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Comment by tb303 | Hacker News Reader

Just a nudge from a stranger: Please take a moment to consider the extremely difficult position "the individual" may be in, the frustrations leading up to this, and the possible negative impact this has on their career that they had to weigh before naively thinking that they "love the fame." that's gamergate mentality in action and will work against you.

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Timnit's position is a direct result of her actions and internal reputation at Google.

No one forced her to do any of the following things:

1. Griping about the racist reviewers of her paper on Twitter.

2. Sending an email to a internal list criticizing Google's behavior and telling people to stop working on diversity.

3. Demanding the names of reviewers and threatening to resign if they weren't provided.

#2 or #3 would get you fired or cause your resignation to be accepted any place that I've worked.

#1 wouldn't get you fired but it's not going to help your career.

even if i agreed with you about some of those points (and i worked at google 2013-2015, internally criticized many of their processes, and was lectured about "my place" at google), everything you said is independent of reading into someone's motives. you're arguing with a point i am not making at all and trivializing the abuse timnit subjects herself to in going public with this.

So you’re saying it’s actually about ethics in AI? ;)

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