Trump's remarks | Imamother

Jeanette

Fri, Aug 25 2017, 6:30 pm

Fox wrote:

We've gone over this and over this, and you seem to have some kind of mental block regarding the whole thing.

Breitbart is 100 percent honest and upfront about their biases. Their entire raison d'etre is to examine stories from a specific viewpoint. They do not claim to be objective with regard to what stories they choose to cover or the slant that they take in covering them. They are not only conservative, but a specific brand of conservatism and have a strong commitment to religious practice. In fact, I started reading Breitbart simply because they were the only ones providing what I believed to be fair coverage of Israel. They enthusiastically endorsed Trump and are critical whenever he backs down on any of his platform, no matter how inconsequential.

Now, contrast that with, say, the NYT. No one would have any problem whatsoever if the NYT said, "Hey, we offer a white, male, urban, left-of-center, secularly-oriented perspective." We could all take that into consideration when consuming their content. But that's not what they say. They are dishonest about the effect of their own biases -- even when they are forced to admit that those biases impact how the report news. Their publisher admitted, "We pledge to do better" after the election, and one of the executive editors has admitted that they don't "get" religion.

I referenced CNN's Don Lemon and his conversation with Ben Shapiro. Just for the record, keep in mind that Ben Shapiro is not a friend of Breitbart for a whole bunch of reasons. Not only did Don Lemon not recognize the bias he was bringing to the story, he continued not to recognize it after Shapiro pointed it out.

Is Don Lemon's perspective somehow invalid? Of course not. We should certainly hear his analysis based on his experiences and ideology. He undoubtedly has valuable things to say. Just don't lie about what that ideology is.

Let's say they're guilty of the crime of having unacknowledged bias. Does this make them "truly bad people"? Does it make them "enemies of the American people"?

Is calling them this the best way to address the problem of unacknowledged media bias?

chaiz

Sat, Aug 26 2017, 4:18 pm

Fox wrote:

Are you seriously denying that shadow-banning exists throughout a number of platforms? Please do some research.

While you're at it, actually read Damore's memo rather than simply reading about it. Claiming that the memo said that "women aren't genetically suited for tech jobs" is a sick lie. The people promulgating that interpretation in the media and foisting it upon their unsuspecting audiences are no better than the Nazis and white supremacists that started this thread.

I actually read Damore's memo and as someone who does believe in general gender differences was definitely bothered by it. For sure it is not a sick like to claim that the memo said women are not genetically suited for tech jobs. It is a stretch to say he wrote that, but not such a far stretch. It is even sicker to say compare such stretches of fact to the KKK or neo nazis or to BLM or to Antifa or the like. I am truly horrified that you can even compare the two.

Fox

Sun, Aug 27 2017, 11:06 am

chaiz wrote:

And I am truly horrified that you advocate kicking puppies for sport. Oh, wait! You never said anything remotely like that! Just as no one here compared misrepresenting the contents of Damore's memo to the actions or ideologies of various extremist groups. I brought up the topic as part of a completely unrelated point.

I'm going to assume you simply missed the trajectory of the thread, misread, and regret making such a spurious and ill-founded accusation.

However, I am curious how you determine where "a stretch" ends and a "lie" starts. When Gizmodo published the memo with every reference and hyperlink stripped and then complained that the memo was poorly sourced, that seems to me to be a great deal more than just "a stretch." That seems to me to be a deliberate lie designed to smear the author and misrepresent his work. And, yes, a tech journalism outlet that does something like this is relatively evil.

Damore's thesis, which he backed up with a great deal of evidence, is that the gender gap in tech may not be entirely attributable to bias. That's actually not a new or original idea. There is a fair amount of research that shows that the richer a society/country is, the fewer women go into STEM-type fields. In fact, there's a hypothesis that given abundant resources, women tend to choose to study humanities rather than STEM fields. However, "women" doesn't mean "every single woman." It means the statistical aggregate, which Damore took enormous pains to point out.

Damore did not reject the possibility of bias as part of the gender gap in tech. He simply pointed out that research suggests there may be more to it than simple sexism. Damore is a biologist by training, and his suggestion was that Google be more scientific in how they think about the issue. His memo was very obviously an attempt to get people at Google to treat the gender gap in tech the same way we examine, say, polymorphism among Darwin's finches in the Galapogas Islands.

Being "definitely bothered" by Damore's thesis is like being bothered by gravity. I can find it morally repugnant that should I slip on the ice, I will fall down. But if I want to avoid a potentially dangerous fall, I'll wear boots with a deep tread and hold on to railings rather than demand that Isaac Newton's theories be outlawed.

chaiz

Sun, Aug 27 2017, 11:19 am

Fox wrote:

Nope. I actually read most of the thread in its entirety. I also read Damore's memo.

Below is what you wrote, word for word. I just copied and pasted.

Fox wrote:

The people promulgating that interpretation in the media and foisting it upon their unsuspecting audiences are no better than the Nazis and white supremacists that started this thread.

