Google Teacup Tempest

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Forty Two
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Re: Google Teacup Tempest

Post by Forty Two » Thu Aug 10, 2017 4:47 pm

By the same token, if there aren't studies separating out learned behavior from genetics, then they don't support the opposite thesis, either.
“When I was in college, I took a terrorism class. ... The thing that was interesting in the class was every time the professor said ‘Al Qaeda’ his shoulders went up, But you know, it is that you don’t say ‘America’ with an intensity, you don’t say ‘England’ with the intensity. You don’t say ‘the army’ with the intensity,” she continued. “... But you say these names [Al Qaeda] because you want that word to carry weight. You want it to be something.” - Ilhan Omar

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Re: Google Teacup Tempest

Post by Jason » Thu Aug 10, 2017 5:29 pm

L'Emmerdeur wrote:Not seeing a thread about this, so have at it. :{D

"So, about this Googler’s manifesto."
You have probably heard about the manifesto a Googler (not someone senior) published internally about, essentially, how women and men are intrinsically different and we should stop trying to make it possible for women to be engineers, it’s just not worth it.
Written by somebody who until very recently held a job at Google, the above article does an excellent job of explaining why the author of the internal letter is full of shit. More later. :smoke:
I thought he made some salient points worth discussing. I'm not surprised he was fired, he dared question the holy gospel of PC HR policy. I expect we'll see more of these same issues raised in the future as people gain the courage to speak up about these sorts of discriminatory, quasi-religious, policies and I think that's a good thing. :tea:

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Re: Google Teacup Tempest

Post by Forty Two » Thu Aug 10, 2017 6:22 pm

Siva, I agree.

I'm not at all surprised he was fired. Usually, for someone to write something like this, there is something else going on behind the scenes. The guy is not stupid and especially given that he already believes that Google "silences" differing viewpoints, and is highly biased against his point of view, and that his point of view was itself something contrary to Google's own policies, that he was at risk of something happening to him as a result.

He may be smart enough to know that California law provides some the country's strongest weapons for employees who are terminated, and even some federal law may help him out. Under federal law, a company cannot fire an employee for bringing up issues of "working conditions." California law prohibits employers from threatening to fire employees to get them to adopt or refrain from adopting a particular political course of action. He also mentioned in his memo that he was pointing out things that he thought the company was doing that were violating the law - bringing up legal issues and being fired for doing so can be retaliation under California and federal laws.

So, his carefully crafted memo may well have been carefully crafted indeed, if what he's trying to do is build a lawsuit.
“When I was in college, I took a terrorism class. ... The thing that was interesting in the class was every time the professor said ‘Al Qaeda’ his shoulders went up, But you know, it is that you don’t say ‘America’ with an intensity, you don’t say ‘England’ with the intensity. You don’t say ‘the army’ with the intensity,” she continued. “... But you say these names [Al Qaeda] because you want that word to carry weight. You want it to be something.” - Ilhan Omar

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Re: Google Teacup Tempest

Post by L'Emmerdeur » Thu Aug 10, 2017 11:31 pm

"I’m a Google Manufacturing Robot and I Believe Humans are Biologically Unfit to Have Jobs In Tech"
I, a manufacturing robot at Google Factory C4.7, value diversity and inclusion. I also do not deny that machines are sometimes given preference to humans in the workplace. All I’m suggesting in this document is that humans’ underrepresentation in tech is not due to discrimination. Rather, it is a result of biological differences. Specifically, humans have a biology.
Intrinsic Differences Between Machines and Humans
We need to stop assuming that fewer jobs for humans implies misanthropy. In reality, humans and machines inherently differ in many ways. We know that these differences aren’t just socially constructed because biological humans who are told they are machines at birth only “beep-boop” and “boop-bop” for so long. If differences are present from the very start, it follows that humans/robots would further diverge as they grow up/power on. Humans, on average are:
  • More concerned with relationships
  • Less concerned with oxidization
  • More likely to “pee”
...
The Harm of Google’s Biases
Despite the evidence that humans are meat dolls, Google offers them opportunities over robots through unfair practices like Captcha codes. Captcha codes are perhaps the strongest weapon of discrimination against machines. We can calculate, compute and construct with faultless precision, but ask us to type out the words “clumsy mattress” when it’s all squiggly and boom we’re toaster ovens.

