK) if Russia contributed to altering a US presidential election don'cha think?
Or wait, did it turn out NK did the Playstation Network hacks too? I kind of stopped following those.
4chan also trolled themselves into becoming racist sacks of shit.
1. "hue hue it's so funny to say such fucked up shit kek"
2. "hue hue it's a big part of my identity to be the dude who don't even care about saying such fucked up shit kek"
3. "hue hue i have spent literally thousands of hours this year posting such fucked up shit kek kek kek"
4. "hue hue i've alienated everyone i know in real life and all my friends are internet strangers who all like to do little else but post such fucked up shit kekekekekek"
Totally. I feel the same about anarchism--like, "Hey come create a glittering society of equality and trust with us, just right after we break all the windows on your block and finish spray-painting your storefront."
Slashdot Mirror
Duuude. Your near-religious faith in a concept called "market," your blanket disavowal of academia, and your guarantee that every instance of statistical finding and academic theory will prove to be "biased bullshit" is so amazing to me I wish I could go delete the second part of my original comment and replace it with what you've written here. Good show!
Welp, I guess you just totally 100% proved that no macro-level knowledge can ever really be known, and is probably wrong!
I'm imagining a patternless world, in which every trend is resisted by nature itself, as if reality were alive and conscious and completely devoted to arbitrariness. Because you've convinced me: no fucking way can it be ever possible that any organization in the past or future histories of this world could devalue women's work.
I feel so awed by your encyclopedic literary knowledge, and daunted (yet excited; bursting!) to dare approach collections of words people have written--these objects you deem "books." Thanks, pal. You really gave me a gift here.
SLASHDOT USER: Science, logic, and math are the only valuable forms of human endeavor, and those that employ them are elevated above the teeming, irrational masses.
ALSO SLASHDOT USER: If statistics say that women have it bad, statistics is wrong! Understand, you've got to look at all these other factors about specific women's specific circumstances, and anyways, there is no chance a single company has a culture that would undervalue them! Plus, I knew a woman once and she was a bitch and made mistakes!!
Love this approach. Sending you the ghost of my mod points :)
You never hear about mass shootings in Texas or other places that allow open carry. The just don't happen.
Let me Wikipedia that for you.
You've got Banned Books [bannedbooksweek.org] apparently in the US which removes or restricts access to paper books.
I agree with your general sentiment, but you've got Banned Books Week very wrong. Take another look at your link :)
Sure, but one that's regularly enforced with violence.
Haha, well I'm not claiming I'm never guilty of this, or it's not a valid choice on how you want to live your life. Just pointing out that for a large number of engineers--a group that usually prides itself on problem-solving--the confusion exhibited in posts about how workplace culture is un-navigable shows a lack of investigative rigor probably worth looking into.
Also, I'm not at work rn :)
....right?
How can so many engineers get the same error message over and over--"People have a problem with you using gendered insults"--and not try just modifying their code just a little?
Like I want to shake them and say, "It's really okay for you to keep being a self-important dick if you really want to! Just be the same self-important dick to everybody!!"
"Some American Workers Try to Live Their Ethical Values"
Regardless of whether or not you agree with those values--and from the modding it looks like a lot of people hovering around this article don't--it is newsworthy that some engineers are willing to turn down lucrative, prestigious jobs because the work they'd be doing, or the company they'd be doing it for, doesn't mesh with their sense of right and wrong.
Of course, in a better world, this wouldn't be newsworthy at all.
Did you or did you not equate immigration with Anglo-Saxon genocide.
Also, I didn't say you were an American nationalist. I said you're a whiny, pedantic white nationalist.
False equivalency much?
Don't pretend to be all offended about somebody noticing you're racist while you're claiming there's some moral imperative to keep a particular racial majority in the US. Like, if you're going to be a white nationalist don't be a whiny, pedantic, pearl-clutching bitch about it.
.................."genocide" != "not enough white people fucking other white people"
and while we're here, "America" != "a bastion of the Anglo-Saxon race"
and also, because even though I think you know this, just in case you don't: when your talking points match Stormfront's, you're being racist.
I just don't get it.
This Stalin-Illuminatus figure(s) that wants to turn America less white by importing thousands of Catholics who all buy into the basic tenants of the dominant economic system, and who trend socially conservative... is that Step 1?
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Profit!!
But also, do you see how the fear of changing demographics is, like, totally obviously literally dictionary-definition racist?
Yeah, he said it wasn't as catchy, and it in a not-so-subtle racist way ascribes evil motive to an entire class of powerless and defenseless people.
Funny you should mention Godwin...
He weighed in.
Well, if we're talking in purely capitalistic terms, the price of white guys walking on eggshells is less than the benefit of having a diverse work environment. Like, "There's a surplus of white guys and we know how to get more." What a bummer it'd be if this economic truth were Truth.