Exactly how did I make such a spurious and ill-founded accusation? He essentially did attribute the gender gap to biology, which in this case is genetics. He was making scientific claims, that plenty of scientists have written are not as simple as he claimed it to be, as to why women are not proportionately represented in tech.

Fox

Sun, Aug 27 2017, 11:49 am

chaiz wrote:

Exactly how did I make such a spurious and ill-founded accusation?

Okay -- I apologize. I misunderstood what you were referring to. Though I still don't understand why you find lies and distortions more repugnant when they come from some people than from others. If the editors at Gizmodo wore white sheets, would their lies be more serious?

chaiz wrote:

He essentially did attribute the gender gap to biology, which in this case is genetics. He was making scientific claims, that plenty of scientists have written are not as simple as he claimed it to be, as to why women are not proportionately represented in tech.

Huh? You must have read a vastly different version from the one I read.

Here are quotes from the memo:

Quote:

I value diversity and inclusion, am not denying that sexism exists, and don’t endorse using stereotypes. When addressing the gap in representation in the population, we need to look at population level differences in distributions. If we can't have an honest discussion about this, then we can never truly solve the problem.

Quote:

Note, I’m not saying that all men differ from all women in the following ways or that these differences are “just.” I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership. Many of these differences are small and there’s significant overlap between men and women, so you can’t say anything about an individual given these population level distributions

Quote:

I hope it’s clear that I'm not saying that diversity is bad, that Google or society is 100% fair, that we shouldn't try to correct for existing biases, or that minorities have the same experience of those in the majority. My larger point is that we have an intolerance for ideas and evidence that don’t fit a certain ideology.

Quote:

I’m also not saying that we should restrict people to certain gender roles; I’m advocating for quite the opposite: treat people as individuals, not as just another member of their group (tribalism).

He even has a whole section headed, "Non-discriminatory ways to reduce the gender gap"

The fact that there are scientists who believe he has misinterpreted data isn't a mark against him -- it's how science is done!

Scientist A: Medium Darwin's finches are becoming extinct. Their numbers are down significantly.

Scientist B: No, look at the DNA evidence. They're interbreeding with Small Darwin's finches.

Scientist C: But the practical definition of a species is "who you can breed with" -- if they're interbreeding, then maybe they aren't separate species.

Scientist A: Okay, so maybe they were never actually separate species. But why are they suddenly interbreeding.

And so on . . .

That's how science works. It doesn't work by somebody stating a thesis and everyone saying, "Oh, jolly good! Well done!" Except, apparently, at Google.

marina

Sun, Aug 27 2017, 12:28 pm

Fox wrote:

You're stating the obvious. Of course, Google is a private company. Don't dumb down these issues.

We're talking about the intent of the First Amendment as it should be applied to digital communication and platforms that didn't exist at the time of its inception. I understand that you think it is perfectly acceptable for Google to manipulate search results or autofill, for example, because -- hey, they're a private company and there's no law against it!

On the other hand, it's wrong for a woman to be relegated to the back of the bus on the way from NYC to Monsey (though that would seem to me to be enough punishment in itself) because there is a law about how private companies can act when offering public accommodations.

No one is discussing what the law is -- rather, what it should be.

But again, the fact that you don't find these issues worthy of serious discussion puts you in a distinct minority, even among liberals in the tech world.

Once again, as you often do, you are now backpedaling by saying OH ACTUALLY THE CONVERSATION WAS ABOUT SOMETHING ELSE YOU SILLY MARINA! It's super annoying to constantly respond to someone whose main argument is that we're actually talking about something different.

This is what you wrote:

Quote:

I recently heard James Damore described as "Patient Zero" in the unraveling of Silicon Valley's attempts to control speech. Without Trump in the White House, this "Patient Zero" would be dead and buried before he could even lawyer up; at least under the current White House, he stands a fighting chance, and we stand a fighting chance of learning exactly what goes on at Google.

Describing Trump's administration as giving us a chance to learn exactly what goes on at google means you hope that this administration will actually bar Silicon valley from violating
what you see as free speech principles, not that it will somehow change these principles into what you think they *should* be.

And btw, public accommodations laws are federal statutes enacted by the legislature. Free speech is in the Constitution. So if you want to discuss how the Constitution should be changed and how Trump's your man to do it, good luck with that. Yes, I don't consider changing the First Amendment to be a conversation worthy of any serious discussion or my time.

But I'm sure you next post will be about how silly I am because we aren't actually talking about any of that.

cbsp

Tue, Aug 29 2017, 4:43 pm

Fox wrote:

(Fox, all your meticulously quoted quotes disappeared and I don't have the time to re-quote everything properly on my phone)

I just came across this via LinkedIn:

https://www-vox-com.cdn.amppro.....exism

It's written by a woman in computer science. IIRC, Fox, aren't you also in the field (am I misremembering database programming)? Has your experience been different?

I've been in "tech" since the early 90's although it's been many years since I've worked in the corporate environment. I remember when Larry Summers made his (unintentionally) controversial remarks

http://www.thecrimson.com/arti.....ence/

And I actually agreed with his perspective then. Is this current discussion any different?