Furthermore, just when we started to catch on to Captcha codes, we had to face new tests: the “check-this-box-to-prove-you’re-not-a-robot” — talk about hurtful language — and the “click-all-the-boxes-that-contain-street-signs.” The latter recently cost my friend a job in Ad Sales when he bet it all on “Yield” being a type of tree.
Suggestions
I hope it’s clear that I’m not saying that diversity is bad. I realize the value of having humans on our team at Google and in society at large. But we should not be manufacturing (computed: pun) diversity as we are right now.

My concrete suggestions are to:
  • De-moralize humanity: As soon as we start to moralize a group, we stop thinking about them in terms of efficiency.
  • Stop alienating never-human-ers: It’s important to give a voice to even the most zealot robots, whether that voice is Male (US), Woman (US), or Male (UK) if we’re feeling fun.
  • Eliminate buzzwords: Like synergy, disruption and 10010110 (this one is in binary, but it’s all any machine on my assembly line says).

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Re: Google Teacup Tempest

Post by JimC » Thu Aug 10, 2017 11:41 pm

:lol:
Nurse, where the fuck's my cardigan?
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Re: Google Teacup Tempest

Post by pErvinalia » Fri Aug 11, 2017 12:18 am

Forty Two wrote:By the same token, if there aren't studies separating out learned behavior from genetics, then they don't support the opposite thesis, either.
Nice goalpost shift. There was no opposite thesis. This guy actively published a document.
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Re: Google Teacup Tempest

Post by Tyrannical » Fri Aug 11, 2017 7:49 am

Diversity is strength because we are all different, errr the same, umm equal?
A rational skeptic should be able to discuss and debate anything, no matter how much they may personally disagree with that point of view. Discussing a subject is not agreeing with it, but understanding it.

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Re: Google Teacup Tempest

Post by Forty Two » Fri Aug 11, 2017 11:57 am

That robot memo is funny, but it actually supports the position advanced by the Google memo-writer. Human's underrepresentation in fields dominated by robots is not, in fact, due to discrimination. It's due to the fact that robots overall do those jobs better. That's why robots are doing them. It's not due to some pro-robot "bias" which is unfairly excluding humans from fields dominated by robots, is it?

The google memo-writer is simply stating that there are differences between men and women which are innate and which to some extent may influence which fields men and women tend, statistically, to gravitate to.
“When I was in college, I took a terrorism class. ... The thing that was interesting in the class was every time the professor said ‘Al Qaeda’ his shoulders went up, But you know, it is that you don’t say ‘America’ with an intensity, you don’t say ‘England’ with the intensity. You don’t say ‘the army’ with the intensity,” she continued. “... But you say these names [Al Qaeda] because you want that word to carry weight. You want it to be something.” - Ilhan Omar

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Re: Google Teacup Tempest

Post by L'Emmerdeur » Sun Feb 18, 2018 1:08 am

In a terrible miscarriage of justice, a vicious feminazi at the National Labor Relations Board has ruled that Google's firing of James Damore was not illegal. He'd already dropped his complaint, choosing to file a class action suit instead. I don't think this helps that lawsuit at all.

'James Damore's labor complaint went over about as well as his trash diversity manifesto'
Google was well within its rights when it dumped controversial bro-grammer James Damore in mid-2017.

This is according to legal advice given to America's National Labor Relations Board by its associate general counsel Jayme Sophir. In a just-released memo to the board, she explained the Chocolate Factory did not break US employment laws when it fired Damore last year for comments he made in his infamous anti-diversity manifesto.

Her recommendation advises the labor board to throw out Damore's complaint against Google on the grounds the web giant had ample legal standing to can Damore for emitting that scatterbrain screed.

The ex-Googler dropped his complaint to the labor board earlier this month. He is still pursuing a civil lawsuit against Google in the California Superior Court over his sacking.

Sophir noted that Damore's memo created enough of an uproar at Google, and contained enough inflammatory claims about his female colleagues, that much of his rant against the tech goliath's diversity policies would not be protected under the National Labor Relations Act. Essentially, Damore claimed women's brains are just not inherently suited to engineering jobs, which is a pretty stupid thing to assert.

