Comment by millermp12 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by millermp12 | Hacker News Reader

Question:

What was the percentage of blacks and/or women at Lotus notes when Mitch sold?

How many low-income/minority households is Mitch within walking distance of from his Berkeley compound?

Diversity for thee, but not for me.

Also, while we're discussing Things You Should Not Notice: what are the numbers as far as litigiousness of "protected" groups? If I'm looking to hire someone, non-protected status (whether it's race, unionization, etc.) means I'm more likely to hire them (all else being equal). Like the blowback from affirmative action, I don't see an objective discussion about litigation risk (whether or not it's substantiated). It's human nature to asymmetrically attribute failure to others and success to oneself. Add racial/gender rent-seeking to the equation and you get an especially potent, counterproductive miasma. Just look at Buddy and Pao - they've made entire careers out of entrepreneurial race/gender grievance litigation.

Why can't all this under-utilized talent create a tech company dominated by blacks and women? Why not create a Meyerhoff like program to prove your hypothesis rather than ask me to subscribe to the latest social engineering fad?

> What was the percentage of blacks and/or women at Lotus notes when Mitch sold?

> How many low-income/minority households is Mitch within walking distance of from his Berkeley compound?

> Diversity for thee, but not for me.

Can I ask you a quick question here? What does any of this matter? Diversity isn't about protecting yourself from character assassination. It's about promoting fairness, equality, and opportunity for everyone in society.

If you look in the past of anyone, you will find things they regret and things that may draw censure from the pro-diversity and intersectional feminist mindset. That's natural. That's to be expected. Society is, by any reasonable and several reproducible metrics, extremely biased in favor of white men. We all grew up influenced by that society. It is therefore almost inevitable that anyone with these sorts of experiences has and will continue to have both privilege and mistakes in their past.

What matters is going forward, how we all take these things we've been fortunate enough to be handed (along with the misfortunes and difficulties we've endured) and use those to promote a fairer, more just world for those who come after us.

We can sit here and argue if this messenger is the ideal messenger. Which is odd, because in many other fields we view past mistakes as a teaching opportunity. Ultimately, the people in power should cede and share some of that good fortune and cultural windfall to create a more equal world rather than waiting for history to repeat itself with violent uprisings. History suggests that such uprisings are not kind to even bystanders.

> Why can't all this under-utilized talent create a tech company dominated by blacks and women? Why not create a Meyerhoff like program to prove your hypothesis ...

Because creating an environment that mimics the societal advantages white men get in the US and most of the western world is infeasibly expensive.

I mean, seriously. How would you even? You'd have to raise kids from birth in a theme park with meticulous care to shield them from the deleterious effects of racism and sexism.

> rather than ask me to subscribe to the latest social engineering fad?

Progressivism isn't a fad. It's the consistent direction of society since the dark ages.

Well said.

Something something just-world fallacy.

http://www.spring.org.uk/2012/06/the-belief-in-a-just-world-...

> expensive

With the millions of dollars from diversity initiatives, I'm sure someone could pull it off.

Also, I think you're missing the entire "classism" thing. I'm Polish, and just because I'm white doesn't mean I have the world handed to me. Kind of the opposite actually, everything that I've ever gotten in life was thanks to fighting the system (whether it was my work or my parents' work).

I could say I deserve something, but honestly I don't really think I do. The world is not a fair place.

The world IS fundamentally unfair. That doesn't mean that society should foster fundamentally unfair policies. I don't know why you would think that this would be wise, or after even a casual perusal of history you'd think it was novel or sustainable.

> Also, I think you're missing the entire "classism" thing. I'm Polish, and just because I'm white doesn't mean I have the world handed to me. Kind of the opposite actually, everything that I've ever gotten in life was thanks to fighting the system (whether it was my work or my parents' work).

It simply wasn't the subject of this conversation. "White privilege" is a specific set of special treatments you get in the US. It is not, "Magically you have a perfect life." It's undeniable that with white privilege you're less likely to be summarily executed by law enforcement, as an example.

But economic and other social divides still exist. Polish and Irish people are excellent examples of other axis of discrimination and racism that still exist in the world today.

> I could say I deserve something, but honestly I don't really think I do.

We're all raised to accept racism as normal. It's not surprising that you feel this way. But remember, you're not the one who's history is getting them shot in the street in the US right now, so you're probably going to feel slightly less personal pain and be asked to express slightly more empathy at this exact moment.

> With the millions of dollars from diversity initiatives, I'm sure someone could pull it off.

One other thing, you underestimate the magnitude of this problem. You'd literally need to make a private island with a controlled social environment and raise children from birth meticulously in a Truman-Show-like theme park to actually isolate all the cultural influences that are being discussed here.

Take the issue of sexism. This is baked into NEARLY ever message children receive, from birth and onwards. How would you ever actually reverse that? You can't, outside of a vacuum. You can only try to counter-balance it and hope the next generations can continue that process.

