Thank you internets and HN for participating in our extensive experiment.

In this experiment, we monitored how we could manipulate opinions and elicit reactions by posting content on different mediums.

Unfortunately, due to the classified nature of this study, we can't really reveal more to you right now.

Also, we made a fuck tonne of money! You helped fund the whole thing, and then some!

No, you can't have the data. Really now, I'm surprised you even asked.

- The Man in the Shadows

This is a good point. Here's an open question:

How do you know when you have enough positive discrimination?

Do you just make sure that the representation of different groups is the same as in the population? This is a poor solution because it cannot be said that this would have been the distribution without negative discrimination.

Also, along what lines would you now pick your categories?

Would you ensure representation for latino lesbian women who speak spanish and like chocolate cake on tuesdays?

Which is to say that the category can get arbitrarily small.

This is probably what the debate is all about, and it is not an easy thing to answer. Some people say now, some people say not now, and they both have good reasons why.

Yes, but what happens when the voice of science is underrepresented?

Now read the grandparent comment again.

Perhaps it's just that the people who actually have the useful-science-shit to do aren't in stupid discussion threads like this one? ;)

I really like the "What You Can't Say" essay. Interestingly, what it says is not that speaking out is bad. It says that you must weight the benefit of speaking out to society, to the cost to yourself. It says you know what, sometimes it's ok to pick your fights, to be a coward, or to turn a blind eye to the destruction of the good in society. I agree that sometimes it's important to be selfish.

This means that I can avoid the short term cost to me, but what about the long term cost?

Every time you stay silent, you are complicit in the foolishness and irrationality in society. Every time a mob silences an individual and you ignore it, you lend power to the mob, and power to the idea of a mob in the mind of society.

You lend power to the idea that the louder you shout, the more correct your idea is.

And it's the ideas that make our society.

Here's an example of where this is going: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-nvNAcvUPE . The rabbit hole goes deep.

I am worried that even HN, a crowd that prizes itself on being intellectual, is so easily swayed by virtue signalling and shouting loudly (see comments here and on other similar threads). If these rational minds are so easily swayed, what about the larger crowd that thinks even less for itself? These centres must be held to a higher standard or we risk corruption of everything.

Your choices make a difference, choose wisely.

Ugh. It doesn't matter how good your math is if your model is wrong.

Here's an outline of what I believe to be a useful model, and some useful questions to ask, and experiments to run in real life to change things.

                +-------------------+
                |                   |
                +                   |
          +---->X1+---+             |
          |           |             |
          |           +-->Q         |
  M+------+           |   +         |
          |           |   |         v
          |           |   +--------+W
          |           |             ^
          +---->X2+---+             |
                +                   |
                |                   |
                +-------------------+
  

M = male / female X1 = math ability X2, X3 ... Xn = other factors (analytical ability, ability to work in teams, ability to understand real problems, etc, also bias of interviewers against women) Q = performance on interview questions W = performance in real life work

The slides, and most peoples argument is based on the model where there is only one factor math ability, which is why people go 'oh but that doesn't account for it / the disparity is so small'.

The important question is how do all the factors ADD UP?

Now,

If Q does not correlate with W, fix your interview questions first.

Then, if you want more women to do well in the interview, well, ... -- the wrong approach is to compromise the integrity of the interview, which compromises the company's business, and which is demeaning to women, although you could use this as a proxy to make the interview more comprehensive -- the correct approach is to investigate X1, Xn factors and train to remove these discrepancies earlier on way before the interview itself, if we decide that we want to. biases in the interview processes are only biases when removing them improves the correlation between Q and W

Another thing to do is to change the nature of the work itself. In which case the factors and interview questions will change accordingly. Play to peoples' strengths!

The nature of the work must include the performance of the team including the individuals as there may be a benefit to representation when it comes to solving problems of a crowd with varied people.

Interestingly, the Google article covers a lot of this, and even suggests some changes that can be made.

A large number of factors can quickly add up even if the individual factors as small.

I welcome comments from the more knowledgable, but I feel that a lot of knee jerk reactions here are just taking individual statements from the argument and loudly saying NO, or saying well there's no difference here.

+1 this

Does more than putting buttons on existing commands

Improves discoverability of interesting combinations of commands and option flags to make higher order commands

This was an excellent read about how to deal with the irrationality and repression of mobs. Thanks.

Perhaps this is where anonymous speech is important as it allows the discussion of ideas without giving importance to the persons behind them. Of courae, allowing for the fact that nothing can be truly anonymous :)

> Perhaps this is where anonymous speech is important

I'd like to rebut that point as we have anonymous, mainstream means to socialize nowadays. Chaotic (4chan) and moderated (mediums like Hacker News).

Users speak truth to power all the time on these platforms, is it effective? eh.

IMO there is a lot of value in these words coming from someone (from google) who is clearly switched-on, yet has A LOT to lose. Either the discussion is presented to the general populace and we accept it and learn from it, or the google employee becomes a martyr.

Either way, the fallout of this document is what interests me.

TED: Everything you think you know about addiction is wrong

https://www.ted.com/talks/johann_hari_everything_you_think_y...

This discussion should be about empowering women.

Not about painting people who've made mistakes with a brush. Not about placing blame.

If a friend / family member of yours, a woman you cared about, was in a situation where she was being harassed by someone with a cheque in his hand, what would you want her to do?

Women in cave feeding the babies. Men venture far and hunt with spear.

Welcome to the stone age all over again :)