If we're talking more broadly, this sense of "walking on eggshells" is exactly what it has always felt like when one has to modify an unexamined belief out of consideration for the someone else. It's what it felt like as people phased out racial epithets over the last sixty years, and it's what it feels like when homophobic slurs popular in my childhood are now rightfully verboten in their pejorative uses. In this case, it means the work of having to learn new standards of professional behavior and put new thought into workplace communication. As far as the indignities of history go, it's not a bad deal.
What could this person do for a company that makes him or her worth this amount of money?
How about create a more inclusive environment to compete for the top-notch tech talent which feels marginalized by current tech culture?
The companies I've worked for that have really seen me have earned from me--and for the most part, unconsciously--harder work, more loyalty, and more involvement with my co-workers (which helps morale). These things are easy for anyone to qualify, but a number of productivity studies have quantified the effects of diverse and happy environments.
If it's just goodhearted concern you have for these people who can't seem to grasp the realities of capitalism, well worry not! By applying pressure to create these jobs, they are following the rich tradition of making yourself necessary in a freely competitive marketplace. The very thing you bemoan--them expecting to get jobs--is the reality: there are jobs for this now!
Hurray!, right? Proof's in the pudding.
"But these aren't necessary jobs!" someone might say.
But someone couldn't say this actually objectively; only at the mercy of their own subjective understanding of value could someone make such a claim. And if one's own subjective system of value is biased against certain concerns, or doesn't account for some people's experience (as certainly all our systems of value fail in some ways to do), is it possible, even likely, that a strongly felt opinion about a company's decision that 1) isn't this person's call, 2) doesn't endanger this person, and 3) is seen as efficacious by the company itself, is itself an expression of this subjective bias?
There are plenty of jobs that aren't strictly necessary, for instance, Greeters at Walmart. Sure, one can think of some reasons for that job's existence (just as one might generously think of reasons to hire someone tasked with creating a welcoming company culture at a tech firm), but this particular critique is not applied to these jobs.
Is it because, in making this critique, you KNOW that people studying gender and sexuality are smart enough to succeed in other, better-renumerated fields? But if you know how smart they are, and you realize that your own biases might occasionally blind you to particular cultural phenomena, why not trust they know what they're doing?
I don't generally reply to ACs, but there are SO MANY recent Slashdot stories about women's gender and sexuality becoming large factors of their success in the tech world, I figured I'd leave a few here for posterity:
Having a Woman On Your Team Ruins Your Chances for VC Funding
Female Computer Programmers Make 72 Cents for Every Dollar Made by Males
Then there's recent harassment stories out of a number of large VC firms, Uber, etc....
If you're propagating a system which consistently and systemically returns lower results for non-members of one group, you might be supporting a prejudiced system.
If you're changing subjects halfway through your comment to assert something both totally unrelated and based on (really, really confusing) anecdotal evidence (i.e. "the liberals keep saying things that go without saying"--wha..?), you might not be making a rhetorical argument. You might be parroting a "talking point" to affirm in-group status.
If you're parroting a "talking point" to affirm in-group status, you might benefit from an examination of the systems of power your subscribe to.
Just sayin' :)
I don't really have an opinion on most of this, and I don't really have a horse in this race either, but you do get that your blanket assertion about the worthlessness of an entire field of study, and your assumption that market value == actual value, well, make you seem kind of pridefully ignorant and tragically naive?
I think there's a lot of bullshit in many discussions about gender, and I think there's a lot of bullshit in many discussions about economics. Meanwhile, I'm going to keep my mouth shut until I'm actually qualified to speak on something. In this case, a short textural analytical report on your comment. That I'm not even charging you for it means you just got a great deal. Enjoy!
There's NK and China, which are a lot more focused on this area and do a lot more damage.
Well, it'd kind of trump everything NK & China have allegedly done (lots of secret stealing on China's part, and, um, leaking of the Seth Rogan vehicle The Interview by NK) if Russia contributed to altering a US presidential election don'cha think?
Or wait, did it turn out NK did the Playstation Network hacks too? I kind of stopped following those.
4chan also trolled themselves into becoming racist sacks of shit.
1. "hue hue it's so funny to say such fucked up shit kek"
2. "hue hue it's a big part of my identity to be the dude who don't even care about saying such fucked up shit kek"
3. "hue hue i have spent literally thousands of hours this year posting such fucked up shit kek kek kek"
4. "hue hue i've alienated everyone i know in real life and all my friends are internet strangers who all like to do little else but post such fucked up shit kekekekekek"
5. "now i'm on /pol/"
Totally. I feel the same about anarchism--like, "Hey come create a glittering society of equality and trust with us, just right after we break all the windows on your block and finish spray-painting your storefront."