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This is why I love the live streams hosted by John Innsprucker. He doesn't look like a TV star, he looks like an engineer, a rocket scientist. He looks real. T
by mabbo 9y ago
This is why I love the live streams hosted by John Innsprucker. He doesn't look like a TV star, he looks like an engineer, a rocket scientist. He looks real.
The other hosts are great, but if you told me they were hired actors or PR people I'd believe it.
- CydeWeys 9y agoYou're showing your biases here. The other people on the livestream are also rocket scientists. They aren't PR people. They just happen to be younger, or women, or of color. So you might want to re-evaluate what you think a rocket scientist "looks like", because your notion is outdated. Sorry to call you out like this, but these kinds of prejudices about who is the "correct" kind of person for tech jobs are harmful and discouraging to the people who don't fit the stereotypes, and helps contribute to keeping them out of the field.
- gsich 9y agoI think you're wrong there.
- electricslpnsld 9y agoThe announcer has a bachelors in aerospace engineering [1], I'm pretty sure that qualifies one as a rocket scientist. [1] http://www.lauren-lyons.com/aboutt-1-2/ http://www.lauren-lyons.com/aboutt-1-2/
- gsich 9y agoNot that. The last sentence from the post. OP just assumes that people don't go into tech because of what other people will think of them. It's a harmful assumption and not true either. People go into tech because it interests them. It's a choice.
- optimuspaul 9y agototally agree. we shouldn't be judging people based on appearances. Not all rocket scientists or engineers or pole dancers look the same.
- ColanR 9y ago> They just happen to be younger, or women, or of color. Maybe parent was referring to their mannerisms, rather than their appearance. It's not fair to jump to the assumption that parent was showing a bias against any of those variations in the human species.
- gameswithgo 9y agoEven mannerisms may be a bias we should try to fight.
- ColanR 9y agoPoint is, it's not fair to assume that _any_ bias was being shown. I don't think anyone believes that "PR person" or "paid actor" is a bad profession. You're assuming the parent was biased against something, and I'm suggesting that the parent discovered some mannerisms were not as indicative of a specific profession as they thought, and said so.
- simplify 9y agoIt's not an assumption, it's in the parent comment itself: > The other hosts are great, but if you told me they were hired actors or PR people I'd believe it.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
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- paulddraper 9y agomabbo never said the others didn't look like engineers. He said John doesn't look like an actor/PR person (which, I think you'll agree, have appearance job requirements). > The other hosts are great, but if you told me they were hired actors or PR people I'd believe it. Lots of people don't marry for money. And if someone marries a poor person, it pretty obvious they're not doing it for money. (Naturally, that doesn't mean they're the only one.)
- pertymcpert 9y agoYes, a million times yes.
- Svettie 9y agoOn the other hand, there are indeed many scientists/engineers who look/act "nerdy" or don't have the suaveness of people we typically see on TV. I think what GP is saying is that typically companies will put forward people who are good-looking and charismatic for PR, so it's nice to see someone different and unpolished be center-stage in the public eye.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- take4 9y agoWhy exactly is “good looking and charismatic” a bad thing? To be a good host you need to (should) be charismatic, that’s literally the job.
- viraptor 9y agoThere's a balance. Sometimes I enjoy watching someone nerding out about a subject. Charisma means they'll sometimes start banter with the co-host rather than continue with things interesting to them. Or they'll try to "make" things entertaining and exciting. I guess it depends if you're looking more for entertainment or information.
- take4 9y agoI disagree, even if you don't care about banter, a capable host will be able to drive conversation and get panelists/guests/interviewees to express themselves better (even if they are typically awkward in front of a camera). I see it all the time in professional esports streams.
- robbrown451 9y agoIt's not bad to be good looking and charismatic, but it's nice to see they didn't make it a requirement.
- Svettie 9y agoI don't think it's a bad thing. I think a lot of the differing opinions here stem from seeing the people on screen as primarily either engineering or PR people. So I think mabbo meant "nice to see an authentic engineering type thrown in with the PR people", whereas Yetanfou thought he said "Of the engineers on screen, that guy is the only one that looks like one". They're kind of standing up for the same principle though: inclusion of people in a role that goes counter to stereotypical outward characteristics.
- arcticfox 9y agoGP's statement: > The other hosts are great, but if you told me they were hired actors or PR people I'd believe it. Is 100% consistent with your statement and even implies it, since GP clearly knows that: > They aren't PR people. If anything, GP was insulting Innsprucker by saying he is lacking the suaveness or good-looks to be hired in PR, while the others have it all. I think this is a good opportunity to examine where (implicit) malice was attributed but was undeserved.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- laythea 9y agoIs this not alike to asking me to not have the mental view of a basketball team as a coloured group of tall males? And if I had that view, then am I discriminating against short white people, or have I built a more accurate mental model of the world?
- neltnerb 9y agoBias is an input, and almost never the fault of the person who has it. It's just the way that brains work. Discrimination is an effect. Bias may cause discrimination, but bias in itself is not malicious.
- tmalsburg2 9y agoIf you think that being a female engineer is like being short in basketball, then there are clearly serious problems with your mental model of the world.
- laythea 9y agoNo, that's not what I said. Let me put it another way, things form patterns in life. All sorts of patterns. E.g. As a silly example to illustrate clearly, trees are generally green. Is that discriminating against other colours? (if such a thing were possible). Or simply an observation of life.
- logiclion 9y agoI believe the person was comparing the engineer to his model of a TV star rather than comparing his model of the engineer to the other 'tv looking ones'. "Sorry to call you out on this" but this person is clearly giving an opinion and this type of reactionary statement reads as defensive due to you expressing some type of negativity due to the structure of this persons opinion. You might want to re-evaluate what your notion of an opinion is, it might be "outdated". Accusing this person of prejudice due to an opinion is using a hammer where a screwdriver is needed...(words are tools). Lastly, suppressing the opinion of an individual with the power of appealing to various underrepresented group identities...can you see what type of appearance this person has through a screen? I think you're showing your "biases" here. Thoughts can be diverse too :)
- azernik 9y agoIf this hedges and mild way of pointing out implicit bias is a "hammer", then what exactly do you think is polite enough?
- logiclion 9y agoThanks for the question. The entire comment is kind of defensive and impolite, but I'll focus on what you asked. In my opinion, approaching it like the parent did as an individual making a statement that can be disagreeing is polite to me. However, your question is asking me to define a polite way to introduce and acknowledge implicit bias into a conversation that is meant to be used in the same way as above, and I can't. Using the idea of implicit bias as a means for an accusation of prejudice and 'outdated' opinions by appealing to various forms of groups that the parent could OR could not be identifying with as 'your' own opinion as an 'individual' is a hammer. Its powerful and sometimes is needed, but again its not a screwdriver :) I interpreted the parents comment as a joke more about the engineer not looking like a TV star than the others not looking like an engineer by the way... So to close this comment, CANT ENGINEERS LOOK LIKE TV STARS TOO?? to which I will respond and say 'not always'. Maybe that's a way to respond politely to implicit bias...
- robotkdick 9y agoHey, thought police, there's just one small problem: your reply is boring. Unless there's a crime that's been committed, that is. Then, it's safe to say the culprit should be dragged through the street and hung by the shoelaces of his converse sneakers. Otherwise, your bias toward boring us to death with your tedious puritanism is like Chinese water torture; although I could have just as easily have said, Swedish meatball torture, or English bangers and mash torture if that were to please you better. We'll all have to check with you before we post to make sure, Big Brother.
- djrogers 9y agoYou're being overtly crass to call someone out for being racist and bigoted when another reading of the same comment could imply that the other host were so professional, well spoken, and polished that he wouldn't be surprised if that was their profession. Isn't it rather biased of you to assume that being an engineer is somehow superior to being a professional actor, spokesperson, or hostess?
- heyoni 9y agoThis. Precisely.
- nmg 9y agoNot to belittle your point, but in defense of the original comment, I think he looked "more like an engineer" because he looked like he'd been up for 48+ hours powered nothing by coffee
- hueving 9y agoYou made an incorrect assumption based on bad logic. The parent didn't say they didn't look like rocket scientists, he/she said that they could pass as PR people, regardless of whether or not they were rocket scientists. Let me phrase it a different and rude (sorry) way. "You know they're including real engineers because there is at least one person in the spotlight that would never be employed by a PR firm."
- CydeWeys 9y ago> The parent didn't say they didn't look like rocket scientists That's exactly what the parent said. Let me quote it for you: > He doesn't look like a TV star, he looks like an engineer, a rocket scientist. He looks real. The implication being that the other hosts looked fake, not like engineers or rocket scientists but like PR people. I think you're being overly charitable here, but even if you're right and your interpretation is correct, the original phrasing lends itself towards a worse interpretation that many other people (including me) picked up on. Precise communication is especially important around areas that are problematic for tech like diversity in our workforce, so if he had meant to compliment the rocket scientists on their poise he should have said exactly that, not implying that they don't look real (unlike the older white guy who fits all the stereotypes of being a rocket scientist).
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- waterhouse 9y agoLet's think about conditional probabilities here. Let's take the example of a man at a regular day of work. Suppose that 50% of the men in sales wear suits, but only 5% of the men in engineering wear suits, at work. And suppose that 20% of the male engineers wear jeans and a t-shirt, but 0% of salesmen do that. Then, taking a random male employee from either sales or engineering, we can say: (1) if he's wearing jeans and a t-shirt, that is a maximally strong signal that he's an engineer, while (2) if he's wearing a suit, that is a moderate-strength signal that he's in sales. If there are outfits where you can say "X% of engineers wear this, while Y% < X% of salespeople wear this", then someone wearing that outfit provides evidence (weak or strong depending on the values of X and Y) that they are an engineer. Contrariwise, if there's some other outfit where X% of engineers < Y% of salespeople wear it, then that's evidence for the wearer being in sales. Furthermore, since all the X's and Y's must add to 100% when taken across all outfits, if there are any outfits where X < Y, then there must be some outfits where X > Y. If there is some pattern of visually obvious signs that, say, 30% of engineers show and only 1% of non-engineers show, then it follows that 99% of non-engineers and 70% of engineers show every other pattern of signs. Which means that, if you see someone showing some other pattern of signs, and you don't know anything except that it's not the abovementioned pattern that 30% of engineers show, then your knowledge logically implies that it's somewhat less likely (1.4 to 1 odds ratio) that they're an engineer. (Maybe someone else knows more than you, and could say that this pattern is actually also a strong signal of "engineer"—let's say it's even stronger, that 2% of engineers are like that and 0% of everyone else is. But the above statement about your knowledge remains accurate. Also, that would imply that the set of all other patterns is expressed by 68% of engineers and 99% of non-engineers, making the average of all other patterns a slightly stronger signal of "non-engineer".) That is a relatively diffuse signal, of course. If someone's very good at recognizing engineer-specific traits, and can see them in, say, 80% of engineers, then the average signal value of "all not-obviously-engineer traits" would be a strong "not an engineer". Or if someone can only recognize "definitely an engineer" traits in 2% of engineers, then that's only a 1.02 to 1 odds ratio for someone who doesn't show those "definitely an engineer" traits. In conclusion, statements of the form "I can look at some people and conclude that they're very likely an engineer" logically imply statements of the form "There are other people I could look at and be less confident they're an engineer". The quantities—how much less confident—depend on the details. I'm curious: (1) Do you think all statements of the form "Engineers are more likely to exhibit visible trait X" are worth calling out? (2) If 'mabbo had stated his criteria, and they were, for example (I haven't seen the videos), "Innsprucker is wearing very informal clothes while the others are obviously dressed up", would you think that was worth calling out? (3) If the answer to 2 is no, then would it have been better to ask 'mabbo, "I'm curious what makes Innsprucker so obviously a rocket scientist", before assuming it was absence of the traits "younger, or women, or of color" and calling him out for it?
- douglaswlance 9y agoYou don't hire old, crusty nerds to do PR. Why do you seek outrage? What does it gratify?
- emsy 9y agoWhat happened to the concept of the most charitable interpretation?
- pferde 9y agoIt has met the Internet.
- swat535 9y agosigh. yet another thread completely derailed by a meaningless and frankly irrelevant comment to the topic at hand, such as the one you made here. perhaps if we were not hypersensitive to every little detail, engineering would be a more welcoming discipline. I came here to read comments about this amazing achievement . so how about we focus on discussing the actual topic for a change ? I hope I'm not the only one feeling frustrated by this trend..
- ekianjo 9y agoYou are not the only one. Funny that instead of looking forward to space exploration a bunch of people prefer mundane debates. I thought that HN was better than reddit but this thread is an awkward exception it seems.
- oska 9y agoThere's a [-] sign next to every comment. You could have easily just collapsed the thread under that comment if you wanted to avoid that part of the discussion. Instead, here you are contributing to the very noise you're complaining about.
- tonystubblebine 9y agoGood comment. All the people trying to derail the conversation by claiming you are derailing the conversation could have just upvoted you instead or commented "good point" and then upvoted that.
- CydeWeys 9y agoI really did not want to derail the conversation into this topic anyway. I'm a lifelong space fan and I've been looking forward to this launch for years. I watched it live today with dozens of my coworkers. But I went to read the comments here and the second highest comment wasn't about the magnitude of the achievement or anything like that, it was just a throw-away comment about the way the livestream's hosts look. I felt obligated to respond because the look of it was so bad. This whole thread would never have happened had that comment not been sitting so prominently on the page sans rebuttal. I'm not the one who started the conversation about looks, in other words.
- mabbo 9y agoI really appreciate that you called me out for it. I wasn't being clear in my meaning, and I totally see your point. Too late for an edit now unfortunately.
