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Google doesn't hide the fact that it puts snacks that are bad for you in a ranked order and makes healthier snacks easier and more convenient to get to on lower
by cromwellian 10y ago
Google doesn't hide the fact that it puts snacks that are bad for you in a ranked order and makes healthier snacks easier and more convenient to get to on lower shelves. They also label healthy stuff green ink, bad stuff red ink, and semi-ok stuff yellow. How is this any different than planners designing buildings to encourage exercise, or personal interactions?
There's nothing immoral about this, and everyone is told about it, but we know people don't always read the labels, but actually sorting healthy to unhealthy by convenience, leverages the laziness of most people into eating healthy. If I have to bend over to the lowest shelf to eat a Snickers, but a banana or apple is right in front of me, maybe I'll eat that?
There is nothing immoral or unethical about, and it publicly know.
If you provide any range of snacks for employees, like any store or restaurant, you face a decision on how to order the food. Most restaurants and stores optimize their menus or shelves to hawk stuff that has the highest margin and least cost.
If Google instead sorts their snacks according to say, popularity in the market, and puts all the Kit Kat or Snickers bars on the front shelf, then isn't that immoral? Lining the pockets of corporations that promote unhealthy disease causing foods, getting people addicted to sugar, and subconsciously steering them towards junk food? By "doing nothing" or "doing what was always done before" you are in fact, doing something knowingly bad that will harm health.
I'd say it's even MORE unethical to 'default' to putting the snacks in order of demand or popularity.
Google has also been trying to use data science internally to correct unconscious bias in promotions and interviews. Everyone is made aware of this, it's not a Milgram Experiment. Perhaps we should continue to let people rank resumes based on visible metadata like applicant name, even though we know it biases the reviewer -- even people who are progressive and even women are prone to this biasing effect. We could do nothing, or we could try to change the result -- and people will cry unethical, social engineering and manipulation.
You've been doing anti-Google rants for years, almost a daily obsession, but it doesn't seem like you've toured their offices even once. Maybe you should take a look at how the cafes and microkitchens actually work.
- ocdtrekkie 10y agoI've toured Mountain View and spent some time at the San Francisco office, FWIW. I doubt anyone would let me in the door these days though. ;) The cafeteria in Google San Francisco started my obsession with dried apple chips. ...I ate all of the ones that cafeteria had. And bought more at a local convenience store after I left for the day. I may or may not have recently bought approximately twenty bags of apple chips at one time. The brand of apple chips sold in California is way better than the ones sold here.