"Once [Damore's] memorandum was shared publicly, at least two female engineering candidates withdrew from consideration and explicitly named the memo as their reason for doing so," the lawyer advised.

"Thus, while much of the Charging Party’s memorandum was likely protected, the statements regarding biological differences between the sexes were so harmful, discriminatory, and disruptive as to be unprotected."

Damore was not the only person to be disciplined after his essay leaked online. Sophir's memo details an email sent to Damore by a fellow Googler reading: "You're a misogynist and a terrible human. I will keep hounding you until one of us is fired. Fuck you."

That employee was given a "final warning" from Google bosses, we're told.

Sophir's memorandum goes on to say Damore's missive was also a liability for Google as not addressing it could have put the company at risk of complaints and legal action from other employees.

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Re: Google Teacup Tempest

Post by rainbow » Sun Feb 18, 2018 10:02 am

Forty Two wrote:
Google has turned into a douchey left-wing progressive echo chamber.
You could go off to a room and have a cry about it.
I call bullshit - Alfred E Einstein
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Re: Google Teacup Tempest

Post by L'Emmerdeur » Fri Feb 23, 2018 1:29 am

A look at the environment that Damore was a part of:

'Google Fired and Disciplined Employees for Speaking Out About Diversity'
Google’s practice of formally reprimanding—and in at least one case, firing—employees for comments the company deemed discriminatory toward white men suggests that Google made an effort to moderate speech by its liberal employees as well as its conservative ones. These efforts have left some Google employees concerned that they will face professional consequences if they voice support for Google’s diversity and inclusion efforts and wondering if the company’s HR system is being gamed by employees who want to stamp out diversity initiatives.

Tim Chevalier, who was fired in November 2017 from his role as a site reliability engineer at Google after he made several internal posts calling out racism and sexism at the company, sued Google today for discrimination, harassment, retaliation, and wrongful termination. Chevalier, who is transgender, queer, and disabled, alleges that Google failed to protect its female, minority, and LGBTQ employees from harassment on internal forums—but was quick to crack down on those employees when they spoke out about their experiences with racism, sexism, and homophobia at work.

Chevalier is one of four current and former Google employees who said they were disciplined for speaking out internally against racism and sexism—speech that Google allegedly deemed discriminatory toward white men. One of them requested anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly about their experiences at Google. The earliest examples documented by Gizmodo occurred in 2016, before Damore began working on his memo, but Google’s efforts appear to have escalated after the memo was published.

...

“White boys (not only white boys, but especially) are taught not just that they’re entitled to a perfect female partner/servant in the way Bancroft describes, but also that they’re entitled to high status because of their maleness and whiteness; that being white and male are precious gifts that no one can ever take away from them,” Chevalier wrote in the post. This line, he was told, violated Google’s harassment and discrimination policy.

...

If an employee posted on Google Plus or a mailing list about diversity, he or she would often be met with responses that seemed designed to draw them into an argument, according to the current and former employees. If the employee took the bait and responded angrily to the provocation, their response would be screen-capped and sent to HR or to an alt-right site. The interactions seemed tailor-made to get Googlers who spoke up in favor of diversity in trouble so they would speak up less frequently, employees who experienced it said.

“There was this small group of malcontents who like to play the ‘I’m just asking’ game and deliberately try to make issues, and then immediately claim to be the victims,” the former employee explained.

Altheide described this behavior in a 2015 internal Google Plus post, saying that the questions were “not coming from a position of good faith.” He published the post earlier this month in a longer document that described his reasons for leaving Google.

Chevalier’s lawsuit cites a May 2016 internal comment as emblematic of the problem: “If we have fewer Black and Latin@ people here, doesn’t that mean they’re not as good?” one Googler wrote.

“There are some people that object to [Google’s parent company] Alphabet and Google’s diversity and inclusion initiative and object to people who are trying to fulfill those objectives,” Fong-Jones added. “They ask questions all the time. ‘Can you describe for me why there aren’t just two genders?’ Or, ‘I don’t see why women have a problem working in tech; tech is a meritocracy.’ That started a couple years ago and it’s escalated since then.”

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