- chrissnell 9y agoI felt the same way as the commenter above and it had nothing to do with their looks or color. Rather, it had everything to do with their speech patterns and tone. They sounded like they had been coached and were reading off cue cards. As I watched them, I joked with a friend that these people had been sent by the PR department to act as engineers and read a script. They didn't sound genuine in the least. If they are indeed engineers, they were trying way too hard. They should relax and try to sound more natural and less like a vocal artist reading a commercial script.
- wavefunction 9y agoThey seemed fine to me. They served their purpose admirably, engineers or not. In fact, engineers could stand to learn quite a bit from the rest of the people on the planet.
- mabbo 9y agoOh, I agree with you wholeheartedly! I didn't mean to say that those other people aren't also engineers and rocket scientist. Some companies might have only let the people who look like them host the live stream. SpaceX put out their top people- young, old, white, black, male, female- and let them all be the faces of the launch. I don't know that my own company would be so brave.
- kakarot 9y agoIt's a bit aggressive to assume OP's metrics of what "looks like" a rocket science includes being an old white male. Actually, you're the one who introduced these features as being relevant, and thus the only one perpetuating these features as being stereotypes right now is you.
- kinkrtyavimoodh 9y ago> The other hosts are great, but if you told me they were hired actors or PR people I'd believe it. Because they are young and good looking and good at public speaking?
- TheAdamAndChe 9y agoYes. Historically, young people with limited experience didn't end up being the focal point of companies in the media, so the chance that they were some PR workers was much higher than advanced material scientists.
- focusgroup0 9y agoI went to school with one of the other hosts. He's legitimately a genius, top marks and well-decorated in academia. Kind of weird to see the guy I used to hang out with livestreaming to 2.3mm people.
- tastyfreeze 9y agoI first read that as 2.3 millimeter people... who busted out the shrink ray?
- Simon_says 9y agoI did too. mm is millimeter. MM is million. It comes from the Roman numeral M, so it has to be capitalized.
- corobo 9y agoPeople can recognize context though. You are not the Google calculator
- aphextron 9y ago>I went to school with one of the other hosts. He's legitimately a genius, top marks and well-decorated in academia. And he's beautiful... Some people have all the luck.
- foobaw 9y agoAre you talking about Michael?
- tribune 9y agoAt the start of the video they introduced themselves as Lauren Lyons: Flight Reliability Engineer and Michael Hammersley: Materials Engineer. All rocket scientists it seems
- CydeWeys 9y agoAnd the relevant resumes: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurenilyons/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurenilyons/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-hammersley-a7166041/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-hammersley-a7166041/
- NotQuantum 9y agoTake Lauren, for example, she's a super accomplished mech/aero engineer who also happens to be a really good host. EDIT: Of course she's also involved in FIRST :P
- taneq 9y ago> He doesn't look like a TV star, he looks like an engineer, a rocket scientist. He looks real. Which is funny because, reading the job titles given to the SpaceX announcers, my first thought is always "wow, SpaceX hires some really attractive engineers."
- Yetanfou 9y agoSeeing how a harmless comment on a man 'look[ing] like an engineer, a rocket scientist´ leads to yet another long thread about 'bias' and similar concept is worrisome. The more speech is stifled, the more people have to weigh every word, every expression before they dare to utter it for fear of being accused of violating something, somewhere, making someone feel 'harmed', the less open and welcoming society will be. Less open to new ideas and new concept, less welcoming to those who come forth with those ideas and thoughts. It also does not mean people will actually change in such a way that they won't think someone 'looks like an engineer' or 'looks live a TV star', they just won't say it out loud. Instead they'll say it among friends they know they can trust, more vehemently than they'd have done if this type of speech were not taboo. I can only hope that the hyper-sensitivity currently found in the public sphere will pass when enough people from enough parts of society speak up against it. If it doesn't we're in for troubled times as it touches something which lies at the core of the enlightened western society, freedom of speech and expression. Those are precious things, too precious to squander.
- CydeWeys 9y agoIt's not harmless though, even if no harm was intended. My girlfriend is an engineer like me yet her experience in tech has been radically different than mine. She is constantly subjected to similar kinds of comments that imply that people like her don't fit in or belong, and it takes a real toll. It's a part of the reason why there's so few women in tech. I would never want to censor anyone. I'm just asking people to think about what kind of effect their words can have. I have the right to say that just as much as someone has the right to comment on who does or does not look like a rocket scientist.
- TheAdamAndChe 9y agoIf you think unconsciously treating people of a different social group differently is harmful, then you need to take a good hard look at your life and understand that there really isn't much strife in your life. I see where you're coming from, but it's such a minor behavioral difference that acting like it's a big deal really seems like a gross exaggeration to me.