Even if that were feasible, it'd be unethical.

> If you look in the past of anyone, you will find things they regret and things that may draw censure from the pro-diversity and intersectional feminist mindset. That's natural. That's to be expected.

Serious question: is it also "expected" that people will lose their jobs because of those things, like Brendan Eich?

Can we please avoid the "lose their jobs" rhetoric here? Eich's job was never in danger even in the C-suite, until he moved from CTO to CEO. One of the job duties of being CEO is to be the face of your company to the world. Another is to command the continued trust of your employees. Another is not to embroil the organization in unprofitable distractions.

"Lose their jobs" has emotional impact precisely because one envisions a hard-working, paycheck-to-paycheck breadwinner with minimal savings. The inability of a man who'd been around for Netscape's IPO to advance from CTO to CEO -- whatever you think about whether that's good or bad, or whether Eich had a way to recover the situation, or anything -- is a very different matter, and implying a comparison between the two cases leads to unclear thinking.

Once we've made the distinction clear, we can say, no, it's unjust for a non-management worker who's not representing the company to be fired by their manager over political activities, and no, Eich "losing his job" isn't precedent because it's not at all related.

Yeah poor Eich, would would have to exercise his golden parachute because his role as face of a company was jeopardized by being a bad face for the company.

Hold on, I'm shedding tears I'm so frustrated for him. Maybe he'll have to retire as a multi-millionaire at 65 instead of 60 now.

> Can I ask you a quick question here? What does any of this matter?

You may want to check comment history of parent poster.

It's about promoting fairness, equality, and opportunity for everyone in society.

Except for white people, which is why the parent is worried about character assassination. It's a real worry when building a business these days. There's no amount of compliance to progressive ideals that will protect you if you have light colored skin.

Progressivism isn't a fad. It's the consistent direction of society since the dark ages.

Yes, it is. The pendulum swings one way for a little while, then it swings the other way. It's been happening that way for thousands of years.

> Except for white people, which is why the parent is worried about character assassination.

This just isn't true. White people hold incredible advantages in modern society. Especially white men. When people ask you to express empathy & are bitterly frustrated when most refuse, they lash out. But that lashing shouldn't be surprising.

One need only look at how the police would treat you if you ran from them vs. the many highly publicized (but hardly unique or isolated) cases where police officers acted outrageously against people of color in the US.

> The pendulum swings one way for a little while, then it swings the other way.

Sorry, but this is wrong. The world is consistently more progressive and permissive over time. We certainly have had major reversals of this in history, but these never recover to quite the same level of conservatism.

And quite frankly, we all have agency in this. We can change the world for the better, if we act in concert. The sum of individual actions is our society, and the sum of societal actions is the arc of history. So stop acting like it's inevitable.

White people hold incredible advantages in modern society.

Not anymore. There was a white man recently who could only get his work published by using an Asian pen name. Look at all of the white men who have had their careers destroyed by the mere allegation of sexism, racism or homophobia, the scarlet letters of your so called "progressiveism". Just ask Pax Dickinson, Brendan Eich or Brad Wardell.

The world is consistently more progressive and permissive over time.

This is easily disproved if you knew even a little world history. Any time a civilization gets significant wealth and comfort, it becomes more progressive. That progressivism in turns creates its downfall, after which wealth becomes scarce and the people become more conservative again. Round and round it goes since the creation of Babylon. The Roman Empire followed this cycle, until it was sacked by the Visigoths. It was followed by the dark ages. Then came the renaissance and its progress, followed by the stark conservatism of the Victorian era. We just finished a long upswing. The pendulum has already started swinging back towards conservatism.

Technology continues to progress. Humanity and its flawed ideologies follow predictable cycles.

Yeah Pax Dickenson had his career unfairly ruined by baseless allegations of sexism and racism? Brendan Eich's entire career was ruined?

Come on.

Your lack of empathy is telling.

Mostly because Pax never denied the "allegations" and in fact doubled down on his racism and sexism, resulting in a pretty well-earned backlash.

As for Eich, his career and finances remain intact. He received censure for doing his job poorly, his career wasn't over.

What do you know of my "intact" career or finances, pray tell? As far as I know, you don't know me or anything about what I'm doing for a living, or what my finances look like.

Lying by implication is still lying, and _tu quoque_ is no defense. So @PopeOfNope said "careers destroyed", which I agree is overstated in my case if not in Pax's. That does not justify you making stuff up to assert "intact". Since I cannot retire, I'm doing the next thing, and we shall all see how intact I am when it launches.

As for "censure", look it up. All the definitions that do not include the essential adjective "official" have to do with judgment, and unofficial judgments like all opinions vary. Mozilla received more criticism from all sides (and still does) than I did over what happened last spring.

BTW, I came here via subtweets. Feel free to at-name me directly in